Child Abuse

Here's my story:

My dad sexually abused me from the time I was a baby till I was 6. I want to share this in hopes of saving other children who may be in the situation I was in.

On the outside, no one would have suspected my dad to be like that. He was heavily involved in church with my mom. He was incredibly friendly and would always talk to strangers as if they were his best friends. He was very charming and very likable.

The profile of the a child abuser is usually someone who is very friendly. They also like to work with kids a lot.

Then about 3 years ago I was working with a young man who was accused the year after I worked with him of molesting children. Again, no one would have suspected it. He was very involved in church. He was very friendly, confident, and out-going.

But there were some characteristics about him that very much reminded me of my dad. He was very impulsive and energetic as my dad was. He liked to tease others and give them a hard time. There is a line you can cross in teasing where it just becomes being a jerk. He was also abused as a child as my father was. He also loved having power over others as my dad did.

Keep your eyes open for people around you or that work with your kids. You never know for sure what might be going on inside of them. The main traits to look out for is men who like to control others, who are on power trips, and who seem impulsive and overly friendly and outgoing. It's a cover, you see. By their winning personality they think no one will know who they really are on the inside. And usually it fools everyone they know, even those closest to them.

And then of course there were the allegations recently at Penn State. This kind of stuff happens ALL the time, but people just don't talk about it, so it keeps going on.

I want to bring this issue into the light. As long as things are kept in darkness they have power. By bringing issues into the light, demons flee, as they do not want to be exposed.

Many people ask, "How could you forgive your dad for what he did?"

As children we are unable to comprehend that people are both good and bad.  We think of our parents as ALL good, and villains in movies we see as ALL bad.  I think children are actually incapable, until they are about 12, of seeing their parents as evil.  Then the teen years hit and they make up for all their blind belief in you right?  So I for the longest time still saw my dad as ALL good.  I loved my dad!  My situation was not so much abuse as it was him making me feel special.  It was not scary.  I was his princess.  In my mind it was just how he showed that he loved me.  I will say God saved me from crazy sexual molestation.  It was just touching.  Which I'm not minimizing, but it was pretty tame compared to some crazy stories I have read about and heard. :(  Anyways, as I got older I did have some anger about what happened and viewed him at all bad for awhile.  But in college I began to have a more balanced view.  I decided I could not discount all the good times we all had when I was growing up.  He took us fishing, boating, camping.  He was very fun and playful with my brother and I.  He taught me a lot about God and the Bible, ironically.  He was probably the most fun person I have ever known.  But he certainly had his issues.  He actually was a sexual addict, which is where it always starts. 

It also helps for me to realize that in God's eyes all sin is the same. We had an interesting activity when I was in my high school youth group where we were each given a card and told what each one meant. We held them up. If you look at them "at face value" lol, like on the side where you can see the differences, that is how we as humans view sin. If you look at them on the other side, that is how God sees sin. It is all the same in His eyes. Lying is just as bad in God's eyes as molesting a child. Lying is just as bad in his eyes and getting "involved" with someone before marriage.

We are all capable of evil. We all sin every day. This realization and concept made it easy for me to forgive my dad. I don't think I have ever held a grudge against him for what he did. Rather I have always had compassion on him, as Jesus also always had compassion on us sinners. I know he was molested himself when he was about 12. He woke up and his cousin was doing oral sex on him. Therefore, hurt people hurt people. He was a victim himself, and because he did not process what happened to him, he continued the cycle of abuse.

I have gone to about 4 years of counseling total in my life at various times to heal and process things. If any of you reading this had something happen to you, I strongly recommend you see a therapist about it, or at least talk about it openly with your closest friends or spouse. Keeping things secret gives them more power. You have to bring it out into the open. Which, I understand why you might not want to. In counseling they always said I had to get it out on the table and I was like, "Why? I like it under the table!" lol But like a wound or scrape needs the open air to heal, so we need to air out our pain in order for it to heal. As long as we try to hold a bandaid over it, it is not going to heal. As long as we walk around wearing masks and being fake with everyone around us, we cannot allow them to help heal us and to have true intimacy with those closest to us.

When we are abused we are hurt by a person; you are then healed by being helped be a person. This helps you to learn to trust people again and have faith in people again. The reason you need to tell someone is that your trust was broken when your abuser hurt you. You need to regain trust in humans in general by telling someone else and letting them come around you and comfort you. You also need to be told by others that it was not your fault. A LOT of abuse victims think it was their fault. I always thought, "Well if I wouldn't have been born...." But I had no control over that, and it was God's will that I was born. I know it was not in his perfect will that what happend to me did, but he can "work all things together for the good of those who love Him."

Here's the details of the last situation with my dad. I was taking a nap with him one day and he kept trying to pull my underwear down and roll on top of me. Thank goodness I was just as sparky then as I am now. I jumped out of the bed, ran to my room and told my mom when she came home from getting groceries. She called Focus on the Family. The gentleman there then reported it. My mom told my dad she had called someone about it. He packed up his stuff and moved out, because he did not want us kids to see him getting arrested. He then got some sleazy lawyer to lower his charges so he was only convicted for a year and accused on "lewd act with a child" instead of sexual molestation. He then EVEN got out after 6 months based on good behavior. The counselors and therapists all said that he was healed and cured and we could be a family again.

Beware of what counselors say. They obviously are not always right.

So we became a family again. And my dad did try something again. He took a "shower" with my brother when he was 14. By the grace of God he never tried anything with me again, but once a child molester, always a child molester. If you know someone who says they are fine now, they are not. Child molesters should NEVER be around children again. Just like if someone had a porn addiction it would not be wise of them to walk into a porn shop. In the same way if anyone has ever molested a child, they cannot be around kids ever again. It's as simple as that.

Here's what Jesus said about child molesters, "If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea."

Why does Jesus say something so final, so profound? Because once a person has fallen into this kind of depravity there is no coming back. It doesn't matter how good they might look on the outside. Their heart is black. Once they molest kids, they will always molest kids. The other reason Jesus suggests they be thrown into the sea and killed is that the person has to then live with themselves after doing what they did. How can a person live with themselves knowing they scarred an innocent child for life?! I know my dad is harder on himself then any of us could be, and for that reason I have always had mercy on him. Every time I would talk to him he would profusely apologize for what happened. I finally said, "Dad no matter how many times I say I forgive you it won't matter. You have to forgive yourself."

May God give him His peace that passes all understanding.

I do not talk to my dad anymore. One good result from going to counseling was that I realized he really is not my dad anymore. He forfeited that right when he did what he did. A father is supposed to protect his children. He not only did not protect me, he was the one who hurt me. Therefore, God alone is now my dad.

I have worked with kids a lot over the last 14 years, which has really helped too. It has helped me make friends with the "little me." For the longest time I was mad at the little Lisa. lol I thought it was her fault. It is easier for children who are abused to blame themselves then the parent or adult, because that seems to scary to say they really could be that evil. Children do not have very much of a capacity to look at evil. As we get older however, we see it everywhere. We cannot ignore its existence anymore, as much as we would like to. Satan is very much alive and working in this world.

I have always been very interested in criminal psychology, perhaps because I essentially grew up with a criminal and also have just been curious what goes on in their minds.

Criminals think they are above the law, obviously. They think they are a super man basically, that nothing can touch them. They come off as just confident but they are incredibly arrogant. Reading the book Crime and Punishment in high school helped me understand my dad a bit more.

They are usually extremely intelligent. Both my dad and this guy I worked with were very intelligent.

Another example is people who are mass murderers. They are "crazy", but they are also incredibly intelligent.

I believe in most severe criminal cases the person is actually possessed by a demon. That is when they can plead "insanity." They didn't know what they were doing, because THEY WERE POSSESSED at the time. I am serious. And I believe my dad was under the influence of demonic forces as well.

I believe people who commit heinous crimes are possessed because I do not believe humans left to themselves are capable of such evil, since we are made in the image of God. However, Satan HATES humans. Therefore, why would he not want to kill or hurt as many of us as possible? I believe Hitler was possessed. Charles Manson was, obviously. I also believe the students who did the shootings at Virginia Tech, Columbine and any other massive shooting were possessed.

We just say they were crazy and put them in a mental hospital. But I believe it is deeper than that. We explain it away with science and medicine because, just like me as a child, we do not want to look into evil head on. We want to rationalize it, and explain it away. It's just something wrong with their brain right?

Why do we do this? Because we are scared in the depths of our heart that if it was just an evil force that made them do that, can this same evil force make us do that? Yes, if you are not saved, that is possible. I know Satan cannot enter a Christian. Satan cannot dwell where God already is. But anyone who does not have the spirit of God in them can become possessed at any point. There are things that people do that open themselves up to this more, such as watching horror movies that glorify evil, playing with ouija boards, playing games like bloody Mary or "light as a feather," anything relating to fortune telling, and many other things. We need to expose these things for what they are. They are not harmless. They are very real and VERY scary.

If you have participated in any such activities you need to renounce them in the name of Jesus. When you play around with things relating to black magic, you may have inadverently given a demon permission to attach itself to you. You may have cracked open a window of your heart to them. Be VERY, VERY careful when it comes to Satan and things like this. HE IS REAL, and he is very dangerous.

Here's an example of a prayer to say aloud....

"By the power and blood of Jesus Satan be gone from my life, my mind, my heart, my body, and my soul. I do not give you permission to be in or around me anymore. I do not like you. I hate you. Please leave and never come back. Amen." :) And then pray the prayer in my previous blog entitled the Roman Road if you have not already done so.

May God bless you! I pray you have truly been set free! "He whom the son sets free is free indeed!"

Grace and peace be with you! :)