Child Abuse Story From LaTonya
by LaTonya
(Indiana, USA)
I am an incest survivor. My life drastically changed when I was thirteen years old. I was sexually molested by my father for close to four years.
The first year of abuse, I questioned God's friendship with me. Why was this happening to me? Why did God allow this to happen to me? By the second year I still held out hope that God had not forsaken me and that someone was going to find out what my father was doing to me week after week.
No one did though, I think in part because I did such a good job hiding what I was going through. Why not hide it? With the threats I received from him on a weekly basis, I was just too afraid to tell. Either it was physical threat like pushing my head under my bath water. Or, the verbal threat of "you will never see your mother and brother again because the (Dept. of Children and Family Services) will take you away from them. I loved my mother and brother and didn't want to be taken away from them.
Hiding it meant I still hung out with friends, I did my school work, and participated in track. As I look back on that time though, I realize had it not been for a sense of normalcy in my life, I would have literally gone crazy. I thought about committing suicide on a number of occasions but could not bring myself to do it.
By my senior year I thought there was a light at the end of the tunnel by me going off to college. I just couldn't cope anymore with this BIG SECRET I had been keeping for so long. I was going to run away but instead I ended up blurting everything out to my mother's best friend when she came over one day. My mom was gone and my father was somewhere in the house. At first she was shocked and didn't say a word. Eventually, her shock wore off and she confronted my father. I thought that would be the end of things, especially when she told my uncle. Oh! I forgot to mention that my father was a teacher and my uncle head of human resource for the school district. It wasn't the end...only a delay because my uncle and mother's best friend hatched a plan for my father to get out of town instead of reporting it. He didn't leave because I told him not to. My mother and brother were so dependent on him. They needed him not I and I made that clear to him. He said he'd never touch me again but that lasted for only a few months.
I had nothing to lose now...two other adults knew so I decided to tell my mother. I just told her "mom dad has been molesting me." She immediately called me a liar and couldn't believe I would say that about him. I was hurt and locked myself in my room. I remember hearing my parents talking loudly but never knew what was said. By the time I came out of my room he was gone. My mother and I didn't talk that night. The next day we received a visit from the CFS. Turns out my mother believed me but the call didn't come from her, instead it came from my grandmother in Florida. My mom shared with my grandmother what was going on. It took my grandmother to stand up for me. Unfortunately, I was so afraid of being apart from my mother and brother that I didn't talk. Not to mention, it's taboo in the African American community to "air your dirty laundry" in public. I never talked so the case was "unfounded." I can say that my father never touched me again after that.
To this day I think of how things would have been if I just talked. I think about how I allowed my "biological" as I call him now to live his life as if he did nothing wrong. To know that there were adults who felt it was more important to protect him than me. I also wonder if he did this to anyone else.
At the beginning of this, I mentioned that I questioned whether God still cared for me I realize that HE never stopped caring for me. How do I know? Well, because I'm here. I am a wife, a mother, and an overall good person. Do I still have my struggles? Yes!! Like when the fear immobilizes my body so that I just can't get out of bed. Or, I cry and I don't know why. Or, when cases of sexual abuse are discussed in the news or they are part of a television show that it breaks me down so I can't function for a while. Guess what though I don't let any of that keep me down. I get right back up and keep moving because if I don't, then my biological wins. That's not happening!!!!
Thank you for allowing me to tell my story. It's extremely important to me that other African American girls/women know that it's okay to let it out. That's why I decided to reveal what happened to me in a more "public" way.
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