Childhood Sexual Abuse - My Story

Trigger Warning: Incest, Rape, Pedophilia, and Suicide - This is the first time I've ever felt the need to issue a trigger warning, and I talk about some pretty harsh things sometimes, so you might want to pay attention to the fact that I'm issuing a warning now. This could get very painful and/or uncomfortable for some people.

I've never spoken online about my childhood traumas in any detail before. It's not because I don't want to talk about it, or have any issue with revealing it; it's because I want to make certain that I reveal it in the way that's right for me. I have mentioned that I'm a survivor, of course, but have never gone into detail about what I've actually survived.

Before I talk about this, I want to emphasize that there are two main points I want to address before I'm done writing the blog posting. The first issue is actually broken down into two parts with regard to forgiveness, and not in the way that is usually meant by the word. The second issue is with regard to recovery, and the way society emphasizes the ruination of a survivor's life.

I don't remember how old I was when it began, but it was subtle at first. Some time around the age of six or seven, I should say. It started with tickling and wrestling, which is a common method from my understanding of the stories of other survivors. Tickling and wrestling became inappropriate touching. Then, at night, it became something else.

When I was four my mother left me with my grandparents, and I lived with them until I was thirteen. My grandmother would go to a 'card party' once a week, much to my relief, because she was not a nice woman. I loved my grandfather. He was a lot of fun, always joking around and playing. He almost never got mad at me, and I don't recall him ever hitting me the way my grandmother used to do, so it wasn't any great surprise that I enjoyed his company far more than I enjoyed my grandmother's.

Apparently my grandfather enjoyed my company as well, but for far different reasons. He liked having the opportunity to be alone with me. The fact that his touch was gentle didn't make it any easier to bear, or any more appropriate. I don't remember every single detail of what he did to me. Nor would I share it if I did, because I have no interest in putting out details that might titillate someone who is searching for child pornography. Mostly I remember the unbearably sick feeling I got from the way he was breathing, the mess he left behind on my skin, and the way he cleaned up the evidence while he apologized and cried.

The abuse continued until I left to live with my mother and step-father. Then my half-brother moved in with us, too. One day he tied me up in the basement and told me he wouldn't untie me until I 'let him'. This part of my life wasn't over until I tried to kill myself. I was still thirteen when I swallowed a bottle of pills, however, so it didn't go on for as long as it seemed at the time. The doctors at the hospital noticed evidence of sexual activity, and it wasn't long before they knew who was doing it.

I woke up in the hospital rather cheerful, cracking jokes. A couple of doctors said I was doing just fine, great in fact, while there was another doctor who had the opposite reaction. There was obviously something seriously wrong with me if I attempted suicide one day, and was making jokes the next. This doctor made it mandatory that my entire family go for group therapy, and that I get individual counseling. I went to a couple of individual sessions, and I think only one or two with my family.

The therapists were all fooled. By me. They talked about how insightful and intelligent I was, how healthy. They said I didn't need therapy, and that I was perfectly fine. For people who are trained to see into a person's psyche, needless to say they weren't doing a very good job of it with me. Being an intelligent person, it was very easy for me to hide all the things that were wrong inside me, like the fact that I had no real feelings left. I had repressed everything. I knew what they were expecting me to feel, and what all the right answers were, so that's what I let them see.

My healing came not from therapy, but from introspection. Nobody could force me to confess or express my deepest emotions, and I didn't want to share them. It wasn't the right path for me at the time. Therapy isn't always right for everyone. I already felt vulnerable and exposed, so why they thought I would willingly expose myself further I just don't know. I had already been raped by two people I was close to and should have been able to trust, so I wasn't about to trust anyone else with my deepest secrets.

I knew there were things that were wrong with me, far better than the therapists ever understood. I knew about the shame I felt. I knew how dirty I felt, and about the sick feeling I got on a fairly frequent basis. I knew about all the times the rage seeped out and I would throw my hairbrush across the room because I couldn't stand looking at myself in the mirror. These were secrets I kept. No one knew about my 'icky' moods. At the time that's how I thought of them. I didn't want to use the terms 'dirty' or 'ashamed' when I felt that way. I left it at 'icky' instead. Using what felt like a more benign label was a way of skirting past my real emotions.

Strong emotions are always frowned upon in the world. Screams of rage and pain would have started fights I couldn't handle. Tears would have made everyone avoid me because of their own discomfort with what had happened in my family. Guilt and blame swirled around me, and no one was very interested in how I was really doing. They just wanted me to get over it. It would lessen their guilt at their own culpability.

Yes, they had reason to feel guilty. My mother was suspicious that something was going on with my grandfather when I was a child, and never did anything about it. She told me I should say 'no' if he touched me. I denied that he was doing anything, which is the common reaction of a child that's being molested, and yet she still told me to say 'no'. That's rape culture for you, though. There I was, being sexually abused by my grandfather from a very young age, and somehow the responsibility fell on my shoulders - somehow I was supposed to let him know he wasn't allowed to touch me, and I was supposed to be able to stop him. The adults weren't required to do anything to help me, and my grandfather wasn't required to stop unless I spoke up for myself and said, "No. You're not supposed to touch me there."

As a teenager, even after my suicide attempt, my brother wasn't kicked out of the house despite the fact that he was eighteen. My mother and step-father wanted it swept under the rug. It wasn't until I wrote an essay at school and revealed what had happened to me to one of my teachers, that social services was called in and the police got involved. Rather than stand by me, my mother was furious with me for opening my mouth. She was worried that she would be in trouble with the police, along with my step-dad, for not reporting a crime. My mother was all about her men and her self-preservation. Never did she go to any effort to protect her children.

The whole experience was humiliating, but I admit it could have been far worse. Both social services and the police handled things as sensitively as possible. A female officer took my statement about both my brother and my grandfather. Thankfully my brother pleaded guilty to the charges, although I don't remember exactly what they were, and went to jail. If he had pleaded innocent I would have had to testify, with my brother watching. During the initial questioning I downplayed what my brother had done, so they couldn't charge him with much. I believe he only served ten months in a remand centre.

My grandfather was a different story. He was never punished for his crime, despite the crime being far more evil than my brother's. At least in my mind it was. I was an actual child, with a child's body, and what he did killed the person I would have been. By the time my brother came along there wasn't much else that could be done to me. His impact was minimal. Basically it was just a lesser degree of the same thing.

The reason my grandfather was never charged is because he lived in a different province. Rape is a federal crime in Canada, from what I remember being told at the time, but it's almost impossible to prosecute anyone in a different province. The accused has to be tried where they are. I lived in Alberta at the time, while he lived in Ontario, so I would have been forced to travel to Ontario to give my statement to the OPP (Ontario Provincial Police) and then testify in a court in Ontario, assuming he pleaded innocent to the charges.

Being only fourteen years old at this point, I wasn't up for a trek across the country to bring my grandfather to justice. I was already facing the possibility of testifying against my brother in court, with my angry parents there watching, and that was daunting enough. My mother and step-father certainly weren't going to pay for me to do something they so heartily disapproved of in the first place. In my case there were far too many levels of, "Keep it in the family."

Understandably, I was very, very angry. I was angry that my grandfather raped me, and that my grandmother had walked by my bedroom one time and saw him touching me but did nothing about it - he didn't always wait for her card party nights. I was angry that my brother took advantage of my self-loathing, raping me at his convenience because he felt entitled to the young female in the house. I was angry with my step-father, who, even though he was the only one who showed me any support whatsoever, never told my mother she was an idiotic moron and to shut her mouth when she said the things she did. I was absolutely enraged at my mother, even though I wasn't entirely certainly why at the time.

I was also angry with myself, for 'allowing' it to happen. Yes, I believed that. I thought I shared responsibility with a disgusting pervert who thought he was entitled to touch a seven-year-old child. I was angry with my body for attracting men. I was angry whenever I felt sexual feelings of any kind, because they were hurtful to me. I was angry with myself for being soiled and dirty.

Then I stopped feeling anything at all.

Humans have a limited capacity for feeling strong emotions. We can only feel things for a certain period of time before we grow numb to the emotion. Even people who are abducted and filled with terror eventually become numb to the fear. It's a defense mechanism. Our psyche can only handle so much intensity before it shuts off those feelings. This was where my anger disappeared to. I repressed it, and by doing so I became depressed. I never again tried to commit suicide. I had made a promise, to my mother of all people, that I would never try it again, and for the most part I keep my promises.

Breaking away from the numbness was a very long journey. I remember riding on a bus once, thinking about something that should have bothered me, and all I could feel was that I wasn't feeling anything. Some deeply buried sense of self-preservation struggled to the surface to let me know there was something seriously wrong with that. My response was purely instinctive from that point on. I began to analyze what was going on in my life and think about what I should be feeling about it, and then dig around for some minuscule spark of those feelings. At first, forcing the emotions was a lot like faking it. It felt completely fake at the time, actually. It took me a long time to realize that the fake feeling was discomfort rather than falseness. I was uncomfortable with my emotions on an almost visceral level.

Knowing that the survival of my soul - and I don't call it that in any religious sense - depended on me getting back in touch with my emotions, I forged on with my private efforts. No one had any idea the kind of intensive therapy I was giving myself. I never gave myself a break, or any time off from it. Every time anything happened, no matter how small the event, I would analyze it to death. I would pull up every emotion I had about it, and then I would tear those emotions apart to figure out exactly why I felt the way I did. It got to the point where I was doing too much self-analysis, but I reached a point a few years ago where I finally stopped feeling the need to do it all the time. That's when I began to feel like I had healed.

I did read some self-help books about shame and guilt and forgiveness, which helped me along the way. I would share the titles of those books if I could remember what they were, but I don't. Besides, we all have to find the ones that we can relate to personally - the ones that speak to us.

The thing about the rape of a child, any child, is that it causes a break in their life while they are still developing into the person they are meant to become. I was no different. The person I should have been is now gone, killed by my grandfather, cremated by my brother, and the ashes scattered by my mother and step-father. I would never have become the person I am now without those events. I mourned the loss of the person I should have been, but I was done mourning a long time ago. I reached a point where I realized I would choose to go through it all over again, if it meant becoming the person I am now. My need for survival hinges on this person, not the hypothetical person I was originally meant to be.

As for my original point about forgiveness, and the two parts I associate with my experience, one is good, and the other is terrible. I don't believe anyone should be forgiven for their sake. What was done to me was hideous, and does not deserve forgiveness. However, I deserve to live a good life, free of the anger that was about to destroy me. Forgiveness just means letting go of the anger. It doesn't mean you condone something that someone has done, or that they shouldn't be punished or should be allowed to do it again. It simply means you release yourself from your ties to the pain. This type of forgiveness is necessary for anyone who wants to recover.

The terrible part when it came to forgiveness has to do with one detail of my abuse that I shared above. My grandfather used to cry and apologize to me after he was done. It's not a good position to be in as a child. I was violated, and then given the responsibility of comforting the man who violated me. He wanted me to pat him on the arm and say that it was okay. He wanted my forgiveness. He wanted his behaviour to be excused, when all I felt was sick at the thought of giving him that comfort. I think I might have actually told him it was okay, but I don't really remember for sure. I was very young. I still loved my grandfather, and I wouldn't have wanted him to feel bad, no matter how bad he made me feel, so I wouldn't be surprised if I accepted his apology in my limited way. It embedded in my mind as, "It's okay. You couldn't help yourself." This is not the type of forgiveness any rapist deserves, and it's not a good feeling to be forced to give it.

When it comes to people who say that a rape survivor's life is over, I call bullshit. It's not over. You may be changed. (In my case I was changed to the point that I have no idea who I would have been had it not happened.) However, you aren't dead no matter how much you might feel you want to be. Your life was not taken from you. Surviving rape does not have to mean that you will spend the rest of your life living in pain and fear. When it comes to my personal safety, I rarely feel fear.

I know how to defend myself should the need arise, but that's not the only reason I don't feel much fear. It's simply that I've gotten past almost all of what I went through in my life. I'm at a point, and have been for some time, where I only feel fear in situations that warrant it. I'm not talking about the odd personal phobia about non-violent things, by the way - things like spiders or fire. We all have those. I'm talking about fear of being out at night, or someone finding us attractive, and all the other fears that develop as a result of being raped or physically abused in some fashion.

We are capable of getting past the fear and living a contented life. We can get past the shame and anger. We can get past the sexual problems. In my case I was somewhat lucky, I think. I was young when I started having sex voluntarily, but I was lucky in the partners I chose. They were decent human beings, and that made all the difference. At first I would occasionally have that 'icky' feeling when I was with someone. It didn't happen all the time, but when it did I couldn't handle being touched...and I would develop the sudden need to have a shower. I think it's been about ten years since the last time that happened to me, so it's definitely a rarity now.

I didn't go to the extremes of promiscuity, either. I'm not built to be the kind of person who finds it easy to sleep around. I'm not sure how much of that has to do with having been raped, or if it's shyness, or even self-respect. I do know that there isn't much point in it for me, since I don't enjoy being with someone when I can't relax with them, and I'm not able to do that with someone who is a virtual stranger. As open-minded as I am about sex, and as easy as it is for me to talk and write about it (including fictional erotica), I'm simply not capable of having a lot of sexual partners. When I do have one I'm utterly faithful, and I'm with them because I have feelings for them.

I'm far from perfect. I have issues like anyone else, and I have sensitivities to certain triggers. My life, however, is only half over, and it certainly didn't end the first time I was raped. It changed, but it didn't end. I feel there is such a thing as being healed, even when it comes to something as traumatic as rape. It takes a long time, and a lot of effort, but healing is totally possible. According to the most recent statistics I've read, one in five women are raped or sexually abuse, and one in six men have been raped or sexually abused. Nine out of ten rapes that are reported, are reported by women, though, so men are much more reluctant to file a complaint. They deserve to be heard just as much as women deserve to be heard, so I will not discount them. I just want everyone who reads this to know that rape, while a horrific crime, should never be considered the end of your life.

No one should ever get away with rape, and it should make no difference in their punishment what happens with the survivor after the attack. What I mean is, if a survivor manages to pull their life together and recapture their dreams, that does not lessen the rapist's crime in any way. Just because I have managed to become the person I am today does not negate my grandfather's or brother's responsibility. It means that I have done the extra work necessary to get past everything they did to me. I'm the one who deserves the credit for my mental stability, not them. They don't get the free pass.

Before my grandfather died people would tell me my lack of feeling toward him would be a different story when he died. For some reason they thought I would magically start loving him again. I didn't. I never saw him again after the age of fourteen, even though I visited my home town and eventually moved back there. I simply never saw him. I stopped loving him long before he died, and by the time he he was permanently gone I wasn't even angry anymore. I was almost at the point I am now, actually. I am grateful for my life happening the way it did, so I became who I am, but I would certainly never have gone up to him to congratulate him on his part in making that happen.

I'm grateful for whatever genetics I have that played a role in my strength. I'm grateful for the few people I encountered at my most vulnerable times who were non-judgmental about my experiences. I'm grateful for the plethora of knowledge available to those who seek it out. I'm grateful to myself for forging ahead with my life when it seemed like it would involve nothing but pain. I'm grateful to my friends now, who are supportive and understanding, and who do their best to fight in their own way against rape. In fact, there isn't anyone I talk to on a regular basis now that doesn't speak out against rape. These are people that give me hope. Not specifically for me, because most of my personal horror is finished, but for the men and women I still weep for as I know intimately the battle that they face.

If you would like to read the writing of some of my friends who speak out against rape, here are a few suggestions for you:

Why I Call It Rape, by +Marlin Woosley
Rape, Gang Rape, Ology and Criminology by +Steve Kovacs
Do You Think A Woman's Vagina Belongs To Her by +susan thom

I would also suggest going to their individual profile pages and checking out their other articles, because they've all written more than one article about rape. These three writers are people I cherish and admire for everything they contribute to the world, and whether they know it or not they are the average, everyday heroes that this world really needs. They are the ones with voices who speak up when they see the things that are wrong in the world, and it's because of people like them that a great deal of my own damage was healed.

It isn't just the rape itself that can destroy a person, it's the aftermath. It isn't just the people surrounding us who can make the aftermath worse. Sometimes it's the feeling that the world is beyond hope. Sometimes it's feeling like there are no good and decent people left in the world who are willing to use their voice and stand up for those who can't. To my knowledge none of the three writers I mention above have been through exactly what I went through, yet even though it wasn't their personal issue they have chosen to speak anyway. For seeing the things that are wrong in the world, I wanted to say thank you to these wonderful writers who also happen to be wonderful people. So, thank you!

My story is far from unique, and far from the worst case scenario. However, it is what's personal and unique to me. As far as I've come, I'm here because I fought against the rising tides of depression and self-hatred. I'm here because deep down I knew that what happened wasn't fair or just. I knew I had value, and that there was something I could contribute to the world. So many people are not that lucky. So many people give up their pain to a bottle of pills or a razor blade. There is hope in the world. There is love. There is life. If you're reading this, and you're one of the many who have been violated, please don't give up. There is more out there for you than you know, and ten minutes from now every single thing in your life could change. Sometimes it happens that fast. You can recover. You can live your life. Don't let them take any more from you than they already have.