True Story of Sexual Abuse in a Stepfamily

I hear my sisters word's: Let it go. We survived. You just need to get on with your life.

But it's not that easy. Memories don't just go away. There are the constant nightmares, the unwanted thoughts, the upset in your own sex life with your husband because you can't get past the sexual abuse.

And then your own mother chooses not to believe you were sexually abused or beaten even after knowing now for 29 years. So, where does that leave you? It leaves you in a world of no hope, of lost relationships, of never having a relationship with your mother again seeing as that she was your last hope of having someone stand by your side.

I have been told throughout my life that I should write a book on what happened through my childhood, it would probably turn out to be a best seller. There are so many adults that have lived through the horror of having a step-parent and living through the sexual abuse and physical abuse that they instill on us.

My sexual abuse started when I was about 8 years old, I remember my mother was working and my stepdad was home because of construction work being slow. I remember the look on my sisters face as he took my hand and told her to go to her room and as she stood in the doorway watching as he led me down that hallway to his and my moms bedroom, my nightmare started there and continued for the next 9 years. Those years of sexual abuse and physical abuse made an impact on my life and caused me to make bad choices through my relationships.

I am 46 years old now and the memories are just as if was yesterday all over again, they never fade, they never go away. I remember being 10 years old and my stepdad giving me a bath and my mother right there in the kitchen and him just down the hallway with me sexually abusing me. She never thought it was odd that I was 10 years old and her husband was giving me a bath.

I remember he watched a lot of porn in those days on an old projector. I remember this because every time he did he would come and get me and sexually abuse me again. I remember him playing doctor with me a lot. Sometime at the end of elementary school, my stepdads dad came down from California to spend time with my mom and stepdad. My parents thought this was the perfect time for them to finally go out on a dinner date. What they didn't know was while they were gone he sexually abused me. When I was 16 years old and I started dating he did everything he could not to let me go on a date, I would get beatings for everything. It seems he would find every excuse not to let me out of the house.

I remember one night when I was 16 and 1/2 I was fixing to leave out on a date and right in front of my mother he grabbed me by my hands and twisted them backwards and told me I wasn't going anywhere. I remember calling out to my mother to stop him, to make him let go of me. She never did. I remember breaking free and running for the door and then being afraid to come home that night.

I was seventeen years old the last time he tried anything, that last time is ingrained in my memory. I was home sick with a bad virus and running fever, it was late at night and my mother was sitting by my bed and putting cold cloths on my chest and I remember my stepdad walking in the room and telling my mother to go to bed that he would take care of it. And that's where the nightmare starts, he sat down on the bed and tried to go down on my chest. I hit him square between the eyes and told him to get the (blank) out of my room. He immediately got up and left. And yet my mother who had just walked around the corner never came in to check on me, or to find out what the problem was.

It wasn't to long after that, that I remember talking to a girl in school who was also being sexually abused by her step-father. I decided then that I was going to tell my mother what my stepdad was doing to me. So my sister and I got together and talked about it and we decided to tell her.

My mother immediately started questioning everything, wanting nitty gritty details, I think I knew she didn't believe us. She asked my stepdad that night about it and of course I remember him denying it. She actually believed him, stuck by his side.

In the summer of my 17th year I ran away, I had just come home from a date and I was one minute late and he was going to hit me, I just couldn't take it anymore. I ran across the street and stayed with a neighbor that night, my mother never came and asked me to come home. Life for my sister and brother were just as bad and we literally lived in a world of hell everyday, never knowing what was coming next, never knowing what was going to spark the next beating.

I remember once we were going some place with my parents and we went out front before we left and we saw the neighbor boys on the side of our house starting a fire, we had just got to the corner of the house when my stepdad saw them and he took us in the house and beat us for what they did. There was other times too, like when we would play hopscotch outside and if we didn't wash the chalk off the sidewalk he would take us in and beat us for that. He was a big man, he was 6 ft 3 in tall and his hands were large as well as the belt he carried.

I remember one night after we had gotten our report cards he woke me up and told me to go in the back bedroom with my mother. I remember him walking down that hallway to my sisters bedroom with that belt with holes in it and a large belt buckle and beating my sister with it and hitting her in the back with the belt buckle because she made a C on her report card. Our only escape was school, or going to my real dads house but even that had consequences as he was married to a woman that didn't like us kids.

I never knew were we fit in to this family. I have always, since the day I told my mother felt that I was somehow the black sheep of the family because my mind refuses to let go of the past. I have been to three psychologists through my life and none of them could take my pain away.

I find it hard to trust people to let go of my feelings to them. I feel like, if you've never lived in the world I lived then, you would never know what it was like to live the sexual abuse. They just couldn't simply understand where I was coming from and the mindset I have about life.

Sometimes my only out is staying away from my family so the memories die down and I can go on living my life. My mother lives in a volatile relationship of her own with her own mother, so its hard for her to accept us kids in a normal, stable and loving relationship. She has even managed to get to my own daughter which has caused a rift between us.

My stepdad continued to deny it and this year took it to his grave. I thought when he passed that my mother would finally acknowledge what happened to us. But she didn't, instead she has pulled further away because we wouldn't go to the nursing home to see him. Why would we? He abused us! He ruined our lives, he took our childhood away from us.

Sexual abuse has long lasting effects on children. Some grow up to abuse other kids as in the case of my own stepdad who was abused by his own dad. And others like me who just live with the memories and nightmare of it, wanting acceptance, wanting a mom who will protect and believe you.

When will it end? I guess when God finally takes me home.