I started counseling with so many layers of emotional protection that I was so familiar with. I felt like I would be dismissed, that my new counselor would say things I'd heard too many times before, "It's in the past, why bring it up again?" Even Alex, although supportive of me starting counseling, didn't understand why I hadn't "dealt with" it yet (he's since learned so much and understands now). I went into counseling with the assumption that I just needed someone "professional" to tell me I'd made too big of a deal of it, and it was time to move on. Fortunately I was completely wrong.
I didn't have a clue what was expected of me in counseling or how it was supposed to go. So I wrote my story down and emailed it to Heather before our first in person meeting. It was something like 20 pages. Looking back it was my effort to beg her to believe me, and also my effort to not waste her time, as I believed I was not worth her time to begin with. I assumed she could glance over that and be ready for our first session, to tell me none of that was a big deal, and I didn't need her. I'd been so voiceless for so long, I'd learned many ways to bury my pain by that point and numb myself. I was so scared she would be no different than everyone else....but I had this glimmer of hope that maybe, finally I'd be heard. This last ditch effort that maybe I wasn't crazy, maybe I would be validated.
My first counseling session was terrifying. I expected the worst but hoped for....well, hope. Heather did sort of an intake, trying to get an idea of why I was there. She already knew some from what she'd gotten through of the 20 page mini book I'd sent her, but as she actually had a life outside of counseling and had not finished it, and shocker, she wanted to hear my story from me directly. By the end of that first session, she got into what I quickly began to recognize as "super serious Heather mode," looked me straight in the eyes, and told me that I had been raped, and it did matter. And she gave me my first book to start reading, The Wounded Heart by Dan Allender. She didn't give me any guidelines as to how much to read by our next session because she didn't know me well enough then to know she should have, so my "Straight A/need to please the teacher" side came out, and I read almost half the book by our next session. I went in apologetic that I hadn't read more, and she was shocked I'd read so much. Let me tell you, that is not an easy book to read. I quickly figured out that counseling is not school, and the counselor is not a teacher. OK, maybe not quickly.....that took a long time to get through my head. The counselor is there to help you, the counselee, and she/he should go at your pace. You don't have to try to impress your counselor. Shocking, I know. It took me at least 6 months, maybe longer, to stop having full body trembles during my counseling sessions, and it took me 3.5 years (which, ironically enough was how long I was in counseling with Heather) to realize that she was not going to abandon me until we both knew I was done. And even then, she would be still available if something came up later. My abandonment fears and wounds are deep, but she never once added to them.
As Heather was well aware, getting into that first appointment is the scariest thing, and then getting the person to stick with it is another hurdle. Sexual assault victims are extremely prone to blaming themselves, trying to invalidate their own pain, and trying to just bury the whole thing. So the first few sessions were spent talking about my story in the language I had at the time, and Heather validating me and getting me to a place where I wasn't going to just bury it and run from it again. The validation she gave me and the incredible compassion she gave me basically catapulted me into jumping into the deep end to work through it, whatever that would look like. I was so elated to finally feel heard, that it was like, "Let's do this thing. Let's go."
I dove headfirst into everything Heather asked me to do. Well, unless I thought it was weird, and let me tell you, there are a lot of things counselors ask that seem "weird" at the time. She tried art therapy with me a total of 1 time because it was so terrible. I process through words, not art, so she'd give me homework assignments that involved writing and reading. I read so many books. I started finding new books and assigning them to myself. We worked on a "life map" so she could get a better idea of my entire story. I didn't very much enjoy the life map, but I realized the importance of it. The books I was reading were helping me understand the impacts of the trauma and understand the things I'd done in the aftermath.
Some of the books I read on the topic of sexual abuse:
The Wounded Heart by Dan Allender - this was originally sort of the pinnacle of Christian books on sexual abuse, written in the 80's or early 90's. It's on a college reading level and is hard to get through, but it's got a lot of good information. Dan Allender has been the main player helping people with sexual assault in the Christian scene long before #metoo happened.
Healing the Wounded Heart by Dan Allender - this is the updated version of the above book. It came out in March 2016, while I was in the depths of my counseling, and it's much better and more relevant now. I highly recommend this book to everyone who asks for a good starting place. It is still on the Dan Allender level, but it's got a lot of new research and fits with today's generation better.
On the Threshold of Hope by Diane Langberg - I read this immediately after The Wounded Heart, so it felt too easy, too whitewashed. I read the entire book in an hour or two. I think alone it would be a good book, perhaps an easier book for someone dipping their toes into whether or not they are ready to face their story. Diane Langberg is another big player in helping people through sexual assault.
Allies in Healing: When the Person You Love Was Sexually Abused as a Child by Laura Davis - this book was more for people who had been sexually abused by family members, to help their significant others understand what they were going through, so it really wasn't relevant to my story. There were only a few parts generic enough for me to get something out of it. But for someone abused by a family member, it would be very helpful.
Rid of My Disgrace: Hope and Healing for Victims of Sexual Assault by Justin S. Holcomb - the first half of this book was very validating of my abuse, which was needed for the place I was in. Then it gets into trying to compare Christ's crucifixion with abuse to show you that Christ understands. It started feeling too forced, too "Christianese" to me, and I didn't even finish it.
When a Woman You Love Was Abused: A Husband's Guide to Helping Her Overcome Childhood Sexual Molestation by Dawn Scott Jones - Heather asked Alex to read this book, and it completely changed how he handled what I was going through. It gave him compassion and an understanding of why it took so long, what I needed, and what to expect moving forward. I read it as well, and I also found it to be extremely helpful in validating the different emotions and layers I should expect to go through. It helped me feel more "normal" as I was working through my trauma. This book absolutely changed Alex and turned him into an advocate for not only me, but every woman who'd been through trauma. He jumps in now and tries to tell spouses about this book often, and sometimes I have to tell him that his want to help is awesome but they are not quite ready for that journey yet. The author of this book's husband left her while she was going through her own healing, so it makes it even more powerful to see her use her own hurt and voice to help spouses understand what's going on.
Not Marked: Finding Hope and Healing after Sexual Abuse by Mary Demuth - I absolutely love Mary Demuth and her voice and all she's done to break the silence and help others face their own stories (also see her website www.marydemuth.com). Meeting her is a life goal of mine. This book would be very good for a lot of people. For me, it was a quick read, and I had read so much that I didn't get a lot out of it, but I just love supporting Mary Demuth. It's not as science-y as the ones written by Dan Allender because she's just a person talking from her own experience instead of a PhD therapist.
Mending the Soul: Understanding and Healing Abuse by Steven R. Tracy - I loved this book. I was actually upset it hadn't been the first book I read at the time. It had tons of validation and good information, but was at a much easier level to read than The Wounded Heart. I spent a long time getting everything I could out of this book.
Heather and I met almost every week for 3.5 years. As Heather listened with compassion and empathy, I started slowly removing the layers of protection I'd built up over the years. One of the hardest things at first was getting Alex to understand why it "took so long to deal with it." I didn't understand or have the language for it at the time. Heather mentioned a book that would help Alex, and I'd mentioned it to him, but he didn't think it was necessary at first. He just didn't yet understand how deep the trauma really was. Finally Heather talked to him, and he got the book and read it (When a Woman You Love Was Abused: A Husband's Guide to Helping Her Overcome Childhood Sexual Molestation by Dawn Scott Jones). Heather is one of those people who can look into your soul. Hopefully you've met someone like that in your life. Extremely loving and compassionate, but also extremely confident and intense. Someone who walks into the room and the entire atmosphere changes. You're afraid to lie because you know she would just know immediately. Someone you immensely respect and want to be around to glean everything you can from her, but are also someone you're a little afraid of. Fortunately for me, Alex was afraid of Heather, so all it took was for her to look him in the eyes and tell him he needed to read that book for me, and he did. It makes me laugh a little looking back. Heather could say something to Alex, and he'd just do it. I used that to my advantage more than once. Reading that book changed everything for Alex, or at least started the change. He went from confused spouse to supporting me more than I was supporting myself. He became my #1 advocate and started advocating for other women as well. He's now extremely compassionate and caring towards women who have been abused, and he's often one of the first people to tell someone that it wasn't their fault. I'm so immensely proud of the fierce advocate and supporter he has become.
The thing about counseling I hadn't realized, is that you go in for what you think is this one thing that happened in a vacuum, and you realize that almost nothing happens in a vacuum. So I was there to deal with whatever had happened with Xavier that I couldn't let go of, or at least that's what I thought I was there for. But Heather wanted to know how I got to that place of vulnerability, what had happened in the aftermath, she wanted the full picture. Over time, as hard as it was, I realized how important the full picture was. There were things in my life that made me vulnerable to Xavier, things in my life that had been similar before he ever came into my life. I realized that if it hadn't been Xavier, it likely would have been another guy who I would have become a victim of. I realized that I, too, could have become an abuser. There were a lot of hard things I had to face.
I also had to face that being sexually abused by Xavier was not the first or even the last time I'd been abused to some degree. Unburying those other stories or realizing the truth of things I thought were "normal" was sometimes excruciating. Fortunately I wasn't doing it alone.
* * *
I'd had a situation in 7th grade where I was stalked and sexually threatened by a classmate. I had one teacher who heard me and protected me, but otherwise it was not handled well by school administrators or others who should have better protected me. I have a lot of grace and forgiveness now for the people who didn't handle it well then, and I've completely forgiven the perpetrator, but it was extremely harmful at the time. It quieted my voice for the next time I was victimized. I learned that maybe it was just better to keep that to myself and deal with it on my own. It also created a great deal of shame within myself. This was around the time my anxiety and depression begun, and I started having panic attacks and had to quit gymnastics because of them. Now I can see the connection. Then it was just considered to be typical teenage melodrama by the counselor I was seeing at the time, and my pediatrician had ruled out asthma and had no explanation for what I now know were panic attacks.
* * *
The story that was the hardest for me to face was one that came 2 years later, when I was 14. During the time Heather and I dove into this trauma, I was a complete mess. I could barely function outside of work, and even work was hard to focus on. But finding freedom from it was worth all of that in the end.
I grew up over 700 miles from my grandparents, so the older neighbors in my neighborhood became fill in grandparents for me. I'm so grateful I had them. One was even in my wedding as my "grandmother" since I did not have any biological grandparents at my wedding. Another, Mrs. Brumit, lived across the street, and she was probably the one I visited the most often for the first 14 years of my life. She became a widow when I was young, and she only had one son, Tim, and one grandson. I am using their real names. For much of my early childhood, Tim lived elsewhere. He moved back into a house on his Mom's property with his much younger wife around the time I was 8 or 9. His wife was 20 or 21 at the time, he was 34 or 35. My family and I were Catholic at the time, and I knew that Tim was a Baptist pastor (or, as they called them in small Southern Baptist churches like his, a "Baptist preacher") and also a middle school teacher. Dad had always said Baptists were crazy, and I was Catholic, so I didn't really respect or care that Tim was a Baptist pastor. Tim and his wife both seemed like adults to me, so I had no concept of the age difference or how young she herself was. They had a son when I was 9, and that's when I first really remember them. I vividly remember first getting to meet the baby boy they brought home. I was fascinated by this tiny baby. As he grew up, I'd visit to play with him. I loved playing in the sandpile with him and the pool. I hadn't been around many babies and toddlers, so it was a lot of fun for me, and I loved visiting Tim's wife as well. If she or Mrs. Brumit wasn't home, I wouldn't stay to visit. Tim and I had no real communication at the time. After all, I was a child.
Right around the time I started my freshmen year of high school, when Tim's son was 5, Tim's wife took their son and left. We didn't know for a couple months, but finally my Mom took me over there to find out what was going on. I was sad I'd lost my playmate, and Mrs. Brumit was heartbroken to not have her grandson living there anymore. That's around when I first really remember having conversations with Tim. Tim told Mom and I his sob story about his wife taking their son in the middle of the night and leaving, and that she had barely taken anything with her. He hadn't seen his son in months by that point and was fighting to get custody. He told us terrible things about his wife, and we couldn't believe the sweet woman we'd known would do such things and then take her son from his loving father. His church had also removed him as pastor because he was then no longer married, and he felt disgraced. He also moved from middle school to middle school almost every year, for reasons he said he didn't understand. He played himself out to be the victim, and we believed him. Now the red flags are all there. Mom became invested in his story and supporting him through it, and I joined first out of boredom, then curiosity, then I became invested as well. We just couldn't believe how awful he was being treated.
A few months later, Tim started getting weekend visits with his son. I was so excited to see him again that would go visit as much as I could. Sometimes I would even ride with Tim and Mrs. Brumit to pick him up from their exchange point. At first we'd hang out at Mrs. Brumit's house, and Mom would join so she could also see Tim's son, but then Mom stopped visiting as much, and then we starting hanging out at Tim's house, just Tim, me, and his son. I was there to visit his son, not him. I was 14, and he was 39, what interest was I to him other than to play with his 5/6 year old?
At 14, I was no longer a young child, but really I was still a child, at least as far as a 39 year old should have seen me. I was just becoming a teenager, and I wanted to be taken seriously and not be seen as a child anymore. I had developed early and had the body of a petite adult; I was already wearing my Mom's clothes and shoes. I started having questions about everything and testing boundaries, as most 14 year olds do. It's part of that transition into adulthood, while still very much not being an adult. 14 is really not easy for anyone. I had started seeking God more inside the Catholic church, but I was struggling finding the answers I wanted. I had a lot of questions, and Tim treated me like an equal. We started having deep conversations when I would visit, about spirituality and everything. I wanted so desperately to be taken seriously, and he, an adult, did seem to take me seriously. I felt heard.
Building snowmen together. Me, the 14 year old child, and Tim, the 39 year old man.
At first I just visited when Tim's son was in town, but then I would visit during the week for him to help me with my homework, or that was the excuse given since he was a teacher. Really, we just talked instead of doing homework. We started going on long walks together in the evenings. He said he was just trying to get in exercise for his health, but he'd wait for me at the corner to join him. Sometimes I would call him. He just seemed like a mentor at first. Then things started to change. He started telling me that he could talk to me more than he could talk to anyone else, that he felt like I really understood him. He made me feel extremely grown up and important. He told me our age difference really wasn't a big deal, that I was like an adult in a child's body and that I was much more mature for my age. He started telling me that my parents didn't understand me like he did, trying to put a wedge between me and my parents to push me closer to him. He started asking if he could hug me, and the hugs started to linger. One time he asked what I would do if he asked if he could kiss me, and I told him I didn't know. He shared dreams of traveling with me, but not until I turned 18, when I'd legally be an adult. We would go to Europe together...then it was that we'd run away to Europe together, a different and much more serious connotation. During this time together he turned 40. I got extremely confused, was he flirting, or was I crazy? Why in the world would he be flirting with me, someone young enough to be his daughter? Part of me reveled in the attention. I felt special. Wanted. Sought after.
One day on our walk, Tim told me he'd had a dream about me, that he'd left the door open for me, and he told me that was true, that the door was always open. Without saying the words outright, he made it very clear that he was propositioning sex. To a 14 year old child. When the days passed and I hadn't given him an answer, he reminded me, made sure I hadn't forgotten. I hadn't. I still haven't. Multiple times he reminded me, and I begun to be afraid of him. Suddenly he was the grown man trying to have sex with me, the teenager, the child. He became more impatient, more prideful, less nice. Like he were getting tired of me if I wasn't going to give him what he ultimately desired. He wanted me to "choose" so that he could pretend it was my decision, so that he could say that it was my decision if he ever got caught. The longer I avoided the decision, the more dangerous I realized he was, and the more afraid of him I became. He was much bigger than I was, he easily could have forced me. I remember sitting in my bedroom many nights, holding my neon green portable phone, trying to will myself to dial his number and go to his house for what he'd wanted, but thank the Lord, I never did. And I believed it would have been my decision had I done that. For over 16 years, until Heather helped me understand, I believed it would have been my decision had I "chosen" to have sex with him. A 14 year old can not make that decision when a 40 year old is asking. I know that now. The guilt he tried to place on me, the blame he tried to place on me was all a lie.
I was visiting one day, I don't think Tim's son was there, and a couple from his former church came to visit. Tim's demeanor completed changed into the Southern Baptist Preacher, and while they were there, he treated me more like the child I was instead of the equal he'd been treating me as. The couple didn't seem at all weirded out by the fact that a 14 year old girl was hanging out with him alone. They clearly respected him and missed having him at their church. It was a staunch difference from the man I'd begun to know. I remember wanting to just scream. To tell them who he was. To tell them what he was doing to me, what he was propositioning. How did it not put up a million red flags to them that a child had been alone with him when they showed up? Why did they not seem even a little bothered by that? I felt invisible. It was a wake up call to me that what my gut was telling me was right, something was wrong with what he was doing.
I wrote Tim a letter, telling him that whatever was going on with us had to stop. I just couldn't do it anymore. I left it in his door, hoping and praying his Mom wouldn't somehow see it. I felt foolish even writing it, like maybe I had been completely mistaken about what he wanted and was making a fool of myself. What was even more confusing was that he didn't say a word about the letter. Nothing changed. I felt like a complete fool, like I'd been completely mistaken, and he hadn't said anything because he didn't want to embarrass me. I also felt stuck in a situation way above my head.
During this time my parents had no idea. Mom kept telling people about how terrible Tim's ex-wife was treating him, how great he was, and how it just wasn't right what she'd done to him and how she was trying to keep their son from him. One day I just snapped. I knew the truth, I still had no solid evidence or proof other than my word, but I knew he wasn't a great guy. I told her what was going on, but likely a much watered down version, as I felt like it was my fault and felt a lot of shame about it. I begged Mom not to tell my Dad, I didn't want Dad to be mad at me for being so naive. She told me she would have to tell Dad. I was terrified of how much trouble I would be in.
A few days later I tried to walk through Tim's yard as I'd done many times before to meet a friend at a pond behind his house. Suddenly, out of the blue, I heard his booming voice, "Get off this property now! Do not ever set foot in this property again!" It was loud and angry and terrifying. I'd never heard anything like it before in my life. What had I done wrong? Why was he mad at me? I was completely scared and thrown off guard. I found another way around to meet my friend at the pond, and when I got home, I casually mentioned what happened to Mom. All she said was that Dad had talked to him, and I shouldn't go over there anymore. For the rest of my childhood, not another word was spoken about it. It was just brushed under the rug and covered with heavy furniture.
I was 14 years old. I had made claims about a 40 year old man trying to start a relationship with me. I didn't even know if I was crazy and had made something out of nothing. I had no tools, no guidance, no way of knowing what to make of it or how to process it. I had a counselor at the time who I had talked to about it. I remember her telling me I needed to tell my parents, but that was it. Turns out she wasn't a great counselor. My current counselor (not Heather) has told me that my counselor during that time should have immediately reported it to the authorities, but she did not. Nothing physical or sexual had actually happened. I had no proof of anything he'd said. He'd made sure there was no paper trail and that everything he said could be easily explained away. It would have simply been my word against his word if it had been brought to the authorities.
In the mind of the child I was at the time, I thought I'd done something terrible. I thought I had somehow lured this 40 year old man, somehow made him think I was interested in him. I thought that I must be the most awful person that I'd made a 40 year old man want to have sex with me. I felt disgusting, absolutely despicable. What was so innately wrong with me that I'd almost done that to him? Because my Dad didn't say a word about it to me for over 18 years, I had no idea what he'd said to Tim. In my 14 year old mind, I had imagined that the conversation had involved Dad apologizing to Tim for the claims I made against him, thinking that I'd really screwed up, and he had to clean up the mess I'd made. I had no way to know otherwise because it was never talked about. I was not told the truth of that conversation for many, many years.
I never spoke to Mrs. Brumit again. She never spoke to me again. I lost someone who had been like a grandmother to me for the first 14 years of my life. I believed that she blamed me. I believed that she was angry at me and couldn't believe who I'd become that I'd had that kind of relationship with her son. I was ashamed to face her. I was absolutely drowning in shame and self hatred. What in the world was wrong with me? On top of that, Tim and Mrs. Brumit stopped using their front yard almost completely, the side of their property that faced my parents'. It became like a ghost town across the street, and again, I believed that was because they couldn't stand the thought of possibly seeing the awful little girl who had said such terrible things and made such terrible claims. Every single day was a reminder of what had happened, of what he'd tried to do, and every single day was a reminder to myself of how awful I must have been to have even considered it. Every day I worried I might see Tim or Mrs. Brumit somewhere around town. I prayed for years that Tim would somehow get caught and go to jail, that something could be proven, that I wouldn't have to worry about ever seeing him again. In a weird way I was hopeful that he would do something much worse, something that could be proven, because I didn't want to fear him anymore, and I knew, I just knew that he was dangerous and needed to be stopped.
Somehow, I really can't explain how except for God seeking me out, I went to church and youth group with a friend less than 2 months after everything had ended with Tim. A Baptist church. It would have been easy for me to have wanted nothing to do with a Baptist church ever after what happened with Tim, a Baptist pastor. But I was so desperate for something more. Within a few weeks of going, I gave my heart to the Lord and started a relationship with Jesus. Looking back, the timing seems completely miraculous. I easily could have gone a completely different direction, one far from church. But instead, I threw myself into Jesus, going to church and youth group every chance I could, reading the Bible, talking about Jesus to everyone. I was told "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!" from 2 Corinthians 5:17, so I believed whatever had happened with Tim just didn't matter anymore. It was part of the "old," and I was a new creation. So I buried it. It was in the past, it didn't matter anymore. Or at least I thought I didn't. The fear of seeing him was still constant, the reminders were still daily, I still felt so much shame, and I also felt like I would have to protect myself going forward, because I didn't know that my parents had protected me from Tim.
By the time Xavier came around, I'd had years for the shame from Tim to set in and for the lies I'd told myself to become my truths. I didn't think I'd be believed, I didn't think I'd be protected, I didn't think I deserved anymore more. What happened with Tim absolutely helped pave the way for me to be vulnerable to Xavier's pursuit of me and later abuse.
Eight years after Tim had pursued me, I was living back at home after college. It was late one morning, I was still in my pajamas, and we got a knock on the door. I opened the door to a reporter from WIS-TV out of Columbia. Her first question was, "Do you know Tim Brumit?" I told her I did. She then said, "Did you know he was arrested yesterday?" I asked her if she was serious, I really thought it was a joke, I never thought he'd actually get caught for something. She explained to me that she was serious and that he'd been arrested for trying to pursue a 13 year old boy from Virginia through the internet. That "13 year old boy" had actually been an police officer. They also discovered extensive child pornography on his computer. I was so completely stunned that I just blurted out my story to this reporter, out of shock and relief. It was literally an answered prayer that I never thought would be answered. She asked if she could get me on camera, and I told her no, and she asked if she could use my name, and I also told her no. I did not want any attention at all, I was pretty embarrassed for blurting out my story to her in the first place. I ended up in the article as "A young woman in the neighborhood."
https://www.justice.gov/psc/docs/AlexandriaVA_03132008.pdf
Tim's 2008 mugshot
At the time I didn't understand the difference between being arrested by state police and by the FBI. Tim was arrested by the FBI, so things moved quickly. I had assumed he would pay bail and be out of jail and back across the street in no time. Instead, he never went back home, and less than two months later, he pled guilty. I never in a million years would have expected he would take a plea deal, but I later found out that he was told that if he didn't take the plea deal, there was a lot they would be able to bring up against him, and it would not go well for him. Less than 3 weeks after pleading guilty, his Mom died. She was 82, but I really believe that just broke her and she just gave up. I went to her visitation, I needed that for myself, but I was too anxious to go to her funeral. She had pre-written her obituary and had not included her grandson. We later found out that Tim's ex-wife had eventually been able to get full custody of their son years prior, and once that happened, Tim probably made his Mom write the grandson out as if he had never existed at all. That must have broken her heart, she loved her grandson so much. In June of 2008, Tim was sentenced to 25 years without parole. I no longer had to live in fear of seeing him. I was absolutely elated. That part of my nightmare was finally over. Tim is scheduled to be released in May of 2029, which is only 21 years, not 25. I don't understand that. He'll be 69, and since he now owns his mother's house, it's likely he will move back across the street from my parents at that time. But I simply cannot think about that now. It's too much, and a lot could happen between now and then, so I'm putting that on the back burner until I have to face it. I can't let that anxiety spiral start now.
Tim's ex-wife and son showed up at our front door sometime after Mrs. Brumit died. She wanted to show her son where he'd once lived since it was finally safe to do so. I realized how young she was, how young she'd been. She told me that she immediately knew I'd been the neighborhood girl mentioned in the news article. I finally shared my story. She finally shared hers. She told me that Mrs. Brumit would have known the truth, she would have believed me, she knew who Tim was. She said that Mrs. Brumit would not have blamed me. She told me that Mrs. Brumit was afraid of Tim, that Tim was controlling over her, and that broke my heart. But it was extremely healing for my heart to hear her tell me those things I needed to hear. I was so thankful to reconnect with her.
Sometime around Tim's arrest, I said something to Mom about when Dad had gone to "talk" to Tim. I don't remember what I asked, but she told me that Dad had threatened to call the cops on Tim if he ever got near me again. I was shocked, surprised, and angry all at once. Dad had believed me? He had protected me? I'd never been told that, so my 14 year old brain had made up what I thought had happened, and that wasn't the story in my head. I was angry I'd not been told. Had I been told that he had protected me, maybe the trajectory of my life had been different, maybe I would have had the tools to say no to Xavier and that abuse never would have happened. As an adult, as a parent, it was obvious to my Dad that he would protect me, his daughter, and he had assumed I knew that he was going to protect me. But as a child, I didn't have the capacity to assume that. He was probably also too angry to even talk about it. But as a 14 year old child, I needed to know.
Years into counseling, I was visiting my parents, and I found the picture of me from when I was building the snowman with Tim and his grooming had already started (the picture of him wasn't found again until years later). Suddenly, I saw a little girl looking back at me. A child. I was much closer then to 40 than I was to 14. I could suddenly see that I had been a child, and none of it was my fault. Tim was a predator. He had groomed me. It stopped me in my tracks, took my breathe away. I confronted my Dad about it for the first time ever, I just blurted out, "Look at me. I was a child! Why didn't you tell me you threatened to call the cops on him if he got near me again?" Dad responded, "I didn't threaten to call the cops, I threatened to kill him." I said, "He tried to have sex with me, I needed to know that you'd protected me. I was a child, I needed that." Dad was clearly taken aback, clearly we don't have conversations like that often. He responded, "I only thought he'd tried to kiss you. I didn't know he tried to have sex with you. I didn't know you needed to know. I just didn't know." When I was 14 years old, my Dad had threatened to kill the man who was preying on his daughter, and all he knew was that that man had wanted to kiss me. He didn't even know the full truth then, but he had protected me. I had been protected. It wouldn't change the past, but it brought so much healing to the little girl inside me who had been waiting for over 18 years to hear her Daddy say that he had protected her from the monster who tried to take her innocence.
Parents, I beg you, over communicate with your kids. Do not assume they think the way you do. Over communicate. Over explain. Say more than you need to. Do not let their young brains spin stories that are not true. Tell them what is true.
❤
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