Hi, all. Jessie, as others have said, thank you for posting. It makes me sad every time I hear stories like yours, or ones I've read in these comments. But it also helps to know I'm not alone. I was abused by my stepfather during my teenage years. I'm not sure if it started deliberately on his part, or resulted from a confusion of emotional roles: his and my mother's marriage was rocky, and I became his confidante. It was such a very slow process at the beginning, a touch here, a caress or a kis there, that I didn't see it coming until it was so obvious there was no turning back. Then it happened a few times. I was so ashamed, feeling that as a teen, and not a small child as you were, I should have been smarter about it, saw it coming and stopped it. I knew it would make my family implode, and it seemed easier to carry myself. I kept silent until I was 23 years old, and had five nieces, and I knew I had to speak up for their safety as well as my own sanity. He never admitted what he'd done, reacting like a textbook abuser, trying to put it back on me. (Things like, I'd dreamed it, I'd misinterpreted his touch, I simply wanted to destroy him and his marriage.) All of which were BS. In the end, Mom has stayed married to him.

It's taken me most of the 2000's to realize the depth of the emotional scars he left on me those years. Some of them I'm still figuring out today. I've struggled a lot with making stupid sexual decisions for a lot of my adult life, and realize now it's because I had it in my subconscious that I felt it was where my worth lay: in my body and sexual prowess. Not true. I mean, sexual prowess can be a great thing, but not when it's all you think you have. I'm finally figuring out that my worth lies in such deeper places, and getting away from those stupid choices, and have learned from them.

So, thank you to you Jessie, and to all the commenters, for letting me know I'm not the only one who struggles with this, even years after it happened.

My name is Iolanda. I am 21. It happened to me too. My uncle used to push me into touching him. I can't remember the first time, it just kept happening. Then, when I was around 12, it stopped. I thought maybe I was to old. He never even asked me not to tell, I just didn't. When I was around 16 I could tell to my closest friends at the time. I think they did't really help, the real help was to tell it.
It came back to me when he died. I had a period of depression which I wasn't even able to relate to his death. I was able to talk about it to my closest friends. Sometimes it helped. One of my friends has been there too, and she's precious. Another friend sho shares such an experience is precious too, but she made it harder when she told me "it just happens to many people, so it was for you, so it was for me, but you can't just let it damage you". Even if I know that ignoring it can only make it worse, and I'm sorry for her way to just bury it, her indifference made me feel like it was my fault if this could affect me.
This has just lied there a long time, then I started therapy. What really brought me there wasn't the abuse, really, but therapy helped me becoming able to find what doesn't work, which is the first thing to make it better. I had never been able to understand what the abuse caused. I knew it changed it all, but I didn't know how. Now I know it made it hard for me to feel at ease with whatever concernes sex. This is what I want to fix now.
I think I'll never tell my family, I'll never tell my mom. She'd only feel guilty and he's dead, she can't protect me from it and she can't do anything.
When I was around 12 I used to imagine telling and I couldn't even bare the thought of going into details with my family, with lawyers, with judges. And he had stopped anyway and I couldn't prove it. And my cousins would have had to know that about their father. And I thought about my mom, and her sister, who didn't know anything about her man...
Now, I just don't want to be left alone and I know that I am powerful, and I can get over this as long as I have people who support me and hold my hand. And I have something precious: I am able to ask for help and I am not ashamed to feel pain.
I hope I can help someone but to be honest, right now I'm just helping myself. Only when I entirely own myself I can really be helpful to others. I hope through this I can find other hands to hold to help each others.

I was one of the girls who stayed silent for far too many years. I was sexually abused by a Catholic monk, from the time I was 7 until I was 8 years old. He told me if I ever told anyone, my youngest sister, who was very ill at the time, would die, and it would be my fault. He raped me numerous times, in the monastery, in a little workroom next to the kitchen. The monastery was near a military base on which we were living, and my brother delivered the paper there every day, and I usually went with him. To this day, the smell of Jergen's Lotion will send me into a panic. When I was 13, and my older brother was 14, we got caught in bed together, and even then, I never told my parents what had happened to me when I was younger. I also became promiscuous in high school, as this monk had told me over and over that "This is what girls are for". At 18, I had a baby girl, whose face I never saw, as she was taken from me and adopted right out of the hospital. I think about her every day, even though I went on to have 3 more children, whom I love with all that I am.

When I was 34, I finally told my mother what happened, and she was aghast. Because we lived on a military base, she had thought that we were safe. I must explain that during this time, my mother gave birth to her fifth and sixth children, and the sister of whom I spoke was very ill. I became adept at hiding what was going on with me, and neither she nor my father ever really suspected anything of this nature had happened. I should mention that this was at the height of the Vietnamese War, and my father was preparing to be deployed. I guess you could say I was a "lost child".

Because of the abuse, my first and second husbands both abused me...the first one physically, and the second one emotionally. After I finally found the strength to leave, I got the help I needed, and am now married to the kindest, most gentle man in the world. I've told my children what happened, even my son. Boys are often abused as well. I never wanted them to have to go through what I had.

Thank you for having the courage to post this. It will touch so many, many more than will ever let you know.

I was sexually abused at about 5 or 6 years old by a male babysitter. Like you, mine wasn't as horrible as many you hear about today, but it changed my life forever. Basically he laid on top of me in my bed while I was told to hold onto his penis while he got off. It happened two or three different times. I had to then sleep in the wet spot, which I hated. One morning my mom was changing the sheets and asked me what it was. I told her and I told her I didn't like it. I was so ashamed and thought it was my fault. Nothing ever came of it, he just never came to babysit again. My mother never tried to console me or help me deal with it. I think she thought I was so young that I would forget about it. But I never did. I'm pretty sure she was sexually abused when she was a child. Back in those days no one ever spoke about those things.

After that I had a lot of trouble in school, I basically shut down, but I didn't understand it for what it was. Only recently have I been able to look back and get some perspective on it. It changed my life in many ways. I've never been to counseling but I did tell my sister about it a couple of years ago. I'm pretty sure he didn't bother her, she was in the same room as me, we had twin beds. She was two and a-half years younger than me and so I think he choose me bacause I was older and also I was the quiet one.

You are not broken, my love. I promise- you are whole. And it's your birthright to reclaim that knowledge.

Sending you loads of love
Lissa