Thanksgiving, Family Get-Togethers during the Holidays in Incest Families

 Today is Thanksgiving. I'm reminded of how much I have always detested this holiday alongside Christmas and the Fourth of July. Those were when the largest family gatherings took place.

Holidays make me wonder how many other children are being lured away from loving relatives into back bedrooms, large closets, basements and empty garages to be sexually abused by relatives and family friends.

In my dad's family, where the incest was most prolific and extensive, Christmas was the event most likely to involve child molestation. Presents are grand unless they distract adults from watching their children and children are enticed to private rooms for "special secret presents". Thanksgiving followed as the second holiday a child was most likely to be raped within the family. The infamous outdoor Fourth of July picnics provided ample opportunities as well. Those were the three events I tried the hardest to escape from having to attend.

My dad, well, he used those gatherings to assault children other than his own. The presence of a dozen children meant dad would have a fairly easy time getting a kid alone for ten, twenty minutes or more.

I remember that one time, it was actually a different religious celebration, first communion, I think, for one of my younger male cousins. The image burned in my mind is of seeing this little boy immediately after he exited a room in the back of the house, a place were he had been with my dad. I saw the look on his face, and I knew. I knew my father had sexually molested him. His face, his face was blank, in disbelief and his eyes had that familiar vacant, dissociative quality I knew so well. He had been wounded, violated, and scarred for life. Then a few minutes later, here comes dad from down that same hallway. Dad was happy. He had that look of trying to contain his happiness at being sexually gratified in one way or another, and he had to work to wipe the post-assault satisfaction glow from his sick and twisted face. Another secret I had to keep to myself. I watched the cousin go to his mom and hold her, speechless. She treated him as if his whole world was unaltered for she had no idea.

Criminals want you to be complicit as it helps to force you to keep the secret if you believe you will end up paying for their crime, too. As if a child under 8, 10, 12 or even 14 has the ability to escape the family cult of predators.

My dad made me complicit on the holidays. My job was to deceive, to bring him victims, my child relatives, and leave them alone, often standing guard to make sure they weren't disturbed. I do feel guilty, among other things. Up front, I didn't know any better as I had been used for sex by dad and family members since my earliest memories. And it was not rare, more like weekly or monthly that relatives sexually molested me. I was severely damaged, no doubt.

I felt guilty lying to these children. I was taught to be a good and inconspicuous lure. It appeared natural that I would want to hold the new baby relative or take the toddler "off to play". I was eldest daughter so, it was kindof my job to take care of the youngsters. In many ways, it was just the way the family worked and I had zero idea that it was abnormal or criminal.

Then, part of my was glad. Glad to witness someone else being defiled in the way I was being defiled each and every week. Satisfaction. Retribution. Leveling the playing field. Not being alone in my angst. Maybe dad would hurt me less that night, or that week. In ways, it made me glad, uplifted. I was a child assisting adult sexual predators. There was no choice in the matter.

Part of me was full of regret and remorse, sickened by the sight of a child being harmed. I couldn't stop it. There was no stopping my dad, my parent, the main person responsible for my food and lodging. To witness, again, made me part of the crime. Dad often would insist that I help him either being holding the child down or simply watching him commit the crime, as it produced a sick thrill in him.

Guilty, guilty, guilty. So many feelings. So many acts a part of, witnessed, aware of. It is amazing that I can live with myself and all this knowledge all these years.

I know hurt and pain exists. I know what adults do to children in their own family. I feel the effects of being victimized and witnessing incest each day. This is my life, my sick intergenerationally incestuous family gave me. I write about it. I gain nothing by simply telling the truth, a truth that happens in one out of every 5 families. A truth that hurts and begs to be buried. A truth I scream out loud on these pages and to anyone who dares listen.

Incest happens.

Families often pass on incest from generation to generation.

No one really wants to acknowledge the scope, the breadth and depth of the Incest epidemic that runs fast and silent throughout the United States and every other country.

Children continue to be raped because we choose to remain silent.

I am an adult. I was victimized by three generations of my dad's family. I talk about it and write about it with regularity.

I am not ashamed. I did nothing wrong. I was a child. I had no one, not a single adult throughout my childhood who ever loved me, cared for me, noticed I was in pain and offered to listen or to help.

I am alone, again. I was isolated as a child. I live a solitary existence as an adult.

Incest is damaging. Let's talk about it and make the hurt less.

All I do is tell my story, the things that happened to me or that I witnessed.

It's stomach turning and disgusting but it is what happened.

Talking about Incest is the only way I know to heal.

Holidays. I remember family holidays. Incest.

Plagued By the Past, Remembering Incest at 4 years of age

 I am plagued by the past as I suddenly remember being four years old and at a doctor appointment that my mother had brought me to. I see the doctor as clearly as I see the couch pillow next to me. He is a typical doctor in that he has the white coat and shirt with the black tie. His hair is white on the sides but he doesn't have the wrinkled face of an old man. He wears the wire-rimmed spectacles and speaks in that matter-of-fact voice of authority that doctors often use. He is talking to my mother. This, the words he is saying out loud to her, bothers me, makes me feel queasy on the inside as I sit upon the exam table, listening, watching, in pain. 

(I'm not sure if I can write this...)

I remember most clearly the doctor's words to mother. He says them while washing his hands, then shoves his hands in those white coat pockets and addresses mother clearly, standing not more than a couple of feet to my left. 

Some of his words: It isn't uncommon for children to engage in touching themselves, sometimes to obsession and redness as we see here. You'd think it was only boys that did this but girls do too. That's the number one cause of irritation, redness, and this localized rash with open sore areas. It's painful, too, no doubt but it won't go away until she stops doing it. Children find out something feels good; something they have easy access to, and they will enjoy themselves even to the point of pain. At some point, she will stop doing this. There are things we can do to make it more difficult for her to touch herself; tighter clothing, an extra set of underwear or two. I've even known some parents to restrain the child's hands when she is left alone like at naps or at bedtime. It is just a phase. She will eventually stop and move on to something else to do when she gets bored. Until then, here is an ointment to be applied twice a day, once in the morning and once at night for 7 to 10 days or until the redness goes away. She appears to be a very healthy, very normal little girl.

The doctor visually I see so clear. My mother stood behind me so I don't recall seeing her at all.

As I write, I remember the doctor with the thick, black wires in his ears listening to my chest with his little shiny cone. He wore a gold ring, too, on his left hand. It was big and shiny. I couldn't really tell if he had hair on top of his head or not as I couldn't see that far up.

When he was telling my mother these things, his assessment...It wasn't right. It wasn't what had been happening. I didn't do that to myself. I felt confused. Doctors, well, doctors are second closest to God, right after priests. But I hadn't been spending hours touching myself there. Dad did. The doctor was wrong. My mom did right by getting concerned and taking me to see him to find out what was wrong down there. My mom believed the doctor. I wish she hadn't believed him.

My dad. My dad had always loved touching me there. He did it all the time ever since I could remember. It was normal for him but sometimes, like recently, he had one of those times where...he spent much more time rubbing against me there. Somehow, maybe mom and my brothers were away for extra hours or days, something transpired that allowed dad to sexually assault my for an extended period of time, more than his normal.

I remember only wearing a shirt and laying naked on top on pantsless dad reclined on the couch. He would spend time on me down there and then he would rest and wake up and rub against me more or move me to rub on top of him or put his mouth places. It was a non-stop marathon of having my dad assaulting my genitals in one way or another, to the point that I was in considerable pain and my privates turned bright red with sores. It was hours. How many, I do not know.

Yeah, I remember that happening. I remember how...excruciating the pain was. It was like burning, intense burning that wouldn't go away. My body was on fire down there. Cool baths, I recall the only time I got any relief was at bath time as the water felt cool against the raging heat.

Constant. The pain was unrelenting and constant whether I was sitting up, lying down, on my belly. There was no position that alleviated my pain. I did cry and often. Helpless and frustrated with no way to get relief, I cried. I cried whenever mom looked at it; showed dad and asked him if it looked like it was getting worse and if I should be taken to the doctor; when the doctor examined me or when mom put the ointment on. Dad did, too, put the ointment on but then, that just allowed him to do other things, more than just put the ointment on. It gave him an excuse to abuse and then apply the ointment to cover up his crime. It took him considerably longer to apply the medicine as he would first aggravate it and then sooth the burning with the prescription.

I was trapped with dad and the assaults and the hurts. He would look at me, and I would know that he was going to take me to another room, get me alone and touch me there again. It usually was not a surprise as dad got that evil, vile look in his eye when he was either thinking about harming me or actually doing it. It's like his eyes kindof glowed a monsterish glow filled with anticipation and utter deranged passion. Once he was finished with me, its like his eyes returned back to normal dad eyes.

I wish the doctor had asked me questions or investigated my "rash" more thoroughly. He was wrong but I knew I was not to speak up as doctors are never wrong.

I felt sad listening to the doctor talk. I, 4 year old me, wished dad had been there to tell the doctor what really happened because then the doctor could tell dad to stop doing that because it was really hurting me bad.

Nothing changed. Dad continued to sexually violate me every day. The rash did finally get better. The between leg pain was truly awful stuff to endure for all the days it took to heal.

My dad. Incest. Doctors. The rash and external genital damage from my dad excessively sexually abusing me.

I was 4. I remember this.