Child Abuse Story From Denise E

by Denise E
(Pennsylvania, USA)

I first remember something was very wrong with my life when I was the age of five. I was suffering from severe abdominal and vaginal pain and could not go to sleep. So, I went downstairs to the kitchen and cried to my mother that there was rocks in my belly. She calmly told me to go to bed and she would take me to the doctor in the morning. I will never forget that visit either. Dr. C told me upon a vaginal examination that little ants crawled up inside me and bit me. Even at that age, it did not sound right. To this day, I am afraid that ants will crawl in my ears, eyes, nose, mouth and any other body parts that have crevices.

Come to find out many many years later, I was sexually molested by my own mother and it was her fingernails that scratched up my vaginal area. I repressed that memory until I was 38. Although I never remember any incident that my mother treated me kindly or lovingly, I do remember that after that doctor's visit, she became extremely emotionally and physically abusive to me. I have yet to remember a fond memory of my childhood with the exception of jumping out of 40-foot-high apple trees and jumping off the roof of our house. I used to love doing that, and did it almost every day. When I did it, I felt free, like I was flying, and when I landed hard on the ground, I felt alive.

From that point on, my life became a living hell of imprisonment and tortuous beatings. My mother encouraged all of my brothers to abuse me also. The only one who couldn't was my youngest brother who was five years younger than me, but I have to admit, I took a lot of my anger out on him and did things that endangered him, like convincing him to jump off the roof, or I would scare him severely because of his belief in Big Foot and ghosts. I feel awful that I did that to him because he didn't deserve that.

When I was 10 years old, I was to play Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz at my middle school. We rehearsed for weeks, my mother allowed me to go to rehearsals. On the production day, we had all bought our choir teacher a beautiful bouquet and a good friend of mine and her parents were picking me up at 6pm. When they arrived, my mother commanded me to my bedroom and told my friend's father I was not allowed to go and to stay out of our private lives. That evening was the beginning of my real torture.

Within a few minutes of me retiring to my bedroom, my brother who is 13 months younger than me, was also in his bedroom. Our bedtimes were ridiculously early. Within a few minutes after I got into my Raggedy Ann nightgown which was my favorite, he came into my room with a crazy look on his face. I can't remember exactly how it all started, but I do know that his sexual attack lasted over three hours.

He beat me bloody, ripped up my gown, and raped me from the back for three hours. I was screaming the whole time, and my mother kept telling me to shut up. At the end of that long attack, I was covered in blood and semen and screaming. When my oldest brother came back in the house from doing lawn chores and heard me he came upstairs and saw what was happening and screamed for Mom. Only at that point did she put an end to it, and she beat him with a belt in the kitchen.

I will never forget that day. I was unable to ever watch the Wizard of Oz on TV or even allow my children to watch it. I suffered at the hands of my one brother from the age of ten till the age of 15 and that is when I decided to place myself into a mental institution so I would be safe. My mother never sought help for me, and she got worse with her physical and emotional abuse to the point where she was beating me with iron skillets in the head, and rubber hoses that she would cut into different sizes all over my body, and she has even beat me with the back of an ax, that she was using to beat down the bathroom door I was hiding behind from her.

I joined the Army right after I turned 17 just to get out of the group homes and to get my education. That is where I met my ex-husband and we had three beautiful children together. Unfortunately, our marriage did not last because after my last son was born, we found out his child from a previous relationship in high school was being sexually abused and it opened the floodgate of emotions that I did not know how to handle or cope with.

My mother is still playing her head games with my brothers and me, trying to turn us all against each other. She is one of the worst people I have ever known, but I take strength and be a better mother than she is. I just recently had the courage to tell her I did not want her in my life anymore, because as a mother speaking to a so-called mother, I would never have treated my kids the way she has.

I have had a hard life over this. I also suffer from severe PTSD, and am on medication for it, which is finally working excellent. The other thing I do is surround myself with positive people. However, I work around the clock, never really sleep, and put too much on my table. I suffer from eating disorders and have struggled with emotional issues ever since I can remember. The good side is that I am a financial analyst and I donate my free time supervising children who have committed status crimes. They need my help and mentoring and I love doing that for free. I am the Chairman of the Youth Commission in my area and I also take pro bono cases of child molestation and help them get their justice.

I won't deny that I am still messed up in the mind over what I have been through, but there are ways to deal with it. I explore these ways because it makes me stronger.

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