I M Perfect lady

Tag: abuse

  • Voted off.

    I am perplexed about the unnatural reaction to being told of a pedophile in your midst…and the lack of natural responses or reflexes.

    I just wonder if the same message was given, but I said it was in the local school, what then would be the response?

    Would they immediately defend the school?  Or would they ask and want to know who this individual was?

    It is hard for me to wrap my mind around the fact, that not one person was curious as to which congregation housed the sexual predators and where did he/she live?  Not one. Silence.  Well, not really silence, but defense of an institution.

    Is this because they already know where they are?

    Or do they not want to know the truth?

    I can’t figure this one out.

    It feels like those of us who are alerting congregants of this behavior are pegged as the ones tearing down the stairway to heaven.  That if you believe us, you will not make the climb heavenward.

    So you stick to the end game, keep your eyes on the goal of heaven and disregard messages that could pop holes in your faith.

    It seems you have great faith in a vehicle that will get you to heaven, while I am telling you there is not enough gas, the tires are bald and there is a klunk in the engine…and it isn’t looking well for you…it is starting to look like a gamble and not the sure shot you were told to believe in.

    I did not wreck the car, but noticed the damage. I did not design this car or make you the promise that it had magic powers to erase all sins.  This is not something I neither created nor is it mine to fix.  I am just reporting

    But I am telling you how it stalled and died on me.

    How the magic button didn’t erase the pedophilia from my father…he kept going and going and going.

    How the eraser didn’t erase his sickness at all.

    I am telling you that there are other sick people that your forgiveness of sins will not correct or halt or stop in anyway.

    They sit and sing with you…and you never even asked who.

    The infection is spreading while you use words to eradicate behavior that years and years of therapy and the desire to do so can only stop.

    Truly, do you really believe that a few words spoken to a man who has a sexual disease, that those words, will cure him?

    It is in the cells and in the DNA, it will take efforts of Herculean strength to face and deal and heal. 

    What I can sense and I am sure he/she can sense is that this religion is not even interested or caring who is within the confines of its membership.

    If the lack of questions is any indicator, there is nothing there that shows him/her there are boundaries and standards within the mission statement.

    All are welcome here. 

    Well, not all…those who speak the truth are voted off.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • What I can verify.

     

    My brother wrote a post on his blog, www.messyguru.typepad.com called, Rumor Has It.

     

    I looked up the definition of Rumor and it said, “Unverified report.” 

    I wonder how much of each of our lives gets by us unverified?

    What we mostly don’t verify is where we came from, is this normal, and is it true.

    We rarely verify our beliefs or our definitions of love or abuse, or the validity of the rules of our religion.

    We don’t verify them, but we don’t call them rumors. 

    We don’t verify them, but we believe them to be our truths.

    We don’t say, “it is a rumor that wearing red nail polish will keep me from heaven.”  Without verifying this report, we believe it and call it truth.

    Or, “It is a rumor that if I take control of my body and decide how many kids I have, I will go to hell.”  How can you possibly verify that?  Yet it is believed as true.

    And we don’t say, “It is a rumor that no sin is too great to forgive or that all sin is of equal value.”  Has this been verified?  Can a cuss word and a man raping a child be the same worth? Is that what we believe to be true?

    Doesn’t it make you wonder what we call rumors and what we call truth.

    What is verified and what is Unverified.

    Somehow the FALC has this all upside down and backwards.

    If what they believe in is unverified, than is it possible that what they don’t believe in is verifiable.

    Is it possible that when they hear a ‘rumor’ about so and so being a pedophile, or being creepy, they are actually spreading the truth and believing it?

    Do they even know what is truth and what is fiction? 

    This is how I found myself when who I had called dad was actually a pedophile. The people that I loved actually abused me and didn’t love me. I was completely upside down and backwards in most of my definitions and what I believed in.

    The churches ideology actually fit perfect into my backwards home life, it matched perfectly.

    My rumors were my truths and my truths were rumors.

    It is horrifying and shocking what folks in the FALC are believing in and what they are spreading as rumors.  I am here to tell you it is completely backwards.

    The rumors floating around in victim circles are facts and verifiable by the results of their lives. By the trails and trials of their journeys. 

    The suicides and attempts, depression and addictions, the mental disorders, and casual sex, the married girls using their bodies like puppy mills, generations of pedophiles, etc…are all signposts and can be verified by their lives.  These are not rumors.

    And these are not accidents or freaks of nature; they are actually perfect results of living in a home of abuse and believing in the way of the FALC.  It is a one two punch and the results are again, verifiable by the lives they live in reality.

    The victims lives are not rumors…and what you call ‘rumors’ about their perpetrators are verifiable…so they cannot be called rumor, for rumor is an unverified report.

    The wounded children are the verification as they live their lives upside down and backwards, out of control and believing they are certifiably nuts, crazy and insane.

    What they fail to appreciate is that they are perfect and the world they came from is insane.  And it is only when they continue to try and make the insane sane is when they go nuts.

    Where they come from is so insane, that they believe and die for rumors and disregard the truth as it walks talks and breathes in front of them.

    It is my humble opinion from my experience of coming out of the FALC and being raised in a family where the head of the house was a pedophile, where the mother supported him and her religion without question or verification to the contrary, that both are steeped in rumors and where truth is kicked to the curb.

    I should know, I am sitting on the curb for demanding and investigating and Verifying rumors…rumors within my family of origin and the religion I was born into.

    For forty-six years I lived an unverified life.  I believed what I was told to believe and disregarded the rest…now, I sit with rumors and look around reality to see what I can verify. 

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • It is not how you say it, but that you say it.

    It seems that I am not the only one who is unsure of what to bring to the Authorities and what is considered ‘evidence’ or if you have the right knowledge or if it is not first hand but rather hearsay.

    What I want to impress upon all who read this blog, is that we each carry a parcel of evidence, and each part whether it be large or small, first hand or was told to us by victims or friends of victims, we are all carrying some evidence.

    Evidence we believe in.

    It doesn’t have to be bold and in detail, it can be that you too have heard about the character of this man or this woman.

    They are all, as we are all, presumed pure until told otherwise, until enough folks can say something to the contrary.

    Each of us has a ruler to gauge people and each of us have bumped into unsavory characters, and what most of us fail to do, me included is follow through and speak up, alert not only friends and family, but authorities.

    The authorities we have to presume are NOT knowing or hearing what we are, they are in the dark and it is up to us to show them were to shine their lights, to investigate and look into the well being of the people, we are fearful for.

    If someone had pressed the issue way back when my father was molesting his daughters and all of our friends, it wouldn’t have taken a great detective to canvas our neighborhood and collect evidence from the girls living there.

    We keep thinking we need to work this from the bottom up, to find a child willing to say something, but that is not our job.  We are not the investigators; we don’t have to have a complete file of evidence to alert the authorities. 

    Our job as citizens of the world is to alert the authorities of folks we have information on, whether it be first hand or second, but if you believe it…it needs to be handed over to authorities.

    As the saying goes. “All it takes for evil to continue is for good folks to do nothing.”

    It matters not if you are articulate, if what you have heard seems small, it all adds up to the complete story; a story told from a variety of angles.  It can be your personal experience or how you heard.

    They need Not just one viewpoint or one age, not just from folks within the church, but from those on the outside.  Not just the family and friends, but friends of family and friends.  We all have a thread that will make up the tapestry of who these people really are.

    They have created an elaborate shield that deflects their criminal behaviors. We each can tug and pull on one thread that will reveal to all just who lies beneath.

    Somehow our minds have us convinced that we will spot this action happening, that we have to see it with our own eyes, before we can pass on information. You need not have the whole picture, but one piece of the puzzle.

    Again, we are not the detectives; we can’t arrest them, or take them to the court of the land.  It is our job to help the detectives.  We know what they don’t know.

    And if you know enough to believe it and you don’t share it, you are adding and abetting the crime. 

    The only ones who are free from guilt in this are the ones who don’t know. 

    If you don’t know, you can’t know.

    But, once you know, you can’t not know.

    And if you know and are holding it safe within, you are doing each pedophile a great big favor.  Their sickness breathes on your silence.  

    I was even more devastated by mother, for she was okay knowing and doing nothing for me.  Nothing.  I was left alone to tend my wounds, to make right my upside down world.   For I have very little memories, but I do have one, me showing my mother my hurting bottom.  I was little, way little.  I didn’t know why I kept that one odd memory. But now I do.  I showed her and nothing was done. She didn’t leave him.  Forty years later, my niece says her Grandpa touched her.

    Silence and doing nothing kept him going from girl to girl. 

    If you believe it, believe that your silence will deliver to him/her another child to abuse. For my experience with my father shows the trail.

    I had evidence that his sickness began years ago.

    The detectives need past histories, not just what is going on today, they need to see a pattern emerging.  The more who come forth, the more chances his/her case will go to trial.  They need to hear that this ‘story’ is being told far and wide, it comes from people of all ages…

    The less that comes forth, the more chances his/her reign will be like my fathers…40 years and way too many little girls!

    What I know for sure is that I will not be the one sitting holding my evidence while a child’s innocence hangs in the balance.

    I will not be like my neighbors or other members of the church and withhold evidence.  What I heard will be passed on.  Not in the rumor mill, but to the ones who have the power to help the children.

    No matter how my evidence is taken by the law, I know that I have done my part.

     It is not how you say, but that you say it.

     

  • I blame you too.

    In the past two weeks, I have been trying to glean the attention of the Detective in order to pass on suspicious names, names we keep hearing repeatedly from different circles all having to do with criminal sexual abuse with children. Names being spoken in three states, and ‘rumors’ that have been passed around within the inner circles of the FALC, but haven’t made it to the outside.

    I am on the outside and willing to share what I have been hearing and would like to encourage others to join my voice.

    What keeps these pedophile machines working is our silence.

    If you have memories or odd memories or have feelings that directly oppose the image being presented, that is a flag. 

    We fail to understand that we don’t have to have a succinct blow-by-blow account of an abuse interaction, but instead we each add our portion of evidence to build the case.

    My evidence against my father was the fear and terror that cursed through me in his presence, as well as no memories of my childhood, or just the odd ones. 

    My father did nothing, unless it included little girls.  He wasn’t taking my brothers on ‘special car’ rides.  He who did nothing in the house to help out, began wanting to make Sunday dinners, when granddaughter’s were born….  He who never went to church or even acted within the confines of their rules, Used the Forgiveness of sins to keep erasing his ‘sins’ of abuse. 

    All those things had a theme and makes sense for a pedophile, but goes against his otherwise behavior.  He never was a family man, making plans, being involved, nor did he take my mother on dates, but little girls…he paid attention to.

    That is a Huge Flag. 

    The Greek Definition of Pedophile is Child Friendship. 

    If you see an adult man or woman who is having exclusive, or almost exclusive and exhaustive efforts for one particular sex or age group, your antennas should be rising.

    We fail to look for the grooming process, the charismatic and excited engagement with children as well as seeing the changes in the child.

    Mostly, I thought you needed child’s behavior to be suspicious, but the authorities can work this backwards as well, by being alerted to odd behaviors in adults.

    What I also came to find out is that my mother’s friends were married to pedophiles as well.  It truly does seem that birds of a feather flock together.  

    Here is another thing, I did not hear of other pedophiles, for I was the one of the ones they were talking about.  I was clueless to the signs for I was the sign. 

    I was the walking billboard.  I had all the earmarks needed to show what a child who has been abused looks like, acts like and is.

    There seems to be two drastically different behaviors exhibited; one that you are a people pleaser, a self less person, you are the co-dependents dream come true…you can’t make a decision unless others agree, you live for them or for approval outside you never have an opinion outside of the group. I have said, “I was a whore for love and peace…” their love and their peace, no matter the cost to my self.

    And the other is promiscuous behavior.  Willing to be self less as well, but with your body in sexual ways.  Having zero boundaries or respect for your own self.  Casual sex…sex without loving committed friendship and honor.

    I was a member of the FALC, I was born into the religion, my mother is a devote member and I presumed since my father wasn’t one (unless he needed to get blessed and get the the anger to dialed back..), we were an oddity.  Our family was a rare one within the church.

    However, I am now finding out even if our bloodlines and lineage is has no history within the FALC, we were not the exception as much as the rule.

    I suppose there are a few folks in there, who have never heard of any abuse within, but in my experience, I haven’t met one yet. Although, to be fair, I haven’t talked to them all, but the lineage of abuse is appalling.

    And here is what I know for sure. The only way this can continue is with the silence of many. 

    The greatest threat to pedophiles is for our voices to unite, for our stories to join together to form piles of evidence that will equal the volumes of wounded children.

    If you can’t speak from personal experience, you can speak of what you heard about someone.

    In my case, the detective couldn’t believe the amount of people who knew. Yet only one had the courage to speak. And that one voice alerted us all to a pedophile in our midst.

    I am asking for you to reveal suspicious behavior…not just a blow by blow account.  I am asking you to stop playing in the rumor mill, but be the one to take the information out and bring it to the authorities.

    Here is the addresses where your letters can be written for people in the Copper Country.  You will notice the fact that I am skipping the State Police, for the detective there is a member of the FALC.  It is my personal opinion and choice to leave it out.  I also left off the Keweenaw County Sheriff for he too is a member of the FALC.

    Houghton County Prosecutor

    Michael Makinen – Phone # 906-482-3211

    401 East Houghton Ave.

    Houghton, MI 49931

     

    Houghton County Sheriff  Brian McLean   

    Detective Tom Rosemurgy – Phone # 906-482-0055 (for both)

    403 East Houghton Ave.

    Houghton, MI 49931

     

    FBI – Detroit Field Office

    Phone # 313-965-2323

    477 Michigan Ave. 26th Floor

    Detroit MI, 48226

     

    It is my hope, that our generation will be the one that speaks out and breaks the chain.  It is beyond what the mind can hold, that a religion is shielding criminal sexual abuse.  And it will not stop due to our “not” talking out about it.  Believe me, I only wished it was just my family, that we were the exception not the rule, but also believe me people, it is running unchecked into this generation of little ones…they are us, they are taking the first footsteps in abuse, and we are the adults now to end it.

    I have heard from families who were told, “not to go near my house/father”….that was they way they dealt, just stay away. 

    Well, them staying away, the good people staying away, gave my father unlimited and unfettered access to all the little girls.  Adults too afraid to speak up to afraid to do anything left the little girls to deal with my father…and they did, they gave their little spirits and souls to a man who ate them up. 

    No adult took what they knew to the authorities.

    Many want to just blame my father, but if you knew, I blame you too.

     

     

     

  • We go to the outside.

    On facebook a blog was shared, and I went and had a look.  http://extoots.blogspot.com/  I browsed a few posts and came upon an article that was referred to on a posted dated, April 30th. 

    http://www.hs.fi/english/article/Shedding+light+on+child+abuse+among+the+Laestadians/1135265532861

    While reading that article, it seems it matters not whether you are in Finland or in the USA, if you are asking for abuse to be recognized within the church, you will be bypassed.

    This article has tons of great information and insight, however this is one section that caught my eye.

    Have the leaders put pressure on you?
          “I wouldn’t say that my treatment involved pressure, because putting pressure is something that is active. But I have felt that I have been bypassed.”

    Boy do I get that.  They don’t pressure you or threaten; they simply bypass what you are saying. There is literally NO reaction or action taken when you bring up sexual abuse in the church.

    Anyone that is pondering, how in the hell, sexual abuse and pedophiles has been able to play within the confines of this religion, need to read this article. 

    However, by her speaking out and others like her we can air out this issue, bring light and awareness, open the closet and see what is hanging there.

    This inspires me and makes me feel that my treatment wasn’t personal, it is simply the way it has been dealt for over a 100 years. But due to the fact that she has written an article in their newspaper, perhaps we too can do the same.

    When bypassed inside the religion, we go to the outside.

     

     

     

  • Stories of Fiction.

    What they don’t tell you is that while you are finding out who you are, you will isolate your self from your old life; you will become a stranger there, while becoming your own best friend.

    My five sisters are gathering together this week, and not a whisper to invite me, I am too odd, and too weird, too nuts or insane, a myriad of labels, but a sister to be included I am not.

    There is a part of me that grieves for the loss of being included and my little girl self feels sooo misunderstood and so misclassified.

    It seems my truth seeking spun me into this evil creature that they don’t want no part of.

    The deeper I delved, the more I explored, the more distance I put between us all, my healing keeps pushing me further away.

    It is like I am set out to sea while they are on the beach having a party.

    I know intellectually, that my spirit and soul would have no peace with them, that I have lived too deep now to go back to be a surface dweller…yet I grieve.

    I grieve for what is, for what was.

    I feel being isolated for all the wrong reasons or so it seems.

    I didn’t sexually abuse them…my father did; yet I am out for talking about it.

    I didn’t neglect them like my mother did; yet I am out for pointing it out.

    It is odd for my little girl to reconcile to make a nice neat understandable folder to put them all in.

    The girls I used to take care of, no longer care for me.

    By doing what is right I am wronged.

    I get it and I don’t.

    It amazes me that they can’t see the bad in my father and then see only bad in me.

    My son, when he was a baby, always said when he did something I thought was wrong…”what did my do?”  With a face of innocence…he wondered.

    And that is what rings hollow through me, “What did my do?”  What hurts the most is that I did nothing wrong. 

    All I did was walk hand in hand with the wounded girls, the girls who were all hurt by him, I never left my line…I never wavered, never veered off course, although there are times like these I wobbled.

    I wobble, shed a few tears, and feel the separation and the unjustness of it all, but I forge ahead.

     

    I forge ahead with the truth and bear the consequences.

    They say, “what doesn’t break you makes you stronger.”

    I am being forged in grief it seems at times.

    How can my mind comprehend me being worse then they who hurt them, again, what did my do?

    It seems they have their story of me and a story of my father, both are stories of fiction…

     

     

  • A dream for me.

    Some days are filled with contrasts that keep you from mulling anything, you go from event to situation to more incoming information, past, present and future…

    This ride at times seems to be moving at super fast speeds, going so quick it is hard to process one thing before the next hits. That was yesterday.

    I had a mission to talk to the Detective to help get a ball rolling, but he will not play catch with me.  I sit, holding my ball…while life seems to be passing so quickly.  Another week has gone by and he appears too busy to return my call.

    To him I may be more work or I am not as important as what he has going on…however he knows not what I know.  I feel myself bumping into a silent wall of rebuff.

    The information grows like a weed out of control and I am losing my faith or trust that even when alerted he will be unable to pull or eradicate this weed that is poisoning the innocent…it seems that the garden is getting overrun while no one is looking.

    I have to have faith that it is all perfectly perfect, that it is going at the pace it should, even if not my speed.

    While I can’t gain his attention, I seem to forever bump into people who I feel are feeding the weed.  It seems so exasperating, like a poor cosmic joke, to see them everywhere and the Detective is nowhere to be found.

    Oh and the normalcy is worn like a costume.

    Letting all that go, I attended a speech given by the Author of the book, The Glass Castle, Jeanette Walls.  She lived her first 17 years in abject poverty, and went on to become a journalist living on Park Avenue in New York City, while her parents remained homeless.

    She spoke to the freshman class at Michigan Tech, and a few of us from off the street, eager to hear her speak.

    Her rough life taught her many lessons you can’t learn on easy street, and in writing it forced her to be with the reality of her life.  She learned about her self and respected herself more for telling her truth, than when she was hiding it from people around her.

    What I found that was different between us, is that as a child she could not hide her ‘shameful’ life situation.  In her town everyone knew they were the poorest family, her clothes and body odor too obvious to hide, and so she wore her label everywhere and was treated appallingly in high school.

    Her very dysfunctional poor lifestyle was hard to not see. 

    And in my case, my outward appearance wasn’t too bad, poor but we did have running water and flushing toilets, although no shower until I was in middle school…just a sauna lit twice a week.  And there was a dirt-poor girl who lived less than a mile from us, who was poorer.  A two room shack more or less…

    Anyway, Jeanette could not hide what shamed her, and I didn’t know the shame that followed me where every I went, I was ‘HIS daughter’ A story was spoken when I left the room or before I arrived, unbeknownst to me.

    I have often wondered what my childhood would have been like had I known that my father was a pedophile, how would I have walked into places and out of them, knowing who I truly was?

    I know that I was always treated like the daughter of a pedophile, yet I was spared because I didn’t know.  I felt I was just a girl from a poor large apostolic family.  I didn’t know that underneath me was incest, abuse…

    I walked with confidence and not with mortifying shame.

    The mortifying shame came when I was 46.  And then I knew what the people of the church knew and yet not one approached me even then.  But, then they started to overtly treat me like a pariah.

    It seemed odd to me that once my truth was out they then began to treat me differently.  It still puzzles me…we all know the truth and now they keep me at arms length, they turned down isles to escape me…

    The only thing changed is I openly walked my truth…and they now did not know what to do or how to talk to me.

    Isn’t it interesting that it was easier to be with me when I was not walking my truth, than it was for them when I was?

    Just yesterday it came to me that it is much easier to be with people who are walking step by step with their truth, than to be with folks who want to tuck a huge part of their lives under a rug.  I can’t be with a half person.

    So, Jeanette and I are the same, we both had rough childhoods, the difference is she knew it and I did not.

    Her father carried a dream of one day building them a glass castle, and she believed in his dream.

    My father never had a dream for me.

     

     

  • Wearing a Tag, “Family”.

    My daughter waved her hand above her head in a crazy type way in explanation to who I am… Nuts.

    Yep, nuts…over zealous about abuse, that I will give up family for it, that I will sever relationships for it.  I am WAAAY out there… 

    Yep, that’s me.

    I felt she had me pegged completely; there was no argument there.

    While perhaps I would not categorize myself as insane, when it comes to dealing ‘rationally’ with abuse, I guess I am nuts.

    I will not tolerate it at all.  No matter from whom and especially when it comes to my kids.  I am overboard certifiably nuts.

    I tried to explain to her my viewpoint, but it is near impossible to explain, it is the old adage, you had to be there. 

    While I do believe we had a reasonable conversation, I felt she tried to come over to my side… it was impossible for her, and I am grateful.

    In order to see abuse like I see abuse, you would have to have been abused like me…she never tasted abuse like I have…her abuse was delivered to her by me.

    I told her the only abuse she has ever had came from me.

    I was irrational, unreasonable, and way more nuts when they were young compared to how I am today. 

    She said I am okay now, unless it comes to abuse, then I go nuts.  So, I have changed.

    In the past I was okay with abuse and went Nuts in the normal day-to-day living.  I love this.

    Do you get it?  I am seen as being nuts for going insane about abuse, by talking of it, warning others of it, writing my way free of it, seeing it when it appears, I am focused and relentless when it comes to abuse. 

    She said, you go way out there and am unreasonable about abuse, and I smiled and said, “yes that is me, I do do that!”

    I tried to explain to her that her grandmother was ‘reasonable’ with abuse. She didn’t want to lose her family so she was kind and ‘rational’ with abuse. 

    That I am okay being nuts when it comes to abuse. 

    I truly don’t mind the name calling and the finger pointing, the shunning and anger that is directed toward me as I staunchly remain unreasonable with abuse.

    I told her it matters not how they see me. What matters the most is that my children see a mother who will not sit down and be friendly with abuse.  I want them to see how to treat abuse by watching me.

    Abuse is not my friend.  

    I will lose relationships to step away from abuse.  I will not put ‘family’ above it.

    Meaning that just because my father was family, I should over look his abuse. Just because my mother is family, I should overlook the years she overlooked abuse.  Just because my brother is family, I should overlook his supporting abuse.

    To see family first …is what abuse is relying on.

    For if you see the family first, abuse slips by unnoticed.

    I am nuts about this, I refuse to let abuse slip by even wearing a tag “Family”.

     

  • One Person to say his name.

    Julia Cameron asks at the end of last chapter, “Did you do your artist date this week?  Did you use it to take any risks? What did you do?  How did it feel?”

    So, I thought what do I fear the most…what do I feel is a risk?

    And what came was looking into the File of My father’s at the Houghton County Courthouse.

    I had pictured this file filled with evidence, victim’s stories, horrific re-counting of their interactions with my father.  A box filled with the demons of his life, an ugly box heaped with things I truly didn’t want to know, his secret life was tucked inside…all the dirt the detective had dug up.  How he traveled from Texas to here, the he said, she said type stuff. 

    I thought I would come face to face with secrets finally brought to the open by my little friends…I would read about, my sisters and their friends, and the truth would be laid bare for me.

    I had to take the risk that I was strong enough.

    This morning when I read that sentence, I decided after work, I would go…stepping through my fear and open that file/box and sort through and face the demons of my childhood.

    I called ahead, so it would be waiting for me.   A file for one. 

    As I parked in front and walked up the steps, I held the railing I knew my father held as he walked down a free man …one of the last things he touched in his hometown before he left for Texas in May of 2005.

    I shook my head to keep me in the present…and kept following my moving feet, bringing me closer to what I had feared these last six years…all the stories of the little girls who suffered because of this one man, my father.

    I entered a room with two smiling normal looking ladies… and asked to see my father’s file. 

    There on the table sat this bright yellow file folder, thin, wimpy, absent of all horrific stories, folder.  It held legal documents and signatures, formalities that had odd titles.

    The paper my brother signed when he paid his bail, the check for most of it being refunded back…he didn't lose too much.

    I asked is this it? 

    And they asked, “what are you looking for?”

    I told them, six years ago when he was being tried, our stories, the victim’s stories were being passed around. The defense attorney had them, the prosecutor had them, and my brother had them, my mother had them…and now I wanted to see them. 

    I explained, at the time, I was too weak to take them in, but now I am feeling braver and want to see what they all read and knew about us victims. Where is the evidence, the story about why he was in court,  and that these papers didn't say too much? It was the glossy version.

    The kind ladies tried to show me the pertinent documents, what he was convicted on, what the plea bargain was, etc. 

     I said this file doesn’t hold the evidence… just the papers for the court.

    As I was leaving, feeling like I had gotten to just read the footnotes of his story, I bumped into the secretary of the prosecutor…a girl I know. 

    She said that perhaps the next time she is in the attic, she would look and see if there is more to his story in their files…but it was a long time ago.  Not that long I said, only six years.  To me it could have been yesterday.  She too was kind and seemed like she wanted to help…but didn't have what I was looking for. 

    She also suggested I go next door to the sheriff’s office and see the detective, perhaps he can find the file with the victims stories…the evidence. 

    So, I made the short walk and asked to see the detective.   He was out on the road, so I could leave my name and number and the reason I needed to see him.

    I told the sheriff, I wanted to see my father’s file, the evidence of his pedophile ways, to read about what they found in order to bring him to trial.  He too asked, why?

    I said I wanted to read the stories that were passed around like a newspapers back then, but I had been too afraid to read, that I was braver today.

    He smiled.  What none of them know, is that in the 'evidence' is a story of my rape, recounted by my childhood friend.  A memory, that I failed to record…that I was feeling brave enough to read about. 

    It was my victim story I wanted to see…Now that I am brave enough, made the trip, walked up the steps, opened the door…maybe I will not ever get to see that story, but what I did was face my ultimate fear. 

    We chatted, about how the system is so backwards, how families are able to sentence the pedophiles, and how their charges are reduced due to parents not wanting their children on the stand facing the man who hurt them….  We both agreed that it is so backwards that a child has to be the strong one, to stand against not only the one who hurt them, but the folks who all are connected to him.

    I stood on one side of the counter and him on the other, both of us on the same side of this issue, neither one of us able to make a difference. 

    I said I would like to talk to the detective, to give him names that I have heard, of other guys like my father, but that I didn’t have much more than that, just names that keep coming up, folks keep talking about them, but nothing seems to happen. 

    I said I wanted to give him them names so I didn’t have to carry them.

    I said to leave lots of time, for I am long winded when it comes to talks of this nature.

    He seemed kind and listened and took my name.  I will see if the detective will be willing to talk to one of the girls whose letter is in the illusive evidence file…

    I feel I could work with them and shed light from this side of the counter, the family side…the little girl side, the victim side.

    I faced my fears, I took a risk and I feel that I am stronger because of it.

    It wasn’t a usual Artist Date, but one that brought me confidence and empowerment.

    It opened the doorway to a full circle moment.  I can be the ‘stranger’ that reported ‘something’ isn’t right in that family….  I can be the one who spoke up, who brought it to the attention of the authorities…to allow some one like me who is waiting for someone to notice, someone to care enough, to be brave and step out and take a risk, point a finger at the source of so many rumors. 

    I can’t know if my speaking will begin to shake the family tree, but I can know that my silence will keep their secrets secret.

    What I don’t want to have happen is for me to be one of the folks who knew and did nothing. 

    I have had these names of the guys, but I thought I needed the names of a child who is appearing to act like they have suffered abuse. But now I know, you can report the names of guys/girls who you have heard part take in abusive behavior, you don’t need a child to start the ball rolling, a child is waiting for you to push it down the hill…

    I also believe a child will intuitively feel that real help has arrived, that they are safe to share their story.

    But, we…the adults in the world have to brave enough to speak their names out loud and to the authorities.

    If you have names, but are not brave enough, share them with me, I will take the names from you so you too no longer have to carry them.

    Carrying their names is carrying their secret.

    And while carrying their secret a child suffers alone waiting. 

    Waiting for some one to notice.

    Someone to see the monster they have experienced. 

    All it takes is one…one person to say his name.

     

     

  • Save your soul.

    The biggest hurdle in stopping abuse is stopping being a part of the family it is within. How easy to report abuse in another family but where it actually counts is when you see it and respond in kind within your own.

     

    To stop treating a father as a dad and see his actions of being a pedophile and putting him away and out of reach of other little girls.  My family failed at this big time.

     

    The authorities brought him to court, but the family set him free.

     

    I wish this was an anomaly but sadly, most will defend the father and not even let it get as far as ours did.

     

    There is this thing called, “Unconditional Love” that keeps this from happening, and another thing called, “Forgiveness of Sins” that does as well.

     

    We all think that the biggest thing we can do is report pedophiles to the authorities, but that is only a small portion of the job.

     

    The biggest deal is to take a family and rip it apart seeing who really does what, what are they doing, bringing and being, to bring in consciousness where before blindness lived.

     

    The key components a pedophile needs the most is your undying faith in them, your unconditional love and your willingness to continue to bless away his bad behaviors…for you to be relentless in this and NEVER changing.

     

    What most fail to realize it aren’t the authorities that are to blame but the families of these perpetrators.  Well, I believe the law of the land needs a big wake up call and to see that they are allowing dysfunctional families to call the shots…

     

    For as it stands now they are asking blind people to see and act clearly.

     

    Most often, and in my case it is true, that I wasn’t the first one abused, but rather just one of a long line of generations worth.

     

    This was normal behavior.  A mother who was unable to discern abuse for she herself never healed from her own abuse.  Her abused self worth and image attracted a man who operated at the same level.

     

    I am finding out that my brother and I are very much changelings within our family’s heritage, that every now and then one comes along and switches the family traditions, but in order to do so, you leave the family.

     

    What most want is to stop abuse, but what few will do is stop being part of a family.

     

    You will have to go against generations of folks, relatives in order to stop abuse.

     

    It isn’t a simple task, for 99% of the abuse is from someone you know and trust and of the 99%, 50% is from someone who is your blood relative.

     

    It is like turning against your own self…and is.

    You will have to take all you have ever known and begin yet again.

     

    I get so incensed with folks who tell me…I would never or I don’t stand with abuse, while they are still having relationships with people who abuse.

     

    It is insanity.  You are being just as abusive to the child by having a relationship with the person who hurts little children.  The child sees who you are aligned with and KNOWS you are not a safe person or one to help them.

     

    This matter is far more complex than it appears.

     

    Abuse is an infection that has spread through generations of families and will continue on unless you walk away. 

     

    You have to leave the infection called abuse… IT will not leave you.

     

    It will not one day change from hurtful abuse to wonderful love, stop pretending time will heal and change things.

     

    You have to leave it in order to be free of it…and then you have separated your self or isolated the infection to just you and then the real work starts.

     

    You have to see it in all your thoughts and beliefs and have to start working on each one to right it.

     

    To change your old definition of unconditional love to love that is free of abusive effects.

     

    You have to change your mind about a million things.

    You have to be willing to not know your self or those you ‘loved’.

     

    You have to be willing to walk a walk against family and ‘loved’ ones.

     

    I walked this walk…and while it was extremely tough, it is well worth the effort. 

     

    You will not walk alone; you will have the guidance of the Universe if you are a seeker of the truth.

     

    You will be changing your very DNA and the legacy you were born into.

     

    I will help anyone who has been chosen to walk this walk.

     

    So, go ahead and report, but mostly start the dialogue in how far would you go to stop abuse, would you go the whole way, would you forsake the world to save your soul?