Tag: abuse

  • Total Contradictions…

    There is a difference between suspecting something and actually knowing or reading in plain English what you feared or intuitively felt…but once you read it it doesn’t go away.

    It nestles up closely with the feelings and they become one.

    The truths click together like a magnet and you can’t force them apart. 

    What I now know is that the Christian neighbors who toot their high moral and high value ways are not able to walk the walk of morals and values. 

    Adults in my childhood world crumbled and their character turned to ash…this I felt about 6 years ago… without proof I had felt deep to my bones that they knew and did nothing.  They were no better than my mother.

    Jim Torola’s blog, has an interesting view of the members of the FALC and child sexual abuse, and he shows that my family and neighbors are not unusual, but perhaps this is an ongoing practice, handed down from generation to generation whose legacy are tainted with abuse. http://jimtorola.typepad.com/blog/

    What I too find so telling is the longevity and the multiple families who happened to all deal the same way, like there is an unwritten or unspoken rule, just a knowing…keep it quiet and away from the hands of the police.

    Detective Tom Rosemurgy speaks of what makes his job of getting the pedophiles off the street so difficult.

    “…without somebody with first hand knowledge (a victim) stepping up first, my hands are tied.  Most folks in (or out) of the church aren't too willing or eager to speak on such matters.  And If I try to start there, more often than not, the victims are taken care of with threats before I can speak with them.  I am always more satisfied with results when I can speak to a victim before the predator or the predator's family knows I am out and about.”

    The last line is so haunting…

    It seems literally a miracle that a child would step up and speak out when the whole family and church are trying to keep this away from the police.

    Hear that, they are trying to keep this info away from the law.  And in my case, oh my, did they do a good job.  For forty year they dodged the law.

    Now tell me who all should be sitting in jail???

    The law is simply not the normal course of action for sexual abuse within the FALC.  And it hasn’t been for years and years…. 

    I know this, for No one called the police.  NO One….come on people what is up with that???

    They will use the law for car wrecks, breaking and entering of their homes, but no report is written up when the children are broken into and wrecked, NO one calls the police.

    Am I the only one who can see the insanity of this?

    In my little corner of the world, I would have presumed many things about the good people of my church, I had them with a rock solid moral compasses, with values that were of a higher standard than the run of the mill criminal, now I am no longer sure as to who they are.

    What does it say about you if you are not sharing information about criminal sexual conduct against a child, be it your child or the neighbor’s child, be it a Christian or non believer?  What does it say about your moral compass if you willingly keep this away from the hands of the law???

    Are you not aiding and abetting criminals?

    I have made a general sweep of the congregation of the FALC as being co-conspirators for pedophiles. How they are knowingly hiding them among their pews…by NOT going to the police.  And it wasn't just my family, it is many families through the ages. 

    I do know and have known that the major factor in these sex rings is that the predator is a family member and the families are ‘in good standing’ among the church members and the church is one of ‘high morals and high values’ and this would not sit well to uncover pedophiles within.

    What I had said in the very beginning of this was that I trusted a whore.  She didn’t act or portray anything else.  She was a whore, charged for sex as whore does, but she wasn’t sitting in church on Sunday proclaiming her piety.

    What totally blows my mind is that people who sit in church on Sundays, and then act like criminals.  Who are you? 

    I love ducks that act like a duck, walk like a duck and quack like a duck.

    Which is why I sought out nature… nature always was what you seen….a tree remained a tree no matter what time of the day or day in the week it stayed the same when I looked at it.  I loved its stability…The FALC and its members are total contradictions…  

     IMG_6831

  • Normal Results.

    “What is your motive for Telling…” is a phrase that lends it self to much debate.  The simple fact that a child is then put in a position of feeling ‘bad’ for squealing stops many from coming forth.

     No one wants to be a squealer.

    Squealing is seen and incurred as to being weak or bad and that you should not say anything, IF you don’t have anything kind to say…

    It is seen as soiling someone’s reputation. 

    How is it that the squealer is the one who is in charge of that?  Surely it wasn’t the little girl’s fault that in Telling on Ray, he would then be made to ‘look bad’. 

    He was bad each moment he forcibly made a girl touch him.

    She was telling to stop an action, she wasn’t concerned how it looks or how it would fit into others lives.  She just wanted it to stop. 

    In order for things to stop, reputations will change color, past ideals of a person will take on a new tone, lives and relationships will hang in the balance, things will not go on as “Normal”.

    For now an abnormal behavior has entered in.

    Insanity ensues if you continue to act normal when abnormal walks and talks in your world and you don’t tell or pay attention to it, to see it like it is. 

    It seems preposterous that you would carry on life as usual with this oddity in your midst, that you would pretend to pretend to pretend that there is nothing amiss, that you would try harder to be normal instead of addressing the abnormal behavior.

    But take it from me, we do.

    In fact, in home this was not abnormal, but normal.  I come from a long line of sexual abuse…and the way they treated it was to do nothing, but carry on as usual.

    When the adults in my childhood life didn’t see abnormal, I then became abnormal.  I had to become abnormal to fit in.

    What I had thought was that only our home acted abnormal to normal abuse, but come to find out there is a sea of people willing to sweep abnormal under the rug to keep up with their normal lives, normal religions, normal families, normal marriages, normal relationships.

    It isn’t abuse that is the problem, but holding on to normal.

    Holding on to normal, all will discount, overlook, and under react in order to keep their own normal lives. 

    What is so incredulous to me is that they hang on to normal in their minds only.  For abnormal has now come to live with them and the longer they don’t see abnormal, the more abnormal becomes their family.

    I lived and learned that abnormal was the normal way to be.

    How grateful and blessed I am, that I was finally able to see that what I had stood for and championed was not normal.  What a gift to see my abnormalities.

    Most are not given this awareness.  I am speaking out and shouting out and pointing out what others are failing to see.

    Since I lived for 46 years believing I had a ‘normal’ family but that I was abnormal, I want to share my experience.  I am not a squealer, but a person who is telling to help stop abuse…for people to start seeing that what they think or want to believe is normal is so abnormal.

     Being raised in abnormal it is hard to know normal.

    Sometimes doing the complete opposite of what you were taught will bring in normal results. 

     

     

     

  • Who Knew and Turned Away.

    The evidence report adds credence to my journey, it gives supporting evidence, names, locations, and sets the tone or energy of what I felt towards my father.   It takes this inner feeling that I had and makes it public knowledge.

    This public knowledge sits so heavily upon me, for years I watched and waited for a reaction that would tell me that others seen my father as Not Normal, yet he was always treated normally, so my feelings that he wasn’t right went unsubstantiated. 

    I had to look up Unsubstantiated.

    1.             Unsubstantiated means, unverified: not proven factually.

    Synonyms: unconfirmed, unproven, unsupported, uncorroborated

    The greatest tragedy is that I waited for an adult or any person to verify that what I felt about my father was true.  That my terror feelings were spot on, and yet no one led on to what they knew or suspected.

    I was left alone unsupported with this knowledge and my body refused to let go of.

    I am thinking what is a deeper wound than the abuse itself is to then have your feelings of the event go unconfirmed.

    No one wanted to corroborate what I had experienced and what fills my body with incredulousness is that I now have facts, verifiable facts, and supported data showing that they knew, but kept this information from me. 

    When I need an adult the most, they failed to support me.

    Here is what I read yesterday…

    “Jenich spoke with Marvin Heinonen, retired Houghton County Protective Services Manager.  Marvin informed myself that indeed Ray Huhta has been under suspicion for at least THIRTY years for sexual assaulting his own children and most of the young girls in the Saint Mary’s Location neighborhood north of Hancock.”

    (a paragraph has info on a victim, so I am excluding it)

    “Marvin Heinonen said back then and even into the later years when Ray Huhta was suspected of molesting girls, there seemed to be a cover up all the time, meaning people in the church and family members would not believe that Ray Huhta could be doing this.  Marvin said the information kept resurfacing for years that Ray Huhta is a pedophile, molesting his girls…”

    One victim wrote in her statement about her family contacting Peter Torola of the Apostolic Luthern Church that she was molested by Ray Huhta. She recalls Torola’s response to her, “What is your motive in telling on Ray Huhta?”  She also stated that three more victims approached minister Pete Torola after she left the area and nothing was done.

    Another victim said her parents confronted Ray and he denied the whole time, from that point on her family’s children were forbidden to go to the Huhta house.

    What was more horrifying to learn so many years ago, was not only did I have to find peace with having a pedophile for a father, but I also learned that so many knew and did nothing.  That 30 years ago he was suspected and the girls told to stay away…

    And some knew 40 years back and at the time wanted to know the ‘motive’ for telling on Ray. Telling on Ray.  Really?

    Imagine that?  Like we are gossips?… And how telling is it that Pete Torola didn’t disbelieve it, he just wondered about the motive for telling.

    Perhaps he had a motive to keep it silent…for a child’s only motive is for you all to see what we see, for you to change your ‘normal’ definition to not normal.

    I guess I wasn’t prepared to hear the details of the little girls, and had braced myself,  but I hadn’t expected the stories held bits and pieces of how uninterested the adults were about the children in the Huhta house.

    I am not meaning to lessen the girls in my neighborhood who were abused by my father, but what stands out is that their parents warned them away from our home, but no one came and took us out.

    I have six sisters…plus eight brothers, and we lived with the Pedophile and his wife. That was our only home.

    We were left there knowingly.

    Somehow, I would feel slightly better if no one knew…if we had gone underneath the radar, an incest nest undetected, but instead it was operating in full plain view and many just turned their heads away from the Huhta children living within.

    What does a person do with this information?

    How do your process the minister’s neglect or Protective Services suspecting but without follow through or neighbors keeping their children away with no heed to us living full time with a ‘suspected’ pedophile. 

    Surely these are actions of an enemy and not of a friend.

    I am not bitter or angry, but I am wise and now validated, vindicated…but it is a hollow victory.

    You find out no one was standing for you…you never mattered enough.

    The main reason I am working with Tom Rosemurgy, is I refuse to be one of the adults who knew and turned away…

     

  • Who is Behaving Badly?

    What stayed with me is how off balance the justice system is where the victims get a ‘court appointed attorney’ called prosecutor and the perpetrators get the option to pay for a high powered expensive, save your ass lawyer.

    How is it that the system was set up this way, where each victim is already without options before the trial even begins?

    As I read through my father’s evidence file, everything was off…except the girl’s reports.  They were right on.

    What was off was that in the history of the little girls stories, it was almost always noted, that an adult knew, was in the room or had been told, but not believed. 

    How off is that? 

    The children had been talking, telling and no one was listening. Then, a Detective arrives in our home, we give once again our stories add a touch of hope that this time, the Bad Man will get punished…and nothing bad happens to him and our faith and hope are dashed once again.

    He wins, he carries on as if 'nothing bad' has happened.

    I hadn’t truly considered the volume of abuse, while I had knew there were many…many seems so oblique. 

    But when you read names and descriptions and locations and what my father is wearing, where he is sitting and then how he ensnares a little girl to sit with him in his kindness and laid back ways and then how strong he becomes in keeping them upon his lap…Forcible Contact on his penis, it sharpens the focus and makes him even more a pedophile if that is possible.

    My friends wrote, and theirs were not table abuse if you will, but mentioned instead tents and beds…rape and masturbation… I can see his technique changed over time, perhaps age or laziness or just the threat of being caught increased…

    My friend’s stories match my fragmented memories of sneaking out of his bed…in terror of waking him.  I now have collaborating evidence to my body’s feelings of him.

    Nothing is off in their stories, nothing doesn’t make sense, all are literal confirmations of who my father is.  They all add up to the same definition, and yet at the end of his trial he walks free.

    It would seem with the volume of evidence remembered, the outcome would have gone better for us, but we didn’t know who we were entrusting our stories to.

    Doug Edwards Prosecuting Attorney was suppose to serve up our justice, but he didn’t allow most of us into the courtroom, our stories lay without a serving of justice, just tucked into a file to remain in the dark.

    How was justice any different than the church’s blessing and forgiving and wanting us to forget?

    It seems there is a very off pattern here, children speaking and the forces that be or the higher powers, neglecting to do their part.

     What is and always has been consistent over the 40 years of this abusive reign my father has been on, is that the children are the only ones doing their part.

    Each time they are asked they tell the truth.

    Each time they are asked they put hope in the abuse ending.

    Each time they tell they are once again disappointed.

     Imagine, the adults who knew and the vast intersections in the community? 

    Wife, mother, neighborhood parents, minister and socical services and then finally the law.

    And then imagine when the law sets him free what we are left with?

    What I know for sure it wasn’t for the lack of evidence or the lack of victims speaking out or the lack of remembering or recalling correctly…the one main source of his freedom is the reactions from all the adults who were informed of his behaviors.

    And I believe each adult had their own personal reasons, their own personal stories of pride and friendship…of fear of what this will do in their own lives by facing this morsel of truth full on.

    It had very little to do with Ray Huhta.

    For anyone with nothing to lose would read these reports and be incensed and filled with the off color of Ray and the repeated and long suffering of abuse of the girls.

    You would have to be legally blind and totally incompetent to not get it. 

    No one reading this could possibly believe that he wasn’t a serial abuser, a pedophile with long standing reputation, for the birth dates of the oldest victim is in the 1950’s to the youngest…in the late 1990’s.

    What sits with me the most is again that it isn’t that we need to have more victims come forth, we need to have more victim rights, holding more adults accountable for dropping the ball.

    Why is Doug Edwards not reprimanded for this?

    Why wasn't the Social Service Man, Marv Heinonen not taken to task for knowing for over 30 years and doing nothing?

    Why wasn’t the Minister, Pete Torola not held accountable for knowing that children were being abuse and he did nothing?  (yes I get it, he is dead. But he was quite alive back in my childhood when my friends told him…)

    Why are we allowing adults behaving badly?  What is so odd is not only is my father way out of line on treatment to children, but then are the rest who knew and did a feeble at best attempt to shut him down.

    Imagine, HE is a FREE Man.  He had lots of help in order to remain free up against so much evidence.  He had lots and lots of help!

    Honest!  Read these stories and you would shudder to think he is free, living in Texas, has access to his newest little great -granddaughter and has full approval by his daughter and his grandson to have a ‘relationship’ with her.

     Again, adults behaving badly!

    Not JUST him, all who are still blindly and without comprehension of the danger they are willingly allowing his latest victim, his 2000 model from walking down my same road.  Sure, it may not be rape today or even masturbation, perhaps she will get off lightly with just forcible contact of her private parts while her father and grandmother visit with him, like there is nothing wrong. 

    Who is behaving badly?

  • Reacted Like Me.

    Today I sat in the office of Detective Tom Rosemurgy, (Rosie to his friends) and we talked about sexual abuse.  Of new information and suspected abusers and how we can help victims share their story and how without their stories, the wheels of justice will not begin turning…and we talked about my father's case and how peculiar it seemed.

    He had my father’s file on his desk or most of it… and inside where pages of little girls stories, and the man they described fits my terror.

    My feelings match their pictures and they are talking about my father.

    I didn’t read this file until a few minutes ago.  

    It is odd to read them, knowing the girls, the house and the visuals they painted, all correctly describing our childhood home, the chairs, the places and clothing my father wore, and then the awful acts he subjected these little girls to.  Years worth of criminal sexual assaults rained upon the neighborhood girls, one after another, year after year, and what is so striking are the adults who know this all along.

    Insane.  Totally criminally INSANE!  

    What strikes me so blatantly horrific is the details of the girls and the knowing of the adults, and the longevity of his run, and then after all these DETAILS and TRUTH are given over to the Detective, the prosecutor who at the time was a member of the FALC, he doesn’t use their cases???

    OH MY GOD does this infuriorate me.

    It is like all these little girls carry my memories and they are left sitting on paper and only one little girl’s makes it to the court of the land. 

    IT is criminal what this prosecutor did to each girl who wrote her memories down.  He should be sitting in jail with Ray Huhta.  And instead both are walking around free as the breeze…while the little girls are left to heal and deal the best we can.

    He raped, masturbated, fondled and had them fondle, he rubbed and touched their privates and them do the same to him…FOR over 35 years.  And when the detective gathers this information, the prosecutor uses just one little girls???

    What in the hell is up with that???

    Here are some of the accounts…just random sentences…fragments of their childhood experiences with my father.

    Chair that spun around,

    Back to microwave,

    Long johns,

    Red nylon long johns,

    Rocking chair by heatrola stove,

    Nice and friendly,

    Easy going,

    Strong,

    Kept my hand on penis,

    Rubbing my privates,

    Won’t let me off his lap,

    Wife in kitchen,

    Other children in room,

    Sunday dinners,

    Father across talking,

    Forced hand on penis,

    Masturbating,

    Raping,

    Wife at church,

    In his bed,

    Wife at hospital having baby,

    Tent with friend,

    Pulling my pants down,

    Friends mother knew,

    Minister told, not believed,

    Child protective services…he’s been under suspicion for 30 years.  Hide in bushes attempt to catch Ray in the act of abusing.

    It is all like a mad mad dream where nothing makes sense and the senseless wins.

    How the voices are ringing out clear as a bell as to who he is and what he has done over 35 years and yet it falls once again upon an adult who acts poorly, the prosecutor so totally dropped the ball on this, and you have to wonder why? 

    To think Ray only served a few weeks in jail is beyond what I can comprehend. And what startles me is that my mother read these same stories and at the end of his trial she drove him to Texas.  Imagine???  How can you read these and not react in revolt or in horror.

    The cry should have been to do what ever it takes to keep him locked up and instead it seemed that so many wanted him free. 

    Our voices on paper meant nothing. 

    Not sure if our trial, (for it seemed like it was a trial for all the girls who wrote a statement,) was unique or is this typical?

    Somehow the response to the words written by the girls seems to not bring forth the action necessary or one that fit the words.  It just seems all wrong.

    The words that should have adults springing into action and becoming fully enraged and setting about to seek justice, did the opposite.

    No real attempt was made or so it seems, just the very bare minimum required, the least of the least…and yet the stories are detailed and stretch over so many years.

    I just don’t get it. 

    Yet, while I always was accused of over reacting, I believe even I under reacted.

    Hindsight it 20/20…and I am not sure I could have convinced not only the prosecutor, my brother and the rest of the family, but it just seems that I missed calculated the amount of repeated abuse heaped on one child.  It would be bad enough if one girl had one incident, but it seems that most had years of abuse. 

    And he gets a few weeks in jail…

    What strikes me the most now, is that for years now I have been criticized for being so dramatic, for over reacting, for not letting it go, etc.  And all I can say is that I certainly wish that others reacted like me.

     

  • Help not Hurt

    “The question is not, “Can you make a difference?” You already do make a difference.  It’s just a matter of what kind of difference you want to make during your life on this planet.”  Julia Butterfly Hill

    I hadn’t considered that we are all making a difference; it just may not be the kind of difference that will impact another’s life in a positive manner.

    For each thing we do or even what we don’t do matters to someone.

    Just how or who it helps is the difference.

    While taking actions to speak the truth about abuse I am making a difference. And what kind of difference it will make in the lives of pedophiles will be different than how it will affect the lives of children.

    In the past my silence made a difference…it allowed my father to continue abusing. 

    Giving my report of my childhood which lacked memories or odd memories standing out, and how my body feared him, helped bring him to the court of the land.

    My viewpoint of him made a difference, albeit 40 years after the crime.  My report validated the little girl’s experience six years ago…together our stories made a difference to each other.

    The Detective shared with me that he honors and truly understands anonymous reports, how it may be hard for victims to stand tall and share their story.  I get it now too.

    My view of anonymous changed. 

    Anonymous reporting of abuse is vastly different than anonymous attacks.  Both make a difference in completely different ways. 

    Anonymously helping feels so much better than anonymously attacking. 

    There is room for anonymous when it’s used to help not hurt.

     

     

  • Yours to decide, always.

    I talked to the Detective today and it was very enlightening.

    He is willing to help us help the children by giving us information that will educate us of the process. We know what abuse is, but not all levels and kinds, but we we want to stop it, but we don't know how to stop it… who to report, how to report or what to report. What is applicable, what is not, what is too old etc. 

    His focus is the victims and wants all to know that no matter if you want to report anonymously or not, he welcomes your story. 

    He and I both feel that the beginning of the healing process is to speak out, no matter how long ago your abuse happened, it will break the bond of silence.  He needs your help to help the children.

    His job is to separate the abusers from the children and in order to do this he must have courageous victims willing to share their experiences.

    What I believe most victims feel is that they will be met with the same kinds of disbelief or non-action that they have met thus far.  However, talking to him showed me that they listen and not only listen but they believe in you.

    In just telling your story you will feel so much better. 

    Tom Rosemurgy is willing to take your calls, to answer your emails or receive your letters.

    What I want most is for you who have been abused to have access to someone who will hear you.

    trosemurgy@houghtonsheriff.com  Is his email address.

    Or you can write him at,

     403 Houghton Ave.  

    Houghton MI 49931

    You don’t’ have to leave your name, but please leave your story.  You have been carrying it too long; it is time to let it down, to hand it over to someone who can carry it for you.

    Your power is regained in your voice.

    I am here and will help anyone who has a story to tell.

    The truth needs to come forth, for while it is kept quiet there are children in danger.

    I know our voices will make a difference in the life of some child.

    I send you courage and strength…I cheer you on as you wrestle with the decision to speak now or remain silent, and the choice is yours to decide, always.

     

     

  • My eyes are on Healing

    Yesterday as I listened to Oprah speak of how her Audience over the years allowed and cheered her to be her authentic self, it also enabled her to inspire us to be more ourselves. As she opened up and shared her life with us, we also opened up and shared ours.

    There is this open swinging space that if you stand in your truth, those around you will do the same…and it works the opposite too, if you hide, they hide.

    She spoke of how she learned from sexual abusers about the grooming process and how they lure you into trusting them…and she realized, “It wasn’t my fault.” 

    This wisdom she passed on.  Her one regret was that she wasn’t able to shine a big enough light upon sexual abuse, but that she did what she could over the years. 

    I am thinking we can each take on this task.

    On a much smaller scale the blogs are doing the same…we are trying to shine a light of truth upon an issue that has affected our lives deeply and we know is still going on. 

    Just like her, we are using our voices the best way we can.

    We are sharing our truths, our pain, our abuse, and we are sharing what we discovered, what we learned and how we see things.  

    As more blogs come forth and more people begin the dialogue, change will happen.  Minds will open; questions will be asked…the tides will turn. 

    We will go from hiding skeletons to displaying our family wounds in order to heal.  Hiding isn’t healing.

    The difference it has made to have one other family come out and share their truths is huge.  Its impact will be felt far and wide…the ripple affects will reach places we can’t even begin to imagine. 

    To not be the only family speaking out…means we are not alone. 

    I know the cost of speaking your truth and I know its rewards…and more importantly, I know the cost of silence.

    Martha Beck writes about Heroes and Fear in Oprah’s Magazine this month.

    “Heroes aren’t free from fear; they’re just so focused on a worthy goal that they feel they can’t turn back.  Most of humankind’s great achievements – the sorts of things that make us say, “Oh, Wow!” – were accomplished by people who were muttering, “OH Shit!”  Heroes don’t feel special, just dogged.  They walk their scary paths with shaky knees and trembling hands. One shaky step at a time.”

    Jim is a Hero!

    Carl is a Hero!

    Judy and Erin…Heroines!

    Here is another part of her fear article that I like.

    “When you shoot,” my friend Jim, a hockey player, once told me, “you never want to look at the goalie. Look at the space around him. Where your eyes go, the puck goes.”  A white water kayaker warned me, “Look at the water, not the rocks. Where your eyes go, the boat goes.”  My riding instructor shouted, “Look where you want to go, not where you don’t.  Where the eyes go, the horse goes.”

    “Got it?  Where your attention goes, our lives go. As you take each step, be peripherally aware of the dangers, but glue your attention to the path between them.”

    I love Martha’s wisdom.

    My eyes are on healing…

  • Reasons to Spin

    While dialoguing in the comment section on the Post, “Where Your Best Interest Lies” a few posts back, I am feeling like I am a reporter trying to get my story out and they are working like crazy Spin Doctors or the Public Relations Department of the FALC to prevent that from happening. 

    They are trying so hard to convince me it wasn’t their ‘faith’ or the church or its members or any of that religious stuff, and that my abuse stands alone, like a rogue virus.

    I feel people are working so hard to spin my story off into this lonely little section called abuse where religion never touched it, blessed it or had ANY thing to do with my abuse. 

    There is abuse, AND there is religion and never shall the two touch each other.

    It is sounding like a political debate where they want there to be two sides. 

    And I am here to tell you in my experience, Religion had a huge part in keeping abuse in my family home.  It did not stay there on its own and without the knowledge of the church.

    There is no way I can speak of my abuse without including the church. 

    In fact, if I had good faith in the forgiveness of sins, I could have had a normal dad.

    If I had good faith in the power of the forgiveness of sins, the sins would be washed away never to be heard from again…

    Maybe you all want to blame my weak faith on the fact that my father kept abusing little girls.  For damn it IF only I could have believed more deeply he could be washed whiter than snow and not hurt one more little girl.

    Do any of you know what it is like to call your childhood friends, now 40 years later and say, “I wish you would not have been my friend, for honey it cost you way too much.”

    Have you?

    Do you know that I recall one bright memory of me being on a huge white pole swing in our yard on a bright sunny summer day, and my dad came to me crying asking ME for a blessing.  Why?  What did he do to this young young little girl whose feet couldn’t even touch the ground.  What???  I don't know if I did it properly…I was way too little. 

    Did I not bless him properly?  Did I not believe it, IS that why he continued on molesting, raping and fondling little girls?  Was my faith to weak in strength to erase it correctly?

    Am I going to hell for being a bad blesser???

    When you question my story, you are saying to me, that I am wrong. Tell me where I am wrong?  Tell me, please and USE your name.

    I believed in a father.

    I believed in a mother.

    I believed in the power of the forgiveness of sins.

    I believed in order to be good, I had to bless bad people.

    I believed wrong…

    And did my ‘faith’ in the forgiveness of HIS sins spare one little girl?  Did it?  Can you put the blame on me?  Did I bless him wrong???

    Oh yeah my faith is weak now, it is actually nonexistent in the power of forgiving and blessing away the sins of the fathers.

    Yes it is.  I believe 100% that it does not work. 

    I am living breathing proof. 

    Where do you all believe these piles of sins are?  Look behind you they walk with you everywhere.  It is only in your mind, that you think they are gone.

    Each and every action you have made is written down in the book of reality seen by God…nothing gets erased ever.

    The only thing you can do is do better when you know better. 

    In the past, I was a good Christian and spoke of it not, not my feelings of terror towards my father, nor my deep down resentment towards my mother, I sucked in and asked to be blessed for being such a bad child to feel unloving toward her parents. 

    I kept trying to be a better child, never even stopping to see if I had parents I should be loving toward. 

    When my father’s name was spoken as being the one to molest my niece, I became a very bad child.  I stood with the little girl and somehow I knew I was standing with me. 

    I stood in reality and refused to bless it away, like I even could.

    This little girl isn’t going to be ‘unabused’ if I utter the magic phrase.

    I am bad, a bad ass, and a bitter, cold, vengeful woman some say.  I will be alone and lonely for saying what I say.  I will be ridiculed and not believed…all the same things I felt as a child.

    As a child I believed them, now as woman who is speaking her truth I do not.

    I have faith in God and me.

    I have faith in truth.

    I have faith is using my real name.

    I have faith in others who can reveal themselves to me.

    The rest, I have no faith in.

    For if you can’t say your name, you are not standing with me, you hiding like my father behind the front of being normal.  Good people don't hide.

    Only those in truth will say their name.  This is my belief and this is my blog.  If you feel differently you can blog yourself and have a great conversation and sharing anonymously.

    Oh and one more thing.

    Someone mentioned I lost the faith in God.

    No honey, God has been with me all along.

    He was the one who erased my memory of the event.

    He kept me being a little girl with out such a horrific thing to remember.  And did however keep my truth in my body, to keep me from going near the man who did such awful things to such a sweet innocent BELIEVING girl.

    Your church doesn’t own God; he is not applauding your spinning my story to make it kind.  He was there and he knew I would not have survived life living in that house with a visual memory, sadly I would have went insane.  Only a child who didn’t know could support that family. 

    I didn’t know… and I put my faith in the folks who were spinning my life to be normal.

    Now I am no longer fooled by the spins, I only see what is behind. 

    Only anonymous have reasons to spin.

     

     

  • Where Your Best Interests Lie.

    I believe reality or truth stands alone, splendid and perfectly brilliant, and we all see it from our own life experiences.

    The topic is abuse.  We all know what it is.  There are no doubts or contention on that, what we are seemingly arguing about is what side do you stand upon.  What side do you believe or do you believe it at all?

    There is the side of the perpetrator or the side of the person recounting her/his childhood story, whose side do you hear about and what do you hear, what makes sense and what doesn’t make sense, and what does a victim gain by going public and what does the perpetrator gain by being silent and supported?

    Sometimes we pick our side by what we would do.

    What takes more courage to stand alone speaking of the unspeakable in hopes of stopping this insanity or of remaining silent?

    And why do you pick to speak or not to speak?

    Is it fear of who you are or what you have to lose?

    Is it fear of the repercussions or fear of remaining silent and what that is doing to who you are?

    At one point all who read Jim’s story or mine will pick a side of belief of disbelief, and I believe it has nothing to do with our facts or the usage of the English language, which I believe Jim is a natural born story teller.

    I instead believe that the side you stand upon all is predisposed; it is where you have walked in this life.

    It has more to do with what you stand to lose compared to what we have to say.

    How invested is your life in the FALC or in the fact that the Torola’s remain free of abuse? 

    There is very little vested interest in my family for we are converts, a one family family within the church.  No Aunts, Uncles or cousins, just us.  No preachers or founding fathers, no long lineage, just one big family, with only two brothers remaining in ‘faith’. 

    I am thinking we were not important FALC people; our abuse didn’t affect anyone but us.  It didn’t spill over into the faith of anyone or would it wiggle their beliefs.

    It was our dirty little secret in a bubble, a zit on the face of the FALC, but not the make up or integrity of the FALC.

    People reading our stories have more to lose by believing in Jim, than believing in me.  You can believe in me and keep your faith, but when you believe in Jim, your faith begins to wobble; you will have to face the fact that abuse may travel backwards to the creators of the FALC.

    My lineage is of no bearings to you, the only folks who get up in arms about my writing is my family of origin, for they have lots invested in the Huhta name and the integrity of their parents.

    Interesting to see that you will fall to the side where you best interests lie.