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Hello. I am a woman and a survivor of prolonged childhood rape by a very close relative. He was someone very loved by the rest of the family, someone who was "loving" with me, and that's why when everything came to light, almost no one believed me. I wasn't the only victim, and yet they still treat him as if he were untouchable. That scarred me deeply. Today I am a mother. I love my children deeply and I am very protective. But for some time now, I've been having intrusive thoughts that fill me with fear and disgust. They aren't desires; I don't want to hurt them, on the contrary: just thinking about it distresses me. It's harder with my daughters, even when bathing them, and that makes me question myself and feel guilty. I never crossed any boundaries, nor would I, but my mind sometimes attacks me with the "what if?" I would like to know if anyone else has experienced something similar: this fear of becoming what I suffered. Thank you for reading.

My name is Survivor and when I was around age 3, my father started raping me. My mother helped hold me down. He was raping her, and she offered me up in her place. This continued until age 23, maybe 24, shortly before my wedding. By the time I was 6, he was raping other members of my family too. He’d come into my room at night and would throw my nightgown up into the headboard and then I’d have to wait my turn in fear and naked shame while others were raped. We had a large waterbed and I still remember the bed rolling up and down, up, and down, up, and down like on a boat. Once done, he wiped me down roughly with a red shop rag he used in cleaning the garage. It allowed him to keep the rag around to smell it and hold it close with no one questioning why it was so dirty with red stains. Most of the time, my dad was friendly and polite. But once he turned into the monster no one did anything to stop him. He never did these things when he was nice. Only when he was the monster. But he used the nice times to make it easier to attack. He would lull you into a false sense of safety and peace which really made you question your intuition and gut instincts that this was a bad man. This made it easier for him to sexually assault other children and adults. As I got older, my parents controlled the narrative of our lives, every aspect was carefully controlled. Like my mom knowing how to force miscarriages. The first abortion forced on me was when I was 15. I don’t know how I managed to make it to adulthood. I continue to remember more and more of the abuse by other family and church members. And other things my dad did within the church where he was pastor and then later deacon. But I still can’t talk about those memories. I think my dad felt like anything he did was inevitable, therefore, never his fault because he couldn’t control himself and when it happened God would forgive him, so it was all right. I know this because I overheard him grooming another family member to do the same things when he was 11 years old. Males in our family were groomed to be abusers too. I was groomed too. To always be the abused. Forced to keep silent, I learned quickly what happens to people who stand up to my dad. They die or get assaulted. As you can imagine, I had terrible anxiety growing up about being sexually assaulted and worked hard to fade into the background. I thought that might help. I thought it mattered what I wore, color of my hair, how much I weighed. It’s taken years and it will probably continue to take years to unlearn the lies I was taught. The worry made me constantly ill with one thing after another-- I got cancer when I was 32 and before that incapacitating vertigo and motion sickness. My parents met while working down in Texas for an independent fundamental Baptist preacher. Lester Roloff—an Independent Fundamental Baptist preacher who opened homes across the country for “troubled” children, teens, and adults. He liked to say he was saving dope fiends, whores, and hippies. I believe many of the children in the homes had already experienced abuse growing up and Lester Roloff homes should have been a safe place to heal. Instead, the kids met caretakers like my parents. My mom was in a charge of the 16 and older home and my dad flew around the country raising money and preaching the party line: men were akin to gods and women were lower than dirt—their only worth was in being a virgin and then baby factories once married. Very masochistic and minimizing of abuse of any kind, my parents ate up the evil rhetoric being preached from the pulpit My parents eventually took their brand of abuse from Lester Roloff’s out into the churches and communities where we lived-from Texas to Washington and eventually into Alaska. He disappeared in a plane over the waters near Anchorage in 2006. The events surrounding his disappearance were always very suspect but intense pressure from my family kept me quiet. Every day for almost three years straight, a family member called and reminded me talking about “our family issues” was causing generational sin to 4 generations. The pressure to keep quiet and do what my family told me to do was so significant I would have rather died than disappoint them. It wasn’t until I set out to heal from all the trauma, that I found out my dad faked his death. I had always been told since he was gone, there was nothing to be done for what I experienced growing up. But let me tell you, knowing he’s still out there perpetrating on other children and men and women really compelled me to come forward. I finally felt free to start talking. Getting past the pressure to stay silent was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Harder, even, than fighting cancer. I have spent many years in intensive CBT, EMDR and Polyvagal therapy learning how to process my wounds in a healthy way. I had pushed for criminal and civil suits against my perpetrators but the Texas statute of limitations don’t allow for justice to be done. So now, I spend my time now speaking on panels, podcasts, and community platforms about the intersections of trauma, faith, and advocacy. One of the biggest honors of my life has been sharing my story and advocating for Trey’s Law on the Texas Senate floor in Spring 2025. Forcing a sexual assault victim to keep quiet is what allowed people like my parents to continue their mistreatment for so many years. I will do what I can to make sure justice isn’t minimized by NDAs and Statute of Limitations. My efforts connect me with survivors, true crime audiences, mental health communities, and faith groups seeking to understand and confront abuse. I invest my time in mentoring survivors, creating resources for healing, and building digital tools to expand access to supportive materials. Because living a life whole and healthy is what I really want for me, all the victims and their families. We make our own opportunities to heal.

I somehow got myself on Tinder at 16 years old. I know, not very smart of me but all my friends were on it at the time and I didn't think about it. I met someone who told me he was also underage, he claimed he was 17. He seemed perfect. We went on a date to a pumpkin patch, we got sushi at a restaurant, and after he came to my home to carve pumpkins. Everything was going so well. We were watching a movie and he asked us to move to my room. Honestly, I didn't really want to but I agreed and we went to my room. His demeanor changed immediately, suddenly he was cocky and dominant. We had sex which I had agreed to even if I felt pressured. Suddenly he put his penis in my anus, pulled it out after a few times, and put it back into my vagina. I was shocked, I was confused. Did that just happen? Is that normal? I am so grateful for the human survival instincts because I mostly checked out. But I remember him saying "You could at least act like you're enjoying it". Still, I didn't react. When he was done he got up and went to get a towel, I asked him to turn on the light and he said "Are you sure? You might not want to see the bed it's going to be graphic." I didn't understand and wanted the light on anyway. My white comforter was covered in blood and had feces stains on it. "wow" I felt embarrassed. He said it was normal. We went back into the living room and a few minutes later he left. Next, I threw out my comforter and went to my best friend's house. She had her older friend over. I told them what happened and they were shocked. Both of these girls were sexually experienced, and they told me that is not normal. You don't have anal sex by accident. You don't have anal sex without a discussion first. You don't "slip" into someone's anus which is the excuse I had thought up for him, "maybe he slipped?". They assured me it was not an accident that happens. I told the older girl his name, Name, it turns out she knows him and he is not 17. He told her he was 20. When he came over to her house before he was really pushy to have sex and her dog hated him so she kicked him out. My dog also hated him. Moving forward I reached out to him, he wasn't responding to my messages, then he said he was sorry but he's not looking for anything relationship-wise, he didn't want to see me again. At this point it started to become clearer "I might have been raped". I spent about 2 years going back and forth between did that really happen, was it rape, was it my fault, did I ask for it? A few days after the rape my vagina became swollen. I know, I'm sorry for the detail but it is crucial to the story. I went to the student based health center my school worked with because I did not want my parents to know I had sex. They did a test on me and I had bacterial vaginosis. The nurse said I had "bacteria that looked like a blooming flower inside of me.", this is because he went from my anus to my vagina a few times and I was bloody. Luckily it was an easy fix with some antibiotics. Another thing that confirmed something seriously wrong had happened. I spent 2 years of my life Junior and Senior years of high school in bed and I do not remember my high school time fully. I slept, I rotted, I removed my bed frame from my room in a mental breakdown, I rearranged my bed to different positions in my room, and I changed mattresses. Nothing was helping me. Eventually, I changed rooms. I began to resent my own home. I did not feel like I had a safe space. I started to be rude to my parents, I was mean when they would not let me go out, and I was snappy anytime. I skipped dinner, and avoided family time. In addition, I stopped going to school. I missed so many days of school, that they sent a letter that they might have a police officer come to our house to do a welfare check. My mom would drop me off at school, I would wait for her to drive away, and I would walk back home to go lay in bed. Until she started to wait until I got inside and then I would maybe go to one class and then walk home. My two best friends started to come to my window on school days and they would knock on my window to try and get me to come to class. One of them, my bestest friend in the world, would continuously knock on my window until I let her into my house. I also have barky dogs so they would be going crazy barking and I had to let her in, she also literally would not leave or stop knocking until I let her in. No matter how disgusting, and horribly messy my room was (I am talking can not see the floor, obstacles to the bed, garbage, huge piles of clothes, deep clothes on the floor) she would sit with me on my mattress on the floor. She would lay with me, she would cuddle me, she would make me watch videos with her on her phone. She would skip school for me. She would eventually coax me into leaving the house, going with her to get coffee, get food, go drive around, go to her house, go adventure outside in the woods together. I can't imagine what would have happened without her. She never made me feel like a victim, always let me talk about the gross details, and let me be my gross rotting self at this time, she made me laugh, she made me feel happy when I was so depressed, and didn't even really know why. As in I was still confused, still unsure if I was actually raped. Eventually, my school told me I would have to repeat my senior year. They never asked me what was wrong, they just told me I was failing bad. I had met a new guy at this time who became my boyfriend, he ended up cheating on me so I can't make him too nice in this story but at this time, he was really helpful, and beneficial, he taught me what real safe sex is and what it is supposed to be and feel like. It is communication, consent, mutual good feelings, and love. I want to add that when I did have sex with him for the first time after the rape my hands locked up. A physical result of trauma, I couldn't open up my hands, I was scared and not of him, but my body responded to this intimate act happening again. It was his first time having sex and I like to consider it my real first time too. He did not "slip" into my anus. Becuase that does not happen. After this, it clicked to me that I was anally raped. I had always searched on Google, Instagram, and anywhere I could for information on anal rape, and I could never find it. I wanted to be confirmed and validated. I wanted to find someone who had experienced the same thing I had and I still have not found it (4 years later). I only saw things about male prison rape. I am making a face right now that is not what I was looking for. Moving forward, one of my friends' sisters started dating the man who raped me a few days later. She messaged me and asked about him. I didn't tell her he raped me but I wish I did. Later on, I saw her at a party, a few drinks in, I went up to her and said I have a really personal question I need to ask. She said absolutely. I asked her if Name (the rapist) had tried to do anal with her. She whipped her head around and said "Yeah! He tried to during sex and I stopped him, I freaked out on him I was so upset.". Everything clicked for me in that moment and I am forever grateful for her and her honesty. She was a turning point in my healing. She confirmed what I had been questioning for years. My at the time boyfriend had gone to a high school that was inclusive, they had personalized education, and they really cared about their students. It was called School Name. He told me I should apply, they work with credit recovery and he thought it would be perfect to help me graduate. He was right. I applied to School Name, they asked me why I was failing high school. I told them I was raped at 16 and I stopped going to school. I told them I didn't want to repeat my senior year. I told them no one at my other high school asked about what was going on in my personal life. The woman on the phone said they could get me to graduate on time and that they could support me. My best friend who helped me through this time also transferred to this school. The two of us were in a new high school in our senior year. School Name changed my life. I enjoyed going to school again, I felt supported, and I was treated like I was smart and not like I was a delinquent who couldn't care less about their future. Every teacher in that building wanted me to succeed and I could feel it. I was in credit recovery programs, taking tests to prove I had the knowledge needed to graduate. My best friend and I finished high school early. It was a great feeling even though I graduated with a 2.3 GPA. Now I am sitting here writing this in a community college with my 21st birthday a few weeks away, and I have finally reached the point where I can think about the rape and not hit myself in the head until I stop thinking about it. I think about the rape and my rapist every day of my life since. I have always wanted to share my story and now I am looking for platforms to share it. I want someone else who was anally raped to be able to read my story, I want someone to be able to feel seen and heard like I wanted and needed. But for any rape survivor, I want you to know that eventually, you will be able to live with this new normal. I won't say "it gets better" because I am not sure that it does, frankly I do not think it does get better, it just becomes something you adapt to. I have gone to therapy and I am in therapy again now. I continue to try and put the work in to heal. I still think about it every day but I am finally less reactive. I still shudder and get angry every time I see his name somewhere. I will never be with someone named Name again. I shudder when I see someone who resembles him in any way. I am afraid of men. I don't like to go on dates, I don't like to be too close to a man, I don't want to be in a room alone with a man, I get angry or uncomfortable when a strange man on the street looks at me for too long, if they compliment me, if they try to have a conversation, or if they flirt. I have attachment and abandonment issues. I don't know if this will ever get better but it is a part of my new normal. Who I was before my rape is no longer me. I have accepted the fact that I am a new person and that I have to get to know myself again. I lost a lot of friends during my time of isolation, I have a hard time keeping a job, and I struggle to do well in school even though I really want to succeed. My depression is overwhelming most days. I want Name to be in a jail cell. I want him to be labeled as the rapist he is, I want him to suffer honestly. I want him to never be able to get a job. I hate him and I hate that he gets to live free and possibly enjoy his life. I hate that he probably still finds new victims. I did report him to the police, but nothing came of it. I also reported him to the Department of Human Services for abuse in my state, and nothing came of it. But I did my part, I can only hope that someone else reports him like I did and they see a flag in their system that he has done this before. I still see him on dating apps, he goes by his middle name now, and he is bisexual. I feel he used me as a test subject. When I was younger I would harass him online from fake accounts on Instagram. I told him that he was gay and that he should be a real man and find a guy to hook up with instead of torturing innocent girls. I told him I know everyone he has raped, even though I don't. I told him karma would catch up to him, and that someone will get you eventually. I told him he is a terrible person, but he never admitted what he did or owned up to it. I would like to think I can move on with my life but this is my story. It is a part of me now, it is why I act the way I do, and it is an explanation for most things in my life. I recently moved out on my own and got my own apartment. I thought I just didn't like having people over at my childhood home because it was the home I was raped in. My family moved out of that house and moved states. And now in my new house, my own personal space, I still can not invite anyone over. It is hard for me to have even just girlfriends, my friendly neighbor, or my best friend over. I do not allow guests to come over, and I never invite a date over. It is a huge step for me to have someone in my home and that is his fault. I only made this connection this year. I am afraid of having my space claimed by anyone else again. Wow, it felt good to get all of that out. It is hard to speak about and share my story when I do not have the justice I would like. It is hard to learn about the justice system when it is supposed to protect you and it does not. It is hard to think that so many people are raped so often. I am angry and I want change. I don't really know what kind of change but something. I wish I didn't have to live in so much anger and fear but that is also a part of my new normal. I am antsy, I can't help but look over my shoulder frequently when I am in public, and I can't help but worry about unlikely things. But I am adapting and you will too. Sending love to you.

It started as sexual harassment. And I let it happen. Do not let it happen to you! I was a college intern working on my supply-chain management major. In business school you know you don’t just get a degree and POOF! A job is magically waiting for you. Unless you already have connections. I was a single woman on financial aid and had squat for family connections. I needed to make some connections while still in school that I could use to climb the ladder. It is a very competitive world. A time when we don’t care so much where we work as long as it has prospects of advancement and making money. I was interning at the corporate offices for a rental car company. I got my first choice for a class in which we had to intern at a real company. My group of four was in their logistics offices and we had no clear job at the time but my school had sent students for a while so we had a contact person and some loose idea of a project that my group of four had to put together and execute for our grade. Well that was kind of of dud and I went along with the bad idea of planning more efficient distribution routes for their cars entering the fleet. It was naive because the company had real pros who designed the system. But, because of my feminine wiles, I got invited to come in and help in my free time by a top manager. Just me. I jumped at the opportunity and on my available days I showed up early in the morning and tried to be like part of the team. It was a very masculine environment. I tried to hang in spite of the pretenses for my special treatment. “You’re not one of those feminist types who go crying to HR if a man gives you a compliment or a pat on the backside, are you?” The man who first invited me had asked. We’ll call him XX. I assured him I was not, anticipating his expected answer. “Work hard, play hard,” was something I said in my denial of values he was obviously opposed to. So the couple times XX introduced me as his mistress I went along with the joke. Another stupid mistake. As an example of my environment, after a male Y in the department first showed me how to use part of a program that calculates stock outages, he had me sit and try it and gave me a massage I did not ask for early in the morning. Well XX came up and made a joke about Y getting his hands of his girl. They had some bro moment where the male Y asked him if he was serious, saying something about XX’s wife, to which XX backed down and said something like “It’s just a joke. I’d love to in my fantasies, but she’s company property, brother.” Company property??! I was sitting right there! I tensed up but tried to pretend I was so absorbed in the computer training as XX left and male Y went back to massaging me, but this time more boldly. He got down my lower back and upper buttock then went down the arms to my thighs, stopping me from doing any work as he blatantly brushed his forearms and hands against my chest. I felt so weak and almost paralyzed by the time I forced myself to stand up to go use the restroom, stopping it. I could have just done that at the beginning but did not. Later hat same day, XX had me go to lunch with him and have a beer at a bar and grill with a pool table. I was 20 but they did not ask for my ID because I was with XX. I hardly ever played pool and while we waited for our food he “showed” me how to play. He made fun of the cliché on movies and television where a man has a woman bend over the pool table to shoot just so he can push his crotch against her backside in a suggestive manger and lean over her with his arms on each side of her to show her how to slide the stick. But while he joked about it he actually did those things to me! That was a good day for my two main molesters and an awful day for me. XX hugged me as we stood up giggling and apparently his hands now had a license to molest my body whenever he wanted. I got numb to it in some ways, but emotionally more on edge. My butt was grabbed or spanked playfully in the department, even by male Y. A few other men were very flirtatious. My shoulders were rubbed, hugs on even minor greetings with XX and finally I was supposed to get used to little pecks on the lips too. I felt like I was in a constant state of mental anguish and defensiveness. My body could be attacked anytime. But I did not defend myself! I would say clearly to XX and some others that I wanted to be respected and considered one of the guys and have a job there when I graduated and they affirmed it. Both main abusers encouraged me, but still sexually harassed me. With my moronic blessing! The semester ended and I kept going in daily during summer break. It was my only lifeline to a possible job after I graduated in a year. I was so groomed that it was not a big leap at all when XX pressured me to give him head in his office. I refused with a smile and head shake and he came back with some rationalization about how I owed him and he really needed it just then. He would not take no for an answer. The first time I lowered myself to kneeling before his desk and took him in my mouth my hands were shaking and I teared up and had to sniffle snot back up. I was the one who was embarrassed! It was like an out of body experience and my mouth dried up to where I had to ask him to drink some of his energy drink. Internally there was a huge change immediately. I was gutted of all pride and self-worth. I was like a zombie. Hardly eating. Lots of coffee. Showing up and doing the reports that had become my responsibility and mechanically giving XX his daily BJ in the afternoon in his small stale office with a small window. I started to have migraines during that summer. I drove home for 4th of July and got so inebriated I ended up sleeping with my much older sister’s ex-husband in the back of his truck. That was a terrible wake up call. I knew I couldn’t pretend much longer without a breakdown so I put my two week in at the rental car place where I was working for free. To secure my future I made sure to keep it all friendly and “you know I’ll be back working here next year”. The idea of all the time and humiliation I had put in being lost to nothing was a major fear. I put myself through two last weeks of it. I had quickie sex with XX twice on and over his desk. I gave into extreme pressure and gave male Y a BJ too when he explicitly made it about a letter of recommendation. He knew about me doing it for XX. He did not even have his own office and we had to use the stairwell. During my final year of school I became aware that I was too traumatized to ever go back there anyway. The extent to which I had been used and abused became obvious to me, where before it had not. As if I had been living in a denial haze. It was a painful time. I was a bit reckless. I got a C in the high level economics elective I took. I said yes to several dates to avoid being alone and either slept with them or freaked out in anger at them. Seeing that I needed the car rental faux-internship on my resume I did email both abusers for letters of recommendation and got a good one from Male Y, but a very impersonal, generic one from XX. I was so dejected and angry. Finally, I told my sister, the one who confronted me about her ex-husband. I TOLD HER EVERYTHING AND THAT WAS MY FIRST STEP TO RECOVERY. To letting out the pain, screaming at myself in the mirror, punching the heavy bag at a boxing gym I joined, and to seeing my first psychologist and psychiatrist. The therapy helped more than the Celexa and antipsych. The support group helped even more. I met two friends for life who have my back in times of sorrow. I have to repeat that it is not my fault that I was abused, even though it kind of was. Don’t let it happen to you! They will take as much as they can from you. Plan your boundaries now and be assertive! Report harassment immediately. Doing so you are being a hero and protecting other women and yourself. If you have already been abused, GET OUT of the situation and talk to someone about it ASAP. There is nothing to be gained by letting the abuse continue! Talking to someone makes it real and lets you start the process of hating less and starting on the path to learning to love yourself again. You deserve real love.

I was used by my brother who has grown up a lot but I still carry scars. My brother is four years older than me and when I was going from elementary school to Junior high, that summer, he made me think that girls in junior high need to know how to give oral to boys. First he did oral to me to show me it was not a big deal. I thought it was a huge deal. But I did it and he got me trained and had me keep it a secret, except from by best friend. He had his friend over when I had a sleepover one night and had her do it to his friend. Then they would have us do contests where they wear blindfolds. At least I was not alone then. It changed me even though seventh grade itself had nothing to do with anything like that. It was a lie to get pleasure from me. My brother still had me doing it at home. And sometimes he would do it to me and I did climax. So I had this weird secret sex life and felt really messed up about it. Then in eight grade I had my first real boyfriend. My parents are so strict, even though they both worked and left me alone with my brother. To go to the movies with my boyfriend they made sure it was with a group and took me there and waited outside the theater. Well one time when we went to see Snow White and the Huntsman my same BFF and me went through with our plan to go down on our guys in the last row of the theater and we did it. It was only a month later I started having sex with him which never would have happened if not for what my brother had done. We snuck out from her place during a sleepover and met the boys outside and went to the nearby park and did it in the grass. That was my virginity. The really bad event, where my life got knocked off the tracks, is when we tried it from my house, sneaking out the window and going just out farther into my big back yard that opened into nothing but the side of a big hill and my dad caught us. It was awful. The world ended. I was treated like a huge betrayer and almost all my privileges were revoked and essentially I was grounded without any end date. And still by brother would make me do the oral. I was broken hearted because I was not allowed to have my boyfriend to the point my parents made me go to the school and talk to the principal and vice principal and they made sure I would not have any chance to ever see him alone. And my brother kept creeping in at night sometimes or when we were left alone expecting me to do what he had trained me to be used to. The next really bad part was two months into my new restricted life. My brother started doing his oral on me one afternoon after school and decided to take it farther and got up and started kissing me and had sex with me. I was in the moment and did not do anything to stop him and even participated. No condom. It was an afternoon when my parents were away and so we did not have to keep quiet or worry and he did it so much longer than my few times with my boyfriend, because he was older and knew more from being with other girls that I got sore for my first time and got a urine infection. I did not eat my dinner that night and pretended to be sick and cried myself to sleep. My brother really wanted to do it again, telling me it was the best sex he ever had, but I refused and one thing I could say for him back then was at least he was not a rapist. Even though he pressured me he never tried to force himself inside me. Four months after I had lost my incest virginity the school year ended and he graduated. I went to high school and he moved out to live in college dorms 120 miles from our home town. Public school was over for me, as was planned as soon as my dad caught me on the hill. I went to an all girl’s Catholic high school. My dad had to drive me a half hour every morning and my mom picked me up from my whole first year. Then they got me a car so I could drive myself but the mileage and my times were closely monitored. I did not have an intercourse throughout high school but seven times total I did oral on my brother during summer and winter breaks when we were both at home. That was the end of incest in my life. I went to college in Atlanta but not the same one as my brother. I rebelled against my parents and even though they tried to keep control, as a legal adult I did not let them. Turmoil and sadness lasted months until they finally got it. I separated from them financial and worked and took out student loans. I was very promiscuous in college. I drank, partied and used drugs recreationally and had several guys I was seeing on and off for mostly sex. That was my life and I thought I enjoyed it at the time. I became stronger and more assertive and when my brother first hinted during a Thanksgiving meeting at our relative’s house that we go for a drive I told him I never wanted to touch him again in such a powerful way that he knew I was off limits and even seemed like the scared one in our relationship. I didn’t enroll in classes for two nonconsecutive semester just because my party life was so much more fun. I traveled on and off. Sometimes with friends, sometimes with men, usually older, who invited me to exotic places. The Maldives, Portugal, The Virgin Islands. I let my married boss use me for a weekend in Key West. I had an affair with my Spanish teacher, who only took me as far as Panama City, Florida. So many risky one night stands. My identity was that I was not looking for anything permanent, a child of the universe. While I was used as a plaything so many times and believed I liked the game. I would tell them things about wanting to make their dick happy and stuff that would inflate their ego. I’m sure there are so many text messages out there that they saved about the size of their D fitting in my little P, about being a little girl wanting them to teach me to be woman and other depraved fantasies I thought they wanted to hear. Obviously directly related to what my brother did to me. I am almost positive I avoided being raped more than once by going with the flow when I did not expect to or probably want to. It may be good that some of them I probably don’t remember. Once was at one of the few fraternity parties I ever went to. It was three guys, not my usual style. Once was with my roommate's father who was visiting her at our rented house and found his way to my bed in the early morning. One of the more extreme traumatic events was with a police officer who pulled me over for driving when I had been drinking but was under the legal limit on his breathalyzer. He followed me home, like a mile away, “for my safety” and even followed me inside. I was in an apartment then and I thought my roomate was home and told him so. But when she wasn’t there he said I lied to a police officer and he had to do a more thorough search if I wanted to avoid being arrested. He was not attractive or nice. He had a gun thought he never took it out. You can guess what happened. I finally shed that wild life during my second to last semester when I saw the end of college coming. My G.P.A was 3.3. and my major was philosophy and it dawned on me that the future was not bright in terms of what I would do or how I would pay back my loans. I buckled down and decided to change. I had an offer to strip and ‘make a lot of money’ but thankfully not only did never considered myself like that, but when I went with a friend for her interview and they tried to recruit me they were so sleazy we both ran out of there disgusted. I reevaluated my whole life. I considered ending it, but some survival mechanism did not allow it. I did not want to be the person I had been for a few years. I looked ahead and saw it was not sustainable as I aged and had no real love or stability. I quit serving when I got an offer to work in a legal office. I slept with the manager who hired me as a receptionist but it was a drop in the bucket of things to be shameful of. He was the last one like that. I got all A’s and graduated cum laude. I got promoted in the firm mostly by title but used it to spring away and take a lower paying job in a nonprofit law firm where I had not slept with anyone. There I did sleep with a lawyer but I am married to him still and my life is back together. I love him and he loves me. He does not know the extent of my sluttiness in college or about my brother and I doubt he ever will. That darkness is fading and it is not part of my life now. It is not who I am. As for my brother, he has a family now and we are on good terms. We did talk about it once while I was studying like crazy my senior year, although it was not a big deep talk. I did mention that he used me, he apologized, we hugged, and that was it. Not the cathartic confrontation some might expect. My catharsis is my husband, and my life now that I am grateful for. We adopted two toddler brothers and I am their mom. Maybe we’ll have one of our own. Maybe we’ll adopt again. I was used and introduced to sex too young and early and it strained my relationship with my parents for a long time and I’ll never get that back. It derailed my life. I was set adrift for a while but God or the universe or random luck finally put me in a good place. Everything that happened led me what I have now. I can’t say I never contemplated suicide in darker times. But like in the move Cast Away, if I may quote, “I stayed alive. I kept breathing. And one day my logic was proven all wrong because the tide came in, and gave me a sail. And now, here I am.” Thousands of hours spent studying philosophy and I quote a movie that was not even based on a book. But it’s perfect.

You think your age makes you less to blame, But I carry the weight, I bear the shame. You crossed the line — no excuse to hide, No softer words can wash this tide. I’m not the one who should feel small, You built this cage, you made me fall. No matter your years, no matter your face, You took from me my safe, my space. But here I stand, I claim my voice, I break the chains, I make the choice. I won’t be silent, I won’t back down, I wear my courage like a crown. So hear me now, and hear me clear, Your actions caused this pain and fear. Age won’t protect what you have done— I am the survivor, I have won.

Around five years ago, I was raped repeatedly by a man I was seeing. It was the kind of rape that some people don’t consider rape - other than the act itself, there was no additional physical violence. There were no threats. There was just the constant knowledge that he would not listen when I said no, that he would not care or stop when I told him it hurt or that I didn’t feel safe. He always kept going. Every time I went over to his house, I knew that it was about to happen again. I kept going over, at least for a little while. Eventually, I tried to end things with him. I stopped answering his calls and texts and a bit later we met for coffee somewhere. I told him I didn’t feel safe with him. I didn’t use the word ‘rape’. I didn’t think of that as what it was, really at all. What was happening to me didn’t fit what I thought rape was supposed to be like. I thought of it as him “pressuring me into sex” or “not listening when I said no.” Not as bad. He told me he was sorry, and that he couldn’t help it. I said okay. He didn’t stop. A few weeks later, I ended it for good. This is not the last time I was raped, but it will always be the episode that affects me the most. Because the other time, I knew what it was. I realized that I was being raped as I was being raped and that somehow made it easier for me to process. But this episode will never stop affecting me. It has sent me to a psychiatric hospital. I have been treated for depression, anxiety, and PTSD. My sex life will never again be effortless. I will never be able to have full-length mirrors in my bedroom. I will never be able to enjoy the things that he didn’t ask if he could do to me. I can live with these things, because I am strong and my support system never fails me. The part I don’t know that I will be able to get over is that I knew I wasn’t consenting, but I didn’t know it was rape. I hope you do know.

My name is Name. I was born in a town called Location, the capital headquarters of District, located in the Northern part of Sierra Leone. My country was engaged in a brutal civil war (1991-2002), with all manner of atrocities committed against people and property. Sadly, I lost both parents during the war due to the lack of access to medical supplies at that time of the war. I was born into a very strict, loving, and religious family that practices the faith of Islam. We were financially poor, but rich in tradition, cultural value, respect, and a strong support network, whatever that means. My Father was a chief Imam and a farmer, and my mother was a housewife who supported my dad with the farming. I am one of the youngest of 26 children. My first name was given to me after dad was strictly told to name me either Name if I was a girl or Name 2 if I was a boy. He was cautioned that had this name followed instructions, I would have died. The second name was acquired through traditional belief that since my mum had lost seven children from minor illness or sudden death, if I were thrown into a dustbin after my mother gave birth to me, to appear that I was found for her to raise, then I would survive. The name for a dustbin in our native language is ‘Nyama’, meaning dirty. My experience of Africa at that time was a place where the voices of women and girls were often marginalised. That said, even at that young age, I always believed that everyone’s voice was equally important and should be considered and respected. This was fundamental to how we felt valued and appreciated in society, enabling us to give our very best. Yet, my first trauma happened at the age of 12, when I was subjected to the horrendous experience of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), which is the intentional removal of female genital organs for non-medical reasons. This occurred not once, but twice. One early December morning, I was tied down. An older woman from within my family circle wrapped her legs around me to stop me from escaping. I was placed on the cold gravel floor of the wash yard. The whole process was so quick that by the time you were on the floor, the cut was done. This barbarous act was performed with an unsterilised pen knife, on me and every other girl who had no say in the matter. I remember it vividly. There were eight of us, and I was the first to be circumcised. This experience left me with an infection, unbearable pain and a deep sense of disconnection from my body. I had no idea how to express what I was feeling, or who to talk to about it. After surviving the pain of the first incident, I was called by one of my aunties to bring some water to the washing yard again. There, I saw an image of the lady who inflicted the first trauma on me, waiting to have it done again. The reason for having to redo it was that she was spiritually possessed at the time of the first incident, which led to a poor job. Since I was the first one to be circumcised, I was the only one who had to have it done twice. I was pinned down again against my will, and I remember crying a lot and being extremely upset, as I knew based on my previous experience what was going to happen. I was extremely scared. I knew something had been taken away from me, something that would harm my life. However, I was unable to process, analyse, and determine the impact, as there were no spaces allocated for reflection and processing. It was difficult, not having a safe space to discuss the negative experience of FGM, when the occasion is seen as a positive and significant milestone as a woman. At the time, everyone around me, including some of the victims, was celebrating and appeared overwhelmed with joy at having been cut. They had little regard for the overall impact it had on me. This whole experience left me mute. While healing from the second mutilation, it felt like my tongue had also been removed, because it was seen as bad luck to talk negatively about it. Therefore, everybody kept quiet and moved on with their lives, even for those who were severely affected. The next time I had the opportunity and platform to safely talk about my FGM experience was 25 years later. In 1991, when the Sierra Leone civil war began, my life was again flipped upside down. As a child, the reports of political unrest sounded like something occurring in a world far away from us. It sounded like something for the politician, not us farmers, to be worried about. What felt like a story became real life when rebels attacked my hometown in 1994. They left a devastating legacy on our close-knit community. There was a high death count and destruction of properties, including historical landmarks. We called it ‘the first attack that some of us survived’, and soon enough, death in every form, destruction and the sounds of guns became familiar. At this point, the war had extended from the Southern region of Sierra Leone (where it initially started) to the Northern region, with frequent attacks on the towns and villages in my district. The government seemed to have no control in resolving the situation, and instead, the violence was escalating like a wildfire. Children should not have to experience this level of carnage and destruction. No one should. But there I was, a child in all of that chaos, with no protection from family or the state. Having experienced frequent attacks in my hometown (Location), I decided to travel to Makeni (the headquarters of the Northern region), where they had military barracks. I travelled with my little nephew as we were the only family members still together at this stage as some of our family members were dead and some were displaced. The reason for going was the potential hope of having protection from the military, despite the risk involved. Although I was only 13 years old at the time,I knew there were no other options available. I found myself as a child living in constant fear of being tortured or dead within the next hour or so. I had no idea when my time would come. That feeling of knowing death could be just around the corner is something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. The second trauma (which I thought was the first trauma due to the severity of the impact) occurred when I was 14 years old. The rebels attacked Makeni, and I was hospitalised for Malaria during the second week of December in 1998. Due to the rumours and panic of the rebels’ intention, I was discharged from the hospital to my brother (who was living in Makeni at that time) and nephew so that we could escape together in case of an attack. Before I came home, my nephew had already escaped with some neighbours for safety, and my brother was searching for me. We finally found each other, but it was too late to run away as the rebels were already in the town. The Christmas period of 1998 was like no other I had ever experienced. I was captured by the rebels, who found me hiding inside a toilet seat. I was hit, kicked and dragged to the neighbouring house where the first set of raping took place. I remember that the first man to rape was called Perpetrator Name (he was part of a group of five men). I was raped with a gun in my mouth in case I decided to shout for help. At the start of this brutal gang rape, I prayed for the sky to send me an angel to disappear with me. Since that wasn’t possible, and I did not want to feel any pain, I became numb, leaving only my physical appearance to deal with the minor pain. Once captured, one of the terrible acts the army does is train young children to become child soldiers. They know full well that hunger can lead to death, and with no family or future prospects, there’s no choice. My experience of being a child soldier led me to experience multiple rapes and other horrendous traumas on two separate occasions. It was hard to believe that before the abuse at the hands of adults, I was a happy, bubbly, and intelligent girl. After the FGM and rapes, I often felt very sad, worthless, lonely, and traumatised. The lack of a safe space or trusted individuals to express my feelings and thoughts led me to become even more consumed by the effects of trauma to the point where it became the norm for me. I am sure that millions of other survivors share the same sentiment. The day after these gruesome traumas was like the morning after the night that no one wanted to talk about. As a teenager, I found myself in a position where I had to deal with everything that had happened, with no family member or other adult to turn to for support. No professional or support network to discuss my thoughts with. Living in an environment where survivors of rape are at fault. Many incorrectly assume that the awful rape was partly the fault of the survivor because of how she was dressed or because she was somewhere she shouldn’t have been. I was 14 at the time I was first raped. I didn’t dress inappropriately, and as for being somewhere inappropriate, I was on the run from rebels, fleeing as they torched everything in their path to the ground. Yet, like so many others before me, I have been stigmatised for the actions of others, in this case, the sexual violence of men. Today, I am still here. I now live in London, having been granted asylum. I arrived in the UK with so much baggage, problems, trauma, language barrier, cultural barrier, and the fear of integration and the worries of exclusion. Despite my past in Sierra Leone, which I will never forget, I have built a new life. I am a wife, a mother, a sister, a friend, and a nurse, but above all, I am a survivor who set up her own charity to help other women. Women like you. Women like us. And from the bottom of my heart, I wish nothing but love and strength for you, wherever you are on your journey.

Sexual assault is a spectrum. I think as young women we laugh off so much - bring catcalled from 12 or 13, being groped in clubs, mocked for pushing a guy off who won’t keep his hands of you. I’m so glad there is this space to share our stories <3

It was Halloween and I spent it with my mom and my god mom's family. I was good friends with my god mom's 3 nephews, one was my age, and the other two were 2-3 years older. After we were done trick or treating, we all went back to their house and played for a bit. One of them, we'll call him R made it a game to scare me the whole night- creeping up on me, yelling in my face, just overall being weird to me. I was really tired and it was late, so R had convinced me to sleepover at their house and we all sleep in one room on pillows and blankets on the floor. I initially refused because I thought it was weird since my mom told me not to share sleeping areas with people of the opposite gender, but he once again scared me into doing it anyway. The door to the hallway stayed cracked just wide enough to see inside the room. It was probably about 3 hours into the night where he told me to take my jeans off so I could get more comfortable, since I'd been moving around since we laid down. I didnt want to, so he did it for me. He was stronger and I didn't want to make a scene so I let him, and after he pulled my shirt up as well. After R did the same to himself he then told the cousin the same age as me to take his off too and put himself on me, which he refused to do and fell asleep instead. R was touching me by then and he wouldn't let me fall asleep. Every time I did, he would pinch or squeeze me and scratch at my body. I remember he got mad at me because since I didnt have my first period, I was kind of missing the part he was looking for, but that didnt stop him. I remember waking up with my clothes still off and dried fluids on my thighs amd waist. I never told anyone, and forgot probably around a day later. Whenever I would talk to him after that happened, he would either spoil me with toys and snacks or be rude and shun me. I was so confused on why until I randomly remembered what happened. He treated me like I was different from everyone else, was always touchy and making fun of me when I started puberty. Now knowing what happened, I feel sick. I ended up becoming hypersexual after everything happened and I would often put myself in risky situations with older guys and anyone else who would give me the time of day. It disrupted my whole life and I didnt know it until now. Its been years since then and I feel like I should be over it, but im not. Im scared to get help because that means I'll have to tell my parents, I dont want them to be mad at me because I hadn't said anything sooner or for them to think im lying because it was so long ago. How do I get over it without any help? Its starting to mess with my daily life and im tired of the flashbacks and nightmares.

On the morning of Friday 13, [My best friend/his wife] asked if I'd come over to watch [child] that night so I did. She went to bed around 4 PM and it was just him, [child], and I there besides her at the time. [Their roommate couple] was at work and [couples baby] was at his grandmother's. We got Plateful for dinner at around 5:30 PM, per my request for Chinese when he asked what I wanted for dinner. On the way back from picking up the food, he started asking a very personal question. He asked "how long has it been since you were eaten out?" I stayed silent but then said I didnt want to answer that but he kept asking. Silence. He started guessing "1 year?" "2 years?" "3 years?" "4 years?" "5 years?" I finally answered "yeah" when he said 5 years. He said that would change tonight and I said "No it won't, I'm fine, nothing is going to happen." He persisted and said that he "promised" something would and I kept disagreeing until we got back to the house. I made [childs] plate and he brushed really close behind me in the kitchen so I rushed to go sit down on the couch (a large sectional, I sat in the corner) with her food and my food. We all ate and I put on "The Babysitter" as something to watch. He made a few remarks that I can't remember but I do remember saying "If you want some Nookie go wake up your wife". After we got done eating, I played with [child] and he got really close and started playing with her too. I was tickling her and we were playing when he started to tickle me too, which I found strange but not harmful. (My pants kept sliding from me moving around and I had to pull them up a lot. He took notice.) This preceded until he sent [child] to bed at 7 PM, which was weird because her bedtime wasn't until 8. But he's her dad so I wasn't questioning it. I put on "The Babysitter: Killer Queen" because I wanted to watch the second movie and he agreed. Then he started saying that his hands were cold and started putting them in my left jean pocket and in my shirt. Anywhere close to me, really. He took his hand out of my shirt but kept the other in my pocket and I kept asking for my pocket back but he'd just say "my pocket" so I thought it was a joke, a weird joke, but still it seemed like a joke. I continuously told him that it was my pocket and he kept repeating thatit was his. I tried to pull his hands out of my pocket and told him to stop and give me my pocket when he started to reach for the other pocket too. Every time I tried to pull his hands away he gripped down really tight into a fist with my pocket fabric in the middle of his hand. I physically could not get his hands off of me. I was already starting to feel uncomfortable but I didn't wanna seem rude or make him upset. He's a big guy and easily overpowers me. He put his hand in my right pocket too at first then we turned toward the movie and he removed it. After a minute He tried to put his hand back in my right pocket too but he ended up pulling the front of my pants open and putting his hand there instead. I said "[his name] stop that's not a pocket" with wide eyes. I know my eyes were wide, I could feel it. He said "even better" then his hand moved into my panties and touched my vagina. He said "Ooh and its shaved". I felt sick to my stomach thinking what was going to happen and I told him "no" and tried to pull his hands out again. He wasn't budging. He moved the blanket I had on off of me and pulled the front of my pants down to see the area above my vagina. He bit my thigh and then put his mouth on said area. He started moving more into my space and looked expectantly at me. I didn't want to fight him and I didn't want to upset him. "No" and "Stop" weren't working. So I started to pretend I liked it to make it go by faster. I pulled my pants down around my thighs to make it seem like I was enjoying it and he moved between my legs and starting licking and biting down there. I looked away from him and closed my eyes really tight. He kept trying to push my legs open wider and it hurt because of my jeans so I look my left leg out of my jeans and spread my legs apart more so he would stop pushing. It felt so wrong. I was trying not to cry at this time. He finished up after about 30 seconds of me faking moans and even faking an orgasm to get him to stop faster. He came up, I immediately pulled my pants up and he said "I promised that's all I'd do to you". He then said "your pussy tastes good" and grabbed me by the neck and shoved his tongue into my mouth. I tried to kiss back to make him satisfied but I ended up just laying there and taking his tongue. I felt like a ragdoll, being used. When he stopped kissing me, I pulled the blanket back over me to shield myself a little bit. He moved and sat on the other end of the couch at first and asked me to come cuddle him. He kept saying "come here" and patting the couch in between his legs. When I refused, he asked what was wrong then came back over into my space. I said that I felt bad and guilty to try and get him to feel guilty too. He said "Shhh" and put his hand into my pants again. I tried to divert his attention back to the movie but it wouldn't work and he put his head in the way of the TV so I couldn't see. I tried again to pull his attention to the movie again to no avail. He then started fingering me, and he lifted my shirt and bra up and took my left nipple into his mouth. Again, I pretended to like it. I thought it would make it go by faster if I pretended to orgasm fast. He finished and made me taste myself on his fingers. Then we watched the movie for a bit and I pulled my hoodie over my face to hide. We commented on the movie a bit. He tried to get me to come cuddle or something with him again but I shook my head no. Then he stood up, came over to me, and spread my legs and layed between them and pressed himself on me. He then moved back to the side of me and unbuttoned my pants and fingered me again. I pretended to like it. He kissed me again and I just didn't even try this time. I just layed there again, with my mouth open and my eyes shut. When he was done he said "don't tell anyone about this" and said that I wouldn't and I told him he could never ever mention a "tip" ever again and I said that this would be "a one night only thing because [hes] satiated now" in the hope's he would agree and never do it again. He said he wasn't satiated. (The "tip" he mentions was one day months ago we went to get pizza and I rode with him and he handed me the pizza and he asked for a tip, I made a joke and pretended to pull my shirt up and flash him. He's been making sexual jokes towards me since.) Anyways, he said "maybe I won't, at least not with her around" and he pointed to the bedroom where his wife was sleeping because she had to be at work at 11 PM. He asked me to come over near him where I was leaning on him and then he asked how long I had been wanting that to happen. I stayed silent, because I didn't ever want that to happen. He asked again and he said "come on, I know you thought about it. How long had you wanted it to happen?" I never thought about it not even once but I didn't want to make him upset so I said "I didn't think that would ever happen" hoping it was enough. It wasn't. He asked again, "so how long?" I lied again. I told him that I wanted it "the past couple times" I mumbled it hoping it would be a good enough answer this time. I moved off of him and got back in my spot. He smiled and tried to hold my hand but after about 2 seconds I let go of his hand and he moved back to the other side of the couch again and asked me to come over there to him for a second time, I declined again. (Sidenote: Throughout him fingering me he kept making me face him when I'd try to look away, he'd pull my hoodie down when I tried to hide my face. I would try to close my legs a few times while he was fingering me too so that he might stop but then he'd force my legs apart again and tell me to keep them spread.) (Somewhere in here he made a joke about him having something that spits or is like a fountain. Something alone those lines, referring to his penis. I didn't want it to escalate any further so I was hoping he wouldn't try to make me touch it or god forbid suck it. I feel sick even thinking about it.) It was then exactly 9:27 PM, a few minutes after he finished and he had sat away from me again, and I said I needed to go to the bathroom. I got up and went toward him because I have to go past where he's sitting in order to make it to the bathroom. He told me to come here tilted his head for a kiss and help my arm while I bent down to give him one. The tried to pull me in his lap but I told him to let me go to the bathroom and he let me go. I made it to the bathroom and sat down on the toilet to use it. I immediately pulled my phone out of my hoodie to text my other best friend what had happened. She told me what he did was raping me. I knew it was but I didn't ever believe he would do that and I felt heartbroken because he used to be a friend that I trusted. She told me I needed to tell [my best friend/his wife] and I agreed that I wanted to but I didn't want it to seem like I was just trying to ruin her marriage or her to think I was just sleeping with her husband. I did plan on keeping quiet. He knocked on the door and asked if I was pooping and I said yes, which was a lie, I just didn't want to go back out there. I stayed in the bathroom until around 9:50 PM when I felt like the pooping story wasn't believable anymore. I sat back down on the couch and tried to play on my phone and text my other best friend but I didn't want him to know that I told anybody do I ended up putting it down. [My best friend/his wife] got up for work shortly after, he went into the bedroom with her. She came out with her uniform on and asked me "how did you get his ass to agree to chinese?" I said "he asked what I wanted, I said Chinese" she then kissed me on the cheek and left for work. She had agreed to let me keep her phone while she was at work because their dog chewed their remote up and she had a remote on her phone and I didn't have space to download the app for the remote on my phone. So she left without her phone, because I had it. I didn't tell her what happened yet because he was still awake, and now I couldn't text it to her. As soon as she walked out the door, he ran to the window on the door make sure her truck left the driveway then looked at me and asked "do you wanna go fuck?" I shook my head no and he asked "why, you don't want to finish again?". He had a smirk on his face. I shook my head no again and he said "alright then I'm going to bed". He went to bed and a few minutes later, [roommate couple and baby] got home. I'm also [babys] babysitter so they were confused why I was there and I told then I was last minute supposed to watch [child] but didn't really watch her so I was there for no reason basically. They handed me [baby] and I had him until around 1:30 AM because he refused to sleep. They took him to bed around then and I fell asleep around 2 AM while watching YouTube. I woke up abruptly at 5 AM with the urge to charge my phone since I hadn't the night before. I went to the bathroom, then ate a sugar donut(came with Chinese food from the night before) from the fridge. And I layed down and covered up on the couch again. A few minutes later, around 5:15 AM I heard the bedroom door handle and I pretended to be asleep with my eyes barely cracked open so I could see. He walked to the door and looked out the window in his same shorts from the night before. He went back to his room and I opened my eyes then shut them again knowing he was gonna come out to go to work soon. He had his work uniform on when he came out next and he sat directly beside me thinking I was asleep. I was laying on my side and he moved the blanket off me, pulled on the button on my jeans, unzipped them, and stuck his hand in my pants again. I squirmed to make it seem like I was just waking up and then stopped and pretended to sleep again in a different position. His hands never stopped. Finally I knew I couldn't pretend to sleep through the whole thing so I opened my eyes and pretended I was grumpy that I got woken up. He asked me to turn over and I layed my head down again after shaking it no and grumbled. He asked what was wrong and I said that I was tired. He didn't stop. He kept going and I said that I was sleepy again. He finally took his hand away and said "alright well go to sleep then, button your pants back first". So I buttoned them, zipped them and layed down again with my eyes closed until he left and I heard him pull away in his truck. I stood up and ran to the bathroom and texted my other best friend again what had just happened. I stayed awake after that crying and I plugged in [my best friend/his wife's] phone in the bedroom for a bit because I needed it to watch tv. It charged enough I could then watch YouTube on the tv to calm my nerves. Around 7:30 AM, [my best friend/his wife] came home from work, took of her jacket and put her keys up and asked me what was wrong. I told her nothing at first, but she's known me for 10 years. So she knew something was wrong by the way I looked. I was curled up with my face in my hoodie and avoiding eye contact. I didn't mean to be so obvious that something was up. I thought I was trying to hide it. I kept shaking my head but she persisted and I broke and started crying and told her that it was [his name] but I couldn't tell because he would be mad and he would hate me. She got really serious and told me that she didn't care if he was mad or not, I needed to tell her. I told her a short summary of what happened and she hugged me and told me it wasn't my fault. I still feel like it was. I kept apologizing and by now I was sobbing. She got up, put on her jacket again and went towards the door. I asked where she was going. She said she had to cool down before she shot him. She went out the door and I went to the window to watch what she was doing and she came back and grabbed her keys off the hook again and told me she'd be back. She left and I watched her location on life 360. She went to their work (they work at the same place, different schedules). She came back a short time later and I asked what happened. She said "a lot" then her ringtone went off and she picked up and said "don't come anywhere near this house right now" so I knew it was him. Then I heard his truck and I started freaking out and I went to get up and she told me to stay inside. I ran to the bathroom and locked myself in with my phone. I heard him leave but didn't hear her come back in so I checked life 360 to see that they left together so I came out of the bathroom. I watched youtube on my phone for almost an hour while watching life 360 too. I saw she was moving back toward the house so I grabbed all my belongings and ran to the bathroom again. She came back in but I could hear him too. She knocked on the door but I didn't open it until I heard her voice and I made her close the bathroom door back so I didn't see him. She told me he was in the bedroom and wasn't coming out and that I was safe to come in the living room. We stayed in the bathroom for a minute and I was still crying and she was crying to and we made jokes about it because that's how we both cope. She said that he wanted to apologize but I couldn't even look at him, I still can't. A picture of him made me cry before we left her house. He didn't think he did anything wrong except for cheating until she confronted him. She kept trying to get me to let him apologize because he didn't want me to leave when I'm feeling this way but I couldn't do it. I can't see him again. [Child] woke up and [me best friend/his wife] left her with me and went to the bedroom with him. I fixed [child] some leftovers from the night before and I ate an egg roll and a wonton. I kissed [child] goodbye and we left. As we were driving [my best friend/his wife] told me she's still thinking about leaving him and that he cried because he thought she would leave him. She said that he didn't know what he did it and that he told her he was thinking about her the whole time. Then why didn't he stop? He should have stopped. I think part of him knew I was uncomfortable. I feel like it was obvious. I never once said the word yes to him. She said he felt like his dad because I feel like this (whole other sad story about his dad). [His name] didn't feel like it was sexual assault, I do. Apparently he feels bad for that. I'm supposed to forgive him but I can't. Right now it's Tuesday the 17th and I'm still balling writing parts of this. We left with his credit card and went to Dunkin Donuts for coffee. I tried my best to act like I was okay and I think it worked. We didn't think about it for a while. We went shopping for her at a clothing store and she bought me a shirt. I know she meant well but it seems like coffee and a shirt is an ample apologizy for getting assaulted. It isn't. I tried to say his name when she took me home and I said it and hesitated and ended up just saying "him" or "he" instead. She said she's sticking by him. I have nobody on my side. I have little fits all through the day because I remember what he felt like on me and I squirm and shiver from being uncomfortable. I cry and sometimes hit something like the wall or my bed because its overwhelming. I feel like his smell is engrained in my nose. I fucking hate this. I can't even look at myself in the mirror without tearing up. I can't tell anyone. The other best friend that knows doesn't wanna talk about it, I don't wanna bring it up with [my best friend/his wife] because I feel like she just wants to forget. My parents don't know. They just know I've been cooped up in my room for almost 4 days now with very little contact. My dad would kill him if he knew what happened and I don't want my dad to go to jail. The couple (my friends) who live with us thought they did something wrong. I told them it wasn't them and they bought me chocolate and a stuffed narwhal because I've been "sad". I can't tell them what happened either. He's one of their adoptive dad. That's not fair to her. Not having anyone isn't fair to me but it isn't the first time I've had to deal with trauma alone. I'll survive. I wrote this as a journal entry to myself and I wrote it in a way it cant be traced back to me. But it's been eating me alive so I have to share it for my own sanity. I'm so fucking alone and its killing me. It will be a ago week today and I know it's early but I'm having so many mixed emotions and I don't know what to do. I've started being hypersexual and masturbating more then crying after and I don't know how to stop this can't be normal.

I am new here on this website, but I am not new to being an incest survivor. Over 35 years ago, in the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s, I was the little girl victim of [entire childhood long] long-term father-upon-daughter incest with a non-supportive, disbelieving mother. It was a long time ago, so I am not in “danger” any longer from my abuser. But the injuries still hurt now and then and the scars are still healing. My mind is still recovering from the insanity that threatened to settle over me stemming from being raised up in that crazymaking, “gaslighting” environment. I woke up one day and could see that it was all just a nightmare from the past that I was allowing to “haunt” me in the present threatening to end my future early. I want to share my story, and I will do so in small portions, for it is far too long for here. As is probably the case with many father-upon-daughter incest survivors, I could write a whole book, no, a trilogy about my childhood and the problems I have had all along throughout my lifespan due that issue. He had a long “tenure” as a child sexual predator since he got started when he was only 5 years old, a sexual addict who loved children until he was of age 70 when he passed away of a fast-acting cancer in 2017. His dark secrets are coming out of the closet since his passing, but my family is still in denial. As I discovered, sometimes skeletons have a way of falling out of the closet on their own. After his passing, my father’s sexual abuse victims, all his siblings, are starting to open up. My father was the youngest sexual predator I have ever heard of. He didn’t become a child rapist in his adult life or develop his predilection due to some quirk in married life, ...he was already a child rapist when he married my mother when he was just 17 years old. My father was a 17 year old child molester-rapist [who sexually abused all five of his own younger siblings, leaving them with lifelong scars and psychological problems]. My father went on to become a highly respected CHP law enforcment officer and a highly respected, church-going, law-abiding [his pubic image, although he broke laws in his private life], tax-paying citizen that everyone revered throughout the small military base and civilian town I grew up in. I have lived out the real-life story of “The Girl Who Cried Wolf”, only I was telling the truth about the “wolf”, who was my father. In the Aesop’s fable, the boy was pranking the villagers, so they didn’t believe him when he really needed them to believe him. I know how it is to be telling the truth about a wolf in sheep’s clothing and no one else can see what he really is. It is very scary. Life-threatening, really. I knew as a child that I had to outsmart my dad if I was ever to “tell” on his dark deeds. But he was always two steps ahead. He always had 2 or 3 lies for each truth I had. I was playing a “rigged game” only I didn’t figure this out until adult life. My father tried to ruin my life and that of all of his siblings and my sister, my children, and any other kids he could get his hands near. I lived and I know the nightmares [figurative and literal] that children live with when their own daddy is the “boogey man” wolf creature that comes in the night, out from the closet or from under the bed, but magically disappears by morning, leaving [virtually] no trace. Since my dad got away with sexually abusing me all those years, I want to open up and expose his sneaky “tactics”. He didn’t get away with sexually abusing me because he was such a genius, so brilliant and talented at illusion and sleight of hand moves. He got away with it because everyone else around him, the adults, were ignorant and duped. I am in favor of using my experience to help to develop a better way to come to the aid of more of these child victims who are trying to find any adult who will hear them and may want to help them. It’s terrible to be held captive in your own home and no one can see it and no one offers to help. You realize you are stuck. Helpless. That ought not to be so. Children should be able to find someone to tell. Police can’t seem to find the “funding” or “man power” to stop these guys. They rarely can ever catch one and put them away, and if they succeed, it is only for a few years before they are back out, resuming their molesting. My life and my journey of healing has brought me to a place where I am done being a recovering victim who considers myself a “survivor”, but I want to be more...I desire to be an “overcomer” who has applied what I know and am [starting to ] make a difference. I want to be part of the solution for other victims who are crying out for help...the help that never came for me and other father-daughter incest survivors, who themselves had to endure “childhood sexual abuse by daddy” because no one saw the signs...because no one was “listening”. I hope to be a part of bringing better solution to the issue of incest than is presently in place...because the present way of addressing this problem is not working. The continuing influx of brand new reports representing all-new cases childhood sexual abuse perpetrated by another father tells us that we are not even close to stemming the tide of this insidious problem that grows behind closed doors. That is all I have to say for now. Thank you for listening.  Sincerely, ~ forthetruth

Firstly I want to thank ourwave for creating this safe space and thank anyone who takes their time to read my story, when my mum was a teen she fell pregnant with me, once I was born we didn’t have a stable home we lived between houses the main house was my nanas, where my uncle lived too. I was 5 he was 15 and When no one was in my uncle would take it upon himself to rape me I don’t remember everything as I was so young and somethings slowly come back especially since my police report but I vividly remember him taking out his penis and putting it my face telling me to suck it..the other memory I have it him sitting me on my nanas bed and him attempting to rape me..he used pliers to try make it easier and also asked me to try help too which I did.. these memories stuck so well in my head and I can never shake them..I also remember my mum bathing me and she has since stated she saw very sore red skin around my lady area and asked “who’s been touching you” to which I replied “name” …now I may not remember everything I may not have been pinned down but that day a piece of me died and I haven’t been the same since, I went my whole life my mum telling me it never happened all my family went against us told everyone i was lying and he was protected whilst I questioned should I even be alive right now at the small age of 9 years old..because I did question my mum on the night terrors and I asked why I got moved so far away and why I have memories of it and I went all this time thinking I had made it up I told myself I was a freak an attention seeker but all along I was right I was a survivor and now I’m 21 years old I’ve just recently reported my uncle to the police and I have my own baby to protect..I don’t get why everyone or how anyone can hurt a child the way so many are hurt

It's no laughing matter. I'm no laughing matter. I don't know which is worse, the abuse I endured at the hands of someone I knew for 10 years or the utter joke it became for the city that it happened in. The joke, the filth I became. My head has never been clear enough to get out exactly what I'm trying to because it's filled with so many unanswered questions and the knowing that I could of been saved from years of pain, suffering, had anyone including the authorities taken what was happening to me seriously. I was married 6 weeks when I discovered the guy I married was nothing like he said. In fact he had been spending his nights on the computer and to this day it haunts me at the content he was watching. The next year I was subjected to numerous beatings. Twice his own apartment complexes managers either refused to give me help or lied to the police on his account. I was abused in my sleep , I suffered a tbi, no one would help me. He was so sick that beating on me made him happy and would try and get me to do things to him. I didn't know what to do because like i said no one including the police took me seriously or to this day 10 years later as I try to file on him,they are more concerned with "why did you go there" or "you're the one who didn't get her way in a domestic violence incident. " If this wasn't enough I moved over 3000 miles away and was told by City law enforcement that I now am responsible for their lies to social security. I had just got a home after swelling on both sides of my brain and had been trying to work on what happened to me however I took it very personal and I tried to end my life and ended up losing my home. I feel like I paid to be raped, I feel dirty, I feel useless. Over the 10 years since I have contacted City law enforcement hundreds of times a year, no joke, hundreds and nothing. They are still refusing to do anything to him even though I sit in my house with documented facts on what he did to me but no one cares to see it. It's emotionally destroying me, it hinders ever aspect of my life. I've had rape crisis case managers try and get answers, I've filled out every paper the Mayor's office sent me. I will get my hopes up and see an email from them and then like always, nothing. No one should be abused is what I say but this feeling of I deserved it consumes me and I'm always trying to explain why I don't. I'm obviously not through the healing process but I want what happened to me out there. I was never aware of the true evils in this world. Never knowing that the police too can cause so much pain but literally laugh it off. I Pray I find the answers I'm looking for. All I can say is my Faith in God was the only thing that kept me able to go. I was robbed, walked until my feet bled so much trauma that I know one day there will be peace. I do know together WE can and I'm so grateful to my AA group and other places I go. Thank you for listening. Thank you for caring.

I met name on Tinder at the end of February 2022. A week later I went over to his to talk but he kept making requests for me to perform oral sex on him I kept telling him I wasn't ready and I haven't done it before. When I stopped during it he slapped me across my face and got angry because he said "once you start you can't stop". I was traumatised when he orgasmed into my mouth and I couldn't process what just happened. He then said he didn't believe me when I said NO and that I shouldn't use the word rape because his neighbours could hear and he could get arrested. He showed no remorse and that made me feel even worse so I ended up apologising to him. The following time we met at his apartment we were cuddling and he kept asking for oral sex and said "just do it and get it over with because I am not gonna stop... you're making it difficult". The more times I said NO the angrier his voice got, and he said " you should want to make me feel good... do it or get the **** away from me". He would also threaten to throw me out of his apartment past midnight and I was too scared to walk home that time. I would usually end up following his demands even though I felt my boundaries being violated each time, worse of all when I told him how he made me felt he would say "I don't give a **** and **** off". When it came to sex I felt pressurised to say Yes and when I came to his apartment I told him I wasn't ready. At first he tried taking off my clothes, I was scared and he said " let it happen" I kept saying NO even with all my clothes off. He got really frustrated because I wanted to put my clothes back on and so he said " if you're not gonna **** me get the **** out... if you're not gonna **** me then why did you act like you were". I wanted to cry but instead I apologised. When we first started to have sex it was way too painful for me I kept bleeding and telling name I'm in pain, can we stop please? repeatedly. He would either say NO when I moved away from him, he kept getting angry and said " stop saying that it's not stimulating for me". I kept saying NO to which he replied "I don't care, I just wanna have sex." From that I remember seeing blood drip down to my legs. One time I tried moving away from him during sex so he slapped my face, hit my back and said "I nearly got it in" in frustration. I fell onto the bed. Following things he would say was that I am working against him during sex because I wasn't letting him properly penetrate me, " You should enjoy it, other girls would enjoy it... you don't even like sex".

Trigger warning for discussion of COCSA. I am a victim on child-on-child sexual assault. I think it's important that I share my story because so many people still tell me that what I went through is not valid just because we were both children. She was even a slight bit younger than me. I know other people have heard the same thing. You aren't alone, and your experiences are valid. I was eleven when it happened. We had been friends since we were six, but she never really liked me, and she controlled everything I did. I practically devoted my life to her. When we were ten she started to abuse me physically and mentally. I hear often that she was just "playing around". That a child would "never do that!" She would. And she learned how from true crime stories online. She used it to get her way. And after a year of so much escalation, she started abusing me sexually. Despite being months younger than me and smaller than me, she was smart and cunning and manipulative, and she took advantage of my love for her and my lack of social awareness due to my autism. And it went on for months. Going to her house for sleepovers was something I dreaded because it brought me the worst discomfort and the worst nights of my life. After years of enduring this abuse, I was mentally and physically drained. I finally realized that if I didn't find a way to escape from her I would die. And it took a while, but I made it out of her grasps eventually. I won't lie, the experience has had lasting effects on my mental wellbeing, but I think I've healed tremendously. There are still steps I need to take, but I'm heading in the right direction, surrounding myself with people who truly care about me. People who have gone through things themselves, that understand me. If you have taken the time to read my story, I thank you. Listening ears are one step closer to recovery. To anyone reading this, you are valued. You aren't alone in what you have gone through, and your feelings and experiences are valid. To anyone who has gone through anything similar to me, I am wishing the best for you 🫶 Thank you all for taking the time to read this.

My story - I've had a hard time being able to pinpoint exactly when this was happening or what happened first because most of my childhood is a blur My brother was my assaulter. I was about 9 and he was about 12. He asked me if I wanted a massage. Believing that my brother would only give me a massage so I said yes. my brother proceeded to move his hands to my private parts, but I didn't understand what was happening so I didn't stop him. This would happen a few more times but still not knowing that this was a problem I didn't stop him. Then one day I was at my neighbor's house and we were in the basement and my brother suggested that we play a game (where I sat on his lap and he would bounce me up and down). I didn't want to so I told him no but then he turned to my friend who was 7 and asked her if she wanted to play she said yes not understanding the bigger meaning behind the game, I didn't want her to have to go through that like I was so I told him that I would play the game instead of her. So I just let it happen cause if it was not me it would be her. One day I remember waking up from being asleep. I remember not opening my eyes but knowing my brother was in my room. I remember feeling him touch me but not moving so he would get bored and leave me alone. As I got older my mental health started to decline and I had always felt disgusting for letting that happen because I didn't know COCSA (child-on-child sexual assault) was a thing. I felt alone and isolated but I soon found out and learned more about it and finally had a term for what happened. I learned that my brother was a child but he is also my assaulter and this doesn't make my trauma any less than others because he was also a child. He knew what he was doing and he knew that it was wrong but he let it continue. He has ruined my life and even though I feel like I have to forgive him because he is family. I hope he remembers that he took away my innocence. - A716

I feel that I have never been able to be who I truly am. I was abused by my uncle from I think around 6 until 18. We lived with them and the reason I don't know the age I was when it started is that I remember nothing in my life prior to it. I know the exact story of the first time it happened and it then happened so frequently that I couldn't count. Many times a day, many days a week, many weeks a year etc. It has ruined who I am and my personality now is one of full compliance. I can't say no to people, i let people abuse me in many ways, not just sexually because I do what I have to to please those around me. I told no one of the abuse until 18, and have only told my husband. I have now found out that another cousin suffered the same and her life is absolutely off the rails. I think it happened to all of us, there are five girls but we simply never speak of it. He is still alive, I don't see him, none of us do as he is a drug addict. I want to seek justice but don't know if I am strong enough to survive that. He made my life a nightmare, he changed who I was, he destroyed me.

The first time I ever laid eyes on T was in algebra class. He was a senior, and I was a junior. He was this cool, popular boy covered in tattoos, flirting with our algebra teacher, and she was totally eating it up. I didn’t talk to him. I thought he was hot, but his obnoxious popularity contest, center of attention behavior annoyed me. So I kept my nose down and intentionally gave him no attention not even a glance in his direction. One day he stopped coming to school. He dropped out to work at this tattoo shop, and I didn’t see him again until that summer. I went to a concert with my cousin that summer after junior year. We were outside getting some air because it was so packed and humid in there. It was an underground rap artist concert, so it was small. I heard someone call my name: “Hey C, hey girl!!!” I turned to see him. I must have had a confused look on my face because he said, “It’s me, T from math.” After a few moments, I was like, “Yeah, I know who you are, what’s up.” We spent the rest of the concert together. He told me how I was the only person who never paid attention to him, how he thought about me a lot. I guess it made me stand out from all the girls who were all over him all the time. He even said it made him Mr. Popular scared to talk to me. He made me feel so special. He said all the right things, like I was already the center of his universe, and he’d been hoping and wishing he would get the chance to see me again. And that if he did, he wouldn’t miss his chance. Looking back, he had started his manipulation from that very first day. The love bomb dropped, and I was hit hard. I was in love. Over the summer, we were together every day. He did everything a boy in love should do he treated me like a princess, opened doors, met my mom, and shook my dad’s hand. He was already doing drugs then, but he was still able to hide it. Other than the weed he was a huge pothead, but hey, this is California, everyone smokes pot, we don’t see it as a drug. I didn’t care about that. But there was more happening in secret. I just didn’t know it yet. After this fairy tale summer, I went back to school. It was my senior year, class of 2009, and I was so excited. But it was short lived. I had this white binder with a clear cover back then it was the thing to do, to put drawings there, pictures of you and your friends, pictures of you and your boyfriend, and carry it around for everyone to see. So of course, I had mine covered in pictures from the summer of me and T. In second period, a girl I kinda knew looked at my binder and said, “Hey, is that T?” I was proud yeah, he’s my boyfriend, we’ve been dating for months. But she said it not in a bitchy “girl that’s trying to make you jealous” tone, but in a concerned, soft tone. She said, “Oh, I saw him at a party last weekend. He wasn’t acting like someone with a girlfriend. Did you know he does drugs?” I said, “Yeah, weed, I know.” She replied, “No, not weed worse.” My heart broke. I didn’t know exactly what that meant what was he doing at the party and who with, and if not weed then what? My mind came up with every hurtful thing, and I didn’t want to know more, so I didn’t ask. And she didn’t say. Later, when I asked him about it, he told me they were just jealous and they were just trying to get between us. And I believed him. I never mentioned the drugs something told me I shouldn’t. After that, it was constant. I always heard he was cheating or lying, and I didn’t believe anyone. Until one day. I was in computer class, and I got a text from a number I didn’t know, with a picture of a tattoo. I asked who it was. She told me, and I knew her. She told me she went to get a tattoo from T she didn’t pay money, she had sex with him in the tattoo shop bathroom and got it for free. I knew she wasn’t lying. I felt sick to my stomach, tears in my eyes. I wanted to run out but I couldn’t. I was stuck there hurting. I don’t remember what he told me, exactly. I remember the intensity of it. How he seemed to mean it when he’d say he can’t live if I am not with him. I am the only one for him and if he can’t have me he’d kill himself. He makes mistakes an no one could ever love me like he does. Like no one could ever love him like I do. I was not just wanted, I was needed. That’s how I felt. Being abandoned by my bio dad, I probably had some trauma.. have some trauma. I wanted to be wanted. And he seemed to know that some how. And use it. So I stayed with him. I always stayed. I remember the first time he hit me. I’d been surrounded by substance abuse most of my life, and somehow I still didn’t see it in him. I was still in high school, a teenager, dating this boy who I thought was so cool. He worked at a tattoo shop, covered in tattoos, this amazing artist, everyone knew him, all the girls wanted to be with him, but he wasn’t with them, he was with me. I was supposed to be spending the night at W’s house… but I was at his. He was trying to play this song on the guitar, struggling on a few notes for over an hour, and I was getting bored sitting there. I told him I was going to go sit on the couch and watch a movie with his younger nephew so he could keep practicing. He told me no, which I didn’t see as a demand… not yet at least. So I laughed it off and was like, I’ve been listening for an hour. He was so obsessed, doing the same thing over and over and over like he was in some kind of trance. Looking back, he was high. At the time, I just thought… well, I don’t know what I thought, but not that. I turned to walk away, and the next thing I knew, he was behind me, grabbed me, spun me around, and slapped me so hard on the side of my face and ear that my face was burning and my ear was ringing. I faintly heard him say something along the lines of, don’t ever walk away from me again. I looked around, his nephew had seen the whole thing, I could tell by the look on his face, but he didn’t say a word. Looking back, that was the beginning, the makings of the idea that would be drilled into my head for years after: “no one cares, it’s your fault, and did this even happen or am I crazy?”. At that point I was madly in love with who i thought he actually was. I thought the person that hurts me isn’t really him. I just need to help him, he loves me. He’ll die without me. It’ll get better…. It never did. This was just the beginning. He just dropped off one day didn’t answer my calls, blocked me. For days, I was in a state of desperation. I called and I called and I called. Until finally, not him but a friend answered the call. He told me T was with a girl in City, he didn’t want me anymore, and to stop calling. I asked why, I asked what I did, I told him I thought we were fine, I don’t understand. He just laughed and hung up on me. And yet again T always found a way of making me feel like I was the center of his universe, no matter what he did. He would die without me, I make him a better person, he’s so sorry he hurt me. He’s just doing it because he’s never loved anyone like this and it scares him, and he self-destructs before I get the chance to hurt him because he couldn’t stand it if I ever did. I don’t know why this worked on me but it did. I always believed it. After City didn’t work out, he came back and did just that, and I fell for it. And I took him back. It just became normal after that. He would block me, I would freak out, search for him, call him and drive around hysterical, and then he would unblock me. Call me, tell me how it was because of something I did that it was because I don’t have the same freedom he did, because I lived with my parents still and I had rules or whatever else he came up with, and that I needed to not do anymore because it hurts him more than it does me to do this because he’s never loved anyone like he loves me. And I fell for it every time. Now I know what he was doing all those times: hard drugs and cheating or both. The next time he hit me, was at my house, and that’s when the drug use became impossible to ignore. He showed up incoherently speaking, not making sense I hadn’t seen him in a couple days, he had just unblocked me again. He passed out on my bed. I woke him up, told him he couldn’t sleep here, my dad would be pissed, I wasn’t allowed to have boys asleep in my room. He got up, flinging his arms around wildly, and punched me. I started crying, asked where he had been, demanded his login for his MySpace account. Who are all these girls on your page, why are they all talking to you like that? He gave it to me, I logged in, and it was an uncountable amount of messages girls he was flirting with, girls he was cheating on me with. I had to stop looking, it made me sick. I asked him about them, I asked why he was doing this. He then picked up his phone and threw it at my face and left. At this point he must have realized he could get away with hurting me and I wouldn’t leave. So he stopped trying so hard to make me forgive him. He didn’t have to. To him I was never going anywhere. But I did, I broke up with him and I meant it this time, for the first time. I drove to his shop and saw him with another girl. Seeing it with my own eyes, it was impossible to ignore. I told him I was done, I screamed I cried “why do you keep doing this to me, why do you keep hurting me if you don’t love me let me fucking go”. I started driving away he ran after my truck, jumped on the side, and started punching me through the window until he fell off. I guess he was embarrassed in front of her. I broke it off, I blocked him this time. And I started to move on. I was done with T for real this time, or so I thought. I’d broken it off, blocked him, and started moving on. That’s when I started seeing B oh, B. It wasn’t official yet but I wanted it to be. We went to high school together, and I’d had this crush on him for years, watching him ride around on his street bike, all confidence and smiles. He was just… normal. Still in school, kind, with these loving parents who actually showed up and cared. On our first date, he took me for a ride on his bike, and when I drove up to his house later, his dad teased me, calling me “lead foot” for how I pulled in playful, not mean at all, just warm and welcoming like they were pulling me right into their family. It made me laugh, feel included. He was sweet, handsome, the type who saw you without any bullshit games. For the first time, I felt this spark of something easy, like maybe I could have a real shot at a boyfriend and happiness without the chaos. But T always thought he owned me, like I was his no matter what, even if he didn’t want me right then. He heard about B and couldn’t handle it. Called me from some other number, whispering all that sugar, begging me to come see him that night. Said he couldn’t eat or sleep thinking of me with someone else. He pleaded, and I gave in, like an idiot. That’s the night I got pregnant. I went over to “talk.” He was all kind and sweet at first, heartbroken, asking me to stay. I said no, but he begged just cuddle, nothing else, he promised. I was still seeing B, didn’t want to mess that up by sleeping with T. I needed time to think. He acted like he got it, respected it. The night felt okay, like maybe we’d figured shit out. But once everyone was asleep, his eyes went black. He forced me to have sex with him. I cried. I said no. I said it again and again.He was 6 foot and I’m 5’4 he was bigger than me in every way. I couldn’t even budge him. Nothing I did made any difference. He held me down, covered my mouth so no one could hear me, and didn’t care. “I am going to get you pregnant whether you like it or not,” he said, “and then no one else will want you.” And he did. It hit me hardest with B. I ghosted him after that, I was too ashamed to even tell him how do I explain I was forced and how do I explain being pregnant with your ex’s kid? What teenager wants that? I never gave him the chance to know what happened. I thought…It’s understandable no boy that age wants a pregnant girlfriend, especially when it’s not even his I wasn’t going to bring this into his life. But for me? Devastating. Years crushing on him, finally getting this chance at normal kindness, stability, his cute family that welcomed me and T ruined it all in one night. Snatched my chance away. I’d never get it now, everything felt so ruined…. I felt ruined and my body felt used up. Who’d want me like this? I just stayed with T, accepted it like that was my life, this was my fate. By the time I got pregnant, it was the end of my senior year, and I was about to turn 18, right after graduation. I never told my parents. He said once I turned 18, he would have a place for us and we would move out. And that’s exactly what happened on my 18th birthday. I thought this could fix everything, I thought we would get better. I was so wrong under his full control now. It got so much darker. Ripped jeans with holes in the knees were popular. I was just 17 when I found out I was pregnant, a secret I buried deep because I didn’t want to tell my parents, even though they would’ve supported me without question. By the time everything unraveled, I was 18, hopelessly in love or what felt like love and carrying this new life inside me, all while feeling more isolated than ever. The house we ended up in belonged to someone who’d passed away, an old woman whose grandson had been living there and stuck around after she was gone. He was a lot older than us at 18 his 30s seemed really old. This guy was friends with T’s older sister, that's how T knew him. T, spun it like a great opportunity: “We can move in there,” he said, and just like that, we did. T did tattoos for a living, or tried to, he’d gotten kicked out of the shop he worked at, probably because of the drugs creeping in, though I never got the full story. So he started doing them on the side, he was getting paid mostly in drugs when he was doing these tattoos. He mainly did them at a trap house around the corner, where all they did was do drugs and sell drugs. People were in and out all the time. Sometimes he did them at our house. As soon as we moved there, I really saw the extent of his drug problem. He wasn’t paying rent and the roomate didn’t hold him to it. He just treated me like shit because of it, like I did something wrong or somehow it was my fault T didn’t have money. No one around him ever held him accountable for anything ever. No one. Me? I’d just graduated high school, pregnant and clueless about the real world. I'd never held a job in my life and never planned to jump into one, especially not like this. I was confused, did they expect ME to have money? Get a job? I was a kid I was pregnant I didn’t understand. But from the second we moved in, everyone made me feel like an intruder, nitpicking every move…. I did the dishes wrong, used too much soap, didn’t clean enough, accidentally ate someone else’s food. I was just navigating adulthood for the first time, and no one cut me any slack. One night he did a tattoo at our house, but it went on for so long. Finally at 4am I asked him if he was coming to bed. This is not normal behavior. He yelled at me “ don’t ever question me in front of people, don’t ever ask me questions at all, it’s not your place”. He never slept that night. I cried myself to sleep. Something I would do every night. After that everyone around the house wouldn’t talk to me anymore, they would talk AT me or about me like I wasn’t in the room. “She’s crazy “ “he doesn’t even love her he’s stuck with her” and T would laugh and agree. He treated me like I was property. I didn’t get an opinion, I didn't get to speak or make decisions. I was his regardless of whether he wanted me or not no one else would ever have me but him. I’ve never felt so lonely in my entire life like I was on a planet all by myself. Like I was screaming but nothing was coming out. It was a living nightmare I could never wake up from. I was invisible. T was 19, already deep in the clutches of meth, his addiction fueling rages that turned him into someone unrecognizable abusive in ways that left marks on more than just my skin. And then there was her, the neighbor in her 40s she was awful to me. I could see her front door and kitchen window, a kids room from my side door. The driveways connected there with no barrier in between, no privacy wall. It was almost like one giant driveway but they were just separated by a space between down the middle. She tried to play some weird motherly role to T. I couldn’t tell if she was in love with him or was playing “mom” to her little baby that was not even her son because they did drugs together. Either way. It wasn't real care, it was the kind where she’d do drugs right alongside her “kid,” excusing every violent outburst, every cruel twist, even when it played out right in front of her. In her eyes, he was this flawless little angel, pure and blameless. Me? I was the liar, the crazy creature hell bent on destroying him. Her voice was always heavy with hate when she talked to me, like every word was laced in venom, a poison brewed just for me, dripping with false accusations that it was all my fault. One day in the driveway, things just got bad. I was sober unlike everyone around me, super hungry. My stomach hurt 18 and pregnant, with T having snatched the food stamps card again running off with it for hours, sometimes days, leaving me without the basics. I was trying to stop him from bolting down the street to chase more drugs, my hands clutching at his arm begging him. But he shoved me without a second thought, throwing me hard to the ground like I was worthless. The rough pavement tore into my bare knees through those damn jean holes, pebbles and dirt grinding deep into the skin, blood welling up in a gritty, stinging mess mixed with the grime.I was looking around for anything or anyone to help get me out of this. That’s when I saw them right there in plain view: her two little boys, fat faced with freckles, their red hair dirty and unbrushed. They had seen everything through their windows and were running out. They weren’t rushing to help or even looking shocked; they were laughing, those sharp, cruel giggles that hurt worse than the fall. Little red headed sadistic freaks. That’s what I thought then. I was too young to realize they were just kids and they were a product of their mom. She wasn’t there in that exact moment, but I could feel her there anyway the enabler who’d whisper blame in my ear, who’d defend him no matter what. The boys didn’t hang around they burst out their front door, still laughing and yelling to anyone who could hear: “She hit him! She hit him!” Twisting the truth into a flat out lie before I could even stand up. When I got up, the embarrassment hit me hard. I felt like I’d done something terribly wrong. I was embarrassed that everyone could hear those kids screaming their lies, knowing that they’d believe them and hate me even more than they already did. Thinking why had I even tried to stop him? I should have just let him go, stayed hungry, and hoped he’d come back soon before I starved. It wasn’t anger I felt right then, but this deep embarrassment, like the whole world was judging me for being in this mess. I picked myself up, blood trickling down my shins, hungry, scared, and so alone. “No, look,” I tried to say, pointing to my jeans where the ripped hole had closed when I stood, trying to open it to show everyone. “He pushed me.” But no one would look. They didn’t care, they didn’t want to see the truth. Soon after, T’s sister moved in with two of her kids, and the drugs got worse. The 30 year old we rented the room from was using, she was using, T was using. All their friends and everyone around in the neighborhood was using. I was the only one that wasn’t. Every time he hit me, they said it was my fault. I’d been knocked on the ground, and then they would just walk over me like I wasn’t there. He invited people over, and it’s like they came over just to be cruel to me. No one was kind there. They said that I lied about him hitting me and I was crazy. If they saw him do it, they would say “well you shouldn’t have tried to stop him from working” and I tried to explain that he wasn’t going to work, he was doing tattoos for drugs. He took my card, I had no food, I had no money, I was always hungry. It didn’t matter to them they didn’t hear me, they didn’t see me. I thought I was losing my mind. I was starting to think I had made it all up. I had friends that loved me, I had parents that loved me. I didn’t turn to them, I don’t know why. But I do know it wouldn’t have mattered then, I probably would have never left until I was pushed out. My friend came over and she was worried about me, she needed to see me. I told her everything. I told her earlier that day I begged him to stop doing drugs, to stop leaving me alone, and he grabbed my hair and pulled me across the house on my stomach and everyone saw, no one stopped him. And I was pregnant, they all knew this, they didn’t care. She told me I needed to leave. I didn’t listen at that moment. Since I met those girls J and W, I’ve loved them, they always tried to protect me, they never abandoned me, to this day. That day it was W that came over, she could not force me to leave and she knew it. But she would be there no matter what, and when I was ready, she was. They both we’re The next day, he started off to the drug house again. I followed him, begging him please don’t leave me alone, please stop doing drugs. And he ignored me until we were two houses down. I guess he didn’t want to bring the drama there. He grabbed me, threw me on the ground, and kicked me in the face. There just happened to be a guy working on his roof the first time in this entire time someone tried to help. He yelled at T to stop, he called the cops. The police showed up… and I refused to press charges. This officer knew me, he had been there before. One time when we were arguing in a room, T wanted me to leave him alone so he grabbed a metal bed frame, threw it at me, and started screaming that I threw it at him and to call the cops, so someone in the house did. They showed up and he forced his foot under it and said that I threw it at him, to arrest me. The officer took me aside and I told him what happened. He asked if I had anywhere to go. I told him I could go to my mom and dad’s. He said he believed me but they couldn’t prove it and I would not press charges. He told me to go home and never come back. He said that if I came back I might not make it out alive and he said to stay away from T “he is no good”. I went home that night but I came back. This is the same cop that showed up that day. Again I won’t press charges. I can see the concern in the officer’s face. He’s scared for me. He finds an illegal knife on T and takes him to jail. He tells me to go home again and not come back. T was on the way to jail. I walk back to the house, everyone already knows what happened. They started ganging up on me saying if I wasn’t pregnant they would beat my ass for bringing the cops around. Because they were all doing illegal activities. And for T getting arrested in the first place. At this point I am scared. I know I need to get out and get out fast, so I called W, I called my mom, and they made it there in record time, packed up all my shit and took me home. I never went back to that house. But that wasn’t the end of T and I. It had been a couple months since that day. I finally told my parents I was pregnant. And they were every bit as supportive as anyone could imagine. They loved me no matter what. I can’t say why I was so scared to tell them. They were always loving parents. They had their flaws, they weren’t perfect but they were good parents. W was over every single day. J always checked in on me. They were my rock, I didn’t feel alone anymore. I don’t think I’ve ever told them just how much they helped me, how much I love them for that. How I can spend a lifetime trying to repay what they did for me and I would never come close. But I think they know. I never told them EVERYTHING until years later and I probably still haven’t said everything. I didn’t need to, they could see I was broken. We could talk when I was ready. Finally I am happy, I am getting better, I am healing. And I am a couple months away from having my baby. Then T comes back into the picture and I let him. He happens to move into the neighborhood behind my parents house. I don’t remember how he got ahold of me. But he did. He always found me. He wasn’t allowed at my parents house at all. I hadn’t told them much of anything that happened but they knew something happened. He kept calling me, kept begging me to see him. Over and over and I gave in. One night I met him on a street in between his house and mine. He was high, I’m not sure what his intentions were that night other than evil. He jumps in my truck and starts screaming at me, hitting me, punching my truck, breaking the plastic on my dashboard. Saying that he owns me, that he’s forever attached to me, I can never get rid of him and that I am never allowed to move on in life without him. Then all the sudden my passenger door opens and he gets ripped out of the truck.The man he was living with must have seen him leave and I don’t know what made him do it but he followed him. Saw what was going on and saved me that night. He told me to never go back. He told me “he’s going to kill you don’t you get it!!” It was harsh but I think he was trying to help. Of course I didn’t listen, not yet. I started meeting him in private, taking him to my doctors appointments in secret. He held it together for a while, there were a few parking lot arguments, nothing too crazy for a while but it didn’t last. I was going to do one of those 3D ultrasounds and he wanted to come. When I went to pick him up, I knew he was high. But I took him anyway. In the parking lot I asked him to wait in the car I wasn’t going to take him in there incoherent, it was embarrassing. He lost his mind and started punching me in the face in the parking lot and didn’t care who saw. So many people saw that they called the cops. I tried to lie but I was told there were witnesses and they are taking him to jail. They wanted me to press charges but I would not do it. He got out shortly after. I only saw him two more times after that day. But he was outside of my house every night stalking me. Watching me come and go, watching who came over. Waiting for me to be alone but I never was. If my parents were not there, W or J were. The night I went into labor, he saw. He was there watching. He showed up to the hospital high and drunk with a bunch of drug addict friends. He was disrespectful to my family and friends at the hospital. I was so terrified. I had the nurses kick him out but he and his sister kept calling my room so I had to be moved to a private room. You walked in the first door and were met with another door. The second door led to my room. That way no one could look into a window and see me. You had to have a specific password to be let in, and if anyone called they gave them no information on whether I was even there or not. I have more kids and I love them all the same but that morning at 3am it was only her. I had my baby, and the second I looked into her eyes, it hit me like nothing ever had before. No one else existed but her. In that instant, I finally knew what real love was this overwhelming, fierce thing that changed everything. From that day on, nothing has been more important than her. She’s the love of my life, period, all that matters to me. She saved my life that day, pulling me out of the darkness and giving me a reason to fight for something good. She was the first to open my eyes and gave me the strength to break free. I knew right then I’d protect her by any means necessary. I knew I’d never go back to him. She deserves love and peace and protection, and I’d make sure she got it. I never ever went back to T after that. Though he was awful, he was still her father so we tried visitation once. He only wanted to speak to me. He showed up high and talked about his wants to be a family and his obsessive possessiveness of me was so clear to me then, when I turned him down, told him I would never be with him again he started to insult me. Calling me a bad mom I made him leave. He held her for 5 seconds that day. That’s the last time he ever saw her that close. I told him if he wanted to be in her life he needed to get help and he needed to get clean, he never has. He stalked me for many years, would track me down, send videos and pictures and songs threatening me, threatening whoever I dated. Until he moved out of state and so did I. His stalking became less and less until after many years it stopped. As far as I know. But the trauma of what I went through still hurts. I can still feel it on my body. I still have to work every day to reprogram my brain. I know I wasn’t crazy, I know I was abused. I know it wasn’t my fault. And maybe one day I will actually accept it. To this day I don’t know why I stayed. I don’t remember everything that happened to me. I don’t know why I remember what I do, maybe they left the biggest scars. Or maybe it was so much that my brain has forgotten some to save itself. I don’t think he was purely evil. I think his popularity and attention seeking was because of something he didn’t get as a child. He shared bits about his parents abandoning him, but always acted unfazed, like it was nothing. Surrounded by people the tattoo shop crew handing out pills and a place to sleep but no real home, no bedroom, just drifting. He held up this cool guy act like he owned the world, never admitting the voids, but I saw through it. I wanted to be the stability he lacked, love him for real, not the facade. He used that against me, twisting my empathy into a way to control me. I don’t know where he ended and the walls he put up to protect himself began. I refuse to make excuses for him. His dad abandoned him and his mom a few years later. His older sister tried to raise him, but she was a drug addict herself. He never had a real home. He never had a good role model in life. He seemed to be constantly surrounded by awful people with bad intentions from before he was even an adult. Maybe he never had a chance at life. Maybe one day I can accept that. I’ll never forgive, but maybe I can move on. I was so hurt for a long time, but now I am just left with intense anger. I want to find all these people and force them to face what they did to me, what they allowed to happen. But that is not possible, so I will continue to work through it, and maybe one day I can let go. Fully. Writing out is my last ditch effort. It’s been 16 years and maybe finally having my story in a physical form I can hold it, read it, share it and know it was real. It was wrong, I’m not crazy this did happen to me. Maybe this will help

Many times I've wondered how to begin narrating my story, whether I should start from the beginning or when "love had arrived." I could start by saying that I fell in love with the person I thought was my best friend. Wow, it’s supposed that when there’s a friendship of that magnitude, love should be great. Time passed, and years later, that friendship turned into a relationship, which, for my heart, was one of the most beautiful things that had ever happened to me. I flew 1,295 miles from my country to the United States for him, believing that finally, my true love story would become a reality. I knew he had a strong character and was a bit egocentric, something that bothered me, but I always tried to ignore those thoughts with the "sweet gestures" he could have with me. In the third year of our relationship, after discovering an online affair (they were only chatting because they were in different countries), he proposed to me. Shortly after we got married, we bought our first house together. Wow, if we weighed it all out, there were many wonderful moments that turned into sad endings because, according to him, I didn’t do something right, and many times I would repeat to myself, “I need to be better for myself and for him,” but for him, I was never good enough. Little by little, I started to fade. His words and actions took me to the darkest places—depression and anxiety. From there, it got even darker: a fight in the bathroom where he was the only one talking, and I had long ago decided to remain silent to avoid making the problem worse. I remember that night we were sitting on the bathroom floor arguing, and when it ended, we decided to leave the bathroom. I was walking behind him, continuing the argument, and that’s when he decided to push me, making me fall back several feet. I had never felt so vulnerable in my life. Among the physical pain I felt in my body, the pain in my soul was even stronger. He apologized and insisted that he thought I was coming after him to hit him. I insisted that I would be incapable of doing something like that, but once again, I was blamed. Shortly after, the problems in the relationship intensified, and there was more crying than laughing. I blamed the depression, but deep down, I knew it was everything that was happening there. I decided to seek professional help and started working with a psychiatrist. For more than a year, I was in therapy and on medication, and that’s when my awakening began. I’ll never forget the day my therapist said to me, "I want you to do an exercise that I know I shouldn’t ask of you." I forgot to mention that I earned my psychology degree in my home country. She continued, “We’re going to make a diagnosis, but it’s not for you. If I’m right, our therapy is going to change drastically because you’ll have only two options: divorce or couples therapy.” Although she didn’t say it, she was leaning more towards divorce. Her request was, "Let’s diagnose, based on observation, whether your husband is a narcissist. You’ve given me many examples that are raising red flags for me." She managed to get an interview with him, and in the end, we reached the diagnosis: I was married to a narcissist. I had been too ashamed to tell her that a week earlier, I was not only a victim of his physical aggression when he pushed me, but he had also pulled my hair. I had never felt so ashamed of myself until I had to talk about it with my therapist. Her only words were, “Run from there; there’s no turning back.” How grateful I am to her for those words. Today, almost a year after our legal divorce, although this path hasn’t been easy, I feel that I’ve become a much more resilient woman. No matter how difficult the situation is, no matter how much pain you may feel, love doesn’t have to be the excuse to push your limits. I knew for a long time that I needed to leave, and it’s not easy. Finding that strength is not easy, but today I can say that when your love for yourself grows every day, it’s that love that helps you move forward. Losing everything and losing myself to find myself has been the most beautiful experience life has given me. NO MORE. Only you have the power to break the cycle.