Warning: Disturbing themes. Proceed with caution.
As a writer, I am periodically asked to write on various topics for various reasons. I’ve written “on demand” poetry, essays, theme examples, papers for psychological studies, and even papers in Spanish. They were for everything from schoolwork to teaching writing classes to pieces for different events like baby showers and going away parties. I’ve written reference letters and official proposals. Some time ago, I was asked to write a piece about childhood sexual abuse.
One might wonder why I was chosen to pen such a piece. As it turns out, I was chosen because I have experience on the topic and, more importantly, I was willing to talk about it. I am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. I consider the experience one of my defining moments. Not the experience of being molested, mind you, rather the experience of writing about it. The most difficult part of writing the piece was not the mechanics of writing or even the emotionally charged topic. It was saying out loud the sentence “My name is KC, and I am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse.”
The piece was set to music with my voice telling the events and their effects on my life. The pictures in the background were of me at various ages from birth to adult. There were pictures of me holding my cat Sunny B (don’t ask) and snuggled up to the family dog, Huggiebear. There were shots of me posing in ballet costumes and others when I was on vacation with a tan that would make an Indian envious. There was one photo in particular where I was looking away from the camera and the shadows of a nearby tree cast leafy silhouettes in chaotic pattern across my face. That was taken at about the age that the abuse began.
I was eleven and was so innocent that I was only just learning about the birds and the bees. My abuser was not a stranger as so many people believe is standard. No, the reality is that abuse is far more common amongst those who are familiar. My abuser was not someone who gave me the creeps when I’d come into contact with them. That feeling does not come into play when the abuser is someone that a child has been taught to implicitly trust. My abuser was not a transient, not a visitor to the household or a cousin or uncle that lived far enough away to keep all things secret. The abuse was not the “play” between exploring children. How much easier might it have been to deal with had it been any of these? My abuser was none other than my own father.
For my first eleven years, he seemed to be a great dad. It was as if a switch was flipped when an opportunity arose and he took advantage of it. From my perspective, it was initially subtle and always dreadful and every time something happened I was told it was for my own good. My health. My cleanliness. My benefit. It was really a classic line to get a trusting child to go along with something that they, even as a child, felt was wrong somehow. It was not something I could articulate though I was a prolific writer even then. Words failed me more than once. The internal battle was far beyond finding the right ones to use, though.
For more than six months, I tried everything I could think of to deter the incidents. I started with “accidentally” locking the bathroom door when I took a bath. When that got me in trouble, I stopped bathing unless my mother was home because I was reasonably sure he wouldn’t approach me then. That got me in trouble for being unclean, so I switched to showers. The incidents didn’t stop as I had hoped, they only changed in nature. I learned to take the fastest showers in the history of bathing. I even went so far as to “bathe” in the river with my bathing suit on. No, I am not joking. I literally took shampoo, conditioner, and soap into the river so that I would not be in my own house alone with my father when it was time for a bath. Really, how sad is that? Unfortunately, that did not stop the incidents. Again, it only changed their nature. I would say that every time I began to master a new kind of avoidance, he was right there with a new brand of adaptation. It did not stop until my mother was home more permanently from her excruciatingly long training program and I became so elusive and defensive that I was nearly put into some kind of intensive therapy program.
So, why didn’t I tell? That’s what everyone who hasn’t been through abuse asks in one form or another. If it was so bad, why didn’t I open my mouth and spill the beans? For the benefit of those who have not been in those shoes, here goes: I tried. My eleven year old mind did not know what the words were that would convey the myriad of emotions that surged through me every time I was in the same room as my father. Since words wouldn’t work, I used actions. I clung to my mother when she was home until she had to pry me off of her. My behavior swung dramatically. I was moody and any little thing would set me off. It was all attributed to the stress of my mother being away for so long, an idea perpetuated by my therapist father who wanted to make sure it all stayed secret. When my mother suggested therapy, he pushed for me to go to a colleague in his group. I refused. Not because I didn’t want someone to talk to, but because I understood that there would be no such thing as client therapist privilege and that this guy (who did give me the creeps, by the way) would tell my father every last word of our sessions.
I felt filthy. Nothing could wash away the stain or the secret. It felt so wrong and I was powerless to make any lasting change. Any step I took got me into worse trouble than the last. After all, what he was doing was to “help” me. He was watching out for me, he said. He was the only one who really cared about me because no one else was protecting me the way he was. I should thank him. He was my father. My very existence was thanks to his benevolence, after all. I owed him everything. All that I was and would ever do was because he cared enough to do the things that must be done. Filthy. Dirty. Ruined. Worthless. He was saving me. There was nowhere to run. No safety. No reprieve. Over and over and over…
I was torn from the inside out with my own logic. If I told my mother, one of two things would happen. She would either believe me or she wouldn’t. If she did, she would have confronted my father and they would have fought and probably ended up divorced because of me. No good. Too much guilt there. If she didn’t believe me, I would not be able to trust either of my parents and there would be no safety against his desires, which would probably get worse over time as I grew up and her presence would offer no protection anymore. No good. The situation would just be worse. If I didn’t tell, things would keep happening and maybe get worse over time. This was the epitome of a no win situation.
Ironically, my salvation came with his cheating on my mother. That sounds really terrible, but the following divorce was not my fault. I was free of the dirty secret he carried and it was not about something I had done or said. I was still conflicted, but a part of me was relieved to see him go. That is, right up until the divorce papers said I would have to go stay with him every other weekend and alternating holidays. In the lawyer’s office, I was adamant that I would not go. Nope, nope, nope, not this girl, not gonna happen. After major confusion mixed with assurances that even if I was angry with him for cheating on my mother, I would come to enjoy spending time with my good ol’ dad, I blurted out that he had molested me and I would run away before going to stay with him for a single night. Mic drop…
The lawyer assured me that I wouldn’t have to go if I didn’t want to but to leave the papers as they were written. Epic fail. Here’s a note: if a child EVER tells that they’ve been molested, further sweeping it under a rug does not undo the tremendous damage that is eating that child away like storm water on a soft stone. Bit by bit, that child’s soul is being carried away in a torrent of pain. I’m not being dramatic. I’m being realistic. The lawyer failed us. He failed me. He failed me as surely as my father had. He did absolutely nothing in a situation that has mandated reporting. He was required by the legal codes he swore to that he would report to the police and child protective services if this very situation ever came up. Epic fail. He thought it would be fine since I didn’t have to see my father any more.
He was wrong.
In a way, my life was already forfeit. What I understood in that exchange was that I wasn’t worth rewriting the legal documents. My moment of truth was met with what felt like a dismissive wave of the hand and a “you’re fine” and the feeling that it wasn’t really over. My mother was horrified and though she believed me, she was concerned with what to do to keep me safe and mostly what to do next as a newly-single mom with two teenagers. I give her a tremendous amount of credit for how quickly she switched gears after being completely blindsided more than once in rapid succession. What should have happened was that the divorce negotiations were ramped up to ensure my safety, immediate entry into therapy sessions for both my mother and me, and charges brought against my father, all brought about by the proper actions of our lawyer. What did happen was… well… nothing.
Since nothing really came of it, my father married the woman he cheated with, who had been one of his clients. Her daughter from another marriage was about seven. They had a baby girl together. The feeling that it wasn’t really over? Yeah. You probably guessed it. He molested both of them. He also molested their friends and a cousin and the next door neighbor girl. I wasn’t the first, either. There were others. Too many others. It was enough that just those few of us who came forward, very reluctantly I may add, earned him years in prison from multiple counts of child molestation and aggravated child molestation.
I could argue the what-ifs and should-haves until the world ends. What if I had told sooner? What if the lawyer had done things differently? What if I had succumbed so long ago? Should I have been more assertive? Should someone have picked up on the hints and clues I thought were obvious? Should I have accepted counseling? Who knows? Any tiny turn can change the course of the largest ship. I went through long periods of sadness and pain, but I can now say that I survived. I wrote the piece because people need to know about sexual abuse. People must learn the signs and understand what a child is saying without words when words fail. People have to know that rarely will an abuser stop at one victim.
Silence is allowing the abuse to continue and grow. For every one who speaks, so many more are still shrouded in secrecy. The silence must be broken before our children are. Childhood sexual abuse leads to so many problems if left unchecked or untreated, such as teen pregnancies, eating disorders, psychological disorders, victims turned perpetrators, domestic violence, the list goes on and on. The cycle will continue unless we stop it. We have to teach our children not just good touch bad touch, but the gray areas around them and in between and that if something feels wrong, they should trust that feeling. The abuse is not black and white. The effects are not black and white. The lines that divide right from wrong in a child’s mind are still forming and can be manipulated by those who are hunting for their next prey. Our children deserve so much more than this, and it is up to each of us to protect them. We cannot help them if we quiet their pleas for compassion and understanding with scorn or disbelief or impatience or indecision. The silence must be broken.
My name is KC and I am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. I am breaking the silence.