People Tell Their Stories:
Abuse and Violence

 

A Woman's Metamorphosis: Speaking Out About Sexual Abuse   Sarah Elise Stauffer

 

I am finally ready to expose my father, and my story. I am a 25 year old mother of 2. I have a beautiful husband, and a safe life.

 

I also have anxiety attacks, a.k.a. little earthquakes, as I like to call them. Any Tori Amos fans out there will know what I mean...I have Post Traumatic Stress disorder and Panic Disorder. I am terrified to open my mouth on a large cosmic scale like this, because I am afraid he is going to come and get me. Finish me off. Hurt my babies. Kill my husband. But I have to compartmentalize my fear.

 

I haven't seen my father in 2 years. I saw him briefly in 2002. The whole Patricia Hearst syndrome for a bit…he didn't do anything then. I thought I wanted to have a relationship, have a Daddy.  And besides, it was easier to believe it was just the drugs. My father says he doesn't remember anything at all, it was all the drugs. We have never confronted it, but he has intimated he remembers nothing as a result of all the drugs he was on for 35 years. My uncle, with whom I had been very close, agreed, indeed, it was the drugs. I was told not to dwell on it, not to be so sensitive, blah, blah…Just to forget it.

He started on me when I was 3. He put drugs in my milk to sedate me, like Phenobarbital and Excedrin PM, valium and fiorinal. He molested me for 9 years, until I was 11. Then after briefly leaving me with his parents, he came back, kidnapped me, took me to New Orleans, and sodomized and tortured me in a motel. I had never seen him sexually violent. He was crazed with rage at me.

 

I managed to find a phone and call his 2nd wife who lived in the city. She contacted my grandmother, and somehow I was brought back to my grandparents again. Denial ensued.

 

As victims of sexual violation, all our lives we are told to get over it, not to dwell on it. There is a huge undercurrent of implicated silence. A collective societal vibe, as well as a personal and interpersonal vibe…taboo. Don't talk about it. And if you do, don't speak the real truth in its raw, unadulterated, unsugar-coated form. Don't allow the absolute horror of it to penetrate your self. And especially don't make others queasy. Women dare not to express the enormity of this incomprehensible trauma, lest we make OTHERS uncomfortable. Lest we make others squirm.

 

Why still the stifling silence surrounding an issue which practically rules young women and girls, and 1 in 6 boys? Because the victim is taught in a passive-aggressive and simultaneously outright way, don’t talk about it. It’s gross and filthy and no one wants to hear/read/think about it.

 

There is a lot of pseudo-sympathy passed around. My personal experience proves this. Wouldn't want to make my grandmother uncomfortable, or make my uncle all squirmy. I finally realized recently just how terrified I am that my father is going to kill me or worse, hurt or kill my babies. But I have to speak, and tell my truth, and if the family can't handle it, to hell with them and their denial and enabling bullshit. This is about taking my body and spirit back, and not being ruled by the fear he instilled in me.

 

When we are face to face with truth,
the point of view of Krishna, Buddha,
Christ, or any other Prophet, is the same.
When we look at life from the top of the
mountain, there is no limitation;
there is the same immensity.
~Hazrat Inayat Khan

 

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