INFO:

I don’t discuss my sister’s experience in depth because I respect their privacy. I address what was made public through the court proceedings and my experience with them as their oldest sister. My father trained my siblings to report my actions to him from childhood. He told them I couldn’t have a boyfriend or get married and ordered them to report back to him if I ever talked to boys. They took their jobs seriously, and I was often “told on” out of spite, resulting in terrifying consequences they were unaware of. Se*ual abuse, specifically incestuous abuse, negatively disrupts the framework of familial relationships. I’ll never know what the relationships with my siblings could’ve been. We all navigated circumstances that devastated our perspective and ability to develop positive interpersonal skills. My father experimented on and tormented me from when I was eight years old. Most of my siblings weren’t even born yet. Trying to survive a family where abuse exists, even when more than one person is victimized, is incredibly isolating for the victims. My siblings didn’t know for a fact (my little brother interrupted my father sometimes when he’d wake up in the middle of the night, but he didn’t remember until his adulthood; by then, it was too late) what my father was doing to me until my he gathered everyone in a family meeting and told them. I didn’t know the first time my father abused my sister until I spoke with her after I walked in on it happening. SA is committed in shadows so dark that predators can victimize multiple children in a family, and the victims believe they are the only ones. We must continue to shine a light on this disease. It’s the only way to disperse the shadows predators thrive in.