Rape The Forgotten Word

20 Pages 5039 Words

I saw the story about you on 20/20 and it compelled me to write to you. I had quite a time getting to your site, but once I did, i read through a few of the survivor stories you had posted. As I did, I couldn't help but feel the way that I did when I first started trying to heal. All of the stories that I read were about rape, most of them violent..all of them terrifying for the victim. Well, my story is very different...I was not raped, and it was not violent, except in it's aftermath..what it has put me through over the last 10 years. I was sexually molested by my father. So, as I read, I once again experienced the old "demons"..."you weren't attacked...you weren't raped...you shouldn't even feel you were abused..."
I had to stop myself and admit that maybe, though I have come a long way, maybe I am not as far as I had thought, or hoped. It was for this reason that I felt I needed to write to you, in the hopes that, like so many before me, you would post my story on your site too, maybe helping someone out there like me to realize that just because there was no rape, no violence, that they are no less abused, and no less justified in their despair.
I had been living with my father and his wife for about 4 or 5 months when he began to fondle me. He would say things like, "I'm your father...and a father should be able to show his love for a daughter any way that he wants to." It never went any further than the fondling, usually several times a week, but it went on for over 2 years. It was no less invasive than a full fledged rape and because it was my father, someone who was supposed to protect me from evils occuring OUTSIDE the home, I later felt that I perhaps was to blame. I was 15 when it started, and fully aware that the contact was not "normal", but I let it continue. I didn't stop it. I didn't tell anyone. Basically becoming my own abuser's enabler, I allowed it to continue until i ran away the summer before my senior year in...