Child Abuse Story From
Renee

Renee is from Schenectady, New York, USA

The following child abuse story from Renee depicts physical abuse and emotional abuse.

The child abuse effects on Renee: bulimia, low self-esteem, fear that she will do to her as-yet-unborn child what her parents did to her.

I am 24 years old. I am pregnant with my first child. I have an older brother and parents who have been married for almost 30 years.

I have been abused by my family and the people around me all my life, until now that is. Both my parents screamed at us, called us awful names, and beat us with their hands, belts, anything within reach. Sometimes it would be a controlled punishment, where we would bend over a chair with our nude butts exposed, they would hit us 3 times with a belt, 5 if we resisted. Other times it was simply their anger that would cause them to attack me out of the blue.

Once, when I was 8, we were sitting at the dinner table eating. My father reached over and for no particular reason, pulled my hair, hard. The surprise made me gasp and I breathed in the food I was chewing. I began choking and I almost died that day.

My mother was prone to fits of rage. Anything could set her off, and she would leap on me and attack me with her fists while screaming at me for something I had done months or even years ago. If we failed to do a chore, or didn't do it good enough, my mother would beat us and scream about how ungrateful we were, always ungrateful. Then, when my father would get home late at night, he would rip us out of bed by our hair and continue my mother's punishment from earlier.

When I was 12, my father was in the kitchen beating my brother, I was in the living room, crying. After my father was done, he came into the living room and looked at me, he shouted, "What are you crying about? you c*nt!" I didn't understand what that word meant, so I went to school the next day and asked my classmates. They were shocked when I told them where I heard it. I went home and told my father that when he called me that name, it hurt my feelings. He went over and cut the cord to the TV and threw it at me.

"There's your feelings," he said, then walked out of the room.

When I was 15, my friends noticed bruises on the top of my head. They asked how I got all the bruises. I told them my father hit me because I wasn't wearing a sweatshirt when it was winter time. They [my friends] made me go to the school guidance counselor. He said it was his job to report this. I begged him not to; I knew what would happen when I went home.

The social worker came, and said that because there were no injuries, they could not do anything. I had to wait for my parents to break my arm or something. They did make us go to a family counseling session, which ended in my mother screaming at the therapist and storming out of the office. My mother even called the therapist back the next day to continue to scream at her and could not believe the rudeness of the therapist when the therapist hung up on her.

When I was 18, my parents grounded me for coming home a half-hour before curfew, because it was snowing out. I had already graduated high school and I was working full time. A friend at work informed me that they did not have the right to ground me, especially if I paid rent to them. I told them [my parents] I refused to be grounded. They told me to get out, so I went to live with the informative friend at work. I never moved back.

When I was 19, my mother called me crying, apologizing for all the things she had allowed my father to do to us. She said that she still cried herself to sleep at night because of the things she had allowed us to go through. She made me re-promise a promise that she had made me make many times as a little girl: No matter what happened, I would still allow them to see their grandchildren.

When I was 22, I started seeing a therapist for the bulimia that had taken over my life. The therapist opened my eyes. I called my mother on Easter to tell her that I knew what they had done. They had abused me mentally and physically, and that I was not going to be a part of their life until they got help. I now know that this is called the hopeless hope. That your parents will one day get better and really love you as you want them to. I have not yet put this fantasy to rest, but I'm trying.

After a series of mean and threatening emails from them [my parents], threatening to have me put in a mental hospital for making up lies about them, to them threatening to prosecute me for perjury, I have stopped speaking to them.

I feel sad that I have lost a happy childhood. I am afraid that I will be an abusive parent and be too sick to realize it. I am afraid I will be like them.

I am still in therapy. I am taking psychology classes at college; I even made the dean's list. I am trying, but I still hurt. Every day I think about them and what they did to me, and what kind of person does that to a helpless child. When I see a child in a store, I think to myself: That's how small I was when my parents beat me unmercifully. I look at the child's fragile body, and the child's simple ways, and all I can picture is a hideous, uncaring monster that eats the souls of the young and helpless. And those monsters are my parents.