Child Abuse Story From Jemz
by Jemz
(Scotland)
The secret I have kept for almost eight years has recently come out. Eight years next month on my Birthday. That was when it started. I was ten and I was staying at my grandparents' house with my sister. I loved it at my grandparents', away from the family at home for a week or two during holidays. Not that my home life was bad, not at all...I guess we just liked being spoiled at my grandparents'.
My 10th birthday. I knew they wanted to keep me out of the house because they had a little party arranged with my cousins and aunt. I was in the garage with my granda, sitting on his knee. Quite a normal thing. I always acted younger that everyone else my age. So what if I still played with Barbie dolls and sat on my granda's knee?
I can't remember it clearly, everything he said, but he began to talk 'the big 10, you're all grown up...do you want a big girl kiss?' I didn't know what it meant. In my naivety I simply thought it was a big ole granda cuddle. Then he stuck his big wet tongue in my mouth. This little just-turned-10 kid. What did I know?? I guess I just let it happen, thinking there was no way that this kind of thing will happen again. Then we went in for cake.
After that, memories are just sort of jumbled up. Nothing in my memory is in chronological order. I do remember him saying 'our secret...you don't want Granda to go to jail, do you? If you tell, I'll go to jail and it will be all your fault. Mammy and Daddy wont like that. They'll send you away, Jemma.'
And I believed him.
I think back now, just thinking, how the hell could I have let that happen?? WHY did I not just stop it, tell someone? DO something. Then my life wouldn't be so f**ked up now.
My god. I loved my grandfather and cousins and all the people I saw when I went there. I could stand the evil for them. Like I said, I can't remember the order of events, but this went on for years. Till I was fourteen or fifteen.
One incident is when my sister and I were watching a movie with him, some stupid western. To anyone walking in it would have been a normal scene, Granda and two of his granddaughters. My sister at his left and me on his right. At one point he got a blanket out, laying it over all three of us. God help me. He got it for the one reason, to feel me under it. MY SISTER WAS RIGHT THERE!! How the HELL could he do that in front of her?? My lil sis knew nothing, poor thing, as I sat rigid, afraid to move. And now I have just remembered more detail.
He turned to my lil sis. 'Right you, time for bed.' She was younger and I was older, therefore I got to stay up late. She went to her bed. He made me do something that night. I can't remember all of it, merely the scene. The orange of the streetlamp seeping through the blinds. The darkness in the room. He looked at me: 'Do you know what oral sex is? A blowjob?' God, how old I was, I don't know. Young enough not to know what any of it meant!! I can't remember exactly how it happened, or what I saw. I do however remember vividly, his hand on the back of my head, him moaning. I felt dead. My mind blank. I was so afraid. So afraid. HOW COULD MY GRANDFATHER DO THIS TO ME???
I don't know whether that was before or after all the times he made me give him handjobs. Touch him. Him touching me, rubbing me, fondling my non-existent breasts, sucking them. He had his tongue down there at one point. He had his penis there too, not quite going in, but rubbing it there. I remember lying very still going out of my mind: When are Gran and my sis getting home???
My heart is pounding right now.
Often, when my sis and Gran were gone, he would do this. Other times I would pretend I had gone with them and go to the furthest away room, and sit in an armchair, well aware that he was at the other side of the house. Afraid to even breathe too loudly, lest he hear me.
When I began getting older, 14 or 15, I began saying no. I was not going to let him do this to me any more. Once, he came in and began talking religiously, almost trying to get me to believe that maybe it was meant to happen. Saying that somehow he must have transferred his love for my grandmother into me. I hate him. WHAT LOVE FOR HER?? I've found out recently he beat her!!
After that whole conversation of trying to cover his tracks he, at the door, offered me money to sleep with him. Jesus. Needless to say, I said no. My god.
I kept this burning secret till just a few months ago. No one knew a thing. I had to see him every other week as well with my parents. Just visiting. I had to hug him goodbye. No one ever noticed his hand wandering to my ass.
I'm 17 right now, 18 next month. Almost 8 years. I am depressed, seriously and terribly. I had talked to my aunt about it. About all the self harm...then I was taken to the doctor's about depression. On the way home, my mother was blaming herself: 'I must be a terrible mother.' Then I said tearfully, 'It's not you. There are things I don't tell you.' It had occurred to her that no one becomes so seriously depressed and slashes at themselves with blades for nothing. She kept saying that no matter what, she was on my side, that she wouldn't tell anyone. 'No, not even Dad, not if you don't want me to.' I was set on that, that whatever I was about to tell her, she would not tell my dad. Then when I cried out on the verge of breaking, tears running down my face: 'You promise??' She knew then it was something big.
When we got home, she made me coffee and just looked at me with tears in her eyes. 'Who?" she asked. It was a croak. I could barely speak. A whisper of a croak: 'Granda.' Her mind seemed to stop for a minute, and then she held her face in her hands, looking up crying, 'I fucking knew it.' She hugged and kissed me, convincing me that Dad had to be told. Within hours my dad was told, family were being called, cops. I had to go to the police station. I was so afraid. On hearing my aunt was coming round, I was bloody terrified. I couldn't see her now with her knowing! I avoided her.
Now a month on, everyone knows. It wasn't just me. He had done things to others, but not on my terrible scale. I had to give a very long statement and we are now waiting for court. Something I am so afraid of. I'm going to have to repeat my story in front of my family.
I feel dead. I am depressed. I don't cry about what's happened anymore. I cry that I can't kill myself. I can't do it because I'll f**k up the family a bit more. I can't kill myself. I feel like I'm only here to put this bastard in jail. Two weeks till I'm 18. I know that all I'll be thinking is...8 years today. I shouldn't have let it happen. I want to be dead. You can tell me there is hope, that I can get help. I don't want it anymore. I just want to be dead. They say it will be letting him win, but why should I care if I'm not around to see him taste victory? He has been in my dreams six times since the secret was relinquished. I think about it every night.
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