This is a very personal story that I am about to share and one that is close to my heart. Everyday I hear about children who are abducted and sexually or physically abused. Some of them are found and returned to their families. Others are not so fortunate. I grieve for all of them.
Most children who are sexually abused, are molested by people they know. It could be a family member, a neighbor, priest or child care worker, ect...ect...ect...
Before I started going to school, my Mom would send me to the backyard to play. My nineteen year old neighbor Joe, several times a week, would lift me over the fence. Before I begin telling you about what happened, let me describe Joe to you. He was a tall man with long dark hair down to his butt. He wasn't bad looking and he always had alot of girlfriends.
After he lifted me over the fence, we would go in the utility room off of his patio. He always had a joint rolled, and after we smoked that he gave me shots of vodka to drink. Now remember, at this time I was only five years old.
He was constantly telling me how beautiful I was, while stroking my hair. Each time I went there it would progress a little more. By this time, he had convinced me that he was in love with me. He talked about how one day we would get married.
One day he took me to his room and took all of my clothes off. He tried to penetrate me, but it hurt so much that I started screaming. He stopped, but not before breaking my Hymen. He never tried that again. Instead he showed me how to give him oral sex, and from then on, that is what I did.
He made me promise that I would never tell anyone about it. He said if I did tell anyone, that he would kill both of my parents. I believed him. I had seen him beat his Mom up a few times.
When I started the first grade, every morning he would be waiting for me before school. It was always the same routine. We would smoke a joint, then drink Vodka, in fact he would fill a baby food bottle with Vodka, and I took it to school everday. Then we'd go to his room. I hate to admit it, but I got to be very good at it.
Everyone has their own way of dealing with abuse. Some do drugs, some drink, and some develope eating disorders. I chose all of the above. I decided when I was six years old, that I wanted to be ugly. I didn't want to be beautiful anymore. If I was ugly, maybe Joe would leave me alone. I began eating as much as I could. I gained alot of weight.
Joe's Mom died of cancer when I was in the second grade, and he moved away. I continued to smoke pot and drink all the way through High School.
To this day, I have weight problems. I just don't know how to deal with all that has happened to me. Even though I know in my heart, that none of it was my fault, I still feel guilty. Whenever I lose weight, men start to hit on me. That scares the hell out of me, and I start eating again. It's just a never ending cycle.
Before I end this I would like to say something to every parent who happens to be reading this. Talk to you're children, tell them that they can tell you anything. Tell them that no one has the right to touch them in their privates. Make sure they know they can tell you about it if it happens, no matter who it is that did it. No matter if they threaten them, tell them that you will protect them.
Another thing I want to say is for you to believe them. If you're child tells you that someone is touching them, whether it is you're husband, boyfriend, brother or priest, believe them. Children very rarely make up stories about this.
Thank you for letting me get this off my chest. I don't like to talk about it very often, but maybe this will help me to deal with it a little better.
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Comments: 40
If going to therapy seems to daunting right now, there are a lot of good books in the psychology and self-help sections of the bookstore. At amazon.com you can get some of them used or at the library, if money is an issue. The one I most highly recommend which was my "bible" for many years, is called "The Courage to Heal". I don't think it is being printed anymore, but I am sure the library will have it and if not I know that amazon.com sells it used, because I just got it for a friend of mine. The authors (Ellen Bass and Laura Davis) have a revised version called "Beginning to Heal" which is still in print, but "The Courage to Heal" is much more comprehensive and detailed, at least in my opinion.
It not easy to heal from sexual abuse, but I believe it can be done. I am so different and so much more self-confident and whole than I was when I first began really working to heal. The memories will never go away, but when you work through the feelings, they lose their power to hurt you and they fade to gray, while life becomes filled with color.
I hope that perhaps the things I have suggested might lead you to investigate further and get the help that is out there for you. All the best.
One of my deepest fears is that someone would take my oldest daughter or touch her inappropriately. She was a cherub of a child with curly red hair. It made all the moms and grandmas (who should know better) wherever I went start conversations with her and pet her and touch her hair... Alot of men did it as well and all of it scared the hell out of me.
Until she was about 7 she would stay within arms length of me in public because she hated this petting that strangers did. It took me removing a womans hand from her head once to make her stop, she was a harmless older woman but was scaring my girl. Now she tells people to not touch her, and that she cannot talk to them, unless I am right there and she feels safe talking to them.
You are right, we have to tell our kids that those bad people cannot hurt mom and dad and they only tell the kids that so the kids wont say anything to their mom and dad. We also need to let the kids know that the person doing these bad things is bad and that if they do not tell mom and dad then we cannot protect them with the law.
by the time I told my mom, all my mother could say is what do you want me to do about it. I was horrified at her response. It was many years later, so there really was no way of proving it.
As for talking to your kids, mine have known about good/bad touch since 2(whether they understood for sure or not..?but they knew), and they talk to me about all sorts of stuff any hour of the day, so hopefully I succeeded there.
Anyways, I'm glad you could get it out. I hope it helped. :)
I'm so sorry you mother did not believe you. That is all too often the case, though less so as sexual abuse has become more and more openly talked about. I think that I tried to tell my father about some horrible abuse perpetrated against me by my oldest brother and some friends of his and that my father wouldn't even listen to me. But that memory is very vague, unlike my memories of the abuse which are vague in the slightest.
I am also sorry about your experience in talking with a therapist. I had some bad experiences with therapist myself before I found the right one, one who had extensive experience in working with survivors of sexual abuse and with whom things clicked. A good friend of mine who did not have the financial resources for either individual or group therapy went to meetings she found very supportive by the group Survivors of Incest Anonymous. Here is the URL to the homepage:
www.siawso.org. You can also email them at info@siawso.org to find out if there are meetings in your area. They are a 12-step program, but their 12 steps are quite different from other 12-step programs and according to my friend, quite empowering. I hope you find there is are group meetings near you and that if you go, you find it helpful.
Kari---I am so in awe of how you handled the situation with your daughter when she told you that your father had sexually abused her. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Your response to protect your daughter in the face of what I imagine was harsh disagreement by other members of your family was so courageous and gives me hope that other parents will be wise like you and believe and help their children if their children tell them that they were sexually abused. Best of course would be total eradication of child abuse, but I think that is going to take some time yet, unfortunately.
Thanks again carolyn!