THE START

Hello there, and welcome. At this time, I invite you to take a short walk with me, as I share my journey of healing with you. Don’t forget to stay to the end, in order to enjoy my gem of positivity. So let’s begin.

To me, despite the fact I experienced extensive childhood sexual abuse, the start was when I was 20 years old. I was in a relationship (not of my choosing), of domestic violence. It was with a man I will only refer to as Alex. It was at this time, the nightmares began. 

The nightmares were always the same. The same man every time. I have come to call these my “dark man” dreams, because mostly he is a shadowy figure. These dreams I find most distressing, because they continue even to this very day. Sometimes I am able to make out the features of the “dark man”. I have come to know the features so well and the place they are set, I have been able to describe in detail to people who have verified the identity of the “dark man” and the place where the dream is set.

Until the “dark man” nightmares, I had no recollection whatsoever of the sexual abuse I suffered as a child. My mind had blocked it out, as a way of coping. However, along with those painful distressing memories, I lost all my good memories too. I have been reminded many times over the years many happy family moments. They have been told to me so many times. I can parrot them back when reminiscing with family about favourite family times.

Notice I say parrot. I have learned so well, I can even add the little details that have been added with each retelling. However, the memories are not mine. The simple reason being I have no childhood memories of my own. I will remember odd bits and pieces, here and there. But a whole complete recollection of my own, no.

I have been told that this is the result of the traumas I have lived through. Having said that, what memories I do have are all linked with animals. I have an overriding love of animals, so those memories are clear as a bell. Even to this day, if I can link a person to an animal or a happening involving animals, my mind says it’s a “safe” memory.

Isn’t it funny how our minds can work? The mind protects us if it can. In my case, it’s been to block memories from a painful time. But our minds can’t seem to be able to separate the good memories from the bad memories, so they all just get blocked. Well, at least that’s how it’s been explained to me.

Slowly, now, I’m getting my memory back. The good but also, unfortunately, all the bad. And it is bad. Horrible, heinous memories. Memories I wish I still didn’t remember. And, to me, it all started with a nightmare.

I now have a great psychotherapist, my Dr H. He has a lot of experience in the field of abuse. Dr H has told me that my experience of memory is quite common in survivors of abuse like this. That they may have absolutely no memory of any sort of abuse. And then all of a sudden, like me and that nightmare, it comes back. Sometimes in bits and pieces, sometimes in a rush. But it does come back.

Never be put off in healing by people who say you’re making up stories. Even for those who have clear recollections their whole life, people will doubt you. But you can heal. It will take time. And the journey to your healing will not be easy. In fact, for me, things are getting worse and the light at the end of the tunnel seems so far off. But there is a light. And that’s where my healing lies.

The gem today is a quote by Maya Angelou:

You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.

And that is just what I’m learning to do. I have had no control over the things that have happened to me. I have not even had control over the manner in which I have remembered so much of the abuse. But I can make the decision as to what I do with this knowledge. And I’m choosing to heal.

How are you healing in your journey? Don’t forget to leave a comment to share with others on their journey, wherever that place may be. It might just be what another person needs. Thank you for sharing this time with me. Until next time, breathe — and believe.

VIRGINITY

Hello and welcome. Come along as we take a short walk through my life as a survivor of abuse. And don’t forget to stay to enjoy my gem of positivity at the end.

As a general rule, we are taught as we grow up (well, I was anyway) that virginity is something to treasure. But what if your virginity was taken from you, before you actually knew you had something precious to lose? That you were tainted — made dirty and broken, before you ever knew that you were pure and clean, and whole.

I know that feeling only too well. My virginity was stolen for me when I was only three years old. It was taken by a man our family knew. A trusted family friend. However, for years I’d blocked the memory out. The pain, the fear, the threats I was told. I remember it all clear as a bell — now.

My moods were always unpredictable growing up. I would blow up unsuspectingly at the very slightest thing. I would swallow my feelings in my emotional bottle, until the cork flew out. I never blew up on the things that mattered. Only mere trifles. However, despite the cork being blown off, it didn’t take long before I fitted a new cork. Thus I would have my emotional bottle sealed tightly again.

I was twenty years old before my mind finally said it was okay to start remembering. Even then, the memories would come to me as nightmares. He was (and still is), the “dark man” who haunts my sleep. How do I know the dreams are of real people and places?

I guess I should take a slight step back. Most of my years of growing up are a complete blank to me. I have only patchy recall of people and places. And it’s not just the negative memories that are gone, but the positive ones as well. What I do remember are the animals of my life.

However, from the nightmares I was having (and continue to have), I have given my family an exact description of the man I didn’t know. The “dark man”. I have described places and situations that have been verified.

This man began by playing games with me when I was just two years old. I was too young to know that the games were bad names; unhealthy games for a child to play with any adult, and most definitely a man. He had me right where he wanted me. Trusting him, believing him.

And then the night of pain. The night of blood. The night of knowing I had done something wrong, yet not knowing what. The night I stopped being an innocent child. Yet afterwards, I always had to keep it a secret. If I told, he said, my Mummy would go away and never come back. It would break up my happy family — and I would be to blame. What a monster, to put such a burden on a three year old child.

And yes, he is a monster. He is the “dark man” who haunts my sleep. Even to this very day, he haunts me — except now he haunts my days as well. I doubt he will ever fully go away. I still blame myself for what happened, even though I know he was the adult throughout it all. He knew what he was doing, what he was taking from me. Even though, at the time, I didn’t.

As you will read, if you decide to follow my story, my virginity was key for me to be a whole person. With every further rape I have endured, a little chink of me has be taken away too. And every chink is another part of broken me.

And so, how do I get through, with the knowledge I now have? Slowly, oh so slowly. Those chinks have done their damage. I can never ever be a whole. But it doesn’t mean I can’t heal into something new. Someone just as precious. As if I’d never been raped. Because now the choice is mine.

Today’s gem is a Japanese phrase. It is a short one, a simple one. But just as meaningful and lovely all the same. Just two little words: 

wabi sabi

Simple enough, yes? But it’s meaning is helping me to heal. Wabi sabi means (roughly translated) to see beauty in the imperfect. So for me, even though I feel tainted and broken by what that man started all those years ago, I can still heal. And heal into something just as beautiful, as if I were still whole. That, I think, is a treasure worth keeping.

Thank you for walking along with me this short while. What words or phrases are helping you to heal? Be sure to leave them in the comments. You might just give someone else the gem they need to get through. And until next time, breathe — and believe.

 MOTHERHOOD

Hello and welcome back. I hope you can stay and walk this short while with me, a survivor of abuse in general, and sexual abuse in particular. And don’t forget to read to the end to enjoy my gem of positivity 

Growing up, I never wanted to be a mum. I had what my family called an “unnatural aversion” to children. I thought and treated them as little aliens, not really human at all. “Children should be seen and not heard”, that was the maxim on which I was raised.

Then, as a teenager, I was diagnosed with endometriosis. So when I was told at the age of seventeen that I either had my children then or live with being childless, I actually didn’t really care. I never gave the subject of having children a thought again (at that time). I just assumed I would never fall pregnant. Never be a mum.

Then, at the age of twenty, I found out I was pregnant. It was the result of being raped by my brother’s boss. I felt fear, shame, incredulity, and anger. Fear of Alex, who was now living in my house. I dreaded him finding out I was pregnant. The reason being he would know, as I was fully aware, it wasn’t his child. And although Alex wanted me pregnant so he could force the issue of marriage, I did not want to marry him, and I didn’t know what he would do if he found out. Shame because I was pregnant outside of marriage. For me personally , that was a big issue I wrestled with. Incredulity that I had fallen pregnant at all; that pregnancy was nothing short of a miracle. Anger because I felt my body had let me down in becoming pregnant as a result of a rape.

I didn’t want to be pregnant and I didn’t want to be a mum. Not at that time.  However, despite that, it never occurred to me to have an abortion. So maybe there was some part of me very deep down that wanted to be a mother after all. I must have had some sort of maternal love to not even consider killing them.

That pregnancy ended because of Alex’s violence at five months. When he found out I was pregnant Alex was demented by knowing the child was not his. He could work out dates as well as anyone. And so, he took me to a doctor. He had to drag me into the clinic (a normal family GP practice, not some seedy backstreet clinic). He had to pin me down and tape my mouth so I couldn’t scream for the procedure, and carry me out to the car afterwards. My little girl, born alive for six precious breaths, was too small to have survived. Her small body was thrown into the “medical waste”, by the doctor. I wasn’t even allowed to say good-bye.

After that, I seemed to fall pregnant with monotonous regularity. And each time, Alex took me back to the same doctor. Each time Alex did the same thing to me; dragged in, pinned and taped, carried out. My last pregnancy I only discovered after I’d thrown Alex out. So I thought maybe I could keep this one. However, workplace “incident” (where I was violently and maliciously gang raped by five co-workers) ended the pregnancy, fraternal twins in this case. Tiny, tiny babies — a boy and a girl.

I did want to get pregnant in later years, but for the most selfish of reasons. I wanted someone who was mine alone. To love and be loved by. I wanted a real and tangible reason to get well, to actually want to live. This was despite being told by a nurse I’d make a lousy mother, simply because I had (and have) mental illness. However being a mum of a real and bodily present child just wasn’t meant to be.

To me, a mother is a picture of love. They love unconditionally and are deserving to be loved in return. When my first little girl was forced from me, I went numb. The doctor placed me on antidepressants, telling me that I’d “get over it soon”. That may have been what he believed, but I never did.

To this day, I feel that I just wasn’t meant to be a mum. And I didn’t deserve to be either. Despite the violence that took my babies away from me, I feel that if I’d loved my babies enough, I would have been able to protect them more than I did. I was unable to provide a suitably fitting and socially acceptable way of honouring their bodies — each and every one. Instead, I believed (and in some ways still do) that I was the worst kind of scum.

Today’s little gem is a quote from Jodi Picoult:

“You don’t love someone because they are perfect, you love them in spite of the fact they’re not.”

That maxim can be applied to any relationship, not just that of a mother. And I do mean every relationship. Because, you see, my babies may not be alive and with me, but that doesn’t make me any less of a mother. So I am now having to learning to love (and forgive) myself — despite my imperfections.

What is your definition of motherhood? Please feel free to leave a comment as to how you celebrate motherhood, whether you have children physically with you, or not.

Thank you for walking this short while with me. I hope you’ll feel empowered to come back and visit again. And until next time, breathe — and believe.

SEXUAL HARASSMENT 

Hello and welcome. Come with me as I share my life as a sexual assault survivor. Don’t forget to stay to the end to enjoy my gem of positivity.

According to Rape Crisis England and Wales, sexual trauma covers: rape, stealthing, sexual assault, assault by penetration, child sexual abuse, female genital mutilation (FGM), sexual harassment, spiking, indecent exposure (flashing), and cyber flashing. There are possibly other types of sexual trauma, but that was just a quick list I found. I also encourage you to read up on each type of sexual trauma; I know I was surprised by what is meant by some of the above, and never thought of them as being reportable. Knowledge is power.

Unfortunately, I have been on the receiving end of workplace harassment , which included sexual harassment. And it was when I had found what I thought was my dream job. I lasted for two years in this supposed “dream job”. Two years too long. It was only when I came to the startling conclusion that either I left or I died, that I realised I had to get out.

The men didn’t stop at “just” talking crudely and the odd grope. It became rape, every single day, often as a group. They penetrated my vagina with objects, and it was this that was the cause of the miscarriage of my last pregnancy. They would hold my mouth open and put their cocks in my mouth. They raped me anally. They also hit me, pushed me out of moving vehicles, and even, I’m sad to say, urinated on me. 

The rapes were  very much a real experience. So real, in fact, that it was because of a rape by one of the senior management that I became pregnant for my first time. It was a cruel situation. The manager hit me on the back of my head as I was walking past him. When I regained consciousness, he was on top of me, fully enjoying his fun of penetrative sex. Even to this day, I have a fear of not just being touched on the back of my head/neck, but also having any person, male or female, being behind me.

So it wasn’t “just” the co-workers who harassed me, but management as well. For the longest time I felt trapped. I even seriously considered suicide as a viable option of escape. Instead I developed an eating disorder, to try and have some control in my out-of-control world. An eating disorder that also almost culminated in my death.

What is even worse, when the upper management found out what had been happening to me at work, they told me lies to keep me quiet. I was told it was not a matter for work-cover. I now know that to be completely untrue, and the company would have been in a lot of serious trouble had I not believed their lies. They told me it was not a matter for the police. Another lie. Serious crimes had been committed against me, and the only one being protected was the company. I was too sick and naive to realise that at the time. When I did hazard to tell one of the company solicitors I was thinking of reporting the perpetrators to the police, she calmly told me that the company would not help me in any way, and would in fact obstruct the police investigation, including withholding legally documented evidence, including witness statements.

You don’t have to have had it quite that badly. Any harassment is too much. And it’s not just girls and women who are targeted. Boys and men can be singled out too. Workplace harassment and sexual harassment is not to be tolerated. It can ruin lives, and not only the lives of the recipients. Unfortunately, in many cases, the recipient feels that the only way for it to stop is to end their own life, as I was close to doing. Then the family and close friends are irrevocably injured too.

I didn’t speak up to the upper management until after I left that “dream” job. It had turned out to be my worst nightmare. I still have panic attacks, not only around men I don’t know, but I also panic in family gatherings too. I have totally lost my sense of safety. There are many days when I can’t even leave my bedroom, let alone the house. The fear of those men is still that strong. And although has taken me decades to try to build my life again, I still can’t hold a job. It’s just beyond me now.

I would not wish what I’ve been through on my worst enemy. Nobody deserves any sort of harassment at work. What makes it worse, in my eyes anyway, is that when confronted the perpetrators will more often than not say, “Oh but it was just a bit of fun.” No. Not fun. It’s never fun to be on the receiving end. On the odd occasion I battled back, I was simply told that I “wouldn’t know how to have fun if it bit me on the bum”. What was fun to them definitely wasn’t to me. I was never left laughing. Cowering, cringing, crying, yes. But most definitely never laughing.

If you, whether male or female, are being harassed at work, and especially sexually harassed, don’t put up with it like I did. You deserve better than that. If in the workplace, speak out. Tell your boss. Tell your boss’s boss. Keep going up the chain of command until someone listens. You may still decide to leave the situation in which you are being harassed, but it helps to make things safer for everyone else. Especially those that come after you.

Today’s gem is an affirmation which I’m only now starting to believe. Just three words:

I Am Enough

You are enough to deserve to be treated with respect and dignity. You are enough to deserve equal treatment. Just plain you are enough. Not less than. Not greater than. But whatever your walk in life, you are enough.

Thank you for taking this short walk with me. I hope it empowers even one of you in a situation of harassment to speak out. Leave a comment to tell us what empowers you. Until next time, breathe — and believe.

A BIT OF A BACKGROUND

Hello there and welcome back. At this time, you get the chance to walk with me in my journey of healing as a sexual assault survivor. Please stay to the end to enjoy my gem of positivity.

I realise that I have jumped straight into my story and healing, without actually giving you an idea of where I’m coming from, abuse-wise. So, why did I name this site “Raped 25 Years” and what exactly qualifies me to write it at all.

My sexual abuse started at the age of eighteen months, when I became a plaything of a pedophile ring. I was introduced to the ring by a trusted family friend. It was without my parents knowledge, I would like to make that clear. It was the same trusted family friend, a staunch member of our church, who took my virginity when I was three years old.

Even when we moved away from the area of the pedophile ring, the abuse didn’t stop. One man, a NSW police officer, followed us. He was successful in grooming me into believing he was my real father, instead of the man who is actually my biological father being married to my mother and living in the same house.

During this time, I was also raped by two teachers, one of them because I caught him raping a class friend in the girls’ toilet block, and the other my high school English teacher. The rapes left their marks on me, by way of obsessive compulsive disorder, anorexia nervosa, and bleeding stomach ulcers from the stress of continuing to see these teachers. 

I only got free of the person I knew of as Dad, when we moved again. That was when I actually recognised my biological father as Dad. By this time, I was fifteen years old going on sixteen, and I was in the tenth grade at high school. All went reasonably smoothly until I got to grades eleven and twelve. That was then my English teacher at my new school decided to systematically rape me over my last two years of high school.

After finishing high school, I spent a wonderful year doing further studies. Then, I started what I thought  would be my dream job. It was, in fact, my worst nightmare. I became the butt of workplace harassment, including sexual (gang raping included),  physical and psychological harassment. It was also when I became embroiled in a domestic violence situation, which would not have taken place except for the workplace abuse. 

The domestic violence continued over the course of about eight months, but I stayed in my job for two years. Even when I left my job, I wasn’t safe. As part of my effort to heal, I joined a self-help group. The leader raped me three times, in the course of the year I was a group member, after which I left the group. I then met a man, again at my church, who raped me and demanded sexual pictures and videos of me. I complied because it never occurred to me that it was abuse. As it turned out, I found out later that this man whom I had trusted was in actual fact, a convicted sex offender.

To be blunt, all these things occurred over the course of twenty five years, hence the title of this site. I have spent more than twenty five years, however, being controlled by my reactions to all this abuse. In August of last year I decided enough was enough. I decided that it was time to start healing and get my life back.

Even in this short time of starting my journey, it has been really difficult. I have a new diagnosis as a result of the prolonged complex post traumatic stress disorder, which I will talk about at another time. I am trying to build a relationship with the man who, in every possible way, is my real Dad. I am trying to forge relationships with my siblings, the relationship that was also destroyed by the abuse. But most of all, I am healing to form a healthy relationship with myself.

I am most grateful that I am not alone in my journey to heal. Many years ago, I tried to start the process with Dr C. But I have come to the realisation that I wasn’t ready then, for the arduous process of healing. I am grateful, however, for Dr C’s efforts and input to my journey. My consultant psychiatrist is now Dr Q. A man who genuinely would like to see me heal. Yet, as of August last year, I am in psychotherapy with Dr H. And that’s when I I truly believe the journey really began.

In my opinion, every survivor of abuse, no matter what the type, should have a steadfast helper like Dr H. He is a man who unfortunately has had to pick up the pieces from many abuse survivors. And yet he is not daunted by the people he meets. In fact, he is grateful to be able to play a role in the healing journey of people like myself. I have the joy of working with him both face to face and by zoom each week (isn’t technology wonderful these days?). In fact, if you really must know, this site would not even exist without Dr H’s encouragement. Mostly because I never believed I had anything to offer other people. Slowly but surely, Dr H and Dr Q are showing me that I do.

Today’s gem of positivity is very personal to me. It is the inscription on a pendant I wear, one that was given to me by my sister:

Whenever you find yourself doubting how far you can go just remember how far you have come. Remember everything you have faced, all the battles you have won, and all the fears you have overcome.

And it’s true. I do doubt my journey of healing, many many times. But this inscription reminds me that I have come so far already, even though I feel like there is still so far to go. So if I have made it this far, I think I can stick it out a bit longer.

What message or saying is helping you to continue your journey of healing? I invite you to leave it in the comments section. Who knows — it just might help someone else to start healing. Thank you for taking this short walk with me. Until next time, breathe — and believe.