I once was a victim but now I am a survivor. I was sexually abused by my grandfather and by the neighbor. I was only 6 when it all began.

He would touch my thighs and then move his way up. As if he had a right. He sodomized me. He would dig his finger nails into my leg. He hade me touch him. This went on for 11 years. My childhood playmate lived across the street. I would spend the night there. Her dad liked that. He liked me. He would come in the night. He told me once that he liked me because I was so soft. I would leave. I would float above and watch. He still lives across the street.

I got married and soon realized that something was wrong. That no matter what I did or how hard I tried...I would always "leave" when things got intimate.

I was feeling overwhelmed by life. My life. I never forgot what had happened to me.... I found myself in marriage counseling, feeling so alone. My husband stopped going but I felt compelled to "talk". I started slow not wanting to really reveal my darkest of secrets. I eventually told my therapist and I soon found myself in the hospital praying I would die.I hated my therapist for taking me there. But now know that at that moment my whole life changed. I shared the secret with my family. They were shocked. Some made the choice to standby my grandfather...others chose me. My family has suffered along with me. My grandfather recently passed away, I never cried. I cried so many times before...he doesn't deserve my tears.

I look back now and wonder what I would have been had I not been a victim.I struggle with depression and with anxiety. I have the support of my family and friends and a wonderful therapist. She has helped me to understand that I am ok. That being a perfectionist is who I am and that is ok too. I still have bouts with some of my coping mechanisms. I still disassociate at times and I do burn myself.I have struggled with an eating disorder and still struggle with finding hope. My therapist suggested joining a support group. I did and it was a wonderful experience. It took the aloneness away and gave me a sense of strength. I would suggest to you to join a group. VOICES (Victims Of Incest Can Emerge Survivors) is an excellant choice.

The biggest lesson for me is knowing that it was not my fault. I have learned a lot about myself and know that I am good person. Bad things happen to good people. I know that I am ENOUGH and that is all that matters

Jennifer

I have been going out with a guy named Don, and every night he'd want sex from me, we had sex every night even if I had my period. The thing is, maybe like, 2 or 3 times out of all these nights did I actually not say no. We've been going out for about 3 months now too.

Today I went to the DA, because his sister is saying that he sexually abused her. But that makes me mad because she helped him rape me over and over again every night.

See, Don, would tell his sister, Jackie, to hold me down because I would always fight him to get off of me. And the one night, I was really fighting him I was yelling kicking, trying to get up off the bed and everything but when I yelled Jackie started to kiss me really hard, while Don would unzip my pants and pull down my panties and rape me, he would say that if I yelled stop or no, that I would get in trouble by his parents and that I would not be allowed to see him anymore. Jackie's job was to hold my hands down and kiss me as hard as she could, while Don would rape me and laugh. It started to get so bad that I would cry every night and go home and cut myself.

I lied to the DA about what happened between me and Don because he's 23 and I'm 13, I know that that's wrong but even know he did all that to me, I still love him to death and I always want to be with him. But see, I can't turn him in although, I really want to because after all of this mess is over and we get back together, he'll just conitinue to do it over and over again to me probably, he said before he was gonna stop but he never did and then he all concerned about me going over to other guys houses because they might hurt me. That's when I finally told him that he was hurting me so badly, and when I told him, he held me tight, and told me that he loved me and that he would never do it again. Partly I believe and partly I don't.

I don't know whether I should tell the DA or not anymore, I think I'm just gonna leave the story like it is. What do you think?

Shannon
AIM: BurninAtTheCross

I can only remember him touching me two times but I suspect it started as early as babyhood. When I was a toddler I was very sexual by nature. I knew that it felt good to touch myself down there and a child of that age shouldn't know that. My first memory of him touching me was at the age of seven. I was lying on my side on the living room floor watching TV (my mom was at work) and he came over and put his hand on my butt and between my legs. I thought it was wrong when he did it but I was seven and he was my stepfather. At the age of fifteen I was scheduled to fly to Florida with my mom to visit relatives. He came into my bedroom the night before and as he approached my bed I had a terrifying feeling of dread and I couldn't understand why. He only came in to tell me to keep an eye on my mom if she drank (she tends to be a rowdy drunk). I couldn't figure out why I was so afraid. But that fear was nothing compared to what I felt when I was nineteen. We (my parents, my sister, and me) had just attended a Halloween party thrown by my aunt and uncle. We were all a little tipsy when we got home and he saw this as an opportunity to take action. I woke up to the feeling of hands fondling my breasts and my vagina. He said "do you like this?" and that's when I realized what was happening. I pretended to stir in my sleep and he quickly fled. I can still hear the sound of his course whisper. I called my aunt who had thrown the party and told her. She didn't believe me, she thought I had the "crying drunks" and told me to go back to bed. I tried to wake my mom up but she was very drunk and wouldn't wake up. He came back into the room and unplugged my phone and before he left with the phone in his hand he said "you let your boyfriend do it, why can't I?" I knew then that I didn't exist as a person in his world and that I should leave. I did just that and I have not lived under his roof since. My mother spent one night sleeping on the couch then went back to him. How she can stay with a man who tried to rape her daughter is beyond me and I will a lways hate her for that.

That same year (19) I was at the apartment of a friend of my boyfriends. As a result of all the abuse I got involved in drugs and alcohol and this particular night I was pretty wasted. When the BF, let's call him Bobby, wanted to go get more drugs I said I didn't want to go and that I would stay there with Louis. I was on the verge of passing out and Louis said I could lay down on his bed. When I went in I locked the door (hey, I'm not stupid!) but he must have picked the lock because I woke up with him on top of me. My shirt and bra were pushed up to my neck and he was kissing and fondling me and I could feel his mouth and tongue on my nipples. I realized what was going on and got up out of the bed. I looked down and realized that my shorts had been ripped from the waistband to the crotch and a huge bruise was developing on my upper arm, so I know I was forced. Just then Bobby came back and he was furious. He hit me and something, maybe the fact that I was sick of getting hit by men, made me hit him back. I'll never know, but Bobby had no money to pay for the drugs and my suspicion is that Louis paid for the drugs and I paid Louis back by being his victim. Bobby, of course, had to pretend to be mad.

During my teenage years my stepfather treated me not like a daughter, but like a lover. I was never allowed to have boyfriends and if a guy called the house to talk to me, he'd be jealous. He'd turn the volume down on the TV just so he could hear what was being said. He'd even go so far as to pick up another extension and listen. Sometimes when I was on the phone he'd be in the background yelling about what an asshole the boy on the other end of the phone is. I also remember being in the bathroom and my bedroom dressing and he'd "accidentally" walk in on me all the time. I would have locked my door but it didn't have a lock and even if it did I wasn't allowed to close my door let alone lock it. As I developed into a woman he would always make comments like "wow, your tits are getting really big" or he'd pinch my butt or spank me as I walked by. What I hated most was the name calling. On a daily basis I was called names like slut, bitch, fat (115 lbs), stupid, good for nothing, ugly and a whole list of others that I can't remember. Of course there was also the hitting. He'd slap or punch me for no reason. He'd pull my hair so hard that I thought he yanked out whole clumps. He kicked me, shoved me, bit me, you name it. It was not a natural father daughter relationship.

I am coping now. I have been clean for 5 years. I get angry easily, have anxiety about nothing in particular all the time and cry at the drop of a hat. I'm also afraid of the dark (embarrassing to admit) and I hate sleeping by myself. My sex life with my fiancé is good but I am not as into it as I'd like to be and that is another thing I am working through I am glad there arewebsites like this where I can post my story and share with other survivors. It has been great therapy putting this into words. Thank you, and thank you to all who read this.

Jamie

I want to thank Shannon for providing a safe place for us to share our pain, find comfort, and begin to heal. "Welcome to Barbados" brings us together and makes us larger than the statistics we always read about. We are real and our voices are strong. Here, we are not only welcomed and embraced, but we are also challenged to look beyond ourselves and our past experiences. We cannot define ourselves by our days and nights of terror and abuse but rather by our spirits that continue to see us through the pain, even when we are tired. Tired of the pain, the fear, the suffering, the anger, the guilt, the overwhelming sadness of what has been taken from us. Yet, we are here and hopefully someday we won't be tired anymore. Thank you all for surviving, you have all taught me something special. I finally have the strength to speak, to live, and begin to love myself. . . something I never thought possible.

The hardest part is beginning. I never know where to start. After all these years, I have myself forgotten where the assault really began or ended. It only happened one night, but after re-living the situation over and over in my mind and in my nightmares, I know that it began way before the rape physically occurred. I say this now because looking back, I understand that V. and K. (the men that raped me) had planned the assault all along.

I have always been an extremely shy girl and making friends for me was very hard. When I was sixteen, I got my first job. My co-workers started to invite me to their parties. At these parties I started to drink and through alcohol I found the artificial strength to begin to socialize with people. At parties, I was often the center of attention, talking and laughing unscrupulously and often getting very drunk. People told me I was a good friend, they told me I was special, they told me I was beautiful. . . all the things I had been starving to hear. Over bottles of wine and countless beers they affirmed everything I wanted to believe about myself but couldn't. Most of the friends I partied with were older. V. was in his mid-twenties. At the time, I did not notice he was treating me any different than the others at the party. I felt bad for him because he, like me, did not make friends easily. I did not know him well enough to understand why he did not have any friends. I just felt sorry for him so when others ignored him, I listened. I did not question his outrageous stories or foolish choices, I was trying to be a "friend." I did not realize how he was always in the room with me, how even if everyone else ran out of beer he always had an extra one just for me, how even if I did not want another one he would practically shove it down my throat. I did not see these things. If I had, I would not be writing this.

I can't even remember the date V. and K. raped me. It has taken me almost six years to acknowledge what happend was rape (I am now 22). I know it was late summer and V. was having a party at one of the local hotels. He had invited the usual crew and another guy named K. I had never met.

I do not know how long I was passed out but woke up to movement. I was laying on my back on the hotel bed and K. was on top of me. At first, I did not even realize who he was or where I was. I was paralyzed, I do not know if it was the alcohol or pure terror that immobilized my entire body. The only thing that was working was my mind which was screaming, begging, pleading, and fighting back but my body refused to respond. After seeing him on top of me doing what he was doing, I shut my eyes and could not open them again. I know that if I had been able to fight back I still would have lost. It would have made the whole experience more awful, more violent, and I still would have lost. K. was older, stronger, and determined. I had no where to go and no one to help me. So I remained under K., stunned/scared silent...bargaining with God...hating myself more and more every time I commanded my body to move and it wouldn't. I prayed to get out of this. I think I blacked out a couple of times while K. was on top of me but the physical pain of his actions kept bringing me back to conciousness. He had taken his time raping me. When he had finished with me, he fell asleep on top of me. It must have been early morning when I woke up and he had rolled over enough for me to weakly wiggle out from underneath him.

I crawled to the bathroom because the room was still spinning and vomited. I thought about what to do. I kept hoping that the flashbacks were simply a nightmate but in my heart, I knew I had been hurt. I thought I had deserved and asked for whatever I had received from him. I did not know what to do and I passed out again.

I don't know what time it was when V. came for me but it could not have been too long. I was still drunk and terrified. I felt him roll me over and he started to kiss me and pull off my clothes. I was horrified. My body still refused to fight but I heard my voice weakly cry for him to stop, that I did not want this. But in response he put all his body weight on me and demanded that I kiss him. When I opened my mouth to protest again, V. shoved his tongue down my throat so I could not speak. V. was even stronger than K. and also scarier because I knew him. I was the one who had comforted him, listened to his pain and lonliness and he rewarded me with the worst possible punishment. I was also afraid that K. would come back for more even though there was so little left to take. So as the tears poured silently down my face, V. finished destroying what was left of my self-respect, my self-image of a sweet, innocent girl who was well liked. Instead, in my mind I became a little tease who'd gotten what she deserved. It was as if I was somewhere else in the room watching him spread my legs, spread my soul in a way that forever changed me.

I don't have to describe in detail the journey of my pain. Unfortunately, most of you already understand that words cannot describe the pure hell that becomes your life after sexual assault. I vowed to forget my awful experience. Like so many of you, I buried my pain and did everything in my power to keep it as far away and separate from myself as possible. It was not until late last summer that I my mind began to listen to what my heart and had telling me all along- I had been raped. I started working at a women's shelter and learn about rape and violence. I still never told anyone even though I was surrounded by people who cared and understood the dynamics of rape. Two months ago, I finally started counseling and broke the silence I had vowed for six years.

In the last few months, I have been remembering more and more. I started to realize that V. and K. used alcohol as their weapon to rape me. They did not need to be physically brutal or threaten me with a gun or knife. They did not make me drink, that was my choice. But they watched me, they paid attention and encouraged me to poison myself until I could no longer even try to defend myself.

But even as I write this, I am not positive that they even needed alcohol. The most traumatic part of my sexual assault is that I put myself at their mercy. I know that they have to take responsibility for the rape, but I am forever pained about my inability to respond, to stop them. My mind tortures me still...all I had to do was scream, run, fight, anything but still I could not move. During the assault, I now remember that as much as I told myself to scream, I also told myself to shut the hell up and take it. As much as I coaxed myself to do whatever it takes to survive, I begged God to just let me die. As much as I was my savior, I also condemned myself. I feel as though I gave myself away, that I sacrificed myself.

Truthfully, I don't think I loved myself enough at that point to fight for myself. I feel as though I traded my million dollar self-worth for a penny of friendship and later discovered that the penny was fake. Even though it was artificial and dangerous, and even when that penny of friendship raped me, I still valued it/them more than myself. I believed them when they said it was my fault. And some nights, when the emotions resurface, I believe them still.

Every day is a struggle and I expect that won't change for a long time. However, I am learning to deal with my pain and heal. I have become more involved in my community and my school. In fact, the university I attend does not currently have a group active against sexual assault. So, I have decided to start one. Right now, I am the only person participating but hopefully as I make myself known, supporters will follow. Right now, I am also trying to move beyond my individual pain. I want to advocate for those of us who have not yet broken the silence, I WILL NEVER FORGET HOW HARD IT WAS. So my prayers are with all of you who haven't "seen Barbados." Someday, when you are ready, you will realize that you don't have to see it to know it's there and that you can only find it deep within yourself. For the rest of us, by coming to "Barbados" we show that we love ourselves, we care about each other, and we seek to make a difference in the world, and that my friends is what survivors are made of. "Know that no one is silent, though many are not heard." Stay safe, it's never too late, you are all worth saving, God Bless.

Jilly
email me jillywelcome20@hotmail.com

when i was in the fifth grade, we had classes about sexual abuse, and we saw a movie about a girl who was abused. the teacher asked me to explain why she acted the way she did after the rape, and i did. i understood her, for some reason. the teacher said i'd grow up to be a shrink. during those sexual abuse classes, i would freak many times: start shaking, cry, run out of the classroom. my friends asked me if i was raped, and i just looked at the floor, and ran away. i wanted them to think i was raped, even though i didn't think i was.

in the first grade, all the girls fought over my attention. i was a normal, happy girl, who, a few years later, tried to see if she had the guts to kill herself, who screamed in the middle of the classroom: "the demon is inside me, and he won't get out". what happened to that girl i used to be?

today i am 18, struggling with depression, anorexia, anxiety and self-mutilatiom. i cannot have a sexual relationship with someone i care about, and i cannot have sex unless i am completely drunk.

after psychiatric hospitalizations and therapy, i had many psychiatrist tell me they think i was raped. i don't remember a thing. i only know that at the age of 8 i became someone totally different overnight. i want to know what happened, but i am so afraid of remembering. but if i do not remember, will i ever feel like my body is mine? will i ever stop feeling someone else's skin on mine? will i ever be alive again?

Tori has been such a great inspirtion for me through all of this: she makes me cry, laugh and believe that maybe i've been here, silent all these years...

feel free to contact me.
www.angelfire.com/nv/ana1