I am no Longer Silent

Here we are livin’ the dream on our little Slice of Heaven one year after it first became ours.  So I thought I’d get things going again, but I have something I need to share with you before we get into all the good, the bad, and otherwise related to living on this land.
 

Disclaimers: 

1.       This will NOT be my typical light-hearted ramblings.  This is me doing my very best to initiate something positive from a dark past.  But after this I promise to limit my philosophical carrying on.

2.       The time I’ve taken to deal with and heal from this is one of the various reasons I have been MIA from the blog I barely started last year.  Well that, and then I had no idea how to explain what I was going through. While it’s still difficult to put to words, I know that it’s time.

 

 “The World suffers a lot.  Not because of the violence of bad people. But because of the silence of good people.” - Napoleon

 

When I was in the first trimester of pregnancy with our first baby, in 2007, I was on the phone with my sister.  She had argued with our step-father and mentioned that she still had a hard time getting along with him because of what he did.  I didn’t have to ask what she meant.  I knew what he did…but then, she APOLOGIZED to me for bringing it up!  I realized in that moment that my very own little sister had no idea that our step-father had also molested me.

So, I said it. 

“I was sexually abused.” 

Now, I’ve said it to the World Wide Web.  Well, I’ve typed it and uploaded it to my tiny blog.

But there it is nonetheless.

It’s a quarter to midnight, and my hands shake as my fingers poke at the keyboard. Having been barely able to admit this to myself for a decade, saying it to others still almost shocks me.  I’m wondering what you are thinking and feeling about this. Unfortunately, I know that it is likely sympathy.  I know some of you reading this have survived similar abuse.  Something I’ve learned since being able to talk about this is that WAY too many people say, “It happened to me too,” or “It happened to my sister/mother/friend.”  If this is true for you, you understand… and I’m sorry.  I fear that some of you will question why I would bring this up, but I hope that someday I won’t fear that – and that other victims won’t have to experience that fear.

The thing that is driving me to find these words is hope.  I have so much more hope than fear, that I am driven to share…  so I’ll continue.

Before I could feel our baby kick in my belly, my memories, my fears, came rushing to the forefront of my mind.  I knew my fear was not enough to excuse me from actively protecting our child from the possibility of this abuse.  I knew I would have to go through the pain that I buried.  Up until that positive pregnancy test, I was still in survival mode.  I denied my past to myself so that I could function on a daily basis. When I saw that second pink line, I entered protection mode.  The excuses I had made for the man who molested me, all the coping mechanisms I used, they fell short of being enough when I put my own child in my shoes.  If my step-father molested my child, it wouldn’t matter that he might have been drunk.  It wouldn’t matter if he has been sober for years now, it wouldn’t matter that my mother is still married to him, it wouldn’t matter that people would hate me for reporting it.  I came to the realization that simply, none of that mattered, period.  I had to forget the excuses in order to ensure that my step-father would never molest my child.

So, I began working through what had happened to me.  I worked very hard at sorting out the pain before our first baby boy was born.  In the first two years of our son’s life, it was enough for me to avoid my step-father.  I tried not to let him hold our baby.  I would never allow my step-father to be alone with our son, and we turned down all requests for overnight visits.

Truth fears nothing but concealment.  ~Proverb

As time went on, I started to open up to my friends, and I was hit again with a realization that my current methods for handling this past fell short.  I knew what my step-father did, so I could choose to protect my child from him.  But almost no one else knew.  When I told my best friend in the world, who was in her third trimester of pregnancy, who was my maid-of-honor, who is the dearest friend I’ve ever had, I realized how horrible it was to not speak up; I was ashamed that I had not told her sooner.  She had a right to know, she had a right to protect her child just as much as I did. 

I went home that night and typed into the Google search bar “molest statute of limitations”, but I was still a ways off from doing the right thing.

Nearly three years after that first phone call with my little sister, and after a lot of soul searching, I was ready to take the information about my abuse as far as was necessary.  I approached my little sister.  I let her know that I was considering reporting the abuse to the state police, and asked how she felt about it.  She barely let me get it all out when she agreed it was the right thing to do and said she would also report what happened to her, although she had a lot more to lose by reporting (my little sister… she’s a tough cookie).

So we reported it.  Then, we waited.  In my naivety, I hoped for a particular phone call - from my mother, or others in the family.  I hoped they (my family) still loved me.  Many of them didn’t… love us, that is.  At least they didn’t love us enough to face holding a child molester accountable - even if that person is their husband, their father, their friend.  Each phone call that never came was a new wound to heal from.  I am still healing.  Still now, when I see young men that are the same age as my dear brother, and I wonder what he might be like now, nearly three years since I last saw him; it takes my breath away.  THAT loss is the biggest I have faced since the first night I was abused.

The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable.  ~James A. Garfield

 

While I went on in disbelief, reeling from the continued and surprising betrayal from friends and family, the investigator found more victims.  When I would learn that someone else had been abused, that they tried to report it, my heart broke.  But I had so much hope that this was the opportunity for that wrong to be made right. There were four victims found in the investigation. 

We were patient as we fought politics.  Yes, somehow when a little girl is violated by a grown man, politics matter.  The prosecutor in office at the time never returned any of my 3 dozen phone calls.  When a new prosecutor took office, the investigator on the case submitted the case again, and we still waited, more politics.  Finally, 16 months after we first shared our story with authorities, our case was handed over to a special prosecutor (you know, to avoid politics – I’m groaning and rolling my eyes as I type this).

Charges were filed, then dropped for further investigation.  Finally, there was a GRAND JURY INDICTMENT!!!!  What does that mean? A jury reviewed all the evidence and ordered several arrests – on 6 felony charges!!  Others were also indicted for neglect of a dependent, official misconduct, and assisting a criminal (one of these two people was my step-father’s brother)!! Folks, WAY too many adults knew what was happening to us girls.  They knew it was happening, and they kept their heads down.  They allowed us girls to bear the weight of their fears, their egos.  We paid the price.  We were the currency offered up to continue in their lives the way they knew it.

It is error alone which needs the support of government.  Truth can stand by itself.  ~Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia

 

Then suddenly, with no warning at all, not even the courtesy of a phone call from the “special” prosecutor, ALL CHARGES WERE DROPPED!  That was it.  The prosecutor would hardly take our phone calls.  No call from ANYONE!  We just fell off of everyone’s radar.  When the prosecutor finally did answer my call, she blamed it on the statute of limitations.  The same statute of limitations that we spent so much time studying early in the case, that she had consulted with her colleagues so often about.  Apparently, Indiana State Law says that we weren’t afraid enough to justify not coming forward as children.  What’s worse? The man that abused me and at least three other girls from 1986 to 1998 is now fighting to erase his arrest record!  Seriously?!  A GRAND JURY thought this man should be charged with 6 felonies!  Just because he was not successfully convicted due to the statue of limitations, does not mean he didn’t do it or that the arrests were unwarranted.  Thankfully, the Indiana Attorney General’s office seems to be outside the reach of the political circus that has tainted this case, and I have hope that they will be successful in defending the arrests, thereby leaving at least some public evidence of what my step-father is capable of.  This situation, though, supports an ominous truth… not everyone that belongs on the sex offender registries will be found there. 

You can change that by holding yourself and everyone you know accountable when you know of this type of abuse.  It is hard, but it is harder for a victim to survive abuse than it is for the rest of the world to survive facing our own evils.

Unfortunately, none of these details of our case or the charges matter one bit to the little girl I was when I was so terrified about what was being done to me.  None of these details matter an inkling to the child that is the next potential victim.  I’ve made every single decision I’ve made thus far in an effort to protect other children just as precious as my very own children.  Countless people in positions to help further this goal have failed us, but my wounds are becoming scars, my fears are becoming lessons, my regret is becoming respect.  I am on the receiving end of an incredible amount of love that gives me all the strength I need.  I am no longer a victim, but a survivor.  I have survived what could have defeated me, and what remains to bear… is bearable.  I am happy, but that is not enough.

We do not err because truth is difficult to see.  It is visible at a glance.  We err because this is more comfortable.  ~Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or who says it.  ~Malcolm X

I remain unconvinced that my actions thus far have had the impact that I wish them to have.  So tonight, while my three children and husband sleep, I write.  I write to ask no small favor of you.  Do not pray for me.  Do not have sympathy for me.  Do not think that there is anything you could or should do for me…

What I ask is that you hold yourselves and everyone around you accountable, your neighbor, your mother, your best friend.  If you must pray, pray that the people in this world that are responsible for the protection of our children will protect them, from their own husband, their own cousin, sister, or co-worker.  Pray that the next time a child is abused,  the person that can protect them thinks first of the child and not what it will mean to piss off the community by shining a light on the inconvenient truth.  While I appreciate that most of you care that this happened to me, please know that my scars are not only from what my step-father did to me, but from the world that didn’t protect me, from my mother choosing not to know my children because I came forward about it, from my children never knowing their Uncle who, as far as I can tell, hates me for what his father did to me, from those that could have stopped it and didn’t, from those that could stand by me now and don’t. 

Stand by me and stand by all other victims in this world by saying to the abusers and the enablers that abuse is unacceptable! 

Do not stand idly by when you see evidence of the abuse.

Do not remain silent when the victim’s name comes up in conversation.  

Let it be KNOWN that you will not tolerate such complacency! 

It is not enough to believe what someone did was wrong, you have to let it be known.  Your silence is your acceptance of what happened.  If you do not speak up, you are guilty of feeding this society that allows the abuse.  When we enable abusers to continue in their abuse to avoid our own discomfort, we make the world nearly unbearable to someone less capable of coping with such pain.  When my mother avoided the pain of leaving the man that was abusing her daughters, she forced upon us a pain that we would bear for the rest of our lives.  If you are strong enough, if you can survive the discomfort, I ask you to face that fear so that a child with less strength doesn’t have to.

“The World suffers a lot.  Not because of the violence of bad people. But because of the silence of good people.” - Napoleon

I am no longer silent.