Anonymous
I read this woman’s blog, and it’s quite possible you do, too. She has a couple thousand followers on Twitter; I’ve even read about her in a magazine. I tell you this not to make it seem like you need to be some ‘famous’ blogger or something for your voice to count, but rather to further drive home the point that there are people all around you that you think you know — that you admire, that you may even envy — that you don’t actually know at all. It’s my greatest wish for this site that you will see how pervasive domestic violence and sexual abuse/assault experiences are. If you are a woman, get three of your female friends or family members in a room with you and look around; One of you has a story of abuse. (I don’t know what the numbers are for men, but I don’t for a second doubt their volume.) It’s everywhere.
***
I was three when we moved into our big, new, fancy suburban house. I had a new brother, and loving parents. Our neighbor children came over to greet us — teenagers, a boy and a girl. They took me to their house to watch a movie. I don’t think they hurt me that time.
It was later, after I trusted them, after my mom trusted them. They would take me to their basement. I couldn’t tell you much more, even if I wanted to. It’s just a mélange of cruelty, of fear, of no power, no control. Of being held down. Of being told that if I told, they would kill my parents. And I believed them. When people act the way they acted, you believe them when they tell you that.
It stopped when I was five. One day, we were in their parents’ car playing “vacation.” (Ahh, the good old days, when you could play in a car.) The girl pushed in the cigarette lighter, waited until it was white hot. Then she held it to the tip of my nose until it sizzled. As I screamed, she said matter-of-factly, “Remember, if you tell, we kill them.”
But left with this visible scar, this token that could be nothing but intentional, I had to say SOMETHING. So I blamed the girl across the street. My mother marched over there, furious, screaming. But her mother, puzzled, explained that her daughter had been in the house all day. My mom didn’t let me play with those kids anymore, and I was glad. I was so, so glad. But I was also confused and ashamed.
I was a liar, I had lied about what had happened. I had no true voice. My mom talked to me about how I couldn’t walk in the neighborhood alone, because I might get molested. When I realized what she meant, I thought, “But that already happened.”
I was six when their house burned down. I stood in the crook of our cherry tree as the sun came up, gleefully waiting for their charred bodies to be pulled from the rubble. I didn’t care that it was bad to want that, I just wanted to know that there is justice, that bad things happen to bad people.
But sadly, they were alive. They’d all gotten out when the smoke alarms went off. All that happened is that they rebuilt and dug a swimming pool with the insurance money. The kids grew up and went away, and I went to cookouts at their parents’ house, watched the dog when they went on vacation. I would glance at the basement crawlspace as I fed the fish, and shiver. But I didn’t allow myself to think about what had happened. It made me feel dirty and polluted.
I thought if I didn’t think about it, it hadn’t happened. But that’s not how it works, is it? As I grew up, and it was time to forge my own relationships, I was far more damaged than I had allowed for. It was hard for me to trust that anyone would actually care about me. If they found out the scars I carried inside, surely they wouldn’t.
I went through all of the things that many abuse survivors go through as adolescents. Substance abuse, depression, suicide attempts. If you had told me then that so much of that could be traced back to my hours in the basement, I wouldn’t have believed you. I could barely even remember it, how could it possibly affect me on so many levels? But when a wound is never addressed, cauterized, or healed, it finds any way to come out that it can.
It gets better, over time. It’s just that it’s one of my first memories, and it’s shaped who I am, whether I acknowledge it or not. My daughter is four now. When she casts admiring gazes at older children and wants to run off with them at parties, I draw her close. I fear her trust being betrayed, mine misplaced. I don’t need a reason to fear for her, I grew up with one.
When I was 16, driving home after a group therapy session, my mom made some reference to how many girls had been sexually abused. “At least,” she said, “that never happened to you.” There was a long silence. I shrugged. She pulled over and named the teenagers. And just like that, my silence was broken. We never really discussed it after that, but just to have her know, and be believed, made a huge difference.
According to the Darkness to Light Foundation, 40% of childhood sexual abuse victims are molested by older children. 50% are molested by someone the family knows and trusts. I’ll do everything in my power to make sure that my three kids are never victims of any of them.
Blog Talk Radio and the contest winner
1. Thanks for your patience waiting for the results of last week’s contest, the ones I said I’d post Monday. 
I am traveling and my Internet connection is limited — but, without further ado, congratulations to Bessie.Viola, you are the winner of my favorite necklace! It was generously donated by my friend, Elizabeth, and created by Robin Ann Jewelry, as seen on NBC’s Ann Curry. It says ‘Peace’ on one side, and on the other (facing a person’s chest) it says ‘at home.’ It is strung on deep purple suede, and valued at $84. It’s pretty awesome. Please email me at maggie[at]violenceunsilenced[dot]com with your mailing address.
2. The women of Blog Talk Radio’s Chicks Who Chat, Classy Jen and Sugar Jones, graciously invited me on their show yesterday to talk about Violence UnSilenced. I was almost paralyzed with nerves, but they were very sweet and I think (hope!) it was a good discussion. You can listen to or download the show here.
3. Look for new survivor stories every Monday and Thursday, and thank you again for the massive support.
Jodi
The following survivor story was written by Jodi, who writes about being a wife, mother, attorney, and everything in between at Jodifur.com. You can also follow Jodi on twitter.
***
My first month in college I met a boy, a man really. He was a senior to my freshman. A senior with a lot of money. And he liked me. And we started “hanging out.” He was cute. And I was awkward. And it was college. And I thought I had made it.
We went to a party and I ran into my freshman orientation leader, or as they were called at my school, “red caps.” I spent the party talking to him while the guy I had been hanging out with talked to other people. I didn’t think much of it until he walked over to me and said, “We’re leaving, now.” In a tone I can’t even describe. It was parental, like a father scolding a child. And menacing.
He walked me to my room and as soon as we walked in he hit me so hard it sent me clear across the room. And I was stunned. I had never been hit. Not by my parents, not by other guys I had dated, never before.
I looked up at him with such I look of shock and he said, “What do you think you are doing talking to that guy all night? Hitting on him. It’s embarrassing.”
“Brian? He was my red cap. He wanted to know how school was going, I….”
WHACK — right across the face and he stormed out.
And I knew, I knew I should never see him again. But it was my first month of college and he kept coming around. Showing up at my room all hours of the night. Calling all the time. I was being stalked before the word even existed.
It was my first few months of school and I did everything to make sure my roommate never knew. I was embarrassed. I somehow felt that this was my fault, that I had made this happen. Everyone thought we were this perfect normal happy couple. He didn’t hit me again for a long, long time.
Until another night and another party and I had done something else wrong. Same tone, same dragging back to my room. Except this time he threw me on the bed, and started ripping at my clothes. And to this
day, I believe he would have raped me, or worse. But I was very, very lucky, because the door was not locked and a close male friend walked in and ripped him off of me and beat the crap out of him. I would never in a million years advocate violence, but he left me alone after that.
Looking back I should have done so many things differently. Gone to the school, told my parents, told my roommate, got out! But I was young and it was my first months of college and he totally preyed on me. And I hope he has gotten what is coming to him.
I work in family violence now. And I deal with men who beat women and children everyday. And I’ve never let go of that scared young girl in the dorm room who thought she would lose her virginity via rape.
And I never judge women who stay.
Zoey Jane
The following survivor story was written by Zoey Jane. She blogs at Mommy is Moody.
***
“I never thought it was okay to hit a woman, until I met your mother.”
I remember my father saying these words to me and my reaction, half nervous chuckle and internal disgust shaped out of fear of him and nausea that any one person could deserve that. I could only assume at the time that my mother had gotten as much, if not worse, than I had. I was 14 and had already fractured two ribs, chipped a cheek- and brow-bone and dodged intervention by child protection representatives four times.
When I was 16, I got into a heated argument with my boyfriend. We were sitting in his car outside my home, a small basement suite I lived in alone. I refused to go in and he refused to drive away with me still in the car. I believe it’d already been a couple of hours, or was verging on it, that we’d sat there, with me needling at him and his verbage downgrading to just get me to shut the fuck up and let him leave.
I was good at blocking doors. I’d start an argument and as the crescendo rose, I’d get closer and meaner and harsher and before you knew it, I was going too far and then when seeing the metaphoric slap in the face, daring them to slap me back literally. I deserved it, I knew, and worse than that, if he really loved me, he would feel strong enough to need to hit me.
In this case, I was soon admitting that I’d had a miscarriage I’d never told him about because I knew it’d just make him feel and cry and I was tired of him crying so easily, the constant reminder of how he was softer than other boys. Truthfully, it was more the fact that I was the one often making him cry, not that he did cry, that I hated. He reacted by seethingly making an accusation that amounted to the label Slut.
Now, I know that this is one of my triggers. That Slut can make me think and visualize and rationalize all kinds of aggression into fairness.
Then, I warned him. I told him that I would lose it if I heard Slut one more time, and that I might not be able to control myself. He called my bluff. And I fantasized about backhanding him across his beautiful, tear-stained face.
Then, he was out of the car and running away from me, choking back tears. When I caught up to him, he said that I’d hit him, but I knew it wasn’t so. It couldn’t be so. I didn’t actually move, I just thought it.
Flash forward nine years and I’m living with a man who cannot cry. An alcoholic who only lets feelings out into the open whence enough has been drunk to make it possible to erase their meaning and the pain they might have inflicted with blackout. He’s yelling at me that my father, whose been dead for only ten days, would slap me if he were alive and I would deserve it. That I’m the stupidest cunt he’s ever met. That I’m disgusting in my neediness and inability to just not let someone fuck me. I’m a Slut.
Because I’m having this man’s baby.
He never hit me. There were reactions to me hitting him. Fingers pressed too hard into flesh as I was thrown onto a bed and straddled with a fist raised over my face. Most women would shake in fear, it occurs, and a fucked up side of me, shook in excitement. Finally. He never did hit me, just shoved and poked those needle-like fingers into my easy-to-bruise skin.
That fist was raised at least another four times in the next year, but he never hit me. I hit him twice.
Once, it was a backhand delivered while he smoked a joint out our apartment’s window, looking away from where I stood behind him. He was telling me to go fuck myself because I told him he wasn’t allowed to smoke up – I was going out, leaving our sleeping daughter under his watch. I pictured throwing him out the window, but instead I asked him, even-voiced and calm-in-mind, “what was that?” and he repeated, turning.
It was a Hollywood moment, when my hand connected to his cheek as he enunciated Fuck yourself perfectly.
The next time, we were wrestling over the phone.
I was hemorrhaging, in the process of losing (another one of) his babies. I had been to the hospital the week before, having passed out after losing half of my blood. This night, he yelled at me that I was fucking ridiculous for just lying on the floor after momentarily losing consciousness, because I wasn’t taking a taxi to the hospital.
Our daughter was screaming in her bedroom, because he’d had to put her to bed for the first time in a year and she didn’t agree with that. He was done taking care of her every five minutes or so, giving him the opportunity to smoke and scream obscenities at me.
Because I was doing absolutely nothing to help him and she was only screaming, refusing to sleep, wanting me. He suggested at one point that I rock her to sleep while he stood behind me, in case I passed out while doing it. I insisted that he take care of her and once she was fine, I’d go to the hospital.
Why he never called an ambulance or suggested it, I wondered. I eventually crawled to the bed, navy seal style.
Later, he brought her to bed to sleep with me after proclaiming that he was definitely done taking care of her and she could scream all night – he had to work in the morning. I wasn’t going to get to the hospital and I pretty much yelled every What kind of a fucking person, Father, are you? at him. I wouldn’t let him set the alarm clock because if my daughter and I were just getting to sleep, we weren’t being woken in four hours. He tried to grab it, and I tried to keep it away from him, barely being able to move without becoming light-headed. He tried to yank it out of my hands, the cord burning like rope might and I let go and threw a half a cup’s worth of water at his legs.
He raised that fist again, with our daughter between my face and it. While I was bleeding (I’d find out later, literally, almost to death) and she was screaming. Moving her to the centre of the bed, I screamed at him to leave and he refused. I grabbed the phone to call the police and he tried to twist it from my hand. Coming around the other side, he attempted to grab it again as I turned it on to dial 911. I smacked him directly down the side of his smug, alcohol-infused face and then came that fist raise again.
“Go ahead. See if you ever see your daughter again, since you’ve now raised your fist twice at me, with her in between us. I’m having a miscarriage and you’re threatening me in front of our child? Do it, I dare you.”
I guess I didn’t know what I wanted, really – him to hit me or not. But I do know that really, little has felt as good in life as smacking him.
And I know this: violence in a household isn’t much more than a shallow message of control and anger. I know because I received it growing up, because I handed it out to the men who disrespected me and because tonight, when my two year old daughter punched me in the face, I immediately put her into our bed, kissed her cheek and told her goodnight.
She screamed, because it was bedtime that she was originally protesting when the blow was dealt to me. And I cried, because it’s a horrible feeling to want to hit your child back.
I’ve come to a new realization: after hating my father for so many years for the kicks and punches. The spankings with a 1X4 inch stick. For being locked in my room on weekends while he slept in, having to piss in the sink of my fibre-board play kitchen and then being spanked for being so disgusting an animal. Standing with my nose in a corner for all of dinner-time, primetime and through to the colour bars on the television and the national anthem. The belittling and the emotional abuses. All of it…
The thing I hate him the most for is not making the choice to just put me to bed, kiss me goodnight and shut the door.
