Sexual Abuse & Incest
If you’ve read About Lee Davis, Personally then you know I was an orphan placed in a foster home along with my older brother and younger sister. I am sharing my story here about my sexual abuse experiences in an effort to help young girls and women understand they are not alone. I give some details because there is more to sexual abuse than just the words. Those of us who have be sexually abused, sexually assaulted, incested and/or raped no there are details, horrible details. The more each of us can share the details, the less control the experience has over us. There use to be support groups for sexual abuse survivors. 12 Step Groups. Although 12 Step Groups are very powerful, more than using the 12 Steps, Sexual Abuse/Assault/Incest/Rape Survivors need a place to share their stories and hear the stories of other survivors.
This is my story. Feel free to share you story with me and I will post it on this website if you would like me to. First names or Anonymous works, if that's what you need.
First of all, I want you to know something about the foster home where I lived for 12 years. Sometimes we hear about horrible conditions of foster homes. You can read in more detail in my book, this was a newly built 1950's wood-frame house. It was in the country, situated on more than an acre of property with 25 acres of land and wooden areas behind the house. Throughout the yard stood apple trees, apricot trees, plum trees, sassafras tree, and a pear tree. There was a a barn and stone garage with purple lilac trees surrounding three sides, a porch swing in the yard on the one side of the house along with a regular kids swing set and well built wooden lawn chairs. Each neighbor had an acre or more of property for their house and yard, and it was a very nice neighborhood of people. Most of us went to church. Everyone's house was usually spotless inside, yards well maintained. No one on our country road, in our neighborhood of eight houses, had a drinking or drugging problem. There was no troublemaking family or any kid that stood out because he or she was a problem child. We all appeared to be typical American families. Even in my house with my family. To look at us, you would never know what was going on behind our closed doors. And so it goes..... Although I have body memories of having been sexually abused as a toddler, I can’t recall details. I do remember being sexually abused after I was taken from my mother and placed in the very institution that took my brother, sister and I away from her. Then we were placed in a foster home. I clearly remember the first time I was sexually abused after being placed in the foster home. One night my foster parents went out for the evening. This was not something they did on a regular basis, at least not since I had been living there, and when I asked where they were going, my new mom just said, “out”. I was a little girl who asked a lot of questions, which annoyed mom so her responses were always short with little or no detail.
My foster parents knew they had nothing to worry about since they were having their favorite nephew, Elmer George, come to the house to stay with us. Even though I was not quite six years old, I knew this nephew was very, very special to them. In time, I realized why he was so special to them.
First of all, I want you to know something about the foster home where I lived for 12 years. Sometimes we hear about horrible conditions of foster homes. You can read in more detail in my book, this was a newly built 1950's wood-frame house. It was in the country, situated on more than an acre of property with 25 acres of land and wooden areas behind the house. Throughout the yard stood apple trees, apricot trees, plum trees, sassafras tree, and a pear tree. There was a a barn and stone garage with purple lilac trees surrounding three sides, a porch swing in the yard on the one side of the house along with a regular kids swing set and well built wooden lawn chairs. Each neighbor had an acre or more of property for their house and yard, and it was a very nice neighborhood of people. Most of us went to church. Everyone's house was usually spotless inside, yards well maintained. No one on our country road, in our neighborhood of eight houses, had a drinking or drugging problem. There was no troublemaking family or any kid that stood out because he or she was a problem child. We all appeared to be typical American families. Even in my house with my family. To look at us, you would never know what was going on behind our closed doors. And so it goes..... Although I have body memories of having been sexually abused as a toddler, I can’t recall details. I do remember being sexually abused after I was taken from my mother and placed in the very institution that took my brother, sister and I away from her. Then we were placed in a foster home. I clearly remember the first time I was sexually abused after being placed in the foster home. One night my foster parents went out for the evening. This was not something they did on a regular basis, at least not since I had been living there, and when I asked where they were going, my new mom just said, “out”. I was a little girl who asked a lot of questions, which annoyed mom so her responses were always short with little or no detail.
My foster parents knew they had nothing to worry about since they were having their favorite nephew, Elmer George, come to the house to stay with us. Even though I was not quite six years old, I knew this nephew was very, very special to them. In time, I realized why he was so special to them.
These new foster parents had lost a baby boy at six months old, and Elmer George, who was born about the same time as their baby, was the son they didn’t get to keep. Dad always smiled a lot when Elmer George was at our house, or when we were at his family's house. Smiling was something dad didn’t do very often, so it was obvious Elmer George was special to him.
It was just as obvious my brother, who was also expected to call this man dad, would never get the affection this nephew got from him. Well, just about everyone was more important to him than my brother ever would be. Any of the three of us for that matter. (That’s a memory for another day.)
Elmer George was a teenager. I thought he was so old, but he was 15 or 16 at the time. A football player for his school, he was big and looked strong. I was very intimidated by his presence. My foster parents also had a daughter, who was four years older than me. She was a pretty girl, tall and thin, with blue eyes and blonde hair that hung below her ears with curls around the bottom. When I looked at her and looked at her dad, I could tell that they were related. She was the one other person who made dad smile anytime she was in the same room as him. On the night mom and dad went out, I didn’t know where she had gone, but she wasn’t at home. It was just my brother and sister, Elmer George, and me.
We were sitting in the living room watching TV when Elmer George said we were going to play high-n-seek. He said that I would be the one to hide my eyes first and he would help me. He told my sister and brother to find a good place to hide, that we would be in the bathroom waiting, counting to 20, which, even at six, I thought was stupid. I didn’t want to hide in the bathroom. That was not the way we played the game when we were in the basement or outside. We stood against a tree or one of the walls in the basement, covered our eyes with an arm, and counted to 10. NOT 20!
But I was far too intimidated by this teenage boy to tell him that his way of playing the game was wrong. Instead, I leaned against the door, facing the door, covered my eyes with my arm, and started counting. I was confused, though, and a little irritated when Elmer George turned my body around facing him, and told me to sit on the floor with my back against the door and count. I was even more confused when he stooped down and started to pull my shorts and panties down. I grabbed at them and tried to pull them up, but he whispered to me in a mean tone, “Be still, I’m not going to hurt you.” I let go and as he slid me forward slightly, he pulled my shorts and panties below my knees, then pulled one leg out.
I knew what he was doing was bad and after just a few seconds my throat began to tighten and I could barely swallow. I still pulled at my shorts and made disapproval groans. I wanted to say, “I’m not allowed to pull my shorts and panties down in front of a boy”, but by the time I formulated the sentence in my head, he spread my legs and had a finger going up inside of me. I groaned even louder because what he was doing really hurt.
He made his finger go in and out of me several times, then pulled it out, and told me to get dressed. I did. He opened the door and said, “Ready or not here we come!” I knew my face was red hot from both anger and shame. I was furious, a word I hadn’t learned yet, but I was feeling it. I wanted to hit him and kick him and bite him. But I didn’t do anything. I was just glad it was over!!!
He walked next to me as I looked for my brother and sister. First, I found my brother who wanted to know why my face was so red and then my sister who just wanted to hide again. “That was fun! Let’s do it again!”
“Jerry can hide this time,” I said, before my brother could say yes or no. But Elmer George immediately chimed in and said, “No, we’re going to hide again while you two hide (meaning my brother and sister). It’s fun. I know you like to hide so we'll hide our eyes.” I stood stiff, while tears began to form and run down my cheeks. Elmer George gave me little shoves toward the bathroom, then a hard push to get me inside. He shut the bathroom door behind him.
This time was different. This time he told me to lay down on the floor. When I hesitated, he pushed me down to the floor, pulled my feet out from under me and slid me down until I was flat on my back, the top of my head against the door. Without hesitating, he pulled off my shorts and panties and told my to stop crying or else. Or else what, I wasn't sure, but I heaved and cried inside my chest instead of my eyes.
He stood up, went to the medicine cabinet, took out a little jar of Vaseline, opened it, and rubbed some on his fingers, then put the jar back into the cabinet. I just laid there and watched. I was so scared I could feel my insides shaking. I knew this was bad, but I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t just jump up and run out with no bottoms on and I was afraid to yell. What if he took off his belt and hit me like dad does and I don't have any panties on, I thought. But then I realized he couldn’t do that because he wasn’t wearing a belt.
Instead, I stiffened my body and put my legs together as tight as I could so he couldn’t get his hands between them. When he knelt beside me, he tried to open my legs but couldn’t. “Stop that!” he whispered in an almost talking voice. I could tell he was angry. “Stop it now, or I will tell your mom and dad that you told me you wanted me to pull your pants down. And you know what happens if they hear that from ME! I'm their favorite nephew!” He was really mad.
At that moment I knew, that he knew, that I knew how much my foster parents loved him and would believe ANYTHING he told them. I also knew what he was talking about would happen if he lied and told them I wanted him to pull down my shorts and panties. My brother, sister, and I had been placed in the care of the state's CPS (Child Protective Services) system, and if anything went wrong, we would be returned to the juvenile court where we lived during the weeks and months while we waited for a new home. For me, the juvenile court was a terrifying place, and a place where I had been sexually abused. (A memory for another time.)
I knew that what he was saying was true. On the first day in this new house that was suppose to be our new home, the man who we were told to call Dad told us what would happen if we were bad. He made sure he told my brother a couple of times in a really angry voice. I don't know if it scared my brother like dad meant it to, but it scared me. Since that day, Mom let me know on a regular basis that she and dad would have no problem putting me in the car and taking me back to that “place” if I didn’t do everything I was told to do. One time they even did it. (Another memory for another time.)
Back to Elmer George. Once he made that threat of lying about what was happening, I knew I had to spread those legs apart. There was no way I was going back there again. If this is what I had to do so he didn’t tell his lie, then spread my legs I did. Begrudgingly, hatefully, I did it.
He hurt me even worse than the first time by trying to put two fingers up inside of me. When he couldn’t quite manage that, he shoved the biggest finger on his hand in and out of me as hard as he could. It was excruciating. He knew it too. Just as I was about to scream he put his hand over my mouth. Tears were streaming down my face. It really hurt. My feelings hurt, too. I now knew this boy wasn’t my cousin. That’s what mom said he was. Our teenage cousin. We had to be nice to him because he was our new cousin. It turned out we had several “new” cousins. But I knew he couldn’t like me and hurt me like that at the same time. The Sunday school teacher told us that when you love somebody you never hurt them. I was hurting and he knew it.
A couple of minutes went by, me whimpering quietly. Then he pulled his finger out and whispered in that mean tone again, “Put your clothes on, and REMEMBER, you can’t tell anyone. This is our secret.” I put my shorts and panties on, he opened the door, and once again said, “Ready or not here we come!” My brother, five years older than me, knew something was wrong when I was walking strangely. I knew he could tell I had been crying and when he asked what was wrong, Elmer George immediately replied, “Your sister hit her head on the bathtub when she was going to hide her eyes.” That didn’t explain why I was walking like I had a stick up my butt, but I didn’t say anything, and thankfully my brother didn’t ask any more questions.
By the time my foster parents got home, I was in bed asleep. The next morning, I still had terrible vaginal pain, but I was able to walk without them noticing I was walking slower than usual. It still really hurt when I walked.
Elmer George told me to remember this is OUR secret, and I did not forget it, EVER. There were many picnics, parties, and visits back and forth from his home to ours. No one was ever the wiser when I stayed as far away from him as possible.
Then......when I was 14 years old, my foster mom loaned me out to babysit. Guess who for? None other than their favorite nephew and his wife.
Yes, you guessed it. It happened again, and again, and again. Every Saturday night for months after they came home from being out late, and Elmer George volunteered to take me home, it was intercourse he performed on me in his car. There was a spot at the end of a dark lonely road where he stopped the car, turned off the ignition and push the seat back. Each time I waited until he told me to take my clothes off before I did so, all the while yelling and screaming cuss in my head. If I thought for one minute I could have gotten away with it I would have stabbed him a hundred times with a sharp knife. That's how enraged I was and those were my thoughts when he was inside of me.
By this time, I was a broken emotionally from all the physical, mental, emotional and sexual abuse at home. My self-esteem was so low, I had become a victim of learned helplessness. That is a form of conditioning. Over years, I had been conditioned through fear….the fear of being taken back to “that place”, the fear of losing my brother and sister, the fear of living on the streets. I had been told over and over that I would be taken back, if……! I knew that was a reality.
One day, when the three of us (my brother, sister and I) were getting whippings with the belt, dad started on my brother like he always did. He was swinging that belt as hard as he could on my brother's back and legs. I jumped every time it made the cracking sound because I knew I was next. But on that day, right in the middle of what looked like an endless whipping, my brother shouted, “Take me back! I want to go back! I want to go back!I don't want to live here!” Dad stopped in the middle of a strike, arm in the air when he stopped, put his belt on, sat back down on the sofa and picked up the book he had been reading before mom instigated the whipping in the first place, like she always did. Within twenty-four hours was up, my brother was gone, taken back to that place, never to return to that house. I was nine years old. (By the way, in all the times there were whippings, and there were many many whippings, always with the belt, their daughter was NEVER EVER included. Looking back on it, I think we three foster kids were nothing more than an intrusion into her nice life of being an only child. There was a wedge between us that only got bigger when these foster parents adopted a baby boy. Yes, that's story for another time.)
Taking my brother back to that place without hesitation only solidified the fear I lived with on a daily basis. So, when Elmer George started driving down an unfamiliar dirt road the first time, I felt that tightening in my throat again. And I’m not sure how he did it, but he let me know that the threat of being taken back to “that place” by my foster parents was still there. Actually, anyone who knew us, knew that, too. He, again, used it to his advantage, just like he used me.
Around the same time Elmer George sexually abused me for the first time, at around age six, another "cousin" from a related family did the same damn hide-n-seek game with us…. us being his sister, my sister, and me! Like I had a big message across my forehead that said "USE ME", I was, once again, the designated person to hide my eyes…..in his bedroom…..on his bed. I was now wondering if maybe there was a boys hide-n-seek club.
Timmy and Elmer George were about the same age and biological cousins. Timmy, too, was a favorite of my foster parents. Not quite as close as Elmer George was to them, but close enough for my foster parents to believe anything he said. To my aunt and uncle, he was their pride and joy. Oh, they thought he walked on water. (For those of you who don't know that phrase, the only person who supposedly ever walked on water was Jesus.)
Timmy's parents were my foster dad's brother and his wife, and the first in the family to foster two boys and a adopt a girl. Timmy was the oldest and their only biological child.
While all the parents were outside on the patio, we were told to go in the house and play. After leading me to his bedroom, and plopping down on the bed, Timmy had no shame about pulling out his penis and telling me to put my mouth on it, something I hadn’t been required to do up to this point. When I hesitated just like I did with Elmer George, Timmy reached up, grabbed me by my hair, forced my face down, and told me to open my mouth. When I didn’t, he yanked my hair harder, and asked me if I wanted him to force my mouth open. “If I do, you aren’t gonna like it!" He held his penis up with one hand while he made my head bob up and down with the other hand. Finally, he ejaculated in my mouth.
I pulled my head back, gagged, and threw up on the floor next to the bed. He slapped me across the face, then told me to clean up the mess. After I cleaned up the vomit with a towel that was on the bed, he told me that I had better not tell anyone about “this” or he would tell my mom it was my fault. If he did, I knew what would happen. So did he.
By the time I was 14 years old, I had already been sexually abused so many times, it was almost a normal occurrence. Adult Elmer George was just one more person. Dad started on me the summer I was getting ready to begin 7th grade. The high school located in the small town of Tarentum was 7th thru 12th grade and was called Tarentum High School. . Going from elementary school to high school was a big deal for me. It made me feel so grown up. Especially since I was now wearing a beginners bra. I remember how excited I was to be starting soon. I had already gotten the state funded clothes I would be wearing, which for the most part were for someone younger. It embarrassed me to think I would be wearing dresses that were inches below my knees with a half belt that tied in a bow in the back of the dress. I was also going to be wearing what looked like boys Buster Brown shoes. This was 1963 and girls were wearing skirts just above the knee with sweaters or blouses. Not little girl dresses. But high school, I decided, was going to be exciting no matter what. So that's what I focused on during that summer. Mid-summer that all changed. That excitement I exuded completely drained from me the day dad, YES DAD! told me wash his back after he had been mowing the grass. No one was EVER asked or told to wash his back. NO ONE! So when he told me to do it, I knew something was wrong. Very wrong. It was at the sink in the basement. It was more like double tubs. This is where the old 1950's wringer washer emptied the water after wringing out the clothes and dad usually cleaned up after mowing the lawn. This may have been the man I called dad, but I was terrified of him. So when he told meto take the wash cloth and wash his back, I did. When he turned around to face me and told me, "now wash my chest", I did. When he zipped down his pants and pulled out a hard penis and said, "wash this", I did. When he lead me to the room in the basement that had a bed, I went without saying a word. Shaking, feeling sick and lightheaded, feeling scared, I sat on the edge of the bed as instructed and performed oral six for the first of many times. It was oral sex I had to perform on good ole Dad over and over for well over a year. He would hunt me down when mom, her two sisters and mother (who lived next door) went grocery shopping each week. Sometimes I would run to the neighbors, hide behind a tree and watch him looking for me until the shopping ladies got home. Other times he managed to get me before I got away. I distinctly remember the night of my foster sister, his daughter, graduated from high school and guests at the graduation party was upstairs, outside in the yard, and even in the basement, he told me to go to the room in the basement and wait. Mad as hell, I went to the room. Just in case someone might walk in on him in the act, he made me get into the closet, which was the enclosed space under the stairs, get on my knees while he thrust back and forth in my mouth. That way, if someone walked in they would just see him standing in front of the closest and wouldn't know what was going on. There were lots of occurrences like that. Mostly in the basement when mom was gone or busy upstairs. I would try to hide or pretend I didn't see him nodding towards the basement door, until he would grab me by the arm and whisper to me to go downstairs. So many times I wanted to scream at him. Or just SCREAM! Period. Then I got what I thought was going to be a reprieve from all of the insanity. Mom yelling at me, calling me names, telling me how stupid I was, pulling my hair, and on and on, while dad was using me for his sexual appetite. The room downstairs that become a decent bedroom where my foster sister got away from it all, "it all" meaning what was going on with my sister, my foster brother and me, was now going to be mine since she was moving out. Perfect, I thought. Since the main light only goes on and off at the top of the stairs, she had the cutest white milk glass wall light and a small lamp on her nightstand to use at night when she was in her room. I had watched her many times after she took a shower in the only bathroom in the house which was upstairs,and her hair was wrapped in a towel, go downstairs where I knew she was going to set her hair in rollers. She had pretty blonde hair that was always looked nice because she set it in rollers every night. The few times I sneaked into that room when she was gone, I would look at all of her make-up, nail polish, perfume, and jewelry in her jewelry box on her dresser. She had a pretty bedspread on her bed and nice white dollies on her dresser and night stand. Most of all, I loved looking at her pretty clothes in the closet. I was, and would be until I was 18, wearing state provided clothes, which were nothing like the expensive clothes that hung in her closet. Maybe I wouldn't have pretty things like make-up and nice clothes, but I would have more freedom. I fantasized about setting my hair in rollers after a shower, reading and doing my homework on the bed, and having my own space, my own part of the world in a small bedroom in the basement. It was actually an ugly room with a brown tile floor, two walls that were the concrete basement walls, one built-in wall that ran along the stairs with the closet on the end, and another built-in wall across the front with a sliding folding door. All in all, it was probably a 10'x10' room. My foster sister made the room look pretty with all her niceties. Even though I might not have the kinds of things she'll take with her, it believed it was going to be my little paradise. Until.... Mom made her revolting changes right after I took everything of mine downstairs to my new bedroom and put them away. First, out went both the wall lamp and the lamp on the night stand. "How am I suppose to see down here without the lamps? I will have to walk back upstairs to shut the light off before I go to sleep." I asked. "Oh, no. You don't turn that light on before you go downstairs. It stays off." Mom replied. "But how am I suppose to see to do anything after dark?" I was actually astounded by this move of hers. "You're not. If you don't want to sit in the dark, then stay upstairs until it's time to go to sleep." "But what if I want to read or set my hair?" I asked. That was definitely the wrong thing to ask because next she took my rollers for setting my hair. Well, that was the basket of hair rollers she saw sitting out. I had extra rollers in a bag in the closet. "You don't need to set your hair and you're too stupid to worry about reading a book." The usual type of comment. I was heartbroken. For once, I thought I was going to get the same privilege given to my foster sister. The same way she stripped me of having any self-esteem or self-worth, she now stripped me of a chance to have peace and a tiny bit of joy in my life. I was in my mid-teens and still none of her usual abusive actions toward me changed just because I was a teenager. If anything they got worse. This is why. Something that NEVER occurred to me would happen, happened. Even if I had to live in the dark downstairs in the basement, I was still going to make it my sanctuary. I was determined to NOT let anyone ruin this any further for me. That was until the second night. I was sound to sleep when I felt someone touch my shoulder and nudge it a little bit. It sacred the hell out of me. Immediately thought someone must have gotten in through the cellar window, which sent a little shot of terror through my body. But when I rolled over, there stood dad shushing me. He never said a word. He pulled back my covers, pulled off my pajama bottoms, got on top of me.... and, well, you know the rest. Interestingly enough, he had a couple of Kleenex in his right hand, and just as he would orgasm, he pulled out me to catch semen in the Kleenex. So now it was intercourse, three, four, sometimes five times a week. Even when I pretended to be sound to sleep, he would shake my shoulder until I pretended to wake up and give him what he wanted. I just wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible. All the while, I stayed in my head and saw myself running through the field and woods, while he pumped away on my little body. Then he was gone, back up the stairs, and to the bed he shared with mom. Babysitting for Elmer George and his wife was around that same time. Then lo and behold doesn't mom tell a couple at church that I would babysit for them. Significantly overweight and not very attractive, mom was so flattered that someone even noticed her. They were an attractive young couple who were at church every Sunday. We always saw them, but never had any conversational interaction with them. To this day I have no idea how they knew me, that I was babysitting age or that I would babysit for them. I gladly accepted, thinking another way to make money. I never expected to happen what did happen. So what happened, you ask? Once again, Mr. Nice Church Guy Jack volunteered to take me home. I have no idea how someone who did not know me, only from seeing me at church, without asking, could be so bold as to drive down a dark lane (not far from where Elmer George took me), park the car, lean over, and start kissing me. Did he see "USE ME" on my forehead, too?
And that’s not all of it.
He got out of his side of the car, walked over to my side, opened the door, had me get out while he got in, slid the seat back then put the back of the seat down, unzipped his pants and pulled them down until he was exposed. Me, looking stupid, just stood there until he pulled me close enough to unbutton my jeans, slid them down nearly to my ankles, helped one leg out and pulled me on top of him. Of course, I tried to refuse until he said, “Oh, no, you don't want to refuse me.” Then I knew by his tone that somehow he knew I was THAT GIRL, the one who gets used and then discarded.
Yep, there was some kind of club alright. Friday nights it was Jack. Saturday nights were Elmer George's nights. And any night of the week he wanted it dad took what he wanted with no reservation. But there was more to the story. On Wednesday nights, Elmer Geroge's wife use to go to church. She would pick me up, I watched their three kids, and then she would take me home. That's all well and good. Accept Elmer George would leave work during his lunch hour on Wednesdays , and only on Wednesdays, tell me to put the kids, who were small, two boys and a girl, in the tub, and he would lead me to their bedroom and have intercourse with me ON THEIR BED! Jack, on the other hand, did things differently. He worked in Tarentum. Since we were let out for open lunch hour at school Monday through Friday, he insisted I meet him at one of the local restaurant's for lunch. I HATED it but I went, and after only a couple times of meeting him, he told me, a 16 year old girl, that he loved me. Oh, but dad was the winner. During intercourse, he told me, the one who laid there on my bed like a dead fish, that one day I might be as good in bed as my prostitute mother. That was my biological mother he was referring to. She had once been a beautiful woman who became an alcoholic and heroin addict and prostituted herself to pay for her addictions. She lived in the city and we lived about fifty miles away in the country, so how he knew what she was like in bed is still beyond me. Most of this went on until the summer after I graduated. While I was in high school a potential opportunity opened up for me. A beauty school in the area was giving a full scholarship. Whoever was interested in going to beauty school and receiving a full scholarship had to show up for a test the beauty school provided. I was one of about 50 girls who took the test. Beauty school was not my first choice. I wanted to be a social worker or therapist, but that required money for college, and that was not possible. Or so I thought. Years later I discovered that as a ward of the state, I could have had four years of college paid for by the state. But that didn't happen, taking the test did. After a week or so, I stopped by the office every day to see if the results were in yet. Day after day it was, "no, we'll let you know when they comes in." It really wasn't "they" because it was only one scholarship that was being given away and I gave up on the idea that it would be me. Then, one day the school counselor came over the loud speaker to announce to the entire school of over 500 students that Deborah Davis (my given name) won a full scholarship to Franco Beauty School. Oh my God, I thought. No one can say I'm stupid now. I was so excited. I still babysat occasionally only because mom committed me. If I wasn't moving out since I was now 18 years old, then I needed to start paying rent. I would loved to have gotten out on my own, but I had no money except for the little bit I made babysitting and a housekeeping gig I picked up. But I wasn't going to have time to do any housekeeping since I was going to beauty school on Saturdays. Dad never stopped coming to my bedroom. On his way to work in the mornings, after having sex with me the night before, he would drop me off at the public transit bus stop to catch the bus to beauty school the next town over and never say a word. Literally, we didn't talk to each other. I got in the car, he drove five miles to the bus stop, and I got out an closed the door. Not a word passed between us.
**************************** I hated those men. I hated myself for not being able to say No. Because I didn't put up a fight, because I was too afraid to say No, even though I resisted as much I could, I never physically fought off these men, I never considered what was happening to me wasn't just sexual assault, it was rape. Even today it's hard for me to say I was raped. Hate was another thing I had to contend with on a daily basis. I went to Sunday school and church EVERY Sunday (and had pins for never missing a Sunday), and learned that it’s not okay to hate, I was CONSTANTLY in conflict with myself. Love everyone was preached over and over. Forgiveness is expected. From God that is. I sure didn’t want God to be angry with me. Mom told me many times God was going to punish me and I was going to hell for the most stupid things. THIS WAS NOT A RELIGIOUS HOUSEHOLD! Going to church was a ritual. A do-gooder kind of ritual. We didn't practice religion in our house. In fact, the only time I heard anything of a religious nature spoken was when mom was telling me God was going to punish me and I was going to hell. Believe me when I say there were no acts of love in that house.
I think the worse thing about my situation was that I couldn’t tell anyone. I couldn’t risk being taken away and possibly placed in a worse situation. Some of the situations that were described to me over the years where other orphans had gone to live scared the living daylights out of me. Like mom always said, I should be happy that I had a roof over my head and food to eat. And that's what I always told myself over and over. On Friday nights with Jack, Saturday nights with Elmer George, and any night of the week dad came into my bedroom in the middle of the night, I could hear the message in my head, "at least you have a roof over your head and food to eat".
*****************************
Even though I didn't realize it at the time, I am a survivor. In this family, like many families where sexual abuse occurs, there wasn’t just sexual abuse. I had been physically, emotionally and mentally abused on a regular basis.
I clearly remember my foster sister at around 11-years-old herself, standing down the short hallway off the living room, peeking around the corner and crying then yelling for her dad to stop as he was whipping one of the three us with his belt, the other two waiting for their turn. My brother, who I’m pretty sure dad hated because this little boy wasn't his dead son, always got it worse. My sister and I really got it, too, welts and all, but my brother fought back. He knew he didn’t deserve that belt striking him over and over and over and he knew his little sisters were next. So, he fought it.
My sister knew how to play the game, though. Even before the belt reached her butt, my sister wailed at the top of her lungs. A couple of swats and that was it for her.
Me? Well, that was another story. I wasn’t about to let this mean man see me cry. I held back those tears with all the physical and emotional energy I had inside me. As determined as I was not to cry, Dad was even more determined to make me cry. Those whippings were hard. They hurt my buttocks and the back of my legs terribly. But I didn’t care how many times he hit me with that belt, I wasn’t giving in. Even though mom was the one who usually instigated the whippings, she knew dad was a bit out of control and always told him to stop. Not a tear came out of my eyes. I won!!! Ha!Ha!Ha! He could do a lot to me, but he couldn’t make me cry. He usually ended the whippings with looking at me and saying, “One day you’re going to cry and cry hard. I’m going to see to it.” And he did try, and I tried, too, and never shed a tear. Not even once.
That doesn’t mean I never cried. Of course the abuse hurt. And there was much more than just whippings. But those I could get over. What I couldn’t get over was the damage caused by all of the overt sexual abuse and emotional abuse--the name-calling, degrading things said to me about how I was going to turn out just like my biological mother who had been arrested several times for prostitution, constantly comparing me to their biological daughter, and always telling me God was going to punish me. For what, I had no idea. Worse, though, was the perception I had of boys and men because of the sexual abuse. I think what may have saved me was spending nearly a whole summer as a teenager reading taboo magazines with my neighbor who was my childhood best friend. In those magazines, left by her mother in the basement that opened into the back yard to a nice porch swing, my friend and I spent hours reading them. In them were stories, supposedly made-up stories for the most part, but I knew there had to be some truth to them. They were stories of one girl after another who was sexually abused by a family member, raped, used and abused. Story after story. My thinking was, how could someone, anyone, make up something so clearly described as sexual abuse and rape if they or someone they knew hadn’t been through it themselves. That's when I knew they were out there. All of those other victims who knew what I knew. Knowing that made me want to cry with relief. Taking on the blame and shame of sexual predators in my life made me think I was the bad person. But while I was reading these stories I felt compassion for these girls who were suffering just like I had suffered for several years. They weren't bad. I still hung onto the shame and blame, but I realized I wasn't the monster I thought I was.
I knew that no matter how much I knew and learned or would become, I would never be taken seriously in the small town where I lived. I also knew how sharing what I had been through would make me vulnerable. These were secrets that NO ONE knew about. I had never breathed a word about what had happened to me to ANYONE. Not even once! Not even to my best friend!
Always the threat hanging over my head, if I didn’t do what [they] said to do I would go back to the juvenile court. I knew I didn’t want to go to that place, so I said nothing. As a teenager, long after my brother was gone and my sister escaped by getting married at 15, even though mom never told me she knew what dad was doing all those nights he got out of her bed, the physical abuse from her got worse. I thought that shabbily constructed bedroom in the basement would take me away from it all. I was happy to have it because that meant I would be by myself to think and read and plan my future. It never, NEVER, occurred to me at the time I moved down there that I would be awakened in the middle of the night by a man I called dad who found a way to get sex for himself. As for mom, she could hit me, smack me, pull my hair, kick me, call me names, humiliate me when possible (church and other public places), require me to do housework, yard work, clean the garage, the basement, I didn’t care. I was determined to graduate from high school.
This is a Poem I wrote that describes how I felt as a teenager. No One Knows
During my teen years, there were three things that were important to me: 1) I had a roof over my head (something mom NEVER let me forget), 2) I would finish high school and get a diploma, and 3) one day I would leave.
By the time I did leave, I had such low self-esteem I'm not sure how I had the guts to make the decision and go. But there was no one anywhere I had been whose life I wanted. So what did I have to lose. I needed to find the tools I needed to help myself, the kind of help that was not available in those days.
Today, and every day, I can say that was the best thing for me was to leave the town where I lived. So I moved 1500 miles away with my 5 1/2-year-old son. I moved to a big city where I knew no one and no one knew me. That is when the life of Lee Davis really began.
SEXUAL ABUSE IS DESTRUCTIVE!!!!
Sexual abuse has the ability to damage the mind, the soul, thought processes, behaviors and self-esteem.
Often times victims shut down and never return to the self they were or could become. It can have a detrimental effect on relationships, not just with individuals of the same sex as the offender, but any or all relationship. Since lack of trust is a common thread among victims of sexual abuse, fear is the common thread among relationships of victims of sexual abuse.
It is not always the fear of a person or persons, or the sex of the offender, it is fear of everything. There is a saying I learned many many years ago. Fear is faith turned inside out. Or we could say: Fear is trust turned inside out. Fear causes distrust. When we truly trust something or someone, we have no fear. But fear causes distrust. When an individual lacks trust in one area of their life, it can, and most often does, affect every area of their life.
There is no degree in which fear invades the psyche of an individual. Being sexually abused once can have the same effect on an individual as someone who has been sexually abused numerous times. It’s all about the individual and how each person perceives what has happened to them. Many become survivors. I would say most do. Other individuals can’t seem to get out of the victim role no matter how hard they try. They are survivors, too, but they can’t quite grasp that concept. All they know, all they feel, is the victimization of it all. Sometimes for years.
Individuals can, like I did, have PTSD. It took me years to realize I acted from a place of post-traumatic stress. Even though I often had flashbacks, constantly thought I wasn’t good enough, had nightmares that someone was chasing me, and trusted no one, it didn’t occur to me that I had PTSD. Other behaviors I’ve exhibited that should have tuned me into that possibility, were that I was more than just aware of my surroundings, I was hypervigilant, always looking over my shoulder, an obsessive thinker, and always thought I had to be perfect.
****************************** After I moved, I learned about self-improvement classes. There were no such opportunities in the small town. I took those classes every chance I got, plus I went to several weekend seminars where I worked on old issues. When the seminar ended and group dispersed on Sunday, I left feeling great each time. Exhilarated. Excited about how this changed my life. But after a few days, the rah-rah-rah started to wear off and self-doubt began to creep back in and I could feel depression slowly seeping in and around me. Thinking I had to be the only one this happened to, only caused me to feel even worse about myself, alone, and more isolated. I went to several weekend seminars by various presenters, but it was always the same. Within a few days I felt more depressed than when I signed up for the seminar. Eventually, it was just one more thing at which I failed.
I thought that once I moved to a new city, far away, everything would change. If I did the “right” things I would succeed at something and feel great all the time. By taking self-improvement classes I thought I was on the road to peace, joy, and happiness. Instead, there were a series of downers, which now included how horrible I felt days after each weekend that was supposed to change my life. For the good!
I pushed on and began attending 12-step support groups for sexual abuse and incest survivors. Here, I listened to others tell their stories about having been sexually abused. I attended for several weeks before I was finally able to share what happened to me. It helped me tremendously to hear their stories and the progress many of the women in the group were making. It gave me hope. After the fifth year of living in the new city, I was in a place where I could afford counseling. I learned so much about myself. It was incredible.
About that same time, I had the opportunity to go to college. I took 18 hours a semester and exhausted myself. I also took night classes so that I could get a Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselor (CADC) Certification. I felt ready to start helping other girls and women who were abused, sexually abused and incested. At the time, Alberta Anderson, a counselor 20 years my senior, who had also been an orphan and sexually abused as a child, and I opened a center together for helping women. She had already been helping women and couples for more that twenty years.
Even though I provided and still do provide support to girls and women needing help to move forward in their lives who are dealing with anything from hitting a bump in the road with an issue or two, to dealing with having been badly mentally, emotionally, physically and/or sexually abused, I spend a great deal of time helping girls and women who have been sexually abused. Over the years I have had the opportunity to reach out and help others who experienced what I experienced, many of whom had it even worse. ************************These are my memories regarding abuse, sexual abuse and incest. I tell these to you so that you know you are not alone and there is help available. I want you to know that there are still times things pop up for me.
For instance, this article, which should have taken me a couple of hours to write has taken me several days. Detailing exactly what happened so that you know what I’ve gone through brought up issues for me. Even though I have been criticized by other counselors, therapists, and psychiatrists for self-disclosure, I do believe self-disclosure is powerful. I wish I had had just one person along the way say, “I know how you feel because it happened to me.” So I share.
One thing I learned. I thought moving was a way to run away from my past. Start over. New everything, new life, new opportunities to be whoever I wanted to be. Eventually, I did become who I wanted to become. That at ME, a healthy better ME.
In the beginning, though, I discovered that no matter where I went, my issues followed me until I worked through them. That is not a short or easy task, but it can be done. Like they say in 12-step meetings, “It works if you work it!”
Once I became a psychologist and began presenting lectures on abuse, sexual abuse and incest, and shared my own story, I was often asked how I got through it all. So, I sat down one day and as I thought about it I began writing. From all the notes I made, I discovered that I could see the process from start to finish. Not that you ever finish working on yourself, but I could see how I created a process without realizing it and was using it over and over. It was a process that I could teach!
Out of the ashes came my classes on self-esteem. Yes, there it was, Me and My Self-Esteem. There were two parts to this—the undoing and the rebuilding. And that was it, Barriers to Self-Esteem and Building Self-Esteem, the two most important components of Master Your Self-Esteem.
Let’s take a look at these classes, which are FREE, by the way.
As you will notice, I require everyone to take Barriers to Self-Esteem first. Unlike most psychologists and therapists, I am a firm believer that before you can begin to build your self-esteem, you must go through a process of undoing the damage that was caused your low self-esteem in the first place. Sometimes individuals go through that series a couple of times, but I require only once. After those classes are completed at least once, we move onto Building Self-Esteem.
Think of it this way. If you had a pitcher of dirty water, wouldn't you pour out the dirty water, clean out the pitcher, then fill it up again, but with clean water? We are much the same way. Clean out the old, pour in the new.
Now, that is not a promise that life will be great once you’ve finished the My Self-Esteem series, but it will be a great start to a happier one. It requires an emotional investment and a commitment to hard work and a desire to become the best you can be.
Are you ready to begin this journey?
Whether your abuse was passive or you were subjected to the worst kinds of abuse, come on this journey with me as I will be with you. Thank you for taking the time to read this, Lee Davis
It was just as obvious my brother, who was also expected to call this man dad, would never get the affection this nephew got from him. Well, just about everyone was more important to him than my brother ever would be. Any of the three of us for that matter. (That’s a memory for another day.)
Elmer George was a teenager. I thought he was so old, but he was 15 or 16 at the time. A football player for his school, he was big and looked strong. I was very intimidated by his presence. My foster parents also had a daughter, who was four years older than me. She was a pretty girl, tall and thin, with blue eyes and blonde hair that hung below her ears with curls around the bottom. When I looked at her and looked at her dad, I could tell that they were related. She was the one other person who made dad smile anytime she was in the same room as him. On the night mom and dad went out, I didn’t know where she had gone, but she wasn’t at home. It was just my brother and sister, Elmer George, and me.
We were sitting in the living room watching TV when Elmer George said we were going to play high-n-seek. He said that I would be the one to hide my eyes first and he would help me. He told my sister and brother to find a good place to hide, that we would be in the bathroom waiting, counting to 20, which, even at six, I thought was stupid. I didn’t want to hide in the bathroom. That was not the way we played the game when we were in the basement or outside. We stood against a tree or one of the walls in the basement, covered our eyes with an arm, and counted to 10. NOT 20!
But I was far too intimidated by this teenage boy to tell him that his way of playing the game was wrong. Instead, I leaned against the door, facing the door, covered my eyes with my arm, and started counting. I was confused, though, and a little irritated when Elmer George turned my body around facing him, and told me to sit on the floor with my back against the door and count. I was even more confused when he stooped down and started to pull my shorts and panties down. I grabbed at them and tried to pull them up, but he whispered to me in a mean tone, “Be still, I’m not going to hurt you.” I let go and as he slid me forward slightly, he pulled my shorts and panties below my knees, then pulled one leg out.
I knew what he was doing was bad and after just a few seconds my throat began to tighten and I could barely swallow. I still pulled at my shorts and made disapproval groans. I wanted to say, “I’m not allowed to pull my shorts and panties down in front of a boy”, but by the time I formulated the sentence in my head, he spread my legs and had a finger going up inside of me. I groaned even louder because what he was doing really hurt.
He made his finger go in and out of me several times, then pulled it out, and told me to get dressed. I did. He opened the door and said, “Ready or not here we come!” I knew my face was red hot from both anger and shame. I was furious, a word I hadn’t learned yet, but I was feeling it. I wanted to hit him and kick him and bite him. But I didn’t do anything. I was just glad it was over!!!
He walked next to me as I looked for my brother and sister. First, I found my brother who wanted to know why my face was so red and then my sister who just wanted to hide again. “That was fun! Let’s do it again!”
“Jerry can hide this time,” I said, before my brother could say yes or no. But Elmer George immediately chimed in and said, “No, we’re going to hide again while you two hide (meaning my brother and sister). It’s fun. I know you like to hide so we'll hide our eyes.” I stood stiff, while tears began to form and run down my cheeks. Elmer George gave me little shoves toward the bathroom, then a hard push to get me inside. He shut the bathroom door behind him.
This time was different. This time he told me to lay down on the floor. When I hesitated, he pushed me down to the floor, pulled my feet out from under me and slid me down until I was flat on my back, the top of my head against the door. Without hesitating, he pulled off my shorts and panties and told my to stop crying or else. Or else what, I wasn't sure, but I heaved and cried inside my chest instead of my eyes.
He stood up, went to the medicine cabinet, took out a little jar of Vaseline, opened it, and rubbed some on his fingers, then put the jar back into the cabinet. I just laid there and watched. I was so scared I could feel my insides shaking. I knew this was bad, but I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t just jump up and run out with no bottoms on and I was afraid to yell. What if he took off his belt and hit me like dad does and I don't have any panties on, I thought. But then I realized he couldn’t do that because he wasn’t wearing a belt.
Instead, I stiffened my body and put my legs together as tight as I could so he couldn’t get his hands between them. When he knelt beside me, he tried to open my legs but couldn’t. “Stop that!” he whispered in an almost talking voice. I could tell he was angry. “Stop it now, or I will tell your mom and dad that you told me you wanted me to pull your pants down. And you know what happens if they hear that from ME! I'm their favorite nephew!” He was really mad.
At that moment I knew, that he knew, that I knew how much my foster parents loved him and would believe ANYTHING he told them. I also knew what he was talking about would happen if he lied and told them I wanted him to pull down my shorts and panties. My brother, sister, and I had been placed in the care of the state's CPS (Child Protective Services) system, and if anything went wrong, we would be returned to the juvenile court where we lived during the weeks and months while we waited for a new home. For me, the juvenile court was a terrifying place, and a place where I had been sexually abused. (A memory for another time.)
I knew that what he was saying was true. On the first day in this new house that was suppose to be our new home, the man who we were told to call Dad told us what would happen if we were bad. He made sure he told my brother a couple of times in a really angry voice. I don't know if it scared my brother like dad meant it to, but it scared me. Since that day, Mom let me know on a regular basis that she and dad would have no problem putting me in the car and taking me back to that “place” if I didn’t do everything I was told to do. One time they even did it. (Another memory for another time.)
Back to Elmer George. Once he made that threat of lying about what was happening, I knew I had to spread those legs apart. There was no way I was going back there again. If this is what I had to do so he didn’t tell his lie, then spread my legs I did. Begrudgingly, hatefully, I did it.
He hurt me even worse than the first time by trying to put two fingers up inside of me. When he couldn’t quite manage that, he shoved the biggest finger on his hand in and out of me as hard as he could. It was excruciating. He knew it too. Just as I was about to scream he put his hand over my mouth. Tears were streaming down my face. It really hurt. My feelings hurt, too. I now knew this boy wasn’t my cousin. That’s what mom said he was. Our teenage cousin. We had to be nice to him because he was our new cousin. It turned out we had several “new” cousins. But I knew he couldn’t like me and hurt me like that at the same time. The Sunday school teacher told us that when you love somebody you never hurt them. I was hurting and he knew it.
A couple of minutes went by, me whimpering quietly. Then he pulled his finger out and whispered in that mean tone again, “Put your clothes on, and REMEMBER, you can’t tell anyone. This is our secret.” I put my shorts and panties on, he opened the door, and once again said, “Ready or not here we come!” My brother, five years older than me, knew something was wrong when I was walking strangely. I knew he could tell I had been crying and when he asked what was wrong, Elmer George immediately replied, “Your sister hit her head on the bathtub when she was going to hide her eyes.” That didn’t explain why I was walking like I had a stick up my butt, but I didn’t say anything, and thankfully my brother didn’t ask any more questions.
By the time my foster parents got home, I was in bed asleep. The next morning, I still had terrible vaginal pain, but I was able to walk without them noticing I was walking slower than usual. It still really hurt when I walked.
Elmer George told me to remember this is OUR secret, and I did not forget it, EVER. There were many picnics, parties, and visits back and forth from his home to ours. No one was ever the wiser when I stayed as far away from him as possible.
Then......when I was 14 years old, my foster mom loaned me out to babysit. Guess who for? None other than their favorite nephew and his wife.
Yes, you guessed it. It happened again, and again, and again. Every Saturday night for months after they came home from being out late, and Elmer George volunteered to take me home, it was intercourse he performed on me in his car. There was a spot at the end of a dark lonely road where he stopped the car, turned off the ignition and push the seat back. Each time I waited until he told me to take my clothes off before I did so, all the while yelling and screaming cuss in my head. If I thought for one minute I could have gotten away with it I would have stabbed him a hundred times with a sharp knife. That's how enraged I was and those were my thoughts when he was inside of me.
By this time, I was a broken emotionally from all the physical, mental, emotional and sexual abuse at home. My self-esteem was so low, I had become a victim of learned helplessness. That is a form of conditioning. Over years, I had been conditioned through fear….the fear of being taken back to “that place”, the fear of losing my brother and sister, the fear of living on the streets. I had been told over and over that I would be taken back, if……! I knew that was a reality.
One day, when the three of us (my brother, sister and I) were getting whippings with the belt, dad started on my brother like he always did. He was swinging that belt as hard as he could on my brother's back and legs. I jumped every time it made the cracking sound because I knew I was next. But on that day, right in the middle of what looked like an endless whipping, my brother shouted, “Take me back! I want to go back! I want to go back!I don't want to live here!” Dad stopped in the middle of a strike, arm in the air when he stopped, put his belt on, sat back down on the sofa and picked up the book he had been reading before mom instigated the whipping in the first place, like she always did. Within twenty-four hours was up, my brother was gone, taken back to that place, never to return to that house. I was nine years old. (By the way, in all the times there were whippings, and there were many many whippings, always with the belt, their daughter was NEVER EVER included. Looking back on it, I think we three foster kids were nothing more than an intrusion into her nice life of being an only child. There was a wedge between us that only got bigger when these foster parents adopted a baby boy. Yes, that's story for another time.)
Taking my brother back to that place without hesitation only solidified the fear I lived with on a daily basis. So, when Elmer George started driving down an unfamiliar dirt road the first time, I felt that tightening in my throat again. And I’m not sure how he did it, but he let me know that the threat of being taken back to “that place” by my foster parents was still there. Actually, anyone who knew us, knew that, too. He, again, used it to his advantage, just like he used me.
Around the same time Elmer George sexually abused me for the first time, at around age six, another "cousin" from a related family did the same damn hide-n-seek game with us…. us being his sister, my sister, and me! Like I had a big message across my forehead that said "USE ME", I was, once again, the designated person to hide my eyes…..in his bedroom…..on his bed. I was now wondering if maybe there was a boys hide-n-seek club.
Timmy and Elmer George were about the same age and biological cousins. Timmy, too, was a favorite of my foster parents. Not quite as close as Elmer George was to them, but close enough for my foster parents to believe anything he said. To my aunt and uncle, he was their pride and joy. Oh, they thought he walked on water. (For those of you who don't know that phrase, the only person who supposedly ever walked on water was Jesus.)
Timmy's parents were my foster dad's brother and his wife, and the first in the family to foster two boys and a adopt a girl. Timmy was the oldest and their only biological child.
While all the parents were outside on the patio, we were told to go in the house and play. After leading me to his bedroom, and plopping down on the bed, Timmy had no shame about pulling out his penis and telling me to put my mouth on it, something I hadn’t been required to do up to this point. When I hesitated just like I did with Elmer George, Timmy reached up, grabbed me by my hair, forced my face down, and told me to open my mouth. When I didn’t, he yanked my hair harder, and asked me if I wanted him to force my mouth open. “If I do, you aren’t gonna like it!" He held his penis up with one hand while he made my head bob up and down with the other hand. Finally, he ejaculated in my mouth.
I pulled my head back, gagged, and threw up on the floor next to the bed. He slapped me across the face, then told me to clean up the mess. After I cleaned up the vomit with a towel that was on the bed, he told me that I had better not tell anyone about “this” or he would tell my mom it was my fault. If he did, I knew what would happen. So did he.
By the time I was 14 years old, I had already been sexually abused so many times, it was almost a normal occurrence. Adult Elmer George was just one more person. Dad started on me the summer I was getting ready to begin 7th grade. The high school located in the small town of Tarentum was 7th thru 12th grade and was called Tarentum High School. . Going from elementary school to high school was a big deal for me. It made me feel so grown up. Especially since I was now wearing a beginners bra. I remember how excited I was to be starting soon. I had already gotten the state funded clothes I would be wearing, which for the most part were for someone younger. It embarrassed me to think I would be wearing dresses that were inches below my knees with a half belt that tied in a bow in the back of the dress. I was also going to be wearing what looked like boys Buster Brown shoes. This was 1963 and girls were wearing skirts just above the knee with sweaters or blouses. Not little girl dresses. But high school, I decided, was going to be exciting no matter what. So that's what I focused on during that summer. Mid-summer that all changed. That excitement I exuded completely drained from me the day dad, YES DAD! told me wash his back after he had been mowing the grass. No one was EVER asked or told to wash his back. NO ONE! So when he told me to do it, I knew something was wrong. Very wrong. It was at the sink in the basement. It was more like double tubs. This is where the old 1950's wringer washer emptied the water after wringing out the clothes and dad usually cleaned up after mowing the lawn. This may have been the man I called dad, but I was terrified of him. So when he told meto take the wash cloth and wash his back, I did. When he turned around to face me and told me, "now wash my chest", I did. When he zipped down his pants and pulled out a hard penis and said, "wash this", I did. When he lead me to the room in the basement that had a bed, I went without saying a word. Shaking, feeling sick and lightheaded, feeling scared, I sat on the edge of the bed as instructed and performed oral six for the first of many times. It was oral sex I had to perform on good ole Dad over and over for well over a year. He would hunt me down when mom, her two sisters and mother (who lived next door) went grocery shopping each week. Sometimes I would run to the neighbors, hide behind a tree and watch him looking for me until the shopping ladies got home. Other times he managed to get me before I got away. I distinctly remember the night of my foster sister, his daughter, graduated from high school and guests at the graduation party was upstairs, outside in the yard, and even in the basement, he told me to go to the room in the basement and wait. Mad as hell, I went to the room. Just in case someone might walk in on him in the act, he made me get into the closet, which was the enclosed space under the stairs, get on my knees while he thrust back and forth in my mouth. That way, if someone walked in they would just see him standing in front of the closest and wouldn't know what was going on. There were lots of occurrences like that. Mostly in the basement when mom was gone or busy upstairs. I would try to hide or pretend I didn't see him nodding towards the basement door, until he would grab me by the arm and whisper to me to go downstairs. So many times I wanted to scream at him. Or just SCREAM! Period. Then I got what I thought was going to be a reprieve from all of the insanity. Mom yelling at me, calling me names, telling me how stupid I was, pulling my hair, and on and on, while dad was using me for his sexual appetite. The room downstairs that become a decent bedroom where my foster sister got away from it all, "it all" meaning what was going on with my sister, my foster brother and me, was now going to be mine since she was moving out. Perfect, I thought. Since the main light only goes on and off at the top of the stairs, she had the cutest white milk glass wall light and a small lamp on her nightstand to use at night when she was in her room. I had watched her many times after she took a shower in the only bathroom in the house which was upstairs,and her hair was wrapped in a towel, go downstairs where I knew she was going to set her hair in rollers. She had pretty blonde hair that was always looked nice because she set it in rollers every night. The few times I sneaked into that room when she was gone, I would look at all of her make-up, nail polish, perfume, and jewelry in her jewelry box on her dresser. She had a pretty bedspread on her bed and nice white dollies on her dresser and night stand. Most of all, I loved looking at her pretty clothes in the closet. I was, and would be until I was 18, wearing state provided clothes, which were nothing like the expensive clothes that hung in her closet. Maybe I wouldn't have pretty things like make-up and nice clothes, but I would have more freedom. I fantasized about setting my hair in rollers after a shower, reading and doing my homework on the bed, and having my own space, my own part of the world in a small bedroom in the basement. It was actually an ugly room with a brown tile floor, two walls that were the concrete basement walls, one built-in wall that ran along the stairs with the closet on the end, and another built-in wall across the front with a sliding folding door. All in all, it was probably a 10'x10' room. My foster sister made the room look pretty with all her niceties. Even though I might not have the kinds of things she'll take with her, it believed it was going to be my little paradise. Until.... Mom made her revolting changes right after I took everything of mine downstairs to my new bedroom and put them away. First, out went both the wall lamp and the lamp on the night stand. "How am I suppose to see down here without the lamps? I will have to walk back upstairs to shut the light off before I go to sleep." I asked. "Oh, no. You don't turn that light on before you go downstairs. It stays off." Mom replied. "But how am I suppose to see to do anything after dark?" I was actually astounded by this move of hers. "You're not. If you don't want to sit in the dark, then stay upstairs until it's time to go to sleep." "But what if I want to read or set my hair?" I asked. That was definitely the wrong thing to ask because next she took my rollers for setting my hair. Well, that was the basket of hair rollers she saw sitting out. I had extra rollers in a bag in the closet. "You don't need to set your hair and you're too stupid to worry about reading a book." The usual type of comment. I was heartbroken. For once, I thought I was going to get the same privilege given to my foster sister. The same way she stripped me of having any self-esteem or self-worth, she now stripped me of a chance to have peace and a tiny bit of joy in my life. I was in my mid-teens and still none of her usual abusive actions toward me changed just because I was a teenager. If anything they got worse. This is why. Something that NEVER occurred to me would happen, happened. Even if I had to live in the dark downstairs in the basement, I was still going to make it my sanctuary. I was determined to NOT let anyone ruin this any further for me. That was until the second night. I was sound to sleep when I felt someone touch my shoulder and nudge it a little bit. It sacred the hell out of me. Immediately thought someone must have gotten in through the cellar window, which sent a little shot of terror through my body. But when I rolled over, there stood dad shushing me. He never said a word. He pulled back my covers, pulled off my pajama bottoms, got on top of me.... and, well, you know the rest. Interestingly enough, he had a couple of Kleenex in his right hand, and just as he would orgasm, he pulled out me to catch semen in the Kleenex. So now it was intercourse, three, four, sometimes five times a week. Even when I pretended to be sound to sleep, he would shake my shoulder until I pretended to wake up and give him what he wanted. I just wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible. All the while, I stayed in my head and saw myself running through the field and woods, while he pumped away on my little body. Then he was gone, back up the stairs, and to the bed he shared with mom. Babysitting for Elmer George and his wife was around that same time. Then lo and behold doesn't mom tell a couple at church that I would babysit for them. Significantly overweight and not very attractive, mom was so flattered that someone even noticed her. They were an attractive young couple who were at church every Sunday. We always saw them, but never had any conversational interaction with them. To this day I have no idea how they knew me, that I was babysitting age or that I would babysit for them. I gladly accepted, thinking another way to make money. I never expected to happen what did happen. So what happened, you ask? Once again, Mr. Nice Church Guy Jack volunteered to take me home. I have no idea how someone who did not know me, only from seeing me at church, without asking, could be so bold as to drive down a dark lane (not far from where Elmer George took me), park the car, lean over, and start kissing me. Did he see "USE ME" on my forehead, too?
And that’s not all of it.
He got out of his side of the car, walked over to my side, opened the door, had me get out while he got in, slid the seat back then put the back of the seat down, unzipped his pants and pulled them down until he was exposed. Me, looking stupid, just stood there until he pulled me close enough to unbutton my jeans, slid them down nearly to my ankles, helped one leg out and pulled me on top of him. Of course, I tried to refuse until he said, “Oh, no, you don't want to refuse me.” Then I knew by his tone that somehow he knew I was THAT GIRL, the one who gets used and then discarded.
Yep, there was some kind of club alright. Friday nights it was Jack. Saturday nights were Elmer George's nights. And any night of the week he wanted it dad took what he wanted with no reservation. But there was more to the story. On Wednesday nights, Elmer Geroge's wife use to go to church. She would pick me up, I watched their three kids, and then she would take me home. That's all well and good. Accept Elmer George would leave work during his lunch hour on Wednesdays , and only on Wednesdays, tell me to put the kids, who were small, two boys and a girl, in the tub, and he would lead me to their bedroom and have intercourse with me ON THEIR BED! Jack, on the other hand, did things differently. He worked in Tarentum. Since we were let out for open lunch hour at school Monday through Friday, he insisted I meet him at one of the local restaurant's for lunch. I HATED it but I went, and after only a couple times of meeting him, he told me, a 16 year old girl, that he loved me. Oh, but dad was the winner. During intercourse, he told me, the one who laid there on my bed like a dead fish, that one day I might be as good in bed as my prostitute mother. That was my biological mother he was referring to. She had once been a beautiful woman who became an alcoholic and heroin addict and prostituted herself to pay for her addictions. She lived in the city and we lived about fifty miles away in the country, so how he knew what she was like in bed is still beyond me. Most of this went on until the summer after I graduated. While I was in high school a potential opportunity opened up for me. A beauty school in the area was giving a full scholarship. Whoever was interested in going to beauty school and receiving a full scholarship had to show up for a test the beauty school provided. I was one of about 50 girls who took the test. Beauty school was not my first choice. I wanted to be a social worker or therapist, but that required money for college, and that was not possible. Or so I thought. Years later I discovered that as a ward of the state, I could have had four years of college paid for by the state. But that didn't happen, taking the test did. After a week or so, I stopped by the office every day to see if the results were in yet. Day after day it was, "no, we'll let you know when they comes in." It really wasn't "they" because it was only one scholarship that was being given away and I gave up on the idea that it would be me. Then, one day the school counselor came over the loud speaker to announce to the entire school of over 500 students that Deborah Davis (my given name) won a full scholarship to Franco Beauty School. Oh my God, I thought. No one can say I'm stupid now. I was so excited. I still babysat occasionally only because mom committed me. If I wasn't moving out since I was now 18 years old, then I needed to start paying rent. I would loved to have gotten out on my own, but I had no money except for the little bit I made babysitting and a housekeeping gig I picked up. But I wasn't going to have time to do any housekeeping since I was going to beauty school on Saturdays. Dad never stopped coming to my bedroom. On his way to work in the mornings, after having sex with me the night before, he would drop me off at the public transit bus stop to catch the bus to beauty school the next town over and never say a word. Literally, we didn't talk to each other. I got in the car, he drove five miles to the bus stop, and I got out an closed the door. Not a word passed between us.
**************************** I hated those men. I hated myself for not being able to say No. Because I didn't put up a fight, because I was too afraid to say No, even though I resisted as much I could, I never physically fought off these men, I never considered what was happening to me wasn't just sexual assault, it was rape. Even today it's hard for me to say I was raped. Hate was another thing I had to contend with on a daily basis. I went to Sunday school and church EVERY Sunday (and had pins for never missing a Sunday), and learned that it’s not okay to hate, I was CONSTANTLY in conflict with myself. Love everyone was preached over and over. Forgiveness is expected. From God that is. I sure didn’t want God to be angry with me. Mom told me many times God was going to punish me and I was going to hell for the most stupid things. THIS WAS NOT A RELIGIOUS HOUSEHOLD! Going to church was a ritual. A do-gooder kind of ritual. We didn't practice religion in our house. In fact, the only time I heard anything of a religious nature spoken was when mom was telling me God was going to punish me and I was going to hell. Believe me when I say there were no acts of love in that house.
I think the worse thing about my situation was that I couldn’t tell anyone. I couldn’t risk being taken away and possibly placed in a worse situation. Some of the situations that were described to me over the years where other orphans had gone to live scared the living daylights out of me. Like mom always said, I should be happy that I had a roof over my head and food to eat. And that's what I always told myself over and over. On Friday nights with Jack, Saturday nights with Elmer George, and any night of the week dad came into my bedroom in the middle of the night, I could hear the message in my head, "at least you have a roof over your head and food to eat".
*****************************
Even though I didn't realize it at the time, I am a survivor. In this family, like many families where sexual abuse occurs, there wasn’t just sexual abuse. I had been physically, emotionally and mentally abused on a regular basis.
I clearly remember my foster sister at around 11-years-old herself, standing down the short hallway off the living room, peeking around the corner and crying then yelling for her dad to stop as he was whipping one of the three us with his belt, the other two waiting for their turn. My brother, who I’m pretty sure dad hated because this little boy wasn't his dead son, always got it worse. My sister and I really got it, too, welts and all, but my brother fought back. He knew he didn’t deserve that belt striking him over and over and over and he knew his little sisters were next. So, he fought it.
My sister knew how to play the game, though. Even before the belt reached her butt, my sister wailed at the top of her lungs. A couple of swats and that was it for her.
Me? Well, that was another story. I wasn’t about to let this mean man see me cry. I held back those tears with all the physical and emotional energy I had inside me. As determined as I was not to cry, Dad was even more determined to make me cry. Those whippings were hard. They hurt my buttocks and the back of my legs terribly. But I didn’t care how many times he hit me with that belt, I wasn’t giving in. Even though mom was the one who usually instigated the whippings, she knew dad was a bit out of control and always told him to stop. Not a tear came out of my eyes. I won!!! Ha!Ha!Ha! He could do a lot to me, but he couldn’t make me cry. He usually ended the whippings with looking at me and saying, “One day you’re going to cry and cry hard. I’m going to see to it.” And he did try, and I tried, too, and never shed a tear. Not even once.
That doesn’t mean I never cried. Of course the abuse hurt. And there was much more than just whippings. But those I could get over. What I couldn’t get over was the damage caused by all of the overt sexual abuse and emotional abuse--the name-calling, degrading things said to me about how I was going to turn out just like my biological mother who had been arrested several times for prostitution, constantly comparing me to their biological daughter, and always telling me God was going to punish me. For what, I had no idea. Worse, though, was the perception I had of boys and men because of the sexual abuse. I think what may have saved me was spending nearly a whole summer as a teenager reading taboo magazines with my neighbor who was my childhood best friend. In those magazines, left by her mother in the basement that opened into the back yard to a nice porch swing, my friend and I spent hours reading them. In them were stories, supposedly made-up stories for the most part, but I knew there had to be some truth to them. They were stories of one girl after another who was sexually abused by a family member, raped, used and abused. Story after story. My thinking was, how could someone, anyone, make up something so clearly described as sexual abuse and rape if they or someone they knew hadn’t been through it themselves. That's when I knew they were out there. All of those other victims who knew what I knew. Knowing that made me want to cry with relief. Taking on the blame and shame of sexual predators in my life made me think I was the bad person. But while I was reading these stories I felt compassion for these girls who were suffering just like I had suffered for several years. They weren't bad. I still hung onto the shame and blame, but I realized I wasn't the monster I thought I was.
I knew that no matter how much I knew and learned or would become, I would never be taken seriously in the small town where I lived. I also knew how sharing what I had been through would make me vulnerable. These were secrets that NO ONE knew about. I had never breathed a word about what had happened to me to ANYONE. Not even once! Not even to my best friend!
Always the threat hanging over my head, if I didn’t do what [they] said to do I would go back to the juvenile court. I knew I didn’t want to go to that place, so I said nothing. As a teenager, long after my brother was gone and my sister escaped by getting married at 15, even though mom never told me she knew what dad was doing all those nights he got out of her bed, the physical abuse from her got worse. I thought that shabbily constructed bedroom in the basement would take me away from it all. I was happy to have it because that meant I would be by myself to think and read and plan my future. It never, NEVER, occurred to me at the time I moved down there that I would be awakened in the middle of the night by a man I called dad who found a way to get sex for himself. As for mom, she could hit me, smack me, pull my hair, kick me, call me names, humiliate me when possible (church and other public places), require me to do housework, yard work, clean the garage, the basement, I didn’t care. I was determined to graduate from high school.
This is a Poem I wrote that describes how I felt as a teenager. No One Knows
During my teen years, there were three things that were important to me: 1) I had a roof over my head (something mom NEVER let me forget), 2) I would finish high school and get a diploma, and 3) one day I would leave.
By the time I did leave, I had such low self-esteem I'm not sure how I had the guts to make the decision and go. But there was no one anywhere I had been whose life I wanted. So what did I have to lose. I needed to find the tools I needed to help myself, the kind of help that was not available in those days.
Today, and every day, I can say that was the best thing for me was to leave the town where I lived. So I moved 1500 miles away with my 5 1/2-year-old son. I moved to a big city where I knew no one and no one knew me. That is when the life of Lee Davis really began.
SEXUAL ABUSE IS DESTRUCTIVE!!!!
Sexual abuse has the ability to damage the mind, the soul, thought processes, behaviors and self-esteem.
Often times victims shut down and never return to the self they were or could become. It can have a detrimental effect on relationships, not just with individuals of the same sex as the offender, but any or all relationship. Since lack of trust is a common thread among victims of sexual abuse, fear is the common thread among relationships of victims of sexual abuse.
It is not always the fear of a person or persons, or the sex of the offender, it is fear of everything. There is a saying I learned many many years ago. Fear is faith turned inside out. Or we could say: Fear is trust turned inside out. Fear causes distrust. When we truly trust something or someone, we have no fear. But fear causes distrust. When an individual lacks trust in one area of their life, it can, and most often does, affect every area of their life.
There is no degree in which fear invades the psyche of an individual. Being sexually abused once can have the same effect on an individual as someone who has been sexually abused numerous times. It’s all about the individual and how each person perceives what has happened to them. Many become survivors. I would say most do. Other individuals can’t seem to get out of the victim role no matter how hard they try. They are survivors, too, but they can’t quite grasp that concept. All they know, all they feel, is the victimization of it all. Sometimes for years.
Individuals can, like I did, have PTSD. It took me years to realize I acted from a place of post-traumatic stress. Even though I often had flashbacks, constantly thought I wasn’t good enough, had nightmares that someone was chasing me, and trusted no one, it didn’t occur to me that I had PTSD. Other behaviors I’ve exhibited that should have tuned me into that possibility, were that I was more than just aware of my surroundings, I was hypervigilant, always looking over my shoulder, an obsessive thinker, and always thought I had to be perfect.
****************************** After I moved, I learned about self-improvement classes. There were no such opportunities in the small town. I took those classes every chance I got, plus I went to several weekend seminars where I worked on old issues. When the seminar ended and group dispersed on Sunday, I left feeling great each time. Exhilarated. Excited about how this changed my life. But after a few days, the rah-rah-rah started to wear off and self-doubt began to creep back in and I could feel depression slowly seeping in and around me. Thinking I had to be the only one this happened to, only caused me to feel even worse about myself, alone, and more isolated. I went to several weekend seminars by various presenters, but it was always the same. Within a few days I felt more depressed than when I signed up for the seminar. Eventually, it was just one more thing at which I failed.
I thought that once I moved to a new city, far away, everything would change. If I did the “right” things I would succeed at something and feel great all the time. By taking self-improvement classes I thought I was on the road to peace, joy, and happiness. Instead, there were a series of downers, which now included how horrible I felt days after each weekend that was supposed to change my life. For the good!
I pushed on and began attending 12-step support groups for sexual abuse and incest survivors. Here, I listened to others tell their stories about having been sexually abused. I attended for several weeks before I was finally able to share what happened to me. It helped me tremendously to hear their stories and the progress many of the women in the group were making. It gave me hope. After the fifth year of living in the new city, I was in a place where I could afford counseling. I learned so much about myself. It was incredible.
About that same time, I had the opportunity to go to college. I took 18 hours a semester and exhausted myself. I also took night classes so that I could get a Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselor (CADC) Certification. I felt ready to start helping other girls and women who were abused, sexually abused and incested. At the time, Alberta Anderson, a counselor 20 years my senior, who had also been an orphan and sexually abused as a child, and I opened a center together for helping women. She had already been helping women and couples for more that twenty years.
Even though I provided and still do provide support to girls and women needing help to move forward in their lives who are dealing with anything from hitting a bump in the road with an issue or two, to dealing with having been badly mentally, emotionally, physically and/or sexually abused, I spend a great deal of time helping girls and women who have been sexually abused. Over the years I have had the opportunity to reach out and help others who experienced what I experienced, many of whom had it even worse. ************************These are my memories regarding abuse, sexual abuse and incest. I tell these to you so that you know you are not alone and there is help available. I want you to know that there are still times things pop up for me.
For instance, this article, which should have taken me a couple of hours to write has taken me several days. Detailing exactly what happened so that you know what I’ve gone through brought up issues for me. Even though I have been criticized by other counselors, therapists, and psychiatrists for self-disclosure, I do believe self-disclosure is powerful. I wish I had had just one person along the way say, “I know how you feel because it happened to me.” So I share.
One thing I learned. I thought moving was a way to run away from my past. Start over. New everything, new life, new opportunities to be whoever I wanted to be. Eventually, I did become who I wanted to become. That at ME, a healthy better ME.
In the beginning, though, I discovered that no matter where I went, my issues followed me until I worked through them. That is not a short or easy task, but it can be done. Like they say in 12-step meetings, “It works if you work it!”
Once I became a psychologist and began presenting lectures on abuse, sexual abuse and incest, and shared my own story, I was often asked how I got through it all. So, I sat down one day and as I thought about it I began writing. From all the notes I made, I discovered that I could see the process from start to finish. Not that you ever finish working on yourself, but I could see how I created a process without realizing it and was using it over and over. It was a process that I could teach!
Out of the ashes came my classes on self-esteem. Yes, there it was, Me and My Self-Esteem. There were two parts to this—the undoing and the rebuilding. And that was it, Barriers to Self-Esteem and Building Self-Esteem, the two most important components of Master Your Self-Esteem.
Let’s take a look at these classes, which are FREE, by the way.
As you will notice, I require everyone to take Barriers to Self-Esteem first. Unlike most psychologists and therapists, I am a firm believer that before you can begin to build your self-esteem, you must go through a process of undoing the damage that was caused your low self-esteem in the first place. Sometimes individuals go through that series a couple of times, but I require only once. After those classes are completed at least once, we move onto Building Self-Esteem.
Think of it this way. If you had a pitcher of dirty water, wouldn't you pour out the dirty water, clean out the pitcher, then fill it up again, but with clean water? We are much the same way. Clean out the old, pour in the new.
Now, that is not a promise that life will be great once you’ve finished the My Self-Esteem series, but it will be a great start to a happier one. It requires an emotional investment and a commitment to hard work and a desire to become the best you can be.
Are you ready to begin this journey?
Whether your abuse was passive or you were subjected to the worst kinds of abuse, come on this journey with me as I will be with you. Thank you for taking the time to read this, Lee Davis