Anonymous
I can’t remember a time when he was nice to me. It was always more than a big brother picking on a little sister. I had that with my oldest brother. I knew what that felt like. It didn’t hurt and leave physical and emotional reminders.
He would look at me with pure hatred in his eyes. You’re so ugly. You’re so fat. You are stupid, why do you even do that?
I was told these things on a daily basis. Told how stupid I was, ugly, fat, how no one would ever love me. Told that the only thing I would be good for is my big mouth pleasing one of his friends. It scared me.
I am 13 and on the phone with a friend. We are giggling and making plans for meeting up with boys later in the day. He storms in and tells me to get off the phone, he needs it. I tell him to wait a minute. The mere act of me telling him to wait sets him off. Before I know it, the phone is ripped from the wall and thrown at my face.
We are driving home from school. His license has been suspended (again) so I am driving. He is mad that I am driving. He sees my Led Zepplin tape and asks where I got it. I sense I am on thin ice here, he is going to blow at any moment. I tell him my friend gave it to me. He sneers at me, throws the tape out the window of the moving car and tells me to stop being such a Poser.
Our parents are out of town for a week and it is just the two of us in the house. Our youngest brother has been sent to stay with some friends. I wish I had been too. Or that my parents would have taken me with them.
He throws a party and I lock myself in my bedroom. The doorknob rattles and a couple tries to come in. They are drunk and most likely high. I tell them to leave and they do. I breathe a sigh of relief and turn my music up higher. I need to go to the bathroom but don’t want to leave. I go to my parent’s room to use theirs. I walk in and there he is, on top of his girlfriend, having sex. It is the first time I see it and is an image burned into my 15 year old brain. I stumble over my words and run to my room in fear. I know that I will pay for that innocent mistake.
My brother was the worst thing that ever happened to me. Telling me daily I was worthless, ugly, dumb, not worth the air I breathe. I lived in fear of him. For as long as I can remember, I have lived in fear of the repercussions of telling my story.
My Mother knew. Her guilt did not allow her to do anything about it. She turned her eye so as not to see what he was doing to me. It was the family secret and still is. No one but he and I knew the abuse he doled out on a daily basis.
I am 34 and am still ashamed that I let it happen. Ashamed that I let it continue. Ashamed that I have let it have such an impact on my life.
He is now married with three daughters. My heart aches for those girls. I fear what he is doing to them. I fear that he is tearing them down the way he did me. I fear that they will never know how wonderful and special they are. I fear that he will destroy them the way he tried to destroy me.
I fear that no one will be there to tell those girls that they are wonderful, special, perfect, sweet, smart, and worth so much more than they will ever know.
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Anonymous
Paper
Can you take the lava
Carried in my stomach for years
I don’t want it anymore
Lava that I swallowed in his truck
because I didn’t know what else to do
Lava I tasted after he threw up
and came back to kiss me again
I didn’t know I could say no
Daddy’s enemas in the living room
Uncle playing licky licky
Daddy playing licky licky
Big coffee cow tongue on my face and laughter
Me screaming stop I hate you
Mommy’s pathetic stop…
300lb husband holding down little girl
in living room floor blocking tv
No daddy I don’t want to show you
how I kiss my boyfriend
I don’t want to kiss you
how I kiss my boyfriend
Don’t talk about me with a boyfriend
Mommy’s pathetic stop don’t tease her
Did you know that uncle’s in prison now?
He played licky licky with
one too many little girls
huh?
Wonder if the other inmates know he’s
in for child molestation
& that he used to be
a prison guard
Wonder if he’s getting his own
licky licky
Mommy eyes closed
Fingers in ears
Head shaking
la la la la
la la la la
I can’t hear you…
But that was past
I don’t carry it now
Paper does
And when it burns
again the paper listens
###
Richard
It has been two years since I first wrote my story for Violence UnSilenced. I was 44-years-old and speaking out for the first time about sexual abuse that began when I was nine.
Quite frankly, 35 years was 35 years too long to be dealing with such trauma. Still, finding my voice was a vital step in the recovery process. It came near the end of my recovery, after years of love and support from my wife. It came after repeated cycles of anger and healing and discovery. It came after I discussed with my mom her and my father’s inability to protect me from the abuse they suspected was happening but about which they did nothing. It came after I was able to forgive myself, my parents, and ultimately my deceased abuser. I didn’t know what to expect after I spoke out. What I experienced was total emotional numbness. My tank was empty. I was not only emotionally empty from the effort of finally putting to rest the abuse of my childhood; I had absolutely no idea of what I was supposed to do next. Not one clue. So, I did nothing. The intervening time has been spent learning how to live life without a crisis. When all you know is pain, pain is normal. I’ve had to adjust to a new and healthier normal.
Today I am sharing my voice once again to encourage men to add their voices to the chorus of abuse victims who are speaking up, speaking out, and ending the control abusers hold over their victims. I want to encourage women everywhere to support and encourage the men in their lives who experience the pain of sexual abuse to address these issues. They’re all around us.
It seems we cannot turn on the news without finding another story about sexual assault. Jerry Sandusky of Penn State stands accused of pedophilia, as does Bernie Fine at Syracuse University and Hollywood child actor agent Martin Weiss. It has become so prevalent that a relative recently broke three decades of silence on the subject of our shared experience to call me and ask how I felt about Penn State. We agreed that the answer was simple. Nationally, we’re having the wrong conversation.
Instead of talking about the individual pedophiles, reporting their court cases, and discussing how their actions affect our public institutions, we should be educating the country on how and why pedophiles operate, how to recognize the warning signs of all sexual abuse, and why it is critical for adults to take action when the sexual abuse of children is known or suspected. We should be educating people about the warning signs of sexual abuse against all children, girls and boys, and detailing the damage that is done when adults look the other way. The dialogue should be about the selective outrage of Penn State college students who took to the streets to protest the firing of a football coach, but had nothing to say when it was learned that school administrators turned a blind eye to the sexual abuse of young boys on campus. That should have triggered a protest. It is time to publicly ask why Corey Haim committed suicide, and ask ourselves why we continue to support a Hollywood industry where, according to actress Allison Arngrim, the sexual abuse of children is an open secret. A claim such as that simply must be investigated openly and honestly. It is time to ask ourselves where our values lie.
Usually, men are sexually assaulted when they were children or young teens. The affects of sexual assault on them are nearly indistinguishable from those of women. They experience the same misplaced guilt, shame, anger, fear, betrayal, self-loathing and loss that women experience as a result of sexual assault. Left untreated, it can lead to the same self-destructive behavior that appears in many of the testimonies found here on VU.
Fear and shame keep men silent: the fear of ridicule, and the fear of being labeled a potential predator due to the myth that all victims grow up to become perpetrators. Fear and shame also prevent responsible adults from stepping in and stopping sexual abuse when they see it. As we all know, silence is an abuser’s best friend. When adults remain silent, sexual predators thrive.
Men and women, speaking up together, can increase the awareness of all sexual assaults. Men and women, united, can educate our country. We can show our neighbors why looking the other way is as damaging as the pain caused by sexual predators. Together, victims of both sexes can raise awareness to a new level. With as much love and Grace as possible, we desperately need men to join the dialogue.
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Richard’s original Violence UnSilenced post appeared here on April 8, 2010. It is currently estimated that one in six boys is a victim of sexual abuse; for more, visit 1in6.org.
Thank you for visiting Violence UnSilenced, a speak-out platform for survivors of domestic abuse, sexual assault, and sexual abuse. If you are a survivor and it is safe to do so, we encourage you to share your story here. If you are not a survivor but you want to support those who are, please click around this site and find out more about what you can do.
Jo (@MinnesotaJoy)
I can’t remember how old I was when my mom met him. He had a dog named Nika. He wore a cowboy hat. He was handsome, with black hair and blue eyes. He didn’t smoke or drink anything but Pepsi. My mom loved him and I was his girl. I called him Daddy and we went fishing and drove around in his truck singing along to Charlie Daniels and Dolly Parton. I loved him.
My mom married him and had two more babies. She’d been married before and I have a little brother from that relationship that I rarely saw. There is a picture of my brother, and my stepdad and me with Nika that is from before they were married. I was perhaps five or six and my little brother a few years younger. I can’t remember that day but I remember that I loved the outfit I was wearing. The look in my eyes is too sad for someone who is only five or so. Perhaps it was going on even then.
I don’t remember how old I was when he started making me do stuff that made me uncomfortable. I remember the feeling of dread when my mom was going to leave the house.
I remember specific incidents and acts that I was made to perform. I remember pain, gagging…feeling sick. Feeling WRONG. Dreading being alone with him but at the same time feeling a strange sense of happiness that I could please him. He told me I was a good girl, a pretty girl. He told me what a good job I was doing. I still have trouble accepting praise some times because it reminds me of him.
There was a time when my mom came home and found him in his bed naked, a single long blonde hair on his body. I can’t remember much, but I do remember that he pushed me off of the bed when he heard the front door close. My mom said I denied that anything happened. I think she knew the truth even back then.
I remember going to the hospital at some point. A male doctor examined me and made me cry and hurt. What he was doing didn’t make sense to me. I was hurt ‘down there’ but not where he was checking. I cried and fought to get free. The doctor told my mom that I must have made things up because of a book she read to me about how babies were made. He figured I was jealous of her relationship with her new husband.
Time passed. I remember my mom getting ready to leave for her bowling league. I cried and begged her not to go and told her I was afraid. That’s the day when I learned I couldn’t ever count on her to keep me safe. She slapped my face and told me to stop lying and then left. I can still see the fancy rug on the floor in the entryway of our house and remember how I didn’t even get a chance to leave that room before he made me pay for telling. My mom came home with a friend later that night and had been drinking. She made me run laps around our block in the snow for lying and said I couldn’t stop running until I told the truth. I ran for what seemed like forever, lungs burning and coughing until I threw up. It took a long time before I finally gave in and told her the lie she wanted to hear.
I stayed overnight at a friend’s house once and he did too so that he could babysit. I remember him calling to my friend in the middle of the night. I stayed in the bed and pretended I was sleeping. When she came back she was crying. A short time later I remember my mom screaming at him and fighting because we had to move again.
We moved from Iowa to Florida. The abuse continued. My mom continued to drink and be in denial that anything was going on. One of her drinking buddies moved into a camper behind our trailer. He tried to do stuff to me but I would just pretend I was sleeping. One day he did it when I was awake and I told him I was going to tell my daddy. (I knew telling my mom wouldn’t work because she’d hit me or punish me again.) He cried and pulled out a gun and threatened to kill himself if I told and said it would be my fault if he died. I didn’t tell.
One day, my mom picked me up from school and said we were leaving. She’d packed a few things and we went to her aunt’s house. Then I went to stay at my grandparent’s house while my mom figured things out. I never saw my brothers again and my mom moved away.
I eventually got kicked out of my grandparents’ house because my grandmother (who was pretty much nuts) accused me of stealing. I went to live with a friend of my mom’s that she met in alcohol treatment. Eventually my mom moved me to Minnesota.
In Minnesota, I shared some nightmares I was having with my junior high guidance counselor. She was a mandatory reporter so my abuse was documented. I was videotaped telling what I could remember. The social worker who had my case cried when she heard my story. They called Florida and my abuser was arrested, but the charges were dropped because the statute of limitations had expired by then. I was twelve. My mom went on about how she just KNEW something had happened and acted like she was the victim in all of it, then crawled into a bottle. Eventually she decided to seek treatment again.
Because I was living in Minnesota and didn’t have any relatives nearby, I was placed in foster care. I graduated from high school, aged out of foster care and moved out on my own. Years of counseling made me understand that none of what happened was my fault. Years of bad relationships helped me learn that I deserved better than what happened to me. I faced my abuser and he admitted (after years of lying about it) what he’d done and he asked my forgiveness. I forgave him.
I met a wonderful man and got married. He is the stepfather of two of my kids and we have two children together. He loves me and isn’t afraid of my past. He is supportive and funny and I’m happy. I have a close relationship with my daughters and we have talked about my childhood. I have done everything I can to let them know that what happened to me was not ok, and that they could talk to me about anything. I refuse to let my daughters believe the lies that I did.
I am ever vigilant to the moods and expressions of my children, always alert in case they ever start acting differently. I am always watching to make sure they stay safe. No one will EVER tell my children that if they tell that their mom won’t love them anymore and will leave them. My children trust in my love enough so that they’d never believe it.
My name is Jo and I am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. I am not a victim.
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Jo writes at Minnesota Joy and tweets as @MinnesotaJoy. She asks that you please keep all comments here on Violence UnSilenced, rather than over on her blog.
Thank you for visiting Violence UnSilenced, a speak-out platform for survivors of domestic abuse, sexual assault, and sexual abuse. If you are a survivor and it is safe to do so, we encourage you to share your story here. If you are not a survivor but you want to support those who are, please click around this site and find out more about what you can do.
