Abuse Continued

My story differs from a lot of stories here in that, there was no actual penetration (unless it happened to me during my sleep, which I sometimes wonder). I was molested by my mother’s ex-husband. I must have been around 7, 8 or 9. This “man” lived in the house, of course, and my Mom had had a daughter with him. One night my grandparents had come over, and when my Mom walked them to the door, he walked into the room (where I was pretending to be asleep) and he touched me between my legs over my underwear. Another memory I have is I would be ready to take a shower, he would call me into the room, so I’d step out only wearing a towel and he would say “my back hurts, will you help me?”. He would sit me on top of him while he was laying on the bed (he was wearing clothes) and he would start massaging me against him back and forth. I remember thinking &quo t;this is a very weird solution for back pain and it makes no sense”… I obviously knew nothing of sexual positions at the time but I knew something wasn’t right with it. How fucked up a “person” to do this to a child. While writing this I feel enraged and disgusted by him, and my mind travels to the present, when I have had a burning sensation many times after intercourse with my partner…. I couldn’t say how many times this happened, or which incident was first, and it terrifies me to think he might have done more to me during sleep… but I can see the link, I can see I am so angry from that person’s rubbing on my private parts when I was just a girl, and I think it affects and reflects upon any current relationships I might have. It affects how healthy my vagina is, and I’m pretty sure in some way it could also have an impact on my ability to reproduce, to be a mother. It is the first time I write about this… To my heart’s sadness, my mother is probably 80% to blame for this. The person who is supposed to love me and protect me most in this world, is to blame. First of all, before this started happening, I remember one time I was in the shower and needed something. Because my Mom was taking care of my recently-born (half) sister, she sent him into the bathroom to bring me whatever I needed. I know I was 6 because my sister had just been born. I remember him looking at me naked longer than was necessary and at that time, I could also feel violated, even though I could not fully understand it nor explain it. To my judgement, I wouldn’t feel it appropriate to send my husband into the bathroom while my 6 yr. old was naked. When I told my mother about the rubbing incidents that had happened later on, she asked me to depict what I was saying with some toys and I did. To me, that was all I should have had to do for her to realize something really wrong was obviously going on and she need ed to kick this man out of our lives. But it wasn’t. Years later she wouldn’t even recognize I had told her and she said she couldn’t remember. In addition to sexually molesting me, this piece of a person, was very emotionally abusive and controlling and manipulative – much of which, I now realize, my Mom allowed. Whether her fear was genuine or not, the fact is my Mom remained “under” his control. Therapists have mentioned this could have been a game between them and a dynamic, more than my Mom truly feeling our lives were at risk. I once heard her on the phone, perhaps talking to his sister, about how he would threaten to kill himself in front of all of us (my half brother and sister, myself and my Mom) if she left him. He would hold a knife while saying this. At some other point he also said he would kill us, and a few times he would get so angry and break things in the house. I remember more than one time, we ran out to the garden and my Mom was calling the neighbors above us because he was being so violent breaking things in the house, she thought he would kill us, or so it appeared at that moment. I also feared for my life, and for my Mom’s life. Again, as I write this I feel so much anger… we were being abused – I was being abused – sexually, emotionally, psychologically. We left the country we lived in 1996…but somehow my Mom allowed this “person” to continue to be in our lives and he came and went, she left him in charge of the business she left behind in our country of origin… what a joke. How can a mother do something like that? When I have asked her, she has told me she has no answer or explanation as to why she did what she did. Other times she said she did it for my brother and sister, so they could have a “father” – A FATHER? She wanted them to have THIS KIND OF FATHER?…. What makes it so very hard for me to get over this, is that I will never understand how my Mom could abuse me second-hand through all of this uncertainty and confusing behavior. For as long as she keeps in touch with him, I feel the abuse continues. She knows what happened, he admitted to it… she has cried… and still talks to him on the phone… still has business pending, because they won’t split the property that was once my Mom business. She divorced him, that she did do… but it was years after she found out what he had done to me, and like I said, she still has to talk to him on the phone to this day. She would tell me to “forgive him” because if I didn’t forgive, that poison would affect me…. fuck. ……………. I have been to several therapists, I have spent money, time, energy, youth… even as a singer my career has been affected because I have been unable to express myself sensually (even though I’d really like to and I recognize there’s a truly healthy side to that kind of expression)… and sometimes I wonder why I am so angry. Well, I guess this pretty much explains it… Abuse that has been on-going for years and years after he actually physically touched me. Much of my life has been robbed from me, much of my identity, because I have had to spend so much energy on this, my self-esteem was so affected…and I was so confused for so many years about my Mom. I know and have always known she loves me, but how do you explain her inability to stand up to him and get him the fuck out of her life after she found out what he did to me? I have felt so powerless for so many years. I wish I had the resources to get him in jail without the risk of him coming after us or me and killing me/us… when I was little I would always think how I wanted him to die, and I would (innocently) try to think of a plan to get him killed, like using an invisible chord to make him trip and fall and break his head. I’d love to hear comments if there’s anything anyone would like to t ell me after reading this… I feel so angry right now… thank you for reading.

— Aileen