My sexual abuse did
not actually seem abusive. My father did
not hurt me in any way physically, but the emotional scars and my skewed
perception of the world have lived with me ever since then.
The last event happend when I was 6.
Hours later I
tried to run outside to tell my mom what happened when she came home from a
doctor’s appointment, but my dad called me back inside.
The next morning,
when she was getting me ready for school, I said to her, “Mommy I want to tell
you about something yucky, but daddy said you would get mad at him so he told
me not to tell you.” She promised, “it’s
ok you can tell me, I won’t get mad at him.”
I told her what had happened.
My mom went to
work but couldn’t concentrate, so on her morning break she went to a pay phone
and called the Focus on the Family hotline.
The man from Focus on the Family told her, “You need to file a
restraining order against him.” She said
she did not want to, and she was scared because she depended on his income to
keep our house. The man told her, “six
year olds do not make up things like this, so she is probably telling the
truth.” He explained that he was a
mandatory reported so since she told him he was obligated to report it. She finally gave the man her name and
address.
When she got home,
she confronted my dad about what I had told her. He said, “I was asleep. I just thought she
was you.” She actually wanted to believe
him. She had admitted that if she had
not already called the hotline at work she may not have reported it because my
dad was very convincing. Praise God that
it did get reported! She told my dad,
“Well I already called Focus on the Family about the what happened.”
Panicked, my dad
then called the police and tried to explain his side of the situation. He tried to convince them that he was asleep,
and he did not really intend to do anything.
My dad must have sensed that they didn’t believe him, because he decided
to pack his stuff up and leave. He knew a
police officer would probably come and question him.
He drove to a trailer
park in our family camper. I remember my
brother being very angry at me that day, like it was my fault that our dad had
to leave. Ironically enough, I felt a
profound sense of sadness and abandonment also, because he had made me feel
special and like I was his princess. I
had actually come to have a kind of crush on my dad, because I was essentially
his mistress from the time I was born until I was six.
After a few days,
my mom called Social Services. Shockingly
enough, they told her, “As long as he is not alone with the girl everything will
be fine.” How could anyone actually
prevent him from ever being alone with me even for a second as long as we were
in the same house? Sadly, my mom took
their advice and we actually all went to the trailer park to convince him to
come back home. My mom tried to make sure
he was never alone with me.
Luckily, a few
days later, on January 10,
1991 , Social Services came to my school and interviewed my brother
and I. The police also came to our
daycare later that day and drove my brother and I to Orangewood in Santa Ana , CA
We stayed at
Orangewood for six days, until my dad’s mother hired an expensive attorney for
my dad, and my dad signed a legal agreement stating that he would not try to
contact my brother or I or come anywhere near our house. The Orangewood facility then let my brother and
I move back in with our mom, even though we were technically still wards of the
state.
The night my
brother and I were taken to Orangewood, Social Services called my parent’s
house and said they wanted to come talk to my dad. When my dad’s attorney found out about the
situation he also called and warned my dad, “No they don’t just want to talk to
you. They are coming to arrest
you.” My dad decided to flee for his
life essentially since he did not know what they might do.
My dad hid behind
his attorney.
His attorney then met
with the D.A. and arranged a plea bargain, meaning he cut a deal with them. The arrangement was that my dad would serve
six months in prison on the charge of a “lewd act upon a child.”
Sadly, he actually
was released after only three months based on his good behavior.
He was then sentenced
to serve four years on parole, and he was told that, at the end of the four
years, his record would be completely erased.
To this day I have no idea why they were so merciful towards my dad.
He is lucky he did
not live in biblical times. The
punishment for molesting a child then was to be stoned to death. Jesus himself said, “If anyone causes one of
these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to be
thrown into the sea with a large millstone tied around his neck” (Mark
9:24).
The conditions of his
parole were that he had to check in with a parole officer once a month and see
a counselor weekly to ensure that he recover from his sexual addiction. I don’t know how effective the counselor that
he saw was though.
The day my dad was
arrested my mom committed herself to a mental hospital called New Life Treatment Center
He did admit
to her that if the process was not stopped, he was afraid of what he might do.
My mom remembers
him telling her when I was almost two years old that he didn’t feel comfortable
giving me a bath. They decided my mom
should always give me a bath. It did not
occur to her to ask why he said that, but she did find it peculiar.
My mom wanted to get back together with him after all this. She actually still trusted that he had a good
heart, and that he was a born again Christian.
She believed his conscious would make him honest in the future. She thought God would change my dad’s heart
and heal him.
The ironic thing
about that is what if God didn’t? God
does not always answer our prayers. If I
was in her position, I would have erred more on the side of caution. The fact is, a born again Christian would not
do something like that to their own child.
He was pretending the whole time.
He was quite the charmer, and he could convince people of almost
anything. He was a good liar, not a good
Christian.
I also to this day
have some anger at my mom for wanting to get back together with him. I never would have. I also would not have allowed him to have
visitation rights ever again, but she had very little knowledge at the time
about how detrimental my dad’s sickness was due to his sexual addiction.
After he was
released from prison, Social Services said he could not have any contact with
my brother or I unless it was supervised.
After two and half
years had passed, all of his therapists naively agreed that it would be safe for
him to move back home. My brother and I
both actually wanted my dad to come back at the time. I was eight then and my brother was twelve.
My mom said I felt
guilty the whole time that he was gone, because I was the one that told on him.
That was probably the main reason I
agreed to him coming back home.
When he moved back
in, his behavior seemed cordial and respectful enough. He was very proper in his interactions with
me. We all went to church together, and
both he and my mom ironically led worship at our church. On the outside it appeared like there was
nothing wrong with our family, but my dad’s mind was still filled with evil,
and he eventually got less and less capable of hiding it.
Though my dad
never tried anything with me again, he did with my brother. When my brother was thirteen my dad took a
shower with him. My dad would always
pick on my brother for how long he took showers so his “reasoning” was that it
was to show him how to take a shower quickly.
Words would have been sufficient of course, and that is why it was his
attempt to “condition” my brother. My
mom and I did not know about this until recently. Him doing this obviously proved that the
counselors were wrong, he was not healed.
My dad, of course,
started having problems with co-workers and his boss at work. He got fired from several jobs. He and my mom then started fighting due to
being short on money. They couldn’t live
off just one income.
He started
drinking two or three beers every night, because he was having trouble
sleeping. None of us liked his
drinking. He was no longer charming or
fun. I think he just stopped trying to
cover up the blackness in his heart.
Putting on a mask for that long can get tiring I’m sure.
He became very
mean, critical and sarcastic. He started
to act bipolar or manic-depressive. He
would be depressed for days and then stay up all night organizing the garage
and have tons of energy.
One day at church
my mom actually caught him flirting with another woman. The church they had attended together before,
called the local church, had very strict rules regarding the interactions
between men and women. So he had never
been “friendly” before with women at church.
He refused to go to a men’s group at church
because he felt like he couldn’t relate to any of the guys there. My mom did not like that she was the only
person to keep him accountable.
Then all of a
sudden my dad did not want to go to church or counseling anymore.
He always wanted
to blame someone else for the many problems that he had.
When his parole
ended, my mom had to write a letter to his parole officer saying that he was recovered,
even though he obviously was not. She remembers
that she did not want to write the letter, because, of course, she could tell
he had not recovered at all.
My mom finally started
going to a co-dependency group at our church to get help for herself. She felt that the group empowered her so that
she finally did not feel as dependent on my dad as she always had. She realized that she needed to “listen to
her gut”, and if my dad’s behavior didn’t improve, she needed to leave.
They started to
have more conflict as she confronted him more on his issues. The co-dependency group opened her eyes to
his behaviors. She finally asked him why
he kept avoiding counseling and church.
She asked why he had so much energy all the time. She asked why his jobs weren’t working out.
God truly saved us
during this time, because my dad was capable of anything. His behavior was so erratic. I think my mom finally realized she had made
the wrong decision by letting him come back.
She tried to make plans for our escape.
After her and my
dad had a particularly big fight about their money situation, she decided to
take my brother and I away for a weekend to stay at her friend’s house. She tried to called the Open Door Mission, a
homeless rescue mission in Omaha ,
NE
She called my dad
to talk things out. He was mad that she had
taken their only car. Finally he
apologized and begged her to come back. I
remember her talking to him and thinking, “Why is she talking to him.” “I don’t want to go back there with
him.”
After my brother
and I left for school that day my mom called their marriage counselor and said
that she was afraid of my dad. My dad
overheard what she said and got on the phone to try to talk his way out of the
accusation.
When my mom hung
up the phone my dad said to her, “If you tell anybody else your afraid of me I’m
going to make sure your mouth never says that again.”
My mom then locked
herself in the bathroom and called 911.
A police officer came out and while he was talking to my dad, my mom was
packing a bag to leave. The police
officer said he could not do anything to my dad, because my dad had not
actually physically hurt her. So my mom just
asked the officer for a ride into town.
She went to stay
at a lady’s house from our church. My
mom then called both my brother and I at school and told us to come to this
woman’s house after school and not to go home.
She called my dad and told him that, due to his violent and
unpredictable behavior, she had decided it was not safe for any us to live with
him for awhile.
In an attempt to
counteract my mom’s plan to rescue my brother and I, my dad also called us at
school and told us to disregard what my mom said. I remember that was a very hard decision for
me to make, because either choice led to be being disobedient. Praise Jesus
both my brother and I chose to go to where my mom was staying. I remember walking to the woman’s house where
my mom was staying and being afraid that something would happen. It all seemed very chaotic.
My mom then
arranged for us to stay at the Open Door Mission until she could get a
restraining order against my dad. We
stayed at the mission for two weeks and my brother and I did not go to school during
that time.
My dad knew that
since he had molested me my mom could legally take my brother and I away from
him forever. So my mom was afraid that
if we went back to school my dad would kidnap us and take away from her first.
While we were
staying at the mission I remember I felt a lot of anger towards my mom over the
whole situation. Ironically enough, I
opened a Bible at that time and read several verses to her on the topic of
divorce. I was torn on the inside
because part of me still loved my dad and wanted my parents to stay together,
but I knew he had a very sick mind. My
brother was also struggling with own anger during this time. He began to walk in the hallways and aim a
toy gun at people.
While we were staying at the mission my mom
was referred to a Christian attorney. He
put a temporary court order in place that stated that my dad must move out of our
house but that he could have visitation rights with my brother and I. My dad also had an attorney which was why she
felt that she had to come to a compromise.
Before the
permanent court order was in place my brother and I were asked if we felt
comfortable visiting my dad. I didn’t
want to give up seeing my dad’s extended family so I stated that I still wanted
to see my dad. My brother also stated
that he wanted to visit my dad. The
final court order said that my dad was required to have regular visits with my
brother and I as long as I was comfortable with it.
A few weeks after
my dad moved out he moved in with a woman he had met at a bar. My mom would not let us stay the night with
him until he had bedrooms for my brother and I.
My mom thought that as long as my brother was there I would be safe. In retrospect it is obvious to me that my
brother’s presence did not ensure my safety, but my mom believed what she
wanted to believe.
My dad got
remarried to another woman after the divorce was finalized. I did feel safer knowing that my step-mom was
there. She could be a difficult person
sometimes, but at least she got my dad back in order. She was from the south and very strict about
everything. At the time, she was good
for my dad.
A year after the
divorce my brother did not want to visit my dad anymore, due to my dad’s
constant criticism of him. My mom was concerned
about me still visiting my dad without my brother, so her and my grandma then started
trying to convince me to move back to California Nebraska
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