by Band Back Together | May 22, 2014 | Child Sexual Abuse, Rape/Sexual Assault |
I need some supportive thoughts guys.
I am scared, scratch that, terrified of the coming summer months. Summer means warm weather, and warm weather means my family heads north to the our camp. The camp where I was sexually assaulted for three years by the same person, our next door neighbor’s son. It happened when I was 11, and even though I am an adult now, it still gives me nightmares and horrible flashbacks this time of year.
What’s worse? I have to see him. My parents are still good friends with his, and act as though nothing ever happened. They tell me I should be over it by now, but I can’t. I just can’t get over something that in one moment changed my life forever. I can’t act as though he didn’t have a heavy hand in ruining my childhood years. I can’t look at him, be around him, or anything!
I wish my family was more understanding. I love them dearly. We have all been through a lot, but this is one thing we don’t agree on.
I want my family to see my son. I want to be able to have fun up at my camp without constantly looking over my shoulder to see if he is watching me again.
Has anyone else had to face their attacker again or a family who just doesn’t understand?
by Band Back Together | May 20, 2014 | Child Sexual Abuse, Incest |
The first memory I have of being abused was before I could talk well enough for people to understand me. I was maybe 2. My father was home and acting playful. He was letting me climb on him and crouched down on the living room floor with me. I was happy, he was like a different daddy because normally, I was scared of him. He was always yelling and hitting people.
On this day he seemed happy and nice. He picked me up and I reached out to touch his mustache. I touched it lightly and he pressed my hand harder onto his mustache, then he took my fingers into his mouth. He bit them really hard. I screamed, but he didn’t let go right away. When he did let go of my fingers and put me down, there were purple tooth prints on my fingers. He was still happy, but I never wanted to play with him again.
When I was 3, he started coming into my room when my sister wasn’t home. We shared a room, so it didn’t happen a lot, but when it did, it was terrible. I never thought it was meant to be pleasant for me, he liked to hurt me.
The first night, he reached under my blanket and just felt my private area. He was talking quietly about how it was too small and would bleed if he put his finger in. He sat there for a while just touching me, then he left.
The next night, while we watched tv, he called me over to him on the couch. He said he thought I had a fever, and he was going to take my temperature. I think he already had the thermometer. He made me lay across his lap and told me to put my face down into my pillow. He pulled down my pants and put the thermometer into my rectum with his finger along side of it. He told me to hold still and relax, or it would break, that it was glass, so it would hurt a lot. I cried even though he told me to stop. My mom came back and saw what he was doing . She told him he was doing it wrong. He said he was afraid the thermometer would slide in and get stuck if he didn’t do it that way. So I had to lay there in front of everyone while he timed it. They said it would be a few minutes but, when the show was over he was still at it. When the show was over the other kids were sent to bed. He told me to be real still and he’d take it out. There was a bit of movement of his finger then he took it out slowly and sent me to bed.
The next time my sister was sleeping over, somewhere my dad brought me into my parents bed. He said I’d been crying because I was scared but I hadn’t been.
by Band Back Together | Apr 17, 2014 | Adult Children of Mentally Ill Parents, Child Sexual Abuse, Date/Acquaintance Rape, Guilt, Rape/Sexual Assault, Self-Esteem, Shame |
It seems that in the last month, the mental block I once hid worries, pain, and hurt has fallen away. My life has been a roller coaster of emotions and difficulties.
When I was four, I was sexually molested by an older cousin; someone I trusted. The abuse corrupted my life and tore at me – I’d cry with guilt and shame. I believe it was at this time I set up my mental block.
When I was eight, my mother was diagnosed with a terminally debilitating physical illness and delusional paranoia. She’d just given birth to my sister and was so ill that I became the mother to my sister; I cleaned up cuts and cooked dinner. My mother didn’t like this. When her mental illness reared its head, she’d abuse me physically and emotionally while my father was at work. Eventually, he had to stop working to look after her.
As a teenager, I was severely overweight; I was paid no attention by boys other than disparaging remarks about my appearance. My best friend was the total opposite – pretty and bubbly, however she controlled and dictated my early years. She controlled a variety of sexual experiences that I wasn’t comfortable with, but was too afraid of being called frigid or that our friendship would end.
I’ve been with my current boyfriend for five years and he is my other half – he’s brilliant with my sister, kind and patient with my mother, and dependable. During our relationship, I’ve lost weight and look like a different girl. Still, my self-esteem is so low that I’ll avoid a deserved argument, afraid that someone will pick my appearance apart – fearful that I’ll be fat and fifteen again, crying in my bathroom.
Last year, my life took a turn for the worse.
I was being intimidated by my roommate’s boyfriend and felt so unhappy, lower than I’d ever been. My boyfriend and I were fighting and I was sure he was going to dump me. I’d found out that my father may have fathered a child with one of my mother’s closest friends and the child is very, very ill so the woman regularly comes to my house begging my mother for handouts and sympathy. My world had crumbled, so that when a friend – someone I considered to be like a brother – offered to take me out for a drink, I accepted.
At the bar, this friend of both myself and my boyfriend told me he’d broken up with his girlfriend and wanted to drown his sorrows. I got drunker and drunker so when he said he should go back to his place and get on Chatroulette (something we’d always done while drunk) that sounded fun.
When we got there, he realized he’d forgotten his laptop and mentioned we should probably go to sleep – I was too drunk to walk home, I should stay over. I had no issues with this – he was my “brother” after all – so I drunkenly pulled off my jeans getting ready for bed. On the verge of sleep and too drunk to know my own name, all of a sudden I was fifteen again, feeling pressured to allowing something to happen. I lay there not realizing that what was happening wasn’t right before shouting “stop!” He may have stopped, I think he probably did, but I was already unconscious.
I woke up later to him touching me, my pants pulled to one side. I lay for a second and the only thing I remember before I had the urge to vomit, was disappointment. Disappointment that he’d done this, for instigating this while I was drunk. Disappointment gave way to numbness. I stumbled to the bathroom and vomited. I looked at my face in the mirror – I wasn’t connecting thoughts together, I felt I was a completely different person – lost and bewildered. I stumbled back the bed, still too drunk to walk home. Besides, I reasoned, he probably didn’t mean to do it. I lay as far away from him as I could, my thighs clenched like a vice and my back to him.
He wouldn’t dare do it again.
I fell into unconscious or a heavy, deep sleep again and woke up to him doing it again. I was afraid he’d say something mean about the way I look or emotionally blackmail me into silence. So I just lay there, my head turned to the wall, my eyes glassy, my face pale as I vomited until I bled and my friend molested me. I was a child again, not understanding what was happening, merely knowing that it was outside my comfort zone and that I wasn’t enjoying what was happening.
I gathered the urge to say stop in a way that I knew would draw his attention. I don’t know why, but I knew that something was holding me back from telling him that what he was doing was wrong; a hunch that he would turn nasty. I told him to stop. He replied, “come on, no one will find out,” to which I replied “no!” once again.
My memory is fuzzy with pain, drunkenness, violation, numbness. I don’t think that he stopped, despite keeping my back to him, despite saying no, despite showing my discomfort. My brain told me that it might be over sooner if I pretended to play along, but I couldn’t keep up the act beyond a few seconds. I lay there, shivering, clutching my stomach while he rubbed his penis along my back.
Eventually I woke up feeling well enough to get away from him. Numbly, I informed him that as far as I was concerned that nothing happened; that I wanted to forget the whole thing. In my mind it was true, during those horrible few hours I never kissed him, touched him, or was in any way sexually excited.
Six months later my numbness is fading – now I’m having panic attacks and crying every day. What happened as a betrayal I see as a betrayal of my boyfriend. The guy who molested me was his friend. He assures me that he forgives me but that he wants to know who assaulted me.
I can’t tell him.
I want to. So badly.
I want him to know that the person he smiles when he mentions was my attacker. I want to come clean to him – tell him everything. The logical side of my brain tells me that if I do, my life might be over. I’d lose a lot of friends, my abuser could say that what happened was a fling – anything but the truth. My family and his would be at logger heads; not a good idea in our small community.
I hate him, but I miss the friend he was. I’m writing this because I’m sick of feeling depressed, full of guilt and shame. I’m sick of looking at my male friends and wondering would they hurt me like that? would they touch me while I threw up?
I worry I’m victimising myself when I wasn’t actually a victim; my memories of that day change like crazy – I can’t be certain what actually happened. One minute I see I was sexually assaulted while the next an evil voice at the back of my head cuts me down.
How do I even begin to move on from this?
My life feels like a black hole that’s physically and emotionally destroying me.
by Band Back Together | Apr 3, 2014 | Abuse, Child Sexual Abuse |
Sigh …where to begin. All of us bear scars, all of us have seen darkness. I have many stories to tell but I will begin with the first.
I was six years old with long, dark hair, playing in our little yard with no fences. It was a small rental house with a porch screen that screamed at you every time you enter or leave. My childhood was filled with long days happily playing outside, when the Iowa weather permitted, or staging dramatic events with all of my toys, when the cold kept us in.
My parents worked hard for our survival. My father was always traveling and my mother was finishing school and working as well. There were many days I would play for hours on my own. I was content with that though.
We lived next to a man who was blatantly abusive to his wife and daughter. I remember my parents worried expressions whenever we would hear yelling and screaming and my father’s angry glance towards their home when I asked him why there was so much yelling. He had two sons. One was my age or just a bit older, and one was about 15.
Now I was and still am an introverted, sensitive, and accommodating person. In my six year old mind I needed to try and make everyone happy if I could. I enjoyed peace, and I enjoyed obedience. My parents were firm believers in positive and negative reinforcement. I had many friends in my elementary school who were bullies, they sensed I would bend to their whims. I did not feel I could, nor should, stand up for myself. This didn’t make me unhappy, I was a very happy child, I believe I was simply oblivious to the notion that I shouldn’t put up with abuses.
On one fine sunny day my father was home, which was a rare luxury, and he was busy mending the yard with me shadowing and putting around, playing in the sunlight. From across the neighbors’ fence I saw the neighbor boy, not much older than I, stride swiftly to the edge of his chain link fence and beckon me to come closer. Hesitantly I took a small step towards his commanding voice and smile. I remember him being a very popular boy at my school and was flattered that he was paying attention to me.
He grinned a foul-looking grin and cocked his head while explaining something about cool girls and showing their underwear. I nodded, not understanding his intent. He looked me over and told me to pull down my pants. Embarrassed and frightened, I shook my head no. Again he asked, this time with anger in his voice. Startled, and wanting to pacify, I raced over to the trash cans by my house and quickly pulled my pants down and up. I had no understanding of what this meant or why he wanted me to do it. He shook his head at me and said, “No, no all the way and out here where I can see you!”
At this point, my father came around the corner. The boy took off towards his house abruptly and my father seeing me crouched behind a trash can asked if I was ok. I nodded my head, “yes” and dismissed the entire event.
Looking back, I see the intent and evil behind it all and am so grateful events didn’t play out any different. A few weeks later, that same little boy ushered me behind the neighborhood dumpster after school, and had his fifteen year old brother French kiss me, leaving me speechless and embarrassed yet again. My six year old brain didn’t understand that any of this was sexual or wrong, but looking back it leaves me speechless.
It wasn’t until years later that I would tell my parents about these incidents. Even when I moved to Texas and was about to enter into middle school, I had no idea that the kiss was wrong. It took a friend of mine listening to my story and reacting in shock to help me realize what had been done. My innocence as a child was skewed by the choices of an abusive father fostering abusive and perverse behavior in his sons. I am so grateful it never had the chance to become physical, and so glad that we did not live there for longer than we did.
“You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” Genesis 50:21 -k
by Band Back Together | Apr 2, 2014 | Adult Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse, Child Abuse, Child Sexual Abuse, Emotional Abuse, Estrangement |
I want to make this short and to the point, as best as I can.
My husband was abused (mentally, emotionally, physically, and sexually) by members of his family. His father sexually abused him as a child, his mother and grandparents covered up the abuse, and outside the sexual abuse incident, they themselves were physically and emotionally abusive. When we met, I didn’t know this, and he’d blocked much of it out, or pushed it down and chose not accept what happened to him. It’s taken years for him to find the strength to shut these people out of his life. It’s also taken years for me to find the strength to deny his mother and her parents access to our daughter.
I don’t want to explain why I even allowed my daughter around them in the first place. Honestly, I have no excuse and I feel like an unworthy mother for not putting my foot down harder when my husband pushed to have them in her life. His family is prominent in his hometown and thought highly of, despite the dark secrets they have hidden in all the corners (the abuse).
A few months ago I had enough, separated from him, and he went to a psychiatrist who echoed what I’d been saying for years: these are not good people and it isn’t safe for him or his daughter to be around them.
Through therapy and medication he’s been able to start coming to grips with the abuse he endured as a child, and he’s starting to break free of the emotional control they’ve had over him. It’s now been about 4 months since our daughter has spoken to or see his family, and it’s our intent that she never sees any of them again.
However …up to this point, she grew up with them in her life on a regular basis. This last month she’s begun asking when she’ll be seeing them again. She liked his grandparents especially (his grandmother was the ringleader in instigating and covering up the abuse). She’s starting to ask at least once a day to go over and visit with them.
She’s never going back over there. I will never put my child or my family in danger like that again.
But, she’s 5 years old. And I honestly don’t know how to explain to her why she won’t be seeing them again. I just don’t. I have an answer for nearly everything for her. But this situation is beyond my scope of understanding. Sometimes I think we should just come right out with it and tell her that they all hurt her Daddy when he was a little boy, but I don’t know if she’ll understand that, and I don’t want to put more on her than she needs right now. (I want to preserve some bit of her innocence, I guess.)
Has anyone else been forced to remove several family members from the lives of their children? Does anyone have any advice about how to talk to my daughter about this situation?
by Band Back Together | Mar 20, 2014 | Adult Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse, Child Sexual Abuse, Fear, Rape/Sexual Assault |
It’s been twelve years.
Twelve tortuous and painfully long years. Yet, you’re still haunting me; taunting me behind the cover of darkness each and every fucking day. Wasn’t stealing my childhood and innocence enough? Why do you have to try and ruin EVERYTHING?!
News flash. I’m not putting up with your shit anymore. You will not take another ounce of my happiness for your sick and twisted pleasure.
When I close my eyes, I expect you to be gone.
I’m done. You disgust me, you sick fuck!
When I was 11, I was first sexually assaulted by the guy who was dating my older cousin. My cousin had to work the next morning, so went to bed early. Sick Fuck Number 1 decided we (he and I) should play a game of truth or dare. I thought it sounded harmless. I was dead wrong. At first, I was excited because I idolized my cousin and wanted her boyfriend to think I was “cool,” so that I could hang out with the older kids. The dares started out normally, but then he started getting a little too daring. He would dare me to flash him, kiss him, touch myself, etc. I told him no, this wasn’t fun anymore, he was with my cousin who was sleeping right down the hall. No, no, no. I tried to get away, but he would threaten me, and then hold me there while he touched me. When that wasn’t enough, he made me watch him pleasure himself, and then do it for him.
My cousin and I had always been so close, always. When I told her, she didn’t believe me. She thought I was lying, and that I threw myself at him. I was 11, I hadn’t even had my first kiss yet…
I never mentioned the incident again for 4 years
Two weeks later. I was at my dad’s lake house for the summer, same as every summer. We had neighbors up there that had kids that my 6 year old brother (6yo) and I played with regularly. We primarily hung out with the two younger kids, a 7 year old girl and 10 year ldo boy. They had an older brother who was 15, but he wanted nothing to do with the younger kids.
We often had sleep-overs and watched movies. Normal kid stuff. The parents would always be either right outside, or a few houses down at someone’s campfire. Everything was business as usual that day. We got all our blankets together and spread out in their living room for movie night. The other 3 were fast asleep, and I was just on the verge when Sick Fuck Number 2 came in for the night. I thought nothing of it and managed to fall asleep. Not long after, I woke up to Sick Fuck Number 2 on top of me with one hand up my shirt, the other traveling south, and trying to kiss me. I tried to get him off of me, but he was a football player and much heavier than I am. His little sister, who was barely two feet from me started waking up, so he bolted to his room. I was awake, terrified, for the rest of the night.
This continued for two more years. It got worse, he would get angrier, his threats more violent. I kept my mouth shut like he told me to. The only reason those sleepovers continued was because my little brother adored our neighbors, and I refused to let him go there on his own. I didn’t want to be the reason my brother wasn’t allowed to have fun.
My parents and Sick Fuck Number 2’s parents were really good friends. Still are. Years later, when it all came out in the open, you know what my parents said? “He was just being a normal teenage boy.”
It all went downhill after that first summer. I used my body to get guys to like me. I had sex with so many guys through high school because, in my eyes, that’s all I was good for. Sex has always been something dirty and ugly to me.
Now I’m 23, married with a 2 year old son, and trying to overcome my negative feelings towards sex. My husband deserves better than that, better than me always feeling dirty after something that should be beautiful. It’s tearing us apart. The sick fucks are still winning after all these years. I’m done!
