Child Abuse Story From Sarah

by Sarah
(Ireland)

Unfortunately, I have been the victim to 3 people who have sexually abused me, beginning from when I was only 4 when I didn't even understand what it all meant.

I was so young, I barely even remember how it all began, yet somehow i remember the later incidents of it. He was my cousin, 10 years my senior, whom I trusted. I don't know why he did it to me and I guess I never will. He used to tell me sick stories of what older men used to do to younger girls and demonstrate them on me, touching me where the people in his made up stories were supposedly touched etc. He told me doing those things were wrong, and i agreed with him, copying his views, but he never told me how wrong the things he were doing were.

This went on for quite sometime until the day he was caught. He told me not to tell, and since my brother had always told me not to be a rat, i assumed it was no different in this case. I told nobody. However, my mum walked in one day and caught him fingering me under the blankets on my floor while I was playing my PS1.

She asked me had he done it before, I covered for him. I said no. She left it go at that.

I didn't realise how much it had affected me until I was older, when it happened again a month after my dad died at a young 13 years of age. He trapped me in a closet and also fingered me. Luckily our youth leader came searching for us, so I wasn't raped that day.

Everyone was puzzled as to why I couldn't talk that day. I didn't say a word. I wouldn't eat, i wouldn't drink, i wouldn't do anything - simply because it was my best friends ex boyfriend and i couldn't keep the guilt in simply because there was a time i had fancied him. He didn't fancy me then though. I didn't understand why he did it to me. I kept telling him to stop. He didn't listen.

With that incident over, the final incident happened with a shopkeeper i did work with. A good friend of mine worked with me at the time, when I was 15, she 14.

The shopkeeper was new in our neighbourhood from Pakistan. We felt sorry for him because he wasn't very well accepted in our neighbourhood because of his nationality. Therefore, we agreed to go to his house so he could show us things from Pakistan, his home country.

He did it in a subtle but assertive way, starting off by simply sitting us down on the opposite couch offering us wine. We rejected his offer. He then showed us around the house. My friend and I were skeptical at this point and started to fret. We held each others hand unknown to him. He emphasised the bedrooms, making us more nervous and then brought us downstairs. He saw our unwilling attitudes and this dismayed him. He turned on the TV. He put on some program with belly dancers etc and asked us to imitate them, again, we declined.

With this he called me into the kitchen, reluctantly i left the sitting room and entered the kitchen after him, unaware he left my friend locked in that room. It was there it happened. My friend started to cry. I told him she felt sick and promised to come back another time. He had already had his way with me, kissing me, touching my breasts and fingering me, but he hadn't raped me yet and i was only praying it wouldn't happen. I forcefully freed myself from his clasp and he released my friend on the condition we wouldn't tell and would meet him at 8pm at the shop that evening.

We balled our eyes out as soon as we got out. An old lady stopped to ask what was wrong but we said we weren't allowed to tell and ran on as quickly as we could to our neighbours house. FInally safety. I was so glad to be given a genuine hug from them as we told our stories in a much greater length than here.

I have only included the basic details, but these horrific incidences will stay with me all my days.

Luckily, the shopkeeper was prosecuted for the things mentioned here and many more unmentioned, and that has helped set my mind at ease.

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