overcome the fact that i was molested

i was 7 and i was melested it all started at my friends house. we were in the basement and watchin tv. the bell rings and its his cousin 17-20yr old cousin. after hello’s and etc. he came down stairs to meet me and say hi to my friend josh. after he sat between us on the couch and said something like do you want to paly a game. being that young we agreed and took our pants off. he started us in the private spot and them he made us suck his **. im 14 now and still havent told my parents.but lately i cany get out of my head. im afraid to tell them. even though my friend told for his sake but charges were never filed. im afraid to tell my dad and i dont know wat to do. i very depressed and i dont know wat to do. i thinkin about telling him tonight. im scared but i have to do it please help.

I am 18 years old and I was molested three times. By my mom’s ex husband, by my best friends dad, and my younger cousin. I’ve gone through therapy and stopped going after two times. I was only three when it happened to me by my mom’s ex husband and I don’t remember much I only remember being scared. When it happened with my best friends dad it happened from the ages of 9-12. I still can’t talk about it much. With my cousin it only happened twice but it was still terrible and I still can’t tell my family. I need help but I don’t know who to turn to.

maybe it still affects me?

If you’ve Ever Been Molested, Raise Your Hand
(Sung to the tune of if you’re happy and you know it, raise your hand)
If you’ve ever been molested raise your hand,
If you’ve ever been molested raise your hand,
The world will never even know it,
And you never have to show it,
If you’ve ever been molested raise your hand.

I feel compelled to tell you that this is not a “feel good” story. It is as ugly as they come. There is no happy ending. No one is saved at the end. It is a re-telling of the FACTS as I know them to be. I have used only the real first names of myself and my brother Steve, he has died and I don’t figure he would mind, it certainly can’t ruin his life at this point. If it just so happens that the details fall into place for you, I am sorry for you as well. These are my words about my life, you are welcome to challenge them or add to them as you like.

The Final Straw

My brother Steve died 3 weeks ago, we buried him 2 days ago, it was always his hope that our family could be just the way my father described it to people we knew. Dad would often say, “I took two families and brought them together, I never regretted it. We made no distinction between whose child was whose; we never referred to each other as my step-children or step brother, sister, mother or father.” I would, in the back of my head, think you f*king liar.

Steve believed in his heart that we could all put it aside for one day. That we could just get together and have a “Family Day”. Like it sometimes was, we could do a cook out and watch each other’s children get to know each other. We could sit on picnic benches and smoke cigarettes and drink a beer and laugh and carry on like nothing was ever wrong. Steve believed we could do this, he could make it happen. In the end he did just that, he did it by dying. He did not kill himself; he died alone on his bedroom floor in his little trailer in Georgia, during a low- blood sugar and years of neglect for his diabetes.

Steve’s funeral was the first time in more than twenty years that we were all in the same room together. Almost all of us. It was the first time in at least fifteen years that I had hugged my sisters, in a row, all at the same time. All on the same day.

We were to each other brothers and sisters with our parents, Mom and Dad. We could have been the “Brady Bunch”, it was such a good union of children. We were all so very young and each of us barely remembered that we had different mothers or fathers. We watched out for each other, we played games together; we walked to school, rode our bikes and did all the things that other families do together.

I have so many wonderful memories of good times with my family, camping trips, the fourth of July, going to Lincoln Park. There are moments in our life that we treasure about some tiny little detail that just made us smile or laugh. All of it, though, is tainted by the ugly stain of sex and violence. Again, my father would often say “I never had to hit my children” and you stood there in silence and nodded your head in agreement. You did not dare to even let a shadow of anything else pass across your face, not even for a second. You just smiled.

You smiled for fear of retribution. There were so many times I wanted to blurt out to someone, it’s all a lie. There was so many times that some small piece of me died inside every time he said those words. I learned, I think, to accept what he said because that was the way HE saw it. I honestly, at times, doubted the reality of it. It must be my mistake. There were no beatings; No one was being molested, I must have made it up. I must be making it up.

I can see myself in some horrible cartoon in the Saturday Evening Post or the New Yorker Magazine, standing up to face a room full of people and admitting out loud “My Name is Melanie and I am a chronic Liar.” We couldn’t tell, it was just too ugly. No one would believe us, no one would believe ME. I tried to tell someone, once, when I was in Portsmouth or maybe Middletown High School. I went to my Guidance Counselor. I tried to explain to her that things at our house weren’t right. I think that I could not actually tell her what the problem was, because I don’t think I could admit it then. It was too horrible, too disgusting for words. I remember that I started to cry and she stopped me.

She got out of her chair and was looking out the window and when she turned around she said “Melanie, I’m not sure where this is coming from because you are prone to “Flights of Fancy”, we’ll call them. You have to understand before you go any further that if you choose to open this “can of worms”, as she called it, the police will come to your house, take away your Father AND your mother and you will all go to foster homes, you will probably never see your brothers and sisters again because no will take all of you together. Now… what do you want to do…?

I wanted to say “Well I guess I’ll just go home and suffer, but I didn’t. I stopped my tears. I got out of the chair and left her office. I went back to class. I was fourteen maybe fifteen years old. I didn’t want to be separated from my mother or my brothers and sisters. I just wanted someone to save us. The only thing I learned from telling someone was that it was OK to breed your own victims. As long as my father was only beating and molesting us, it was OK. We really didn’t have options. It was the price we paid to be together, to be the “Brady Bunch”.

My memories of my sister’s abuse is fleeting at best, it comes from a little girl’s perspective. I knew something was going on, I knew it was wrong. I can close my eyes and see my father’s silhouette standing over her bed. She never cried out, she would cry after he left, softly into the pillow. I think she thought I couldn’t hear her. I think she thought I didn’t know. I really didn’t want to know. I let her cry, alone in the dark. We never talked about it, not once until sometime after I was married and gone away to have my own life.

God, I feel so guilty. I “rocked” the bed for many, many years. I got up on all fours and buried my face in the pillow, sometimes I cried, and sometimes I didn’t. I found that the bed would move across the floor. I found that if I made sure the bed was in the right place I could rock it against the door so it wouldn’t open. That didn’t work very long and I couldn’t do it every night. Some nights I just fell asleep. I couldn’t stay awake long enough.

I began to wait in the dark for the creaky step on the stairs in the farmhouse on Brahman’s Lane. I leaned how not to fall asleep, but the abuse didn’t always happen at night. I didn’t know. My father would come into the room and I would sit up in bed as if by happenstance I just woke up. He would say something like “I thought I heard a noise” and leave as quietly as he entered, but I knew, I felt some small sense of victory.

What I didn’t know was that he would only go to the next door. Where my two other younger sisters slept. Every time I kept him out of my room, Every time I “won”, I had condemned them to the same fate. It didn’t even dawn on me. It wasn’t even within the realm of possibility. I was not abused by him in that way. I took beatings from him for running away and other infractions. Beatings, that most certainly qualifies as abuse, so did my brothers. I had to bear witness to the other.

My guilt is immeasurable. I have struggled with it every day of my life. I should have said something to someone one more time. I should have stopped him or challenged him, but I did not. I did not tell my mother, because I knew, like the Guidance Counselor, she wouldn’t believe me. She always said that I marched to the beat of a different drummer, but it was OK, and I eventually would find my own way in the world. It was the seventies after all, teenagers were different.

We sat at my sisters table after Steve’s funeral. We talked openly about the abuse. My poor older brother had no idea. He was inundated with graphic details. I am not sure if he will accept it as truth or perhaps something else. He will have to make up his mind. He listened very quietly, he took it all in. He took the grief for Steve’s death along with the grief of my sister’s abuse home with him. I feel very sorry for him. He never knew.

My sister sat there and after we had all had a drink or too, though she has far too many drinks, far too often, she just blurted out… “I give the best blow-job in Newport, because my father taught me how”. I cannot stand the pain of it. I am typing this through the tears in my eyes and my nose is running all over my face. I didn’t know, I had no idea, I never thought. I feel crushed inside, hollow, I am aching all over. I am nearly 50 years old now and my heart feels broken, crushed up like a dirty empty beer can on the street.

My other sister, the youngest girl of the four, has suffered in the same way. Who can know why he chose only the two he chose. I personally feel he chose them because it is a “control” issue. They were quiet very shy girls. He knew they would not object. They were good girls and would do what he wanted them to. They were pretty little slaves to his depravity.

It would have been so easy to be the “Brady Bunch”, if he had not been such a monster. The boys got beaten, the girls got molested. We were seven strong, now we are six; collectively we could have been a force to be reckoned with. If we had banded together at the time, and gone to our mother it might have been different. If she had understood, we might have been saved from it. But we didn’t and so, she didn’t.

The really sad part of this story, I know I haven’t even gotten there yet and it gets worse. When the girls were in their late teens my mother found out about the older one, she and her boyfriend having been caught in “the act” by my father, they “cut” a deal. She was sixteen or seventeen and they allowed her to leave the house and get married.

This was good for her but a horrible condemnation for the other. It left her alone as the “Chosen One”. I only know that after she left home and went to live with her husband, I learned how to sleep again at night. My bedroom door never opened anymore, I thought it was over. I had the luxury of just lying down and closing my eyes and falling to sleep to have my safe and quiet dreams. I could just live in Melanie’s weird little world, all by myself and I did.

Sometimes when you are with friends and talking and someone brings up some piece of emotional baggage, I always used to make a little joke of how I don’t have “a piece” of emotional baggage; I have an imaginary Skycap named “Bob” who follows me around with a cart to hold my entire set of matching emotional luggage. It’s safer if you always know where it is. Then it can’t spring up in the middle of the afternoon and knock you to your knees in tears. People you work with just don’t understand that, they start to think you’re weird.

I became a nurse, I saved people. I healed them, I was freaking Florence Nightingale, and it comforted me for a while. As the public’s eyes became more open and aware of abuse, as my patients began to speak more openly about it, I had to find something else to do. I could not bear the pain of living with other peoples abuse, it hit too close to home.

That, mixed in with all the “regular” death ,dying and injury that nurses deal with, left me depressed and anxious on a daily basis. I cannot watch most TV shows; they all want to make some social statement about the abuse and neglect that other children and people suffer. I cannot bear witness to any more of it than I have already seen. I cannot save everybody; I can’t even save my family. I am only one small person, I am already broken enough, forgive me, please. I have since gone on to other things.

The younger of the two, that were sexually molested, had a friend for as long as I can remember. She died not too many years ago. My sister is and was devastated by the loss of her. She was my sister’s backbone. She held her up, comforted her and mothered her. It was this girl, at age sixteen or seventeen who became the hero. She did what we could not do, she told our mother. I don’t believe that my mother knew there was another.

Now it was out, now it had to be dealt with, now something could be done. Yeah, right. You think our mother would have distanced herself from our father, you think that she would have taken my sister’s by the hand and left him alone in the dark to deal with his monstrous transgression. She didn’t and she hasn’t. I can say no more than that. We have fallen into a chasm of disbelief over it, some of us have made a kind of peace with it and some of us have not. You have to decide for yourself. I cannot decide for my part. I don’t have all the details, failure to process, insufficient information.

I am writing this to tell someone, I want to scream his name out from every rooftop to everyone he has ever known. I want everyone he has ever had contact with to know what he really is, a MONSTER. I still, cannot. It is still too shameful, too painful, too embarrassing, and too horrible. I am guilty by association; I am an accomplice in some weird way. I am his daughter.

I thought I had found a “resting” place in my head for all of this to live quietly. I could keep it there, safely I thought. It was just us, we would manage it somehow. I thought I had put it to bed until the day before Steve’s Funeral.

A long time family friend approached my youngest sister, she felt compelled at this point in her life to say something. The most horrible thing anyone could say, I think. She confessed to my sister that she too had been molested by my Father. I am stunned. My world is rocked. Another life already filled with family tragedy, ruined by the circumstance of poor parenthood. How many others are there? We moved often in our lives. I cannot help but wonder and fear about the answer. I don’t want to know, but I want to know.

How many other broken souls must I carry the weight of? I know you will say it is not my burden, not my fault. I didn’t do this nor could I have prevented it. I know that already, I have heard it before in innumerable counseling sessions. They are just empty meaningless words. To live with my pain of it, our pain of it, has almost been more than I can bear. To know that is has spread outside of our family is unbearable, unthinkable and unfathomable.

I am sorry for you, very, very sorry. I was not strong enough or clever enough, however many of you there might be. I could not save you from him, I did not know. I am dying inside over it. I wish I could cry tears of blood for you. I am frightened by it. I am going to go to bed tonight and lock the door and rock the bed, till I am exhausted and sleep restless empty sleep for however long it will take me to find a way to deal with it.

Know please that my life is not completely unhappy. I have my brothers and sisters; I have a wonderful husband of twenty eight years. Who loves me and tries to understand. I have a handsome and loving son who is a wonderful husband and father to his children. I could not ask for more, I dare not. I must call “Bob” and ask him if there is room for one more piece of luggage, only this time it is not part of the matched set. I wonder if he will mind. I should tip him better. The job is getting harder and he is getting older. I hope he will last as long as I do, because I cannot carry it all by myself.
Melanie

I am now 16 and a jounior in high school but when i was in 7th grade on Feburary,12,2004 I was sexually assualted in a classroom during school hours. This is how it happened. The teacher had left the room and me and this boy named Benny Ledezma were the only kids in the room (we have a very small class.) And the teacher had asked to clean up the room a little so we did. I am very short at the time I was only 4 feet 8 inches so I had to stand on a chair to clean the white board. and Benny was cleaning another part of the room. He decided with out even saying anything that he was going to rub my leg in a very intimate way without my concent. I told him to stop and he did for a few minuets but he did it again and I told him to stop again and he did. Later that after noon we were sitting at the table doing school work and he started touching me in a very sexual matter. It was almost lunch time so I just ignored it. It bothered me for a few weeks after that but at that time I didn’t even know that there was a name for what he had done to me.
I never told anyone but about 5 months ago I found out that one of my friends had been raped several times. That was real upsetting news to me. But a few days ago the fact that I had been sexually assaulted really started bothering me I don’t know what to do even though it happened almost 5 years ago. I am thinking about telling my friend to let her know that she is not alone but I don’t know I am really confused and depressed about the whole situation now.

I am 16 and i was molested when i was 8 i was in a live in school. it was our dorm parents son. he was 25, she came in to my room one night and told me that we were going to play a game and that i could not tell any one and if i did my parents would die….i told him that i did not want to play. he started to choke me and said that i had no choice..then he took my covers off and told me that in order to play this game no body was allowed to have clothes on.so he took on his pants and then he took off mine. i cried a lot that night i did not fight him..i aws to worried he would kill my parents.i was able to block his memory from my mind completely until a couple weeks ago i smelt something that smelt like him…i have had nightmares ever single night i have only told a couple people. i am getting less and less sleep every night…i wake up just shaking and im scared to go back to sleep. My guardian noticed i was acting funny and started to pressuring me to tell her what was going on..i did and now she wants me to tell my parents i dont live with them but she still thinks i should tell them i just cant pull my self to do it…at this point i just wont these dam nightmares to go away….WHY WONT THEY GO AWAY!!!

Alright so about a year ago, when I was about 16, I went on a backpacking trip with my youth group. The leader, I had known for about six years. He was twice my age and he was a really great friend. He loved to hang out with us kids and it was cool. I really liked him and I trusted him. The backpacking trip changed everything. It was five days that we would be in the wilderness and it all started with the touch of his hand. It had started out small. But as the nights continued on it got worse. I had become angry at him. I could feel the ring on his left hand and all I could think about was ‘what about his wife? What about his kids? He’s gonna have a baby soon, what about her?’ I tried my best to ignore it like it wasn’t happening. It made me sick inside. I felt sick, but I didn’t reall think anything of it. We came home, I felt dirty. I never wanted to tell my parents.I went to youth group two more times after that and one night he decided that we would play hide and seek in the dark. Everybody was hiding and I was trying to find a place and he opens the door to the closet and asked me if I wanted to come hide with him. I pretended not to hear him and walked past him. It has tore me apart. Its been a year and I still am not over it. The worst part is that my sister was apart of it too. And I broke for her. We should have known and done something, but even in truth, what could we have done? One night three months later, my sister was angry with my parents and said that they didn’t even care about what happened. They didn’t even know. My parents called me into their room and asked me what had happened. I didn’t think much of it. I didn’t want them to know. I tried to play it off as if it wasn’t anything. But that’s not true. It was something and it was a very big something. We’ve been in cousiling and we have told others, but not many. My best friend cried, wishing that she had been there for me. I think that the worst part of it all is that I still don’t know what to do. Every tear I cry is giving him power over me. I don’t kno how to let go. I think, I need to make a choice. But how? Who can help me? I hate feeling paranoid when a man stands behind me, I hate suspecting my dad, my friends, everyone around me. I don’t want this to happen again and I am so afraid that it will. I am stuck and I can’t get out. We had counseling, my sister and I but I dont think its working. I need help.

I am 15 years old and i was molested by my older brother who is 7 years older than me.Well this is how it all happend,I was in my room one day with my older brother,johnny.And our room is far from everyone elses room…so that night he stripped of my clothes and just..i dont know,took control of me.I remeber looking away at the wall not knowing what he was doing or was going to me next.This went on til i was almost nine years old,then suddenly it stopped.
I never thought of asking him why he did this and why he just stopped.I thought to myself if it was a wrong thing or a good thing?What was he even doing to me?Was he going to do it again?I was confused.
Years passed and i never thought about the game he played,not once.We would have parties and i loved being around Johnny,Until 8th grade.
For some strange reason i started to wonder,”Would i get in trouble if i told somebody?Would he hate me?will my family hate me?”I was terrified.Then one night while i was at my daddys my i was eating soup at the kitchen table,then the phone rings.It was my uncle.
I had told my cousin Lexi about what had happen and i found it strange my uncle was calling and yes…He mentioned to my dad about my brother.
I over heared the conversation and went into my brother roberts room.A few minutes later my dad came in and asked if i was ever touched by johnny.I started to cry and told him “Yes,dont be mad.” I could hear my dad begin to breathe really hard while pacing back and forth.We both walked out of the room and entered the living room were my step mom Yolanda was.My dad told her,she broke out in tears and held me close,my sister stephanie came in and too held me in her arms.I felt so free,so alive.A few months passed and i just said i didnt want the incident to be reported.So my family listend and it wasnt.
That was last year.I am now 15 years old and in the 9th grade.The school year didnt start off so well.I was still recovering the fact that i can no long see my brother…then my best friend chelsy moved to new york..THEN me and my boyfriend broke up.We were together for a year and three months but he moved and we had to go our seperate ways.
Anways one day during P.E i felt very emotional and i couldnt stop crying!I had this strong feeling of hopelessness.”Why do people keep going away” i thought to myself.” the dont care for me” was something i had carved into my brain.I couldnt stand this anymore and all i could do is cry.So crying is what i did and i couldnt stop!
3rd period came and i had to go to math,still in this terrible mood.I kept balling my eyes out and my teacher sent me outside so i could be alone and get some air.Then out teachers assistant came and sat and talked to me.I told her about my brother and my friend,i opened up to her like a book ready to be read.And she listend to me.Obviously they had to report it…a lady at school talked to me and reported it to the police and someother place,i forgot.
I now go see a thearpist[[ im sorry i cant spell ]] I love her to death.I look foward to seeing her monday..
But i still feel like i did something wrong.Why did my brother look at me that way?Why did i let someone i loved so much,cared so much for “molest” me?
“WHY DID THIS HAPPEN TO ME?”

I am 34 years old and was molested by my brother from the time that I was in 3rd grade till about 8th gr.. He was five years older than me. I have beat myself up for years, have been depressed, suicidal thoughts, irritable, hateful, tense, negative, held grudges, nontrusting, hating men and so on. I have been in therapy and on meds for years. Talking to my therapist who I believe has saved me is the best thing I could have ever done. My brother..aka the molestar has always been the guy that I was supposed to go to and look up to. My parents have been divorced since I was 3 and my brother was the father figure for my whole life. He took advantage of me in every way and told me that if I told that he would beat me. In fact, he has beaten me and left bruises. I would show my mom but she would yell at him but I never told her why. I was too afraid and it was taboo. There were times when I was going up when I would just sit inmy room and shake and cry. I have had nightmares, I have daydreamed about it and often thought of how I could hurt him. I walked around with this burden, hurt and much more for over 20 years. I recently got married and my husband knows about the situation but no one in my family knew. My brother has always talked about people..he puts everyone down including me. He now has a daughter that is in third grade and now feel compelled to say something to him but I just don’t even ever want to see him again. Every time I have gone to his house this past year I have had anxiety, anger and have done things to his house to make myself feel better. I felt like I could damage a few house items and feel better but I didn’t. My mom hasn’t been able to understand why I hate him so much and why I crticize him and just loathe him. I was told that he was having Xmas this year at his house and I just don’t want to go. I kept on saying that I wanted to tell my mom so that she would understand why I feel the way I do but I just didn’t want her to feel as though it was her fault. The molestation has been on my mind almost every day of my life. It has now recently come to the front of my mind and to the tip of my tongue. Yesterday, I was with my mom and son just having a nice day. I was thinking about telling her but…..well I fianlly did. I said to her, do you want to know the real reason why I hate my brother? She said yes. I said it’s not an easy answer. I felt a part of myself just take over and at the same time go numb. I told her that she would be angry and upset and that it wasn’t her fault. I finally told her and her face dropped and I was just numb and so many other things at the same time. I felt bad for telling her bc now she is probably internalizing it like I have done for my whole life. She hugged me and said: how come you didn’t tell me then? I told her that I don’t know….I was threatened, scared and was afraid that no one would beleive me. She asked the usual questions, like what did he do, when, where, how and so on. I cried but was kind of calma t the same time. She said that it wouldn’t have happened if she were around more. I told her that I knew she was going to blame herself and that it wasn’t her fault. I just wanted her to understand why I hate him so much and why I didn’t want to be around him any more. She was mortified and I felt her pain. I felt like maybe I shouldn’t have told but I knew that I did the right thing. I tried to lay down with my son to take a nap but couldn’t nap. My mom was downstairs with this bombshell that I just laid on her with no one to talk to. I din’t know how to feel. She said that she knew that it was the truth bc why would I make something like this up. later when I went to the kitchen where she was cooking, she turned around and started crying and said that she can’t tell her husband or anyone else at this point bc she was going to make my brother own up to what he did. She said that the whole thing was disturbing and hugged me again. I felt the hug but it was weird…I thought it would have been comforting but it wasn’t bc my mom was now the one hurt….what did I do? Did I do the right thing?? She said that he is not going to get away with what he did for the rest of his life and walk around as if he is this perfect person. She said that he has nerve talking about people knowing what he did. I told her that I don’t want an apology from him. I don’t ever want to be around him. She said that he is going to make things right. I told her that I just don’t want to be around him anymore and I told her that I meant what I said. Now a day has passed since I told her and I just want to comfort her. What should I do?? I wonder if she still beleives me…I know she does but I am thinking so much about what happened and son’t know where to go with it.

Ok so I am 21 I was molested by my father when I was 13. Nothing extreme but my Dad and I were watching tv, my mom went to bed and I fell asleep. Now before I go on, I just want to say that my Dad never did anything like this to me before and I’ve always loved him even through my parents divorce, him being a horrible father, and being too into porn. Well anyway I fell asleep and when I woke up, he was groping my breast on the outside of my t shirt… and I froze. I was so shocked and scared. I didn’t know what to do except roll over and hope he would leave me alone. I prayed that he would leave me alone.. and he did for a while. But I accidentally fell back to sleep and when I woke up he was doing it again. But this time he saw me wake up and he stopped. He then pretended that he was asleep too and didnt know what what was going on. He then said “ok we should head to bed, its late.” So I did, without a word and cried all night. I was completely traumatized for months. I was too afraid to tell my mom and I didnt want to take my dad away from my sisters.(as messed up as that sounds) and I convinced myself that it wasn’t him and he was drunk. Then on, I would wake up every hour when I was sleeping and would wake up with fists up if anyone came into my room while I was sleeping. I lost friends, I became depressed, boyfriends became an issue. I hated him for a long time. I eventually couldnt keep it to myself and I recently told my fiancee but I said that it was one of my dads friends, because I really believe that he didnt do it. My fiancee knows somethings up with the story I gave him. But he and my dad get along and I think he would be disgusted with me and think I were crazy for not coming forth in the first place. I am scared. I swore to myself that if he ever touched me or my sisters again it would be over and I would come forth. I think he did touch my sister though.. so I’m messed up because I think I let her down too. I hate him and love him its so messed up. And whats worse is I’ve had issues with my fiancee because he is older than me, and he sometimes reminds me of him. we’ve had issues with porn because it reminds me of my dad not only being molested by him but how it hurt my mother. I FEEL SO MESSED UP. I FEEL CRAZY and ashamed and disgusting. I’m going to seek out a therapist but I dont have money and I’m afraid they will report it and it will put shame on my family. What can I do?