By Pat Lawrence
Burglary victims often express a sense of violation and deep loss
over even the smallest items. For women who are sexually abused
as children, the theft is of an entire childhood, the violation is
real and the loss of self-confidence, trust and security, can be devastating.
Grace, the second daughter in a family of ten, says, “Growing
up in a home like that, without the love and protection you should
expect, leaves a big hole. It robbed me of my childhood.”
Now a practicing nurse and “a happy go lucky person”,
she says, “It took years of recovery. I was sad all the time. And
parenting yourself is exhausting.” Her oldest sister carried
the burden of abuse first. “Our father started molesting her
when she was about four. When she got older, he moved on to me.” Her
sister tried to protect her as long as she could, in the only way
she had. “She did her best to keep him from me, but, she had
to suffer so much to do it, she stayed angry at me as well.”
Often, that anger meant beatings.
Like most children in similar conditions, the sisters didn’t
speak of their situation to anyone, even each other. Their father
extracted silence with threats of abandonment and heartbreak for their
mother. Not until her first child was born did Grace find the courage
to seek help for the anger she carried. “My son had disobeyed
me in some way; he could have gotten hurt. I was furious. The anger
was terrifying. I didn’t know if it came from not having control
or from not being able to protect him.” She went for counseling
right away.
It was the first step to healing. Grace ran away from home her sophomore
year, never finishing high school. She did drugs. Her social responses
were confused and often, painfully self-destructive. “The
only attention I had from my father was sexual. It made it difficult
to define social and sexual barriers.” Like many survivors,
Grace says, “I confused love and sex because of it, thinking
‘He wants me, so he must love me. We become professional
people-pleasers.’” For some survivors the alternative
is self abuse. “They cut or hurt themselves physically
to take away from the emotional pain that is unbearable.”
Grace was 35 when she disclosed the family secret. “I confronted
my father and told him how badly he had hurt me. He never denied it.” Still
manipulating, he told Grace not to tell her mother. “He said
he might as well take a gun and shoot himself.” But, Grace
had support through the ordeal. “I did tell her. She says she
didn’t know. She did the best she could in a chaotic home.” Grace,
52 now, says simply, “We don’t talk about it anymore.
She doesn’t want to think about it.”
Grace thinks about it.
The mother of four, Grace questions her own parenting. She worries
about her daughter. Ending a second marriage, she wonders how
to make the right decisions about men when she can’t trust her
own judgment. “You live with all this craziness and people
say nothing is wrong, so you grow up not believing what you feel,
thinking that what’s wrong is all in your mind.”
She’s concerned about making the same mistakes over again,
afraid she won’t be able to stop the cycle of abuse and victimization
that seems to plague survivors. “We grow up with unmet needs,
spend a lifetime seeking to get our needs met, ignoring the needs
of our children, and they grow up with unmet needs and the cycle is
passed on.”
Survivors are often emotionally distant to their own families later.
Grace says that’s true for boys, too. “My father
didn’t just molest his daughters. And he fostered a sexual environment
verbally that was equally damaging.”
Grace feels fortunate to have received help for the crime committed
against her and that she faced her father with the truth before he
died. “Most survivors do much better when they’ve been
able to confront their abuser.” Although she knows disclosure
is painful, she says one element makes it imperative. “Abusers
don’t stop because a child grows up. They start on another child.
And then, another. Fathers who molest children become grandfathers
who molest children. And, not just their own children. We have
to break the terrible cycle that begins each time a child is betrayed.”
Send an Email About This Article