This story contains extremely detailed true stories of child sexual abuse. May not be suitable for children or those sensitive to open discussion of anything related to child sexual abuse.
I began to learn about the realization of what happened to me so many times in February of 1993, I was seventeen. Thoughts and questions flooded my mind as I watched in-depth coverage of a news program about a little girl who was molested by a male neighbor or relative. It made me wonder if the experiences I had were actually acts of sexual abuse. I started reading whatever I could to try and determine if I indeed had been a victim. I found out that the definition of sexual abuse included much more than I had originally thought.
If a young person is fondled, kissed or held for an adult's sexual gratification; forced to perform oral sex; raped or otherwise penetrated; made to watch sexual acts; forced to listed to excessive talk about sex; fondled or hurt genitally while being bathed; subjected to unnecessary medical procedures to satisfy an adult's sadistic or sexual needs; shown pornography or made to pose for sexual photographs; involved in child prostitution or pornography; or forced to take part in ritualized abuse where one was sexually tortured, then a young person is a victim of sexual abuse.
Even after discovering the real definitions to determine if I was sexually abused, I still could not consider myself a victim. My memories were never unconsciously repressed, I was always aware of what had happened and I often had memories of each situation, but I just put the thoughts aside, because I did not think it was anything to be concerned with. As I followed the news programs of this tortured little girl I began to get worried and scared as well as curious. I never thought I would be a victim of sexual abuse, it was a topic like many others that I thought "could never happen to me." Well it did happen and here is how it began.
When I was about three-years-old, my Uncle Brian was asked to baby-sit me. He was at the time about fourteen or fifteen. My grandparents and my own parents felt he was old enough to take care of his niece and be responsible for my well-being. Well he was responsible all right, so much so that he would become the number one contributing factor to the problems and mental anguish that I would experience years later.
The only events of that day which I can remember are when we played doctor with those toy kits made for children, where most of the instruments are much larger than normal. He said since he was older he would be the doctor and of course I would then be subjected to being his patient. I do not remember protesting his decision, why should I, I loved and trusted my uncle. He listened to my heart with the stethoscope. Then he said he was going to take my temperature. For as long as my three years had taken me, my temperature was always taken from my mouth, but my uncle had other ideas. The bastard first manually examined my vagina, then he turned me over and had me lay across his lap with my clothing still off. He then inserted this very large, toy thermometer into my rectum. I do not recall if I was in pain or not, I would believe that I might have been, but I cannot be certain. I also cannot remember the duration of this incident, but it was a single event. And what I do recall most is that he looked right in my eyes and told me that I should not tell Mommy or Daddy about what we did. I never did.
Unfortunately I cannot say that I was never molested again. I believe I was five or six when my neighbor Bobby began his sick game. Bobby at this time was in his late teen or early twenties. I remember very clearly that there was a gray metal folding chair on the left wall closest to the garage door opening. Bobby always used to sit in the chair just inside the garage door. I believe it began in the spring, it was very warm and he was always in cloth shorts with a white stripe in the sides and a tank top. One day he called me over to talk and give me a hug which was not unusual for him or any of our neighbors. Except this time, he spoke to me about how tired he was and that he had not been feeling good for quite a while. Then he asked me if we could play a game, he said maybe it would help him feel better. He also told me that is was a "special secret" game that he could play only with me and no one else because I was a big girl now and only I was smart enough to play correctly. So I agreed, it was nothing complicated, it involved him seated and me standing firmly between his legs with our bodies touching. I faced away from him the whole time, except when he was yelling at me. He held my arms really tight with a force pulling me toward him and then he would say "GO!" and I was to squat up and down at a pace that he always determined, sometimes really fast and other times really slow in almost a sensual motion. He would count to see how many times I could squat and this was his idea of a game. In the beginning he would yell at me if I was not doing it right and he would hold me even tighter, after enough of his yelling I learned how to play. Whenever I was outside playing, it seemed he would be there, sometimes we would play more than once a day and it always seemed to take so long. I think it went on until the months grew colder and I was no longer playing outside. He used me for his own sexual pleasure and although our skin never touched, he still sexually abused me. He used me for some sick perverse pleasure of his and because I was so young and obedient I kept going back to it, never realizing that even though I was never caused any pain then, that it would come back and hurt me later. I always did just as he asked, I never told anyone about our "special secret" game. He no longer lives next to me.
Even after this very long game ended, it did not mean that I was no longer going to be abused by someone else because a few years later when I was eight or nine the older boy ,Rob, from down the street had his fun with me. I had a huge crush on Rob from the moment I saw him and after he realized this I guess he figured I would be an easy target. It happened the day he decided to set up this tent in my backyard at the bottom of the slide facing away from my house. While inside we played cards for a while then he said he had a better idea. And he began to tell me how much he liked me and that he wanted to show me how sorry he was that he always use to tease me. He made me lay down and then came right on top of me, unzipping my jeans. His hands touched every part of my body and then he slowly taught me how to kiss, while he was doing this his hand began to move inside my underwear and he fondled me and inserted his finger into my vagina. He kept whispering to me about how good I felt and how happy he was now. I was both in shock and very scared, here I was with the boy I adored, he was finally giving me all of his attention and yet he was hurting me a great deal. I knew that I did not enjoy what he was doing but I was so scared that if I told him to stop he would get angry and yell at me. I was afraid of any man yelling, my father has the worst temper I have ever known and he was always hollering and throwing things and making holes in the walls, it terrified me and it still does, so I did whatever I could to not have to go through it with anyone else. While we were in the tent, my father came outside and Rob saw his shadow so he told me to quickly get dressed, keep my mouth shut, and open the tent flap while he started dealing the cards, as if we were being totally innocent. My father hollered for him to go home and yelled at me for being in there. He never asked me what we were doing, he saw us playing cards, that is all. I again never told.
So, it was not until my senior year in high school, when I felt I needed to talk to someone and have them tell me honestly if what I went through made me a victim. The first person I asked was a teacher, Shirley, whom I trusted very much, she was also a registered nurse. I wrote the story of Brian for her to read and then asked her what she thought. Right away I could see the sympathy in her face and she told me that she wanted me to talk to someone right away. She gave me a choice of my guidance counselor or the crisis counselor, Joy, whom I had known since middle school when I was in a program for teenagers with alcoholic relatives. I could not decide right away, I was so scared of knowing what happened to me and terribly humiliated, and even more so I was frightened because I thought Brian, Bobby, or Rob would find out that I was telling someone and they told me never to do that. She gave me two days to think about it and if I did not make a decision by then, she would. So I chose Joy, she was warm and caring and understanding. It was one of the first few days in February of 1993 when I sat in her office, in a flowered baby-doll dress, she asked me about my needing to talk to her and I almost started to cry. I handed her the same letter that Shirley had read, and from there I froze in my chair with embarrassment. We talked almost everyday from then until my graduation in June and I eventually let her read all of my horrible stories. It is from Joy that I also began to learn how to journal my thoughts. I wrote pages everyday in a notebook and she would then read it and offer any feedback. It was at that time a way for me to express myself when I could not verbalize anything. We had tried to talk about things, but that is when she began noticing that I would dissociate. Often Joy would call me for a long time, before I would seem to hear her and usually I would not understand what had just happened. As a result of talking to Joy so often and being able to tell her my most intimate thoughts, I became very attached to her, like I did so many teachers before her.
I am learning now that from the time I was in grammar school, I would develop very strong attachments to certain female teachers. Usually it happened because I saw a trait in them that I wanted to develop in myself, and it always seemed that I would have this uncontrollably strong feeling that I wanted to be loved and protected by them because I had this acute sense of trust in them. So it became that Rose, Pat, Anne, Marian, Joanne, Kathy, Beatrice, Beverly, Barbara, Beverly, Shirley, Geri, Diane, Kathleen, Ella and Joy became the people from my school years I obsessed over constantly, always wanting to be with them and talk to them and feel the comfort they provided for me. Unfortunately I was going to graduate from high school and leave for college, the idea of losing the only people that I loved and trusted almost destroyed me. After the graduation ceremony as we were leaving the field I almost fainted and was in a hysterical state, Shirley and Geri rushed to me and helped me off the field, where I stood and hugged them all and cried for hours even after everyone else had left.
During my first year at college I became very depressed and many people had noticed and tried to help, so then I created my attachments to Donna, Heide, and a professor Laura. They all worked on getting a female counselor on campus for me that would be free because I had no money and I could not use insurance because my parents knew nothing of what I was dealing with. They fought and got a counselor but I hated her, she scared me, so I was left dealing with everything myself. Then I joined a sorority and through the love and support I got there, I became attached to some of the sisters I was most comfortable with like Lisa, Natalie, Jeanette, Michele, Cara, Danielle, Rachel, Jeanmarie, Alena and Melissa. It was during the end of my sophomore year that I became very depressed. I locked myself in my room, began self-mutilation by cutting my wrists over and over with a rusty razor blade, I stopped eating and skipped classes. Jeanette was very concerned and knew everything I was going through, she told me that she would give me three days to find some help or she would.
I went home the following weekend and flipped through a phone book until I found a number. I was then put in touch with a woman named Susan. I told her that I would get a job to pay her fee and then she asked about my insurance. I did not want my parents to know anything was wrong, I wanted them to continue to believe that I was there "perfect" daughter, but I needed help, so I wrote my mother a note asking her to let me go through the insurance because I needed to talk to someone on a regular basis and that it was very important to me, but I could not tell her why. The next day, she came in crying and said okay, but the insurance only covered half the fee so I had to get a job to pay the rest. I became attached to Susan very quickly, I thought I finally found what I needed. Things were going wonderfully and during those months I also became attached to two other professors Janice and Annie. Then in the second semester of junior year Susan told me she was leaving her position to work in a hospital. I was devastated and because of my severe depression and acts of self-mutilation as well as talking about suicide, Susan called my parents and told them of my emotional condition and recommended that I be put in a hospital right away.
My mother panicking and crying found a psychiatrist, Miriam, who would evaluate me and classify me as having severe Clinical Depression, General Anxiety Disorder, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Eating Disorder NOS, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, chronic stress and suicidal tendencies. She then authorized that I be hospitalized. I had never been in a hospital for any reason and the thought of being in a psychiatric hospital at only twenty-years-old scared me even more and made me so angry at myself. If I had never said one word about what those men did to me I would never be in this situation. I then found out that this hospital was the same one that Susan would be working in. For days while being there I did nothing but cry and sit alone and scared in room. After I was forced to eat, meet my social worker, attend groups and become stabilized on medication, I began to feel better and very safe. This feeling of being protected and safe and structured unfortunately meant becoming attached to my social worker Rochelle, my counselor Denise, the eating disorder director Robin and three of the nurses Kathy, Claire and Julie. While I was there Rochelle helped me to write a letter to my parents telling them that I was sexually abused by three men they knew. I would not tell them their names for fear it would destroy my family and that my father would try to kill them, this was just to help me let go of part of this huge secret I had been keeping for so long. It did help to my surprise and after I was there for two weeks, it was time to go home. I cried the day I left. Feeling lost and alone again.
Luckily though after much persuasion I allowed Rochelle to find a new therapist for me to see, she found Michele. Michele worked in the same office as Miriam so it was very convenient. I was very hesitant about having to go through my entire life story with someone new and then having to develop a trusting relationship with them, but I received much encouragement and support so I went ahead yet again. I told Michele right away of my fear of abandonment and how I always feel like I am getting hurt by the people I love. After a few sessions I became more comfortable with her and felt like this was truly the final step in getting through this nightmare I had been living.
It is very hard for a young girl who has always tried to be the best daughter, student, athlete, overachieving perfect person to suddenly have to face the traumas of her past and be made to feel like she is this horrible, sick, psychotic person who has lost everything in her life. I thought I would never be "normal", I felt like I could never face my family or friends, that I would never be able to have a relationship with a man and get married and have the family I have always dreamed of, that I would never be free from the horrors and memories that were forced upon me by three disgusting male bastards.
I went through the usual motions with Michele and was even able to verbally tell her what happened to me. She had seen me dissociate before and together we discovered that I could stay in the present and still communicate if I could feel her presence with me at all times, so I would not become frightened by the images in my head. In order to get through those sessions, she simply held my hand and every so often reminded me that she was there, that I was safe, that she did not think I was a disgusting bad person, and that no one else was going to hurt me. A few months later Michele had to put me back in the hospital though because during one session, which I do not recall, I somehow told her that I had a plan to kill myself that night by driving my car into a pole I had chosen. The next thing I remember is waking up in the same corridor of the same hospital again. I was only there for five days.
When I was released I went back to school and tried to complete the classes I was taking. It went well and the next few months were great, I became more attached to Michele than I had to anyone else and I began my senior year in college. I was feeling wonderful and scheduled to graduate in May of 1997. I have definitely learned that I am just not lucky enough to have things go well for me too long. Because then it happened, in January of 1997, Michele told me she was moving out of the state. I was in shock and then I fell on the floor crying and screaming. After she calmed me down, she told me that she was not leaving because of me and that she would not leave me alone without anyone to continue to help me. I was so mad at her for doing this to me, she told me she would never leave and I believed her. We had been working on telling my parents the names of the people who hurt me, and I was scared but would only do it with Michele by my side, so within the next two weeks, it was done. It was the hardest most terrifying experience I have ever went through. My father was violent, my mother was in tears, and soon I was too. One by one Michele made me tell, I never looked at them, I just focused on Michele and clutched her hands. Then Rachel drove me back to school.
Finally after hearing Michele tell me how proud she was of me, I decided to meet the woman she chose for me to take over for her. It was not so much for what Michele said, but my thinking that she loved me too much to leave me with just anyone, so with her the following week I met Rebecca. I had a hard time in the beginning, because I liked Rebecca right away, she is young and pretty, she has a wonderful soothing voice and she made me feel comfortable right away. It was hard though, I wanted Rebecca to like me, but I was also trying to figure out how to make Michele stay.
I failed in keeping Michele here and on February 18, 1997 I said good-bye to Michele, it was eleven months that we worked together, the longest I have had and again I had to start over. After tearful good-byes and my sorrowful screams, Rachel pulled me away from Michele and took me back to school. I went to my room and with total feelings of hopelessness drank a liter of wine and swallowed thirty Tylenol. Rachel and my other suitemates found me unconscious with an almost empty bottle of both wine and pills, when they were trying to get me up for a fire drill.
After I got out of the medical unit, they sent me to psych, again I made quick attachments to Lori and Kathy. I also spoke to Rebecca everyday and this is when she made a realization as to everything I had been through. She told me I had something called Borderline Personality Disorder. Later I read that it is very common especially for females abused by multiple perpetrators to develop BPD.
When I got out I saw Rebecca that afternoon. From then we have been through countless topics and issues. And now even though I told myself I would never let it happen again, I am extremely attached to Rebecca. She had to hospitalize me in August when I went off my medication and there I became attached to Susan and MaryLynn, but now things are continuing, although it still is not easy. In the beginning of March 1998, it will be one year since I have worked alone with Rebecca. She continues to help me through all of my issues and little quirks. She has put up with and encouraged me to stop doing dangerous things to myself. She gives me her attention and honest opinions and feelings. She is really wonderful, and although I have not told her yet, I adore her as much as I did Michele.
It will soon be five years since I began to talk about being sexually abused. I have went through more trauma then I or anyone else should have to deal with and I am only twenty-two. I have been on fourteen different psychiatric medications, the three I am on now seem to be working. I really have a hard time understanding how anyone could hurt another person like I was hurt. I still sometimes blame myself for what they did, but I do truly know that it was not my fault. I have been scarred emotionally and psychologically because three sick men did not know or care about what was right or wrong. I have still not been able to finish college, which was my greatest desire. I cannot hold a job or make long-term commitments to anything because my moods and emotions vary so often and sometimes it is impossible for me to even take on the smallest of tasks. I fight myself everyday in trying to beat these illness' I have developed and there are still so many times when I hurt myself because I cannot understand why any of this happened to me. There is no answer. But I do pray to God that I will overcome this challenge he has given me. I also wait for the days that the men who hurt me will die so I can see them put in boxes and buried where they belong. I thank God everyday for giving me the chance to know and love all the people I do and when I am able I will rejoice for the day I can graduate from college, have a career, meet a wonderful man, marry and have a family. Until then I wait.
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