Hello everyone,
I haven’t posted here for quite a while. I had to stop even reading here for a little bit… When I first started reading here, my emotions were all over the board,(pun intended!). I began having problems with anxiety, sleep, moodiness, snapping at people, ect…
A lot of posts were triggering things I hadn’t had to think about, for a long time. One, particular, “Taking Your Abusive Parents To Court”, really hit me hard. I have been wanting to post this ever since I read that thread.
I have been struggling with a enormous sense of guilt. I don’t think it belongs to me, but maybe it does, and if so, WHAT do I DO about it now?!!
When I was 31, I was contemplating a divorce. I had three small son’s, and I was damn near suicidal, I was so depressed. I had been with this man since I was 15, and I was torn apart, and terrified about the future, but I absolutely knew, I could not stay in this marriage.
I gotta tell you folks, I was as close to a break-down, as I think I’d ever been. I went to see a therapist for help and, as is the norm, he began by getting “Patient History” info.
Well when he heard my whole story, he said he was amazed that I could recite the whole thing so unemotionally. (But…hey…I’d gone over and over it, a gazillion times, on my own and with “helpers” of various kinds, trying to process it all, ya know. Frankly I was sick to death of talking about it, and blew through it just to move on.)
Then he started questioning me about an uncle who had molested me. He asked me to name other people said “uncle” had molested. There were so many, I just gave him like ten names. (Mostly my older sisters, and uncles’ own children.).
He then told me that I had to prosecute my uncle. Right THEN. He wanted me to call the DA right from his office! Said that he would make the call for me, if I didn’t feel I could do it! He even picked up the phone, poised to dail, as he spoke!
I was shaken to my core. My uncle was now a seventy-yr. old man with cirrhosis. (Not that his health problems bother me one bit. They do not!), but my aunt, (his wife), had just had surgery for lung cancer, (three quarters of one lung removed and a lobe from the other.), also, I love my (seven), cousins dearly, and I didn’t want the stress to kill their mom, and drag them all through the trial. Not to mention their kids,my sons, sisters and brothers, my mom ect…
The stress that this whole ordeal was going to cause was something I honestly did not believe I could survive, considering my already extremely shaky emotional state!
The therapist then said, that I would be responsible for HUNDREDS more sexual abuse victims, if I would not to do this! He reasoned that if I could name ten people, uncle had molested, and each of those people could name ten people…
Seemed like a rock & a hard place to me. People would get hurt if I did this, people would get hurt if I didn’t.
But I did not feel I would SURVIVE this!! (That did not seem to be a priority to my therapist, but it was to my ME!). I had small sons, who were going to need SO much from me during this divorce, (and after)!!!
I left that appointment literally shaking. I never went back.
I knew my uncle and his wife had, for many years, been foster parents. (They had a model home
. ) The Foster Care System is a pedophile’s dream. Custom made victims. You get to choose the age, sex, race, and if any, emotional/ physical problems, of the children you want to “care” for. ( Girls, ages five through thirteen, with sexual abuse histories? Yes Please! Cha-Ching! ).
Anyway, I heard they were out of the "Welfare Queen" business, and had been for years.
A year or so after that counseling session, I learned that they had, in fact, just acquired a ten yr. old girl. Rumor had it, that my uncle was already taking the child’s side in petty arguments with his wife, (alienation from “helper adults, classic pedophile strategy).
I had many sleepless nights wrestling with news. But in the cold light of dawn, I chose not get involved! I did not want to re-traumatize myself! I truly felt “barely sane”!!
The part of me that is still a somewhat human, caring, morally responsible woman, feels tremendous guilt, about these, (and other), choices I’ve made in the interest of self-preservation.
But above all I feel ANGER. Why, out of ALL the MANY, MANY, people who KNEW, (or should have known), including the state that supplied him with victims, WHY was it MY responsibility to “Do Something” about HIS behavior?!!!
I chose to save myself, in order that I might help my OWN children. I would have been no use to anyone, had I had to face the attack that surly would have come down on us, of this I am sure. “it is easier to grow a strong man, than it is to fix a broken one.”
My responsibility was to “Grow Strong Men”. In my opinion, I feel I did what I had to do, as a parent. Yet I am still so angry, that I have to feel like a callous animal, for having done so.
I faced my abuser a long time before, and outed him to everyone I knew. And NO ONE ELSE pressed charges either.
Why is that? Why did it have to be me?
Bless you if read through this!