Letter to my parents

This letter has either already arrived at my parents' address, or should arrive any time now:


Dear Mom and Dad,

This is probably the most difficult letter I've ever had to write. The subject matter is extremely painful for all of us. For years, I wanted to spare you that pain. I thought what I endured was my burden to bear alone. But when I finally told Sheldon my shameful secret, his immediate response was, "That explains so much." Suddenly things made sense to him. My regret is that I did not tell him sooner.

That is why I am writing this letter. My intent is not to cause you any more pain. I love both of you more than my feeble words could ever express. In no way do I blame you for something you had no way of knowing. However, you as my parents deserve to know the truth.

There is no easy way to say this, no gentle way to lead up to what Sheldon already told you on the phone. Without going into gory details, Damien began molesting me when I was 13, and the sexual abuse continued for years, escalating in severity. What he did meets the commonly accepted definition of incest ("sexual contact between those so closely related that it would be illegal for them to marry") and, although I have no memory of actual intercourse occurring, it meets the newly accepted Justice Dept. definition of rape ("penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim")

Those words are painful to read, I know. I wish they weren't true; I wish none of it had happened. It has been terribly anguishing for me to deal with the ugliness and shame of it all.

I'm sure this raises many questions for you. Why did I let it happen? Why didn't I tell? Why didn't I make Damien stop? Why did I act, all these years, as if nothing was wrong?

Remember when my aunts feared, because of how compliant I was with Damien, that I would eventually fall under the spell of some man, in such bondage that I would do his every bidding, even if I knew it was wrong? Their fears proved correct, only it happened much sooner, and it was with Damien. By the time I was 13, he could get me to do almost anything. It's no secret he could be tyrant-like. Even as a child, he wanted to be world dictator. He found in me an all too easy subject to exert power over and to control. That's the essence of sexual abuse -- it's far more about power and control than it is about sex.

The way I attempted to cope while it was happening was to pretend it away and refuse to think about it. It was as if I was in an unrelenting fog. I became a master at denial. In the place of the truth, I created a fantasy world, wherein my life wasn't filled with shame and despair; my brother wasn't sexually abusing me or pressuring me to read porn, drink alcohol and take drugs; instead, he was World's Best Big Brother, wonderfully protective. The truth -- that the brother I so loved and admired would hurt and betray me in such vile ways -- was something I couldn't bear.

So I put my dark secret in a box, locked and sealed it, and buried it as deeply as I could. Unfortunately, the toxic slime that kept oozing out of that box poisoned every aspect of my life, not just during those awful years, but all the years since then.

It was incredibly difficult, but I finally managed to get Damien to stop, to promise to leave me alone, to stop trying to convince me that there was nothing wrong with an incestuous relationship other than my unwillingness to submit to him. Although he never asked, I forgave him. It was over and done with, and I tried to leave it in the past. In those days, I didn't completely understand forgiveness. I thought it meant reconciliation and restoration as well, and that I had no right to treat him any differently than if the years of sexual abuse had never happened.

Up until 2009, I had told only one other person, a therapist that I saw in college. She was no help whatsoever. I left and never returned. When I began seeing Randy, my current therapist, it took me months to finally tell him what I referred to as my "deepest darkest secret". Actually I couldn't even get the words out at first. He had to say them for me. It didn't come as a shock to him; the red flags were all there.

The ways I coped back when I was 13 -- the things I did to prevent going insane or being plunged into even darker despair -- helped me survive. But they aren't healthy ways of coping with life over the long haul. They aren't how God intends for anyone to live.

What we have been doing in therapy is, in many respects, like cleaning out old, festering wounds that should have been treated decades ago. In addition, we are exposing the lies that have kept me bound most of my life, and we are replacing them with truth. A friend of mine describes this as "soul surgery". Eventually all will be repaired and stitched up, every gaping hole mended, every wound cleaned and healed.

More than ever before, I believe in a redemptive God. What men meant for evil, God will use for good. God can redeem anything, even this.

Please know that, no matter what -- past, present or future -- I love both of you very much. I am thankful beyond words that God blessed me with such wonderful parents.

I love you!
Annie


The letter does contain a partial truth...or partial lie, depending on one's perspective. I don't blame my mother in the sense that I believe she would have prevented or stopped the incest had she known. But I do blame her for creating a family environment that allowed incest to flourish for years.


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Domestic Abuse & the Church

If you are at all involved in a church, please read this and pass it on to the leadership.


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Protective or controlling?

I completely bought into my mother's stories, that became family lore, of how wonderfully protective my older brother was of me.

Sheldon was the first to burst my bubble. For years, whenever I would tell some tale of supposed protectiveness, he would say, "You'd get angry if I did that." His words baffled and annoyed me. I thought it was a lame excuse on his part for not being protective -- by blaming it on me.

Finally, after I'd been in therapy for awhile, Sheldon spelled it out for me: "Damien was not being protective; he was being controlling." He re-interpreted some of my favorite stories in that light. It made sense.

Randy agreed. He even went further. "He didn't protect you from himself. In addition, when he should have been protecting you as an older brother, he insisted on getting you involved in porn, cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs." He told me a story of an older sibling protecting him when they were in their teens as a way of offering contrast.

It was painful to give up that nice fantasy.

Recently, I had to face the same truth about my mother. She prides herself in her "over-protectiveness" of us. It finally dawned on me that each example of that involved her not allowing us to go places or do things, often because she would worry. It seemed more about protecting herself from worry. But it's not just that...every instance involved her controlling us, especially me.

She didn't protect me from my older brother's bullying, even the times she observed it directly. She didn't protect me from being controlled by him. When I was bullied and teased at school, no motherly protective instinct kicked in; instead, she found it either amusing or too trivial to bother with.

Worst of all, she had no qualms about sending me back to live in the same apartment building as the men who raped me when I was 23. It didn't trouble her at all that every time I looked out my window or walked to and from my apartment, the apartment where I'd been raped stared me in the face. She didn't care that my rapists lived so close to me, that we couldn't help seeing each other, running into each other at the mailbox or in the laundry room. In her defense, maybe she thought they had lost interest in me after raping me and thus no longer posed a threat...or maybe she naively thought they only raped women they lured into their apartment. But she saw no need to protect me from the anguish of seeing them again.

Years later, when I asked her whether she worried about me living there, she waved her hand dismissively. She claimed she thought the older one had left immediately, rather than a few weeks later. She wasn't at all worried about the younger one. Why was I making such a big deal about it? After all, they left me pretty much alone after the rape.

Protective? No. Controlling? Yes.

Not that long ago, she was telling some stories from my childhood. "I was so protective!" she said. "People always said I was over-protective!" Then she told me about all the things she didn't let us do...normal kid stuff that, as a parent, I delighted in letting my kids do. I wanted them to experience exuberant play, even if it meant getting dirty, some messes, a few skinned knees, and a few rips in their jeans. My face must have betrayed my feelings because my mother said defensively, "I did let you talk in your rooms!"

Oh, wow, I guess she wasn't a complete tyrant then!