Child Abuse Story From Andrea W
by Andrea W
(San Antonio, Texas, USA)
Darlene, let me start by saying my sister and I had a wonderful childhood, or thought we did up until four months ago. My mother remarried when I was 8 years old and my sister was 6, but we did and still have a loving relationship with my father and mother. Sam was my stepfather and was extremely kind and nice to both me and my sister. He never tried to abuse us in any way and was very generous. I lived with my mother and him from age eight until I graduated college in 2003. We lived in a large sprawling house in Texas, and both my sister and I had our own bedrooms with our own private bathrooms. Sam was very wealthy and besides nice clothes, toys and gifts we both had our own horses. He even had an in-the-ground pool put in for us. My mother adored him and my sister and I were very happy. We saw our father often, and my father even liked Sam.
Sam died of a heart attack this past June. We were all devastated by it, especially my mother. After a few weeks, my sister and I went to the house to help my mother clean out closets and re-adjust her life. She cried constantly and had me and my sister upset also as we got rid of his clothes and personal things.
Sam had an office next to the garage and after the important papers were put away I told my mother I would clean up the rest of it. There was a wooden box on the floor of the closet with a lock on it. I didn't pay much attention to it and moved it around often. The next day I found a key taped to the back of a desk drawer and opened the box. There were 38 video tapes in it. That's when I found out what kind of a man Sam really was.
I put the first one on the TV in his office and was shocked to see a video of my sister showering. Then there were some of me naked. I started to cry but heard my mother calling me so I just turned it off and hid them back in the closet. I was so upset I didn't know what to do or whether to tell anyone.
The next day I put them in the trunk of my car and took them back to my apartment with me. Over the next week I think I watched almost all or parts of them and was so traumatized by it I missed 3 days at work. These videos were carefully edited and were obviously taped in both my sister's and my bathrooms and bedrooms. I was probably 10 or 11 when they began, but video after video I was older and there were tapes of me and my sister up until we both moved out. From puberty to womanhood he had tapes of both my sister and I naked. There were tapes of some of my girlfriends and my sisters girlfriends showering, dressing and undressing. Some were videos of my aunts and girl cousins who stayed at the house over all those years and some of Sam and my mother's women friends. They are the most humiliating videos I could possibly imagine. As I watched them I realized there were at least two lenses in both bathrooms and probably three in both bedrooms. Some were from a distance but others were very close-up shots.
The most disturbing ones were when we were using the toilet or using tampons for our periods. Many of us showering, drying off and doing other very personal things that a person would only do in complete privacy. He had videos of both my sister and I masturbating at different stages of our lives. As I watched them I was hysterical, shaking and crying. There were even a few of my mother when she used our bathrooms over the years. I just couldn't believe he would do something so cruel to us. He was always so nice and kind. Never once did I ever think of him as a pervert or peeping tom.
As I think back, sometimes there were occasions over the years when he walked in on me or my sister and did see us naked. But it always seemed accidental and something that did not happened often. I never suspected for a moment that he did it purposely and although it was embarrassing at the time I was never very upset about it. He never touched or in any way made sexual advances or even spoke to us about sex. It completely blows my mind knowing that he watched all these tapes and was such a disgusting man.
Each video is six hours long. Some are complete videos of either me or my sister and some are videos strictly showing our girlfriends, aunts and female cousins. Some are videos of female friends of my mother and Sam and some are mixed. There are a few of some of my male cousins and one that I saw of my sister's boyfriend showering. Most are of either me or my sister, but about 30% of them are of other women or girls with only a few of males.
Months have gone by but I find myself still watching them at times, finding clips I never saw before and become angry but also devastated by what he did. Knowing he can never be punished for it upsets me. I'm still not sure whether I should tell anyone. They are too humiliating to let anyone see them and it would kill my mother if she found out about them. I almost told my sister a few weeks ago but now think it would just upset her as much as it has me. I guess that's why I'm writing to you about it. I know you deal with child abuse and I was never really sexually abused, but as I find now I think I am mentally abused by it. I try not to think about it and sometimes I just cry when I do. The worst part is when my mother and sister talk about Sam saying what a wonderful man he was.
In August I was at my mother's house and tried looking for the places he had the camera lenses hidden but was unsuccessful. Apparently he removed them once my sister and I moved out of the house. I can only guess where they were or how he hid them. I keep telling myself to destroy the videos but so far they are still under my bed. I'm sure I haven't seen every clip of tapes since there are hundreds of hours of edited video. It breaks my heart that he did this, especially since I thought I loved him so much. He did leave my mother well off and both my sister and I were well taken care of in his will. I have pretty much made my mind up that I won't tell anybody about it but wish there was some way to punish him for it. He was a very sick man and none of us ever knew what he was doing. I can't imagine the time he spent watching and editing all the footage he had. I only hope someday I can forgive him or at least not be tormented by it.
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