Child Abuse Story From Calindy

by Calindy G
(American Fork, Utah, USA)

God help me please!! I'm just a child. What did I do that was so WRONG?! 
God, I don't even know when the abuse started. I guess my earliest memory was when I was 3. I was sitting on the stairs of my parents' home, watching my parents argue. Then I watched my mother hit my father so hard blood went everywhere. His face was just RED!! I remember screaming and being picked up and hauled out of the house.

Then it goes black......

I don't remember the year, but my mother was living in a trailer in Nevada with my sister and me. I remember her going to the bar and leaving us home alone. I was only 4 or 5 and my sister was 6 or 7. I remember waking up one morning and finding my mother on the living room floor, passed out and naked with a man. I woke him with a kick to the head. I got into trouble for that. I remember my mother sneering and saying, "Meet your new daddy, we got married!"

I remember being beaten for simple things, like I got gum in my hair and needed help getting it all out, so my mother grabbed me and dragged me into the bathroom and cut all my beautiful blonde hair off. I looked like a boy. When I cried, she smacked me and told me this is what I got for bothering her. Needless to say, she had more children. Two more in fact. My little sister and my little brother.

I remember being taken away many times, but always returned to my mother and her husband because again she had won over the courts. My biological father was fighting tooth and nail to get my sister and me. Since he had no rights to the youngest two, he couldn't do anything but pray for them. I know I spent the majority of my adolescent life in foster care. From the time I was 3 until 7 I was in and out of them. From 7 until 8 I was in one steady. They wanted to adopt me. I know my siblings where almost placed up for adoption, but my mother got them back.

There were countless nights of my 3 siblings and me sitting in a car outside the local bar, waiting on her to finish her "drink," but sometimes it was hours!! My siblings were just babies. Some of the times we had a 2-month-old and a 1-year-old to watch. My sister and I were just children ourselves.

One time I remember, we hadn't eaten in awhile. Mommy forgot to cook. We lived in a home that you couldn't even walk through. It was covered in dishes, and clothes and dog feces! It wasn't even human for the rats that occupied my room with me. My sister had gotten hungry and went and stole a candy bar and pop from our stepfather. He found out and hit her so hard across the face that she was black and blue from her ear to her shoulder. My mother covered it with a scarf. And sent us to school. The cops were called, and we were taken again!

Then I remember being locked in my room. I needed to use the bathroom so badly. I found a lunch box, you know, the old metal kind. I used it for a bathroom and then had to get it out of the house before anyone knew. My sister covered me with a blanket so I had some time to do what I needed and wasn't scared. She also put her ear to the door and listened for movement so I didn't get into trouble. My stepfather and mother never found out about that. I don't think I have told anyone that.

I don't remember much of my two younger siblings growing up, except the last night I was actually in physical custody of my mother and her new husband. The house was surrounded by many cop cars. My oldest sister was placed in one car, I was placed in another. My mother was standing in the doorway, holding for dear life to her two precious angels.... They placed them in different cars then too. I remember my stepfather out back yelling at the cops, "If I can't live here then she can't either. I'll take it all." He was cutting the wires to the back of the trailer so nothing would work.

My stepfather was one of those men that would drink and do pills. He loved it when it would storm. The bigger the storm, the bigger his "get wasted" times would be. He would be so drunk, he would come into my sister's and my room and pull us out of bed and beat on us. Although he never touched the children that were "his"!

During the wire-cutting scene, I got placed in one foster home, my sister in another on an air force base, and well the younger two, I don't know what happened to them...all I do know is my brother at 6 months old couldn't sit up alone, and my little sister couldn't talk that well at more than a year and a half old. I got to see my sister during our weekly counseling sessions. It went on for more than a year like this.

Then one day, a man in a car drove up to my foster home. All of us children where outside playing since it was summer. A man with bright red hair got out of the car. I knew right then and there it was my father. He had come to take me home. It wasn't like the other times, he wasn't with my case worker, and he wasn't in his semi truck. He was in a nice pair of slacks, a white shirt undone at the sleeves and rolled, and a pair of really shiny black shoes. He just opened his arms and I went running. He told me he was there to take me home. Back to Illinois!! Back to my family.

Nine years.....

Still no word on her. I am 17 at this time. My father has remarried. My mother, from what I hear has also divorced and remarried again too. This is husband number 5!! I finally found my mother in Southern Utah, of all states. She lies to me and tells me that she has been looking for me. She has sent me many packages, and letters and things for Birthdays, Christmas, Easter...the list goes on. But I know different. My address and number stayed the same for years. Never changed.

I moved back to Utah in April of '98. I was 63 days from turning 18. I moved in with her, and things where ok. That is, as long as she had her pills and I didn't breath a word. Things went sour and I was kicked out just 3 days before turning 18.

I turned 18, got involved with a man and was married August of '99. Since that day, my mother has tried to have me arrested, has tried to take my children away from me, has called DCFS on me for nothing. All because I finally realized she is a very sick woman, and I can't surround myself with that.

I am now 27 years old. I am divorced. I have 2 children of my own. I still have nightmares of the abuse! The neglect! But life will get better. As of March 2008 I have cut all ties with her. She doesn't have my number or my address, so she can't find me! I went into hiding! I live my life like a normal person. I am just careful not to put anything in my name so that she can't locate me and try to "make things better!"

I hope by sharing my story it will help me release my fears of the mother and stepfather that have been haunting my dreams for years now. I just want to enjoy life and not be afraid of my past!

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