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| My years as a College Student 1974-1978 |
Why it took me years to write my memoir - why I didn’t want to write about me at all - is because I was sexually abused by my adoptive father. I broke my silence at age 22 when I went to my first therapist for counseling (right after college). I wasn't telling everyone what had happened - I kept silent. Writing about my childhood took me nearly 5 years. I published my memoir in early 2010. At age 53, shame could still do that - it tried to silence me.
Did I want to remember those years? No. Remembering what he did to me paralyzed me: to go back in time to think about those years seemed like a bad idea, like I’d be reliving it. I had therapy twice and it had helped. Writing helped more. The more you tell what happened, the old terror loosens its grip on you. I had therapy to release it and writing about it was hard but not horrible. Our minds do bury what is hard to comprehend. When we feel safe, as adults, after time has passed, we can go back and look at what happened. Talking about it and writing about it releases the shame.
Did I want the world to know? No. I checked with a few of my female cousins to make sure that my dad made me his only victim. Of course this was years after it happened. After my memoir, my cousins then knew what happened to me and yes, they did back me up and support me emotionally. They knew my dad was a bad alcoholic. Now they knew the truth and everything else.
Did I have to write what happened? Absolutely. WARNING: This kind of thing can define the rest of your life. If you don’t face it head-on, it can control you and destroy you and your confidence.
For years and years I didn’t want anyone to know - because of my shame. I never confronted my dad as a teenager. To me, my father was sick. He was the monster who I had to live with. I endured more than five years of inappropriate touching and non-stop talk about sex - what he wanted to do to me in graphic detail.
Why didn’t I go to police or to a trusted teacher or a relative? First I was afraid no one would believe me. Second, I was afraid I’d be blamed - my mother had called me a whore. I was 12 when my dad first molested me - I was not a whore. Our family was sick and damaging in many ways.
I want each and every sexual abuse victim, at PENN STATE or anywhere else to know: your silence keeps you the victim. Silence is not an answer. To heal this, you have to speak your truth.
First, find a really good therapist; then hire a really good lawyer.
Now I am a survivor of sexual abuse, not a victim.
The one that abused me did have and still have friends in high places that are just as bad as he is. For many years he screamed at my fake mom that if she ever left him he´d rape me. This went on for years!!!!!! When I became an adult and began to tell therapists what he´d done to me and the rest of us, it got back to him. I was set up to be dragged into court and ws drug through the mud. My reputation was damaged as well as my childrens´. He even went into court and stood there telling the judge from the observers seats that he owned me!!!!!! Then he told the judge what he wanted to happen to my kids. The judge asked me if I´d been abused as a kid and I told him yes, very much. That was so freeing to say that right in front of that abuser! He asked if the abuse had come from me to my kids and I said yes, unfortunately it had as this is what I´d learned. I had little other information to go on how to treat kids except what I´d learned in marching band, at school, and home. I told the judge that school and marching band saved me where it had not saved my siblings. I had condemned what I learned at home and forcefully taken my life on another road. The judge said I was a very strong individual but felt I could benefit from counseling. I told him I´d been in it for years already and he commended me for that. He said he wanted to help me out by putting my kids and their weight on my health with a relative. He court ordered this and wanted constant updates as to my progress. That´s when the county got in on this and my fake dad got his hands into things. The woman who´d abused me first and tried many many times to kill me was head of the orphanage in town at one time. When it closed she became a social worker for childrens´ services. Thus, she was over my case with childrens´ services!!!! My memories about her in my early life were buried due to what doctor´s later called traumatic childhood amnesia.
ReplyDeleteI commend the author of the post for talking about memories being buried. Whenever I was near this woman I´d begin to remember her and instantly got a splitting pain in my head that was so bad I fell to the floor!! She knew exactly what was going on but I dídn´t!! I asked her how I knew her and she said I must be mistaken. I told her I was definitely ``not`` mistaken. She denied it anyway and walked away hurriedly with fear on her face. I thought right then that she´d done something to me at some time that she felt I´d hurt her badly for. She was very lucky I didn´t remember it while she was standing in front of me!! I was told that a new foster home was being set up for my kids but for the time being they were split up. My daughter clung to her older brother and when they split them up she was two and he four and a half. They said she´d just stand in the corner of the foster mom´s house and scream incessantly. The woman was losing her mind they said. I felt horrible for my daughter and knew I´d been set up. I tried to get them to put the kids back together or at least allow them multiple times a week to be together to play and talk. They did do this and she got better but at two this was an ordeal that imprinted on her for life and damaged her deeply. Then, the woman who was a childrens´ services social worker told me I was not to talk to therapists about my childhood or what my parents had done. She ordered the therapists not to talk with me about it either! The therapists told me about this and asked if I´d ever known this woman. I told them about the episode of my head feeling like it was splitting open and falling to the floor. I told them how she´d acted when I asked her how I knew her. They said that something was terribly wrong and they were going to try and help me get to the bottom of it. They would not write any of it up but would just write up things not about my childhood. They´d do intense sessions with me and then the psychologist would talk with me about particulars. Whenever he asked me to try and remember this woman I´d feel a searing pain in my head and fall to the floor. I didn´t understand it but he did. One day he asked to hypnotise me and he learned what connection she had with me. He wasn´t allowed by law to tell me that I´d been adopted but I wouldn´t know that for decades. So, he told me only that I´d definitely known that woman in my very early life. I now know at the age of 53! that she ``is`` my adopted mother and never relinquished those rights though she forced me to go to be raised by her lover! He too held authority over my life as far as the law was concerned and still does. Years ago I learned that adoptees are forever seen as minors in the eyes of the law and their guardians are those who raised them!!!!!!! Until he and she dies they are my guardians under the law!!!!! How awful is that????!!! So, both conspired to drag my name through the mud in the courts via the counseling center officials but they turned on childrens´ services and talked to the judge on my case. They asked me to sign a release for them to do this to protect me. What it did was get the judge on my side. I knew there was a conflict between childrens´ services trying to order the judge to side with them and him not wanting to. It was confusing to me but now I realize in writing this that my adopted mother and her lover who raised were indeed both working to totally and absolutely ruin me and my children.
ReplyDeleteSo, this battle was going on between a judge who was being ordered to do as he was told....by childrens´ services!!!! He took offense and ordered an impartial social worker ``other`` than this tall white woman, to be on my case and report all to him about my progress. Well, the new woman was apprehensive and told me she had met my dad and had to do what he said because her life had been threatened. I knew how violent he´d been with me and felt sorry for her but still felt she was using it to get me to tell her secrets about myself. She was asking for personal information that she should not have asked about. When I didn´t respond to her questions she wrote me up for non compliance. Then, she took this to the judge who asked me why I hadn´t replied. So, I told him exactly what she´d been asking for. He told her this was none of her business and it wasn´t what he´d wanted done with me. The woman told him that he had to do as he´d been told, meaning that someone else with ´´muscle´´ had been working towards making him bend to their wishes. Well, he wasn´t bending and so she reminded him of the threats that could happen if he didn´t do it. Well, he didn´t do it. He saw that this was about two people who had legal authority over me from childhood and were trying to leverage it to ruin me. While this was going on I couldn´t figure it all out. The people at the counseling center were telling me to have faith in them that I could trust them and I did so knowing that it could turn out bad. Then, suddenly they were all put on administrative leave and only one nurse was left making it impossible to do much. All therapy ceased for all patients except occupational therapy. They brought in a new psychiatrist then and told him what to do. He brought me in and told me he´d been ordered around, didn´t like it and would be fighting for me with certain people who thought they could make people do what they wanted. I found him to be very entertaining but by that time someone had changed my meds and my blood pressure kept dropping out. I don´t know who was accomplishing this but feel now it came from very high up to cover their butts for things they´d done to me as well. It´s no wonder to me now to know that doctors in 1983 told me I should never have survived everything that was done to me and by so many people!!!
ReplyDeleteIt took a year to get my life back the first time they did this to me. Then, I got my kids back. Life was going good until a memory from my childhood resurfaced of a murder dad committed in front of me when I was young. I knew I´d have to report it for my own safety. Dad dirty cops for friends in that dept. He began threatening my life after I talked with mom about this murder. I saw the connection so I limited information to her. But the damage was done and dad began getting death threats delivered to me via family and friends. Two men began stalking me by walking up and down the walk across the street. I hadn´t noticed it because I was at my kids´ school doing volunteer work. The cop next door said he´d asked someone at the cop shop about this and was told to forget it and stay out of it. He felt I was in dire danger. The old woman across the street who was also my friend told me about these men. I called the FBI about it so they´d know who caused harm to me and why. They said they were sending an agent to have a talk with dad to tell him if I ever got a scratch they´d arrest him for it. The threats got worse and then my time volunteering at the school was attacked via the schools superintendent. My son was handicapped and abused my his fellow students and teachers. The teacher told me we were filthy indians and would never be better than she. I laughed and said I wasn´t an indian, she must be mistaken. She showed me the official records that my kids were listed in official school records as being indians!!!! I talked to the principal and he did the same thing!!! I got a court summons after my daughter was under threat of my sister in law in her classroom. Both kids were very apprehensive about going to school because of all of this. I think a friend of mine with some power of her own, dropped a dime on the principal and told them to get him out or she´d take it to the courts. I remember her telling me this but it made no sense to me. She only said there were things I didn´t know but things she knew and she said she had alot of powerful friends of her own. My kids were related to her but we didn´t have family ties due to the violence of their dad and my adopted family. Life was getting bad again, all because these men were threatening me across from my house and what was going on with my kids.
ReplyDeleteI had a summons for family court to explain why my kids weren´t in school. They were home sick as could be, throwing up at the thought of going to school. A new principal came in and took my son under his wing and actually made progress with his education. He went to court to testify for us and so did the social worker for the school. I was told to sit in an out of the way place and not to look towards the courtroom doorway. The social worker told me I had to look though and laughed saying those that sought to hurt me weren´t going to get what they wanted. I watched as these very tall white men in priests clothes walked into the court room. I counted five or six of them in all and could swear that one of them had red on, which meant he was a cardinal. My head was spinning but the social worker said my dad wasn´t the only person with powerful friends. Boy, she wasn´t wrong. When they came out one of them approached me and said he was very glad to meet me. I was born with what would be called miraculous abilities so they felt I was special. I said I wasn´t anyone special but this man said I was and said they´d be praying for me. I told him I sure did need it. He laughed and said it must be very confusing to me what was going on. All of these incidents were connected and went right back to the man who raised me and my adopted mom his lover! The depth of their connections and the horrific things they did in their lives runs very deep. He called his own family white jews one day when I was young and I didn´t understand it. He is most certainly in the Masonic Brotherhood. As well, he´s a definite member of the KKK. We found his holy garments.....including the hoods and the insignias in his closet when we were young!! He´s also been in the military and worked on top secret projects. So, yes he´s always been connected. So, people like that can abuse and even try to kill kids and get away with it. This is how it´s done! When I was 15 he broke my door trying to get in to rape me in my bedroom. He´d drugged my brothers so that they wouldn´t be a problem. A miracle saved me. Weeks later I got very sick and he gave me some meds for it. I don´t think clearly when I´m sick. As soon as I got to my bed I collapsed. When I woke up he was at my bedside, had my covers tucked in tight on the edges and put his hand on my neck telling me to sit still or he´d hurt me. I have no memory otherwise of that incident. I told our oldest brother who told me to tell dad he wanted to talk to him outside the house. He walked back in the house holding dad´s shirt by the scruff and was very angry. I´d told him not to kill him so he´d obviously hit him a couple of times. Dad was laughing and saying he could do anything he wanted to us. Our other brothers came to listen to this. I got dad to spill his guts to us about this so that they´d all know it. The youngest one wanted to kill him. The middle one was crushed. The oldest one was about to join the youngest until I told dad he had to go to his room and be still until we kids could come to an understanding. I ``asked`` him to do this. He laughed and said I was weak. I said I was being the kind of person I was, a good person who ``asked`` first. He said I was weak and powerless. I told him ``in the name of God get in your room and be still until I tell you that you can talk``. He did it!! My brothers mouths were all hanging open with stunned looks on their faces. I was laughing, saying, ``Yea, look who´s got power now!``
ReplyDeleteThank you Trace and anonymous for exposing what it is to be abused and what needs to be done about it for survival.It takes a great deal of courage to speak up and to change life.The more that is done by the innocent victims of abusers when they are able the more likely the perps will be brought to book and their culture of abuse exposed as it is being at Penn State..
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