TW: details of sexual abuse and rape, emotional abuse and manipulation by parental figures; brief discussion of relationship emotional and mental abuse. Uncensored language.
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I will not be “ministerial” in this post. I will be a human who is dealing with a huge trauma, and that will include some thoughts that might disturb you. It’s my truth, and I am feeling compelled to tell it.
This is an incredibly hard post to write. I have completely gone no-contact with my mother, and by extension, my two brothers and the entire side of their father’s family. It has 100% to do with the fact that they refuse to believe my truth, and have told me so to my face, even when I have offered proof, dates, times, places, etc.
My stepfather raped me. For 16 years of my life – from the time that I was 2, to the time that I was 18 (the day before my first wedding, as a matter of fact). I refuse to call it “molestation” now because it was so much more than that. He manipulated me into having sex with him, telling me that he “loved me,” and that I was “his boy.” There were times I can recall during these horrific sessions that he would call me by my mother’s name, but that eventually stopped. I think he was trying to justify what he was doing. I am unsure, but whatever it was it scarred me for life. I still have intimacy issues that I am working with a therapist on.
When I was 9 years old, I finally came to the conclusion that what was happening was not normal, and no other boy that I was aware of had this type of relationship with his “dad.” I remember we had a long-term substitute teacher in my 4th grade class (for the life of me I cannot remember her name), and I told her in a whisper, “My stepfather molested me.” I remember her shock, and anger, and her telling me that everything would be alright and I would be safe. I will from this point refer to him as my mother’s husband.
Later that day, I was taken into the principal’s office, where sat the principal, a female and male cop, and the school psychologist. I was grilled by said very intimidating male police officer, who wanted me to use a ball to show him what my mother’s husband was making me do. I couldn’t do it. I was so scared. He asked me if I wanted the female police officer to leave. Honestly, I wanted her to stay, and the principle, the male officer, and the school psychologist to all leave. I don’t remember what I said, and how I said it, but the gist came across, and I was told I would be leaving with the officers.
We walked outside. I remember I said to them, “Thank you, I will walk myself home now.” The female officer told me no, and she urged me toward their police cruiser. I remember being told to get the back. There I was, at nine years old, in the back of a police cruiser where the criminals were placed. I remember feeling sick, like I was going to throw up. I told the officers, and they asked me to try to just hang on until we got to the “station.”
I was taken into the police station, past the people that were handcuffed to benches, past a plethora of desks, into a dimly-lit room, painted a dingy sterile green, that had some toys and a playpen in it. I was told to wait there and they would be calling my mom. I remember I just wanted my mommy. I just wanted to go home, and I didn’t want her husband to be there.
It felt like hours, but my mother finally showed up. She came into the room, and I was so happy. I felt like I was saved. I thought she was going to run to me and sweep me up in a hug and tell me everything was okay, and thay I would be safe and we’d move away somewhere else.
She didn’t. She slapped me across the face so hard I remember almost falling to the floor, and staring at her in shock. This wasn’t my mom. I didn’t know who this was. She was so angry.
She said she saw a smirk on my face when I walked into the room, and she called me a liar. She screamed at me and told me that I needed to change my story or I was never going to see her again, and that her husband had been arrested, and that my brother was being taken from her, and it was all my fault. Police were crawling all over our home and it was all my fault. Social workers were at the house, shared with my aunt and her 6 children, and they were threatening to take her kids away too, and it was all my fault. I was a liar, and I needed to tell the truth.
I burst into tears, and started to hyperventilate. Have you ever cried so hard that you’re hacking? That your two steps from puking? That’s what I was doing. I wet myself. I puked all over the floor. I cried that I wasn’t lying, that he did what he did, I wanted him to stop, and I didn’t understand. I remember repeating myself: I wasn’t lying. I wasn’t lying. I wasn’t lying…
She looked at me with disgust, said that I was a pussy for lying like this, and I had no reason to destroy our family. She told me she wished she never kept me, that I was ruining her life, and that she needed to go save “my father” from jail. She said that she was going to make sure that I ended up in MacClaren Hall, that I was put into “juvie” for being a liar. She looked like she was going to kick me. I braced myself for it. She instead stormed out of the room, and that was the last time I saw my mother for three months.
Eventually, they brought my brother into the room. I want to say he was two, maybe three years old. Another female officer came in, looked at me in shock, and asked me what happened. I quietly told her, “my mother doesn’t believe me.” I was sitting in my own wet, near my own puke, and I was silently crying. I don’t remember my brother making any noise. I don’t remember really acknowledging him. I was nine years old, and I was devestated.
That same officer brought me back some new clothes (they were mine, my mother shoved my clothes in a trash bag, and packed my brother’s into a duffle and diaper bag). I changed, and I waited.
My grandma and grandpa came and got us. They took us to their apartment, and showed me their spare bedroom. It had a daybed. I remember eating pizza, and laying down. I fell asleep I think for a while, but I was woken up by pounding on my grandparent’s apartment door. My mother was there, and she was screaming at my grandfather and grandmother, asking where I was, that she needed to “knock some sense into me,” and that she wanted to see her son (meaning my brother). I know she was there, I know she was let into the apartment because my grandparents wanted to avoid the neighbors hearing my mother’s rant.
They charged her husband, she screamed. They were charging her with child negligect because she refused to leave him, and she was choosing to stay with him. Other words were said, but I started tuning them out. I started to wish I had never said a word. I was regretting trying to safe myself.
My brother only stayed with us for two weeks, and my mother eventually was allowed to take him home. I stayed in the spare room, avoiding seeing her. My grandmother told me I didn’t have to if I didn’t want to. I didn’t. I was scared of her. I was scared of my own mother.
Over the next few months, there were social worker visits, psychiatrist visits, court visits, visits with my public defender, and visits with a judge. I was eventually able to give them dates, times, locations, and vague details about what he did to me, and what I did to him. Having to recall the stories was awful, and I know I was tripped up a few times because things started blending together. That was used against me by my own mother as proof that was lying.
The last time we went to court I thought I was prepared. My grandparents bought me a new outfit. A blue button up shirt with surf boards on it, a new pair of jeans, a nice belt and a bolo tie that I loved because it had my grandma’s favorite turquoise in it. I felt good. I felt confident. I was ready.
He was sitting right there. I froze. He was right there. “You don’t have to hide from me Johnnie.” he said to me. I turned and walked away, away from everyone, and tried to find somewhere just away. I sat on a bench, by myself. No one came for me for a bit. I could breathe again.
Eventually my grandpa and my lawyer found me, and my lawyer brought me into an empty court room, and we just talked. I told him I didn’t want to see my mother’s husband. He understood, and wrote it down. He asked if I wanted to see my mom. I said I wasn’t sure. He nodded. He asked me how living with my grandparents was. I told him I never wanted to leave. I love my grandma, and Mikey (my grandpa). They were so good to me. He nodded. He asked me, “If your grandparents cannot continue to care for you, would you be okay going to his parents?” I said no. I didn’t want to see them, even though I truly loved his mother. His father was an asshole who liked to mentally fuck with me, and I hated having to see him. He asked me if there was anyone else. I asked him, “Do my grandparents not want me there any more?” He said it wasn’t that; it was that my mother didn’t want me living with them. She wanted me anywhere but with them, or foster care.
After court, I was exhausted. We went back to the apartment, and my grandmother said that my mother was coming over. I wasn’t sure I wanted to see her, but my grandmother said maybe we just needed to talk. I really didn’t want to talk to her. I sat there and waited.
She showed up, and looked at me. She stood there and just looked right through me, like I was something she wanted to squash and kill. I hated her in that moment. I hated my mother, because she wasn’t the mother I needed. “I’m going to talk to my son,” she said to my grandmother. She said “Get up.” I froze. She grabbed me by the arm, and said, “We’re going to talk.” My grandma intervened, and said, “He’s been through a lot today Taunya. Maybe this can wait.” My mother ignored my grandmother, and pushed me into the spare room and locked the door.
I was trapped with her. She said sit. I sat in the desk chair. She berated me, grilled me for what felt like an eternity, and I remember begging her to stop. I remember crying my eyes out, begging her to stop. She told me no one believed me. That my uncle and my grandfather were scared that I was going to lie about them next. She browbeat me into confessing that I lied. She stood triumphant, and said, “I knew it. Now you’re gonna go tell my mother how you lied to her. How you lied to all of us.”
I lied that day. I lied and said that I made it all up. Nothing happened. It was all in my head, and something I picked up from TV. My mother told me to tell everyone that it was because they were constantly fighting and that I thought this was a way to fix it.
I tried to tell the truth again. I talked to my grandma, and told her that I was telling the lie so that my mom would leave me alone. She told me that she figured that that was it. She told me that I could not keep that up forever, and that my mom was going to figure it out. My mother did, and was so angry. The social worker told her that I was sticking to my story of the SA. I was trapped. I felt betrayed, by the social worker and most of all, my mom. My mother came again, and told me that if I didn’t change my story and stick to it, that she and her husband were going to go to jail, my brother was going into foster care, and I was going to MacClaren Hall. She would make sure of it. In case you don’t know MacClaren hall was a juvenille detention center in El Monte, CA eventually shut down for gross negligence and abuse. In our house, with my cousins, it was frequently a topic of discussion.
I changed my story. Officially. I was so tired. I just wanted it all to end.
After 18 months away, I was allowed to return “home.” I started 5th grade two months into the school year. I didn’t do well my first report card. I got a “D” in reading. My mother flipped out.
The abuse stopped, until my second brother was born in 1990. I was 12 years old. I remember on New Year’s Eve, 1991, my brother was almost a year old. He was sleeping next to me. My mother’s husband came in, picked my brother up, and took him out into the den. My other brother was asleep on the bottom bunk of our shared bunk beds. He put my younger brother with him, and came into the room, and locked the door. I pretended to be asleep, but I was shaking really bad. He climbed under the blankets, and it started again.
I had my first real orgasm with another person that night, and I will never forget the disgust and dirtiness I felt afterward. “You wanted it. You liked it. Look, your body reacted. You love when I do this. You are my dirty little boy. You always will be. If you tell this time, you know that things will be really bad. No one will believe you. Just let it happen. You’re mine.“
In a separate incident, just a week later after going back to school, I was “jumped.” I don’t know how many there were. I didn’t count. There was a metal rod or pipe, and they were beating me with it. I curled up into a little ball and let them beat me. They were mostly hitting my backpack, but I remember thinking that if they killed me, my mother might finally be sorry. A lady came to take out the trash, and screamed, which broke up the fight. She got me up off the ground, dusted me off, picked some of the gravel and pebbles out of the road rash that was the right side of my face. She told me to come in with her, and I remember shaking my head no. “You’re a stranger,” I said. She shook her head like she understood and told me to wait there while she called the police. I heard police, and the minute she stepped inside I ran. I ran all the way from that alley, down Chatsworth St. I don’t even remember if I waited for the stop lights. I just ran.
I got home, cleaned myself up, and never told a soul. That Saturday, I tried killing myself for the first time. I tried cutting my wrist with a broken piece of picture frame glass. Short of hacking into my wrist, it wasn’t sharp enough. There is still a tiny scar on my right wrist; a reminder that I did this. I needed to do this at the time, and it didn’t work. I wished it had.
My mother started drinking heavily after the death of my great grandfather. She would go one of two ways: verbally violent, or whiney. I was her favorite target. “Why did I do it? Why did I lie?” I’ve worked out that she was trying to reconcile her own guilt, her refusal to believe something happened. It was happening regularly right under her nose. I would be laying in her bed, or in his camper’s upper bunk while she was leaving for work, naked from the waist down (sometimes completely nude, but covered in a blanket) because she interupted him, and she never said a word on the oddness of it all. She never acknowledged it. We were sleeping in the same fucking bed. I am now certain she knew something was happening. This was also around the time she forced me to call him “Dad.”
It was gross, this life I was living. I was having regular sex with her husband. I took the dominate role almost all the time; I would never let him near that area of my body. It hurt and I would scream. He would tell me to relax, and I couldn’t. He still made do. Again, details are irrelevant, but he started calling me his “mistress,” or his “secret lover,” and making jokes about how I would always be his, and even if I got married, he would still have me fucking him. He told me that if I didn’t service him, there were other boys that would. He did say that he would never touch his sons, because they were his blood. What a relief, right?
I tried again. I took everything in the medicine cabinent. I swallowed every pill, syrup, and capsule in that bathroom. I got violently ill, and threw it all up. I cleaned up the mess, and never said anything. I was 15.
This was around the time I became the biggest, most disgusting of homophobes (the closeted kind that treats others as they have been treated). I had to hide who I was, and I had to hide what he was doing. It didn’t make me popular in high school, and in fact I was treated horribly until I learned that the space was safe and it was slightly ok to be myself there.
I started going to the church near my high school. I studied and received my Confirmation, now 16. I thought about becoming a priest. He couldn’t touch me then. I spoke to an abbot visiting from a monastery, and asked about becoming a monk. We had a long talk, and he suggested that I was making a rash decision, and needed to experience more life first. I didn’t tell him why, and I desperately wanted to tell him how much “life” I was experiencing at that moment.
It just became rote. He start something, sometimes I would out of frustration, and I would tune it out. Orgasm, and clean up, and leave. Sometimes he’d force me to sleep with him by laying half on top of me. I tuned it out. I started thinking that, “I was letting it happen, and it was my fault. I was a dirty whore. I was a lying, dirty whore.” I know now that it was manipulation, grooming, and programing. I didn’t then.
I had a crush on the hot guy. The guy in class that everyone wanted, that loved Vampire Lestat and was really into techno, alternative, and just counter culture in general. I was in a play where he was the assistant director. As one of the few guys in the play that was male, I claimed a prop closet as a dressing room. He came in while I was changing. He mention that I didn’t need to be shy. I boldy asked him if he liked what he saw. He smiled at me. We reached for each other, and we made out. It was my first kiss with a guy. I never told him that. I was in my underwear and a t-shirt. He was fully clothed.
He resembled him. I really liked him, but he resembled him.
I would sneak out with him to West Hollywood. We’d make out a lot. We did have sex in his car, hiding in alleys or wooded places in the valley where we thought we wouldn’t get caught. I would go with him to the Arena and Circus. That’s where I discovered freedom. I could dance on tables as sexually as I wanted, and no one was allowed to touch me unless I allowed them to. I made a lot of money dancing on tables. I saved it all, and it mostly paid for my Senior Year. Until the walls bled…
I woke up, and I was in a pile of people. I don’t know what happened, but I have an idea. I think there was something in my drink. I was sore, and there were marks on me. There were four other guys, including his ex-boyfriend. I woke him up, and quietly asked him to take me home. He looked at me with bleary eyes, and must’ve saw the look on my face, nodded, and took me home. I met with him the next day, and I saw the marks on his arm. Track marks. I told him we were done. He begged me to leave with him. I told him no, I was a junior and still needed to at least finish school. He said ok. We drifted apart. He graduated, and I moved on.
I dated girls. The first one broke up with me because I wouldn’t have sex with her. The second was two years younger than me, and it was awkward in our friend groups. I had asked her to prom, but she knew I liked my ex-wife, so she pushed me toward her. I started dating my ex-wife my Senior Year. On our first date, she wasn’t even aware it was a date.
She became my refuge. It wasn’t healthy, and I acknowledge that. While I was with her, he seemed to back off of me.
We were exclusive through the second semester of high school, and we went to prom together. She went with my family and I camping that summer. We were intimate, and we got closer. I asked her to marry me on a complete and utter whim, and she said yes. My mother was furious, but she eventually acquiesced. Her husband was silently annoyed, like a chastised child who can’t have what he wants.
Publicly, he was my best man for the wedding. My dear friend was my best woman, but he was “best man,” because my mother forced the issue. He took me to a strip club with his uncle for my bachelor party. I sipped on mocktails and ate crappy snacks while some woman shoved her breasts in my face. I don’t know why, but we came home to an empty house. He started something with me again that night. I fell into the old pattern, like a worn glove, and allowed it to happen, until I didn’t.
I pinned him to the floor, and hand my hands around his neck. I told him if he ever touched me like this again, I would kill him. I meant it too. It took him turning red and purple to get my drift.
The next day, I was in a tux, and it was a blur. I married my best friend that day, and it was lovely. He stopped with me. She saved me. I don’t think I have never thanked her for that.
Later, we moved, we had our son, and we were living a life. I acknowledged I was polyamorous and introduced a male partner into our relationship (a whole other can of worms that led to verbal and emotional abuse). He resembled him, in a lot of ways. I couldn’t break the cycle, I guess.
When I was 26, I was having a really hard time at work. A guy in my department was harrassing me, and it got so bad I was losing my hair, I was gaining weight, and my depression was bordering suicidal again. I started seeing a therapist. On our third appointment, I told him about the SA and the abuse. He informed me he had to report it.
It was a nightmare. It was 4th grade all over again. This time, they were concerned for my son.
They investigated, but did not charge him. My mother was livid and tried throwing us under the bus by telling the social worker investingating that I was Pagan and that I was poly.
We didn’t speak for a year. She was still allowed visitation with my son, for short periods of time, at my child care provider’s house, under supervision. The sitter said she understood, and was fully supportive.
We had a knock down, drag out fight at my child care providers home. She arranged for us to use it as a safe space to “talk it out.” It became a verbal brawl, and I shattered my mother that day. I gave her details – in all their disgusting and borderline incestuous glory. She basically plugged her ears and screamed, “Lalalala” over my confession. She walked away. I felt powerful, because for the first time I wasn’t hiding from the answers. I finally, FINALLY told her the 100% truth (not everything, but enough I thought to get her to see it).
Months down the line, she acknowledged to me in the parking lot of a Starbucks, in her minivan while driving me to pick up a car part, that “something happened between us,” and she didn’t know what. She didn’t want to know what. It was futile, and I just let it go.
I stopped interacting with his family for the most part. It felt awkward being there after accusing him of rape a second time.
Recently, he had been struggling with cancer. He got it in his mouth and it spread to his throat, and eventually through his esophagus. He was hospitalized, and my mother called me to tell me that he was dying. I didn’t want to, but I asked her if she needed me to come down there. She said yes.
Our relationship at this point was largely transactional. I borrowed money from her, and until I quit would occasionally sign her and others into Disneyland when I worked there. Coming to help in this situation was very, very weird. I did it anyway, because I felt obligated because she had helped us so much financially. Again, co-dependant and transactional.
The. Entire. Time. I. Was. There. I was gaslit. I was told that things that actually happened didn’t happen, like my having asthma. Even when my both of my brothers confirmed I had it, and had an inhaler, she brushed it off and insinuated that I was “faking it.”
She diminished my accomplishments in school, focusing on my brother’s amazing new job, and how he was making triple digits (yet he was living out of his car and barely seeing his own children). Not to mention he has become a tacit Trump supporter, and a conspiracy theorist.
She warned me not to bring up my youngest brother’s problems, which I have no idea what they are, other than the fact that he never graduated from high school, and doesn’t work because of his fibromyalgia (which she stressed was so much worse than mine). Oh, and this is when she mentioned that she bought him a Prius. “He’s making the payments,” she said. I wondered, “Really? With no job?” I think I know what he is doing for money, I’ve seen it unfortunately and need brain bleach to get those images out of my head. No one wants to see their sibling like that.
The three of them kept bringing up my ex-husband, who was not the person everyone else saw as being this gregarious and wonderful human. He was a verbally abusive and emotionally manipulative asshole who caused so many problems in our relationship and the relationship I had with my ex-wife, that the entire situation was toxic for all. He would manipulate me into an emotional melt down, and act like the hero for calming me down. That kind of thing. They kept bringing him up, and I finally said, “Look, I have a lot of trauma I’m still working through with that, can we please stop talking about it. It’s not relevant to this situation.” They acted massively butthurt, but it stopped. Sort of.
The discussion turned to his death, and what they wanted to do for his memorial. My mother looked me straight in the eye and said, “We won’t be using you for the memorial. I want him to have a real minister; a priest.”
“Well fuck my highly academic Master of Divinity degree, and my ordination.” I thought.
Not that I would have ever thought to do his service. Nope.
They then brought up a neighbor who had become close to his sister, and her kids. This guy apparently was molesting three of her children. They were openly discussing how sick he was and what a pervert he was, and how her husband never liked him because, “something was off with him.”
In my mind I’m thinking, “Yeah, he was looking in a mirror, and couldn’t handle it you assholes!”
We visited her husband twice while I was there, and I fell into clinical mode. I refused to engage in the “family discussion” of what to do about his life support. I gave a very clinical yet spiritual opinion, the same I would have with any family at bedside as a chaplain. I advocated for a Catholic chaplain for him, so that he could receive his annointing. I would not, however, step into the “eldest child” role and help make decisions. I cast myself as an outlier, and lived in that space. I know it pissed them off.
“He raised you.”
In my head: “Yeah, he also make me fuck him. I raised myself, and the two of you. I made your dinner, I made sure you had clean clothes, and I made sure your homework was done and you were ready for school. I dragged our mother out of bed every weekend and forced her into a car to drive us to our mutual workplace, knowing that she was likely still drunk. He hid in his motor home in the driveway, fucking around with whatever, drinking too, when he wasn’t actively raping me in there.”
My response: “We remember things very differently. Your father is much different than the man I grew up with. Let’s leave it there.”
I refused to take that bait. I could see that they were pissed. I could care less.
The final morning, I was sitting with my mother, and the subject of his medicine and t-cells came up. It never clicked. I heard them talking about t-cells and immunocompromisation multiple times, but for some reason it just never clicked. She dropped the bomb on me.
He was HIV positive. He had been since after my second brother was born. He “apparently” got it from a hooker. He didn’t tell her for several years.
My mother knew this information for 25 years. She never told me.
He was raping me while he had HIV.
I panicked. Texting my chosen sisters rapid fire, freaking out internally, wondering if I had it or gave it to anyone else, including my ex-wife. I was a mess. And I was angry.
I shut down, kept my emotions close, and came home. Upon my arrival, my husband and son consoled me while I lost it. They reminded me that I have been tested since then and have never had symtoms. I got tested again, just in case. Negative.
The Monday after my return the rat bastard was dead. One less evil in the world.
I kept the line of communication open with the three of them until last Saturday, when they “memorialized” that monster. I was waiting for my mother to get me something from the hospital to show that I was there and he was dying. She never followed through. Thank goodness for understanding management. If needed, his death certificate is public record. I can pull it.
After coming home, I haven’t been sleeping well. I am up until 3-4AM regardless of the time zone. I have been having horrific nightmares, so bad that they are waking me up in a cold sweat. I don’t remember most of what’s happening in them, and I am glad I am not. It’s a horrible, but this helps. Therapy helps. My husband’s, my son’s, and my entire chosen family’s support helps. My recently discovered birth father and that side of the family have been as supportive as I have so far allowed them to be. I’ve been keeping them at a distance a bit because of this, because I don’t feel worthy of them and their goodness (though we don’t agree politically).
They are blocked. I’ve waited long enough. I cannot do this anymore. He’s dead and gone, and will never answer for his crimes against me in this life, but my hope is that he’ll burn in his Catholic hell. Or that he’ll answer for his crimes in the next life. Or his soul will be considered so black it will simply crumble into nothing, and it will be like he never existed, and no other creature will be forced to have him as a past exisitence. My favorite option, honestly.
I will miss my nephews and my nieces. I hope someday to open up the lines of communication with them.
I love my brothers. I raised them for the first years of their lives, until I moved out at 19. I doubt they’ll ever believe me, especially my younger brother. For some dumb reason he idolized his father (whose internalized homophobia made his life hell). Someday, maybe when she is dead, we can reconcile. I will demand reconciliation before forgiveness.
I doubt I will ever get that from her. I do love my mother. I also hate her. And I am well aware of how strong that word is. I was her child. I was a miracle that should have never happened (she was in a car accident before she even knew she was pregant with me and didn’t find out until she was nearly seven months). I hate her because of her obsession with that man. He left her once, she chased him down to Denver and brought him back. I hate her for not protecting me. I hate her for not loving me enough to believe me. I hate her for chosing him over me.
May she have the life she deserves. It won’t have me in it. And I will be better off.
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