My abuser had died. I didn’t get details. I didn’t ask. I didn’t want any. His death was liberating to me. I no longer had to worry about seeing him when I went “home” to visit my family. No chance of an encounter at the grocery store. No more having to imagine how I would react, what I would say, what I would do. I was finally, somehow, free.
I was sexually abused as a child. The man who abused me was named Uncle Phil, but he wasn’t my uncle. He was a friend of my step-father’s family who stayed at my grandparent’s home when he visited from Chicago. He sexually abused me in the basement bedroom of the farmhouse I visited nearly every weekend. It was a farmhouse that included extended family and was always bustling with activity. No one knew, even though there was always someone else home while it happened. I wasn’t the only child he abused either.
He called it our secret. He told me that other adults would be mad at me if they found out. He told me they wouldn’t believe me even if I told them. At the time I didn’t think what was happening was wrong. I was special. I had a secret.
I remember the day other adults found out like it happened this morning. During recess, one of the other children he was abusing ran up to me crying. She said, “They found out. They know.” We sat on the cool pavement and cried together, not knowing what would happen next.
Because we were so young, second or third grade, some of the details after that are fuzzy. I do remember talking to the guidance counselor at school. My next memory is one of sitting in the detective’s office with a cousin. We were being asked to circle where Uncle Phil had touched us on a coloring book image of a naked little girl with bows in her hair. I did what the detectives asked. I circled where he had touched me on the picture of that little girl.
Afterwards the detective gave us a tour of the jail cells. One of the other kid’s parents joked about locking us in them. After that day, nothing happened. Nothing. No one spoke about what happened. I didn’t see a therapist. Life just kept happening.
The abuse stopped, but I did see Uncle Phil again. A few years after that visit to the detective’s office he was staying at my grandparent’s home again. He confronted me and a cousin one day while we were walking back to the farmhouse after picking some wild strawberries. He told us that we should be ashamed of ourselves for spreading dirty lies. I grabbed my cousin by the arm and ran back to the house. We never told anyone what had happened.
I didn’t talk about the abuse until I was 27 years old. I was in a committed relationship with the man who would later become my husband and things weren’t going well. Something was off with me and it affected every part of my life. Late one night it came out. I told him everything and we agreed that I needed to talk to someone.
One of the hardest days of my life was walking through the doors of The Healing Center for the first time, but once I made it through they did everything they could to welcome me on my own terms. The Healing Center, coincidentally, a United Way-funded program partner changed my life.
I was offered a therapist, free of charge, because as a graduate student I didn’t have insurance. I wasn’t interested in group sessions or art therapy, but knew they were available if I changed my mind. Judith was my second therapist offered through the Healing Center, and she is who I credit in helping me turn my life around and understand the coping mechanisms I was using to survive. I learned that I didn’t have to be perfect. I didn’t have to do everything. I learned to accept that I am okay just being me.
Seven years later I am happily married and have a son. Two things I could have never envisioned for myself before working with Judith at the Healing Center. The sexual abuse I experienced as a child took my innocence, confidence and self-worth. I have some of that back now, but I couldn’t have ever done it alone.
No charges were ever brought against my abuser. I was told as an adult that none of the other parents wanted their children to testify so my parents were told there wasn’t a case. Nothing happened. It doesn’t have to be like this for anyone else.
I chose to tell my story publically for the first time with this blog. I felt like it was time. It feels right. I work at United Way in communications and tell other people’s stories as part of my job. I couldn’t ask for a more perfect or supportive platform. I also feel like sharing my story may help someone else who experienced something similar know that they aren’t alone or broken and that they didn’t do anything wrong. Sharing my story takes the power away from my abuser and makes it my own.
I do ask one thing of anyone who is reading this though. I ask that you listen to your children. Talk to them often about sex and what is safe and what isn’t. Do it before you think they are ready. Do it often.