If you’ve read About Lee Davis, then you know I was an orphan placed in a foster home along with my older brother and younger sister. Although I have a body memory of having been sexually abused as a toddler, I can’t recall details, but I do remember being sexually abused after I was taken from my mother.
I also remember the first time I was sexually abused after entering 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 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 John, come to the house to stay with us. Even though I was not quite six, I instinctively knew this nephew was very, very special to them. In time, I realized why he was so special to them.
I also remember the first time I was sexually abused after entering 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 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 John, come to the house to stay with us. Even though I was not quite six, I instinctively knew this nephew was very, very special to them. In time, I realized why he was so special to them.
These foster parents had lost a baby boy at six months old, and Elmer John, 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 John was at our house, or we were at their house. Smiling was something Dad didn’t do very often, but he sure did when Elmer John was in his presence. That’s how I knew he was the special one.
It was obvious my brother, who was expected to call the man of the house Dad, would never get the affection this nephew got from Dad. Well, just about everyone was more important to him than my brother ever would be. (That’s a memory for another day.)
Elmer John was a teenager. I thought he was so old, but he was actually around 14 or 15. A football player for his middle school, he was big and looked strong, and very intimidating to me.
Our foster parents had a daughter, too, who was five years older than me. A pretty girl with blue eyes and blonde hair that hung below her ears with curls around the bottom, tall and thin. When I looked at her and looked at her dad, I could tell that they looked alike. On that particular night, I didn’t know where she had gone, but she wasn’t at home. It was just my brother and sister, Elmer John and me.
We were sitting in the living room watching TV when Elmer John said we were going to play high-n-seek. He said that I would be the one to hide my eyes 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.
First of all, 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 way. Instead, I leaned against the door, standing, covered my eyes, and started counting.
I was confused when Elmer John turned my little body around and told me to sit on the floor and count with my back against the door. 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 Elmer John whispered to me “Be still, I’m not going to hurt you.” I let go and he pulled my shorts and panties below my knees, then pulled one leg out.
I knew there was something wrong with what he was doing, but my throat began to tighten, and I couldn’t talk. I still pulled at my shorts and made disapproval groans though. 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. This time I groaned louder because I was in pain.
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 know my face was red hot from both anger and shame. I was furious, a word I hadn’t learned yet. I wanted to hit him and kick him and bite him. But I didn’t. 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 John immediately chimed in and said, “No, we’re going to hide again while you two hide. It’s fun. I know you like to hide.” Elmer John gave me little shoves toward the bathroom, then inside the bathroom. 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 pulled me down to the floor, then pulled my feet out from under me and slid me until I was flat on my back, my head against the door. Without hesitating he pulled off my shorts and panties.
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 a bad thing he was doing, 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, them 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 kneeled 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 mother that you told me you wanted me to pull your pants down. And you know what happens if she hears that from ME???!!!” 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 that I did what he said he would tell them. My brother, sister, and I were part of the juvenile court system, and if anything went wrong, we would be returned to the juvenile court from which we came. For me, the juvenile court was a terrifying place, and a place where I had already been sexually abused. (A memory for another time.)
I knew that what he was saying was true. On the first day in this unfamiliar house, this new dad told us what would happen if we were bad. He made sure he told my brother a couple of times. Since that day, mom let me know more than once 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. Once they even did it. (A memory for another time.)
Back to Elmer John. Once he said that, I had no problem spreading 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, but 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 slammed the biggest finger on his hand as hard as he could in and out of me. It was excruciating.
Tears were streaming down my face. It really hurt. But my feelings hurt, too. I now knew this boy wasn’t my cousin. That’s what mom said he was. My 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 like or love somebody you never hurt them. I was hurting and he knew it.
Several minutes went by, me whimpering. Then he pulled his finger out and said, “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, and it had to have looked like I had been crying, because I had been. When he asked what was wrong, Elmer John jumped in and said, “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 a little vaginal pain, but I was able to walk without them noticing I was working slower than usual.
Elmer John 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.
As a teenager myself, at age 14, my foster mom loaned me out to babysit for none other than their favorite nephew and his wife.
Yes, you guessed it. It happened again, and again, and again. On these Saturday nights after they had been out, and he volunteered to take me home, it was Intercourse he performed on me in his car.
By this time, I had been pretty broken from all the physical, mental and emotional abuse at home, and 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”. 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 were to get 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 back and legs. In the middle of what looked like may be endless, my brother shouted, “Take me back! I want to go back! I want to go back!” Dad stopped immediately and before twenty-four hours was up, my brother was gone, never to return to that house.
The fear I had was justifiable. So, when Elmer John started driving down an unfamiliar dirt road, 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 John sexually abused me for the first time, another cousin from another family did the same damn hide-n-seek game with us…. us being his sister, my sister, and 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.
Jimmy and Elmer John were about the same age. Jimmy, too, was a favorite of my foster parents. Not quite as close as Elmer John 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.
This aunt and uncle were the first in dad’s large family to foster and adopt. They fostered two boys and adopted a little girl. But Jimmy was the oldest and their only biological child.
While all the parents were outside on the patio, Jimmy 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 John, he reached up, grabbed my hair, then moved his hand to the back of my head, forced my face down, and told me to open my mouth. When I didn’t, he yanked out my hair really hard, and asked me if I wanted him to force my mouth open. “If I do, you aren’t going to like it!) He held his penis up with one hand while he made my head bob up and down on it with the other hand. Finally, he ejaculated in my mouth.
I pulled my head back, gagged, and threw up the contents of my mouth onto the floor. He slapped me across the face, told me to clean up the mess. Then 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. He threw me a towel that was on the bed and I cleaned it up off the floor.
By the time I was 14 years old, I had already been sexually abused so many times, it was almost a habit. Dad started on me the year before. First it was oral sex, then, once my bedroom was in the basement, it was intercourse, three, four, sometimes five times in a week.
At 16, someone at church asked mom if I could babysit for them. This stupid woman, mom, I mean, was so flattered that someone even noticed her. Oh, yes, an attractive young couple who was at church every Sunday asked if she would consider letting me babysit.
Church? That might actually be okay, I thought. Well, it had to be since mom told them yes. Again, I wasn’t asked if I wanted to babysit, just told that I would be. This couple went out on Friday nights.
Again, this Mr. Nice Church Guy, let’s call him John, volunteered to take me home. I have no idea how someone who does not know me, only from seeing me at church, could be so bold as to drive down a dark lane, park the car, lean over and start kissing me.
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 and 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, “Aren’t you that girl….?” Then I knew that somehow he knew.
Yep, there was some kind of club alright.
**************************** I hated these boys and men. But then, because 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 some internal 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.
I couldn’t tell anyone. I couldn’t risk being taken away and possibly placed in a worse situation. Some of the situations mom described over the years where other orphans had gone to live scared the living daylights out of me. Like she always said, at least I had a roof over my head and food to eat.
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What I want you to know is that 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 and yelling for her dad to stop as he was taking turns whipping three foster kids with his leather belt who had been doing nothing but arguing with each other over something silly.
My brother, who I’m pretty sure my foster dad hated because this little boy would never live up to the potential of his dead son, always got it worse. Oh, my sister and I really got it, too, but my brother fought back. He knew he didn’t deserve that belt striking him over and over and he knew his little sisters were next. So, he fought it.
My little sister knew how to play the game, though. Even before the belt reached her bottom, my sister whaled. 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, he was even more determined to make me cry. Those whippings were hard. They hurt my bottom and the back of my legs. But I didn’t care how many times he hit me with that belt, I wasn’t giving in. Period!
Each time, though, mom knew he was 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 always said, “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.
That doesn’t mean I never cried. Of course, the abuses hurt. And there were 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 emotional abuse--the name-calling, the degrading things said to me about how I was going to turn out just like my biological mother who was an alcoholic, drug addict, prostitute arrested several times for prostitution, and the constant comparing me to their biological daughter.
Even worse, though, was the sexual abuse and what the sexual abuse did to me and my perception of men.
By the time I became an adult, I had the roar of a lion inside of me in the form of rage. There was a huge part of my psyche that wanted to reach out and help other girls who had been through the same. Of course, during those years sexual abuse was taboo.
But after spending nearly a whole summer as a teenager, reading taboo magazines with my neighbor and best girlfriend, told of one girl after another who had been sexually abused, I knew I wasn’t the only one.
In those magazines, left by her mother in the basement that opened into the back yard and 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. 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.
So, I knew they were out there. All of those other victims who knew what I knew.
Once I graduated from high school and started out on my own, 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’ve 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. Why not?
As a child, there was always the threat hanging over my head, “If I didn’t do what [they] said I would go back to the juvenile court.” I knew I didn’t want to leave my brother and my little sister, 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.
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 the housework, the yardwork, cleaning the garage, the basement, and my bedroom in the basement, I didn’t care.
And as for my shadily constructed bedroom in the basement, I was happy to have it because that meant I would get away from them. By them, I meant, my foster parents. It never, NEVER occurred to me that I would be awaked in the middle of the night by a man who found a way to get sex for himself.
He came creeping down the basement stairs in the middle of the night. The first time he scared the heck out of me when he lightly shook my shoulders. I rolled over, terrified for a second that someone had come into the basement. I heard, “sssssh,” and still was sure who it was. Then when he said, “It’s me, keep quiet,” I recognized his voice.
I was furious! Enraged! I could feel my face turning red and my fist clenching as he got on top of me. I could not believe what was happening. I pinched my eyes closed and didn’t move, thinking my lack of participation would discourage him. But, no, it didn’t. He did what he did and vanished back into the night.
After that night, there were many, many nights. After that first night, I pretended to be asleep, but he shook me until I rolled onto my back. Disassociation became my best friend. I closed my eyes and pretended I was somewhere else. I loved the field behind the house in the summertime, so that is where my mind took me whether it was summer or winter. By the time I ran to the end of the 25-acre field and back, he was off me and gone like he hadn’t been there at all.
What disturbs me to this day, is that I never cried when I was sexually abused. NEVER! I thought I deserved it. I believed I was the throw-away child that no one wanted and deserved whatever I got from anyone.
I’ve always believed that once my foster mother realized how hard it was to take care of three orphans and a boy they adopted a couple years after went were taken into their home, it would never have happened. Maybe they would have adopted my foster brother, but they would never have fostered the three of us.
This is a Poem I wrote that describes how I felt as a little girl. 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, there was no way I had any tools to help another person. I needed to help myself, the kind of help that was not available in those days.
The best thing for me to do 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 began.
SEXUAL ABUSE IS DESTRUCTIVE!!!!
It is an act that damages victims, often for a lifetime. Because offenders are often someone the victim knows, trust, that can never be regained, is stolen from the victim. For many, it is their innocence that is stripped away. For others, it is their ability to function, and still others, it is their future dreams and goals that are pushed down into a place of darkness surrounded by fear and hopelessness.
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 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 that 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 shoulders, I was an obsessive thinker, and I thought I had to be perfect.
I had to dress perfectly, I had to have the perfect place to live, drive the perfect car, have the perfect job. Even when I first moved to the new city and had no more than a couple hundred dollars, I lived by the motto, Fake it til you make it. A couple of nice outfits and I was on my way. The rest of this is history, which you can read about at About Lee Davis.
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After I moved, I learned about self-improvement classes. There were no such opportunities in the small town. I took those classes, 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 as 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 was 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.
Finally, after the fifth year of living in the new city, I was finally 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. Finally, 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 and/or physically abuse, 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.
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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 and thought about it and 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 story—the undoing and the rebuilding. And that was it, Barriers to Self-Esteem and Building 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 to undo the damage that was caused by your abuse. 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, bring in the new.
Now, that is not a promise that life will be great once you’ve finished the Me and 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 journey with me as I will be with you. Thank you for taking the time to read this, Lee
It was obvious my brother, who was expected to call the man of the house Dad, would never get the affection this nephew got from Dad. Well, just about everyone was more important to him than my brother ever would be. (That’s a memory for another day.)
Elmer John was a teenager. I thought he was so old, but he was actually around 14 or 15. A football player for his middle school, he was big and looked strong, and very intimidating to me.
Our foster parents had a daughter, too, who was five years older than me. A pretty girl with blue eyes and blonde hair that hung below her ears with curls around the bottom, tall and thin. When I looked at her and looked at her dad, I could tell that they looked alike. On that particular night, I didn’t know where she had gone, but she wasn’t at home. It was just my brother and sister, Elmer John and me.
We were sitting in the living room watching TV when Elmer John said we were going to play high-n-seek. He said that I would be the one to hide my eyes 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.
First of all, 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 way. Instead, I leaned against the door, standing, covered my eyes, and started counting.
I was confused when Elmer John turned my little body around and told me to sit on the floor and count with my back against the door. 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 Elmer John whispered to me “Be still, I’m not going to hurt you.” I let go and he pulled my shorts and panties below my knees, then pulled one leg out.
I knew there was something wrong with what he was doing, but my throat began to tighten, and I couldn’t talk. I still pulled at my shorts and made disapproval groans though. 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. This time I groaned louder because I was in pain.
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 know my face was red hot from both anger and shame. I was furious, a word I hadn’t learned yet. I wanted to hit him and kick him and bite him. But I didn’t. 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 John immediately chimed in and said, “No, we’re going to hide again while you two hide. It’s fun. I know you like to hide.” Elmer John gave me little shoves toward the bathroom, then inside the bathroom. 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 pulled me down to the floor, then pulled my feet out from under me and slid me until I was flat on my back, my head against the door. Without hesitating he pulled off my shorts and panties.
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 a bad thing he was doing, 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, them 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 kneeled 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 mother that you told me you wanted me to pull your pants down. And you know what happens if she hears that from ME???!!!” 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 that I did what he said he would tell them. My brother, sister, and I were part of the juvenile court system, and if anything went wrong, we would be returned to the juvenile court from which we came. For me, the juvenile court was a terrifying place, and a place where I had already been sexually abused. (A memory for another time.)
I knew that what he was saying was true. On the first day in this unfamiliar house, this new dad told us what would happen if we were bad. He made sure he told my brother a couple of times. Since that day, mom let me know more than once 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. Once they even did it. (A memory for another time.)
Back to Elmer John. Once he said that, I had no problem spreading 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, but 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 slammed the biggest finger on his hand as hard as he could in and out of me. It was excruciating.
Tears were streaming down my face. It really hurt. But my feelings hurt, too. I now knew this boy wasn’t my cousin. That’s what mom said he was. My 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 like or love somebody you never hurt them. I was hurting and he knew it.
Several minutes went by, me whimpering. Then he pulled his finger out and said, “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, and it had to have looked like I had been crying, because I had been. When he asked what was wrong, Elmer John jumped in and said, “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 a little vaginal pain, but I was able to walk without them noticing I was working slower than usual.
Elmer John 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.
As a teenager myself, at age 14, my foster mom loaned me out to babysit for none other than their favorite nephew and his wife.
Yes, you guessed it. It happened again, and again, and again. On these Saturday nights after they had been out, and he volunteered to take me home, it was Intercourse he performed on me in his car.
By this time, I had been pretty broken from all the physical, mental and emotional abuse at home, and 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”. 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 were to get 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 back and legs. In the middle of what looked like may be endless, my brother shouted, “Take me back! I want to go back! I want to go back!” Dad stopped immediately and before twenty-four hours was up, my brother was gone, never to return to that house.
The fear I had was justifiable. So, when Elmer John started driving down an unfamiliar dirt road, 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 John sexually abused me for the first time, another cousin from another family did the same damn hide-n-seek game with us…. us being his sister, my sister, and 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.
Jimmy and Elmer John were about the same age. Jimmy, too, was a favorite of my foster parents. Not quite as close as Elmer John 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.
This aunt and uncle were the first in dad’s large family to foster and adopt. They fostered two boys and adopted a little girl. But Jimmy was the oldest and their only biological child.
While all the parents were outside on the patio, Jimmy 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 John, he reached up, grabbed my hair, then moved his hand to the back of my head, forced my face down, and told me to open my mouth. When I didn’t, he yanked out my hair really hard, and asked me if I wanted him to force my mouth open. “If I do, you aren’t going to like it!) He held his penis up with one hand while he made my head bob up and down on it with the other hand. Finally, he ejaculated in my mouth.
I pulled my head back, gagged, and threw up the contents of my mouth onto the floor. He slapped me across the face, told me to clean up the mess. Then 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. He threw me a towel that was on the bed and I cleaned it up off the floor.
By the time I was 14 years old, I had already been sexually abused so many times, it was almost a habit. Dad started on me the year before. First it was oral sex, then, once my bedroom was in the basement, it was intercourse, three, four, sometimes five times in a week.
At 16, someone at church asked mom if I could babysit for them. This stupid woman, mom, I mean, was so flattered that someone even noticed her. Oh, yes, an attractive young couple who was at church every Sunday asked if she would consider letting me babysit.
Church? That might actually be okay, I thought. Well, it had to be since mom told them yes. Again, I wasn’t asked if I wanted to babysit, just told that I would be. This couple went out on Friday nights.
Again, this Mr. Nice Church Guy, let’s call him John, volunteered to take me home. I have no idea how someone who does not know me, only from seeing me at church, could be so bold as to drive down a dark lane, park the car, lean over and start kissing me.
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 and 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, “Aren’t you that girl….?” Then I knew that somehow he knew.
Yep, there was some kind of club alright.
**************************** I hated these boys and men. But then, because 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 some internal 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.
I couldn’t tell anyone. I couldn’t risk being taken away and possibly placed in a worse situation. Some of the situations mom described over the years where other orphans had gone to live scared the living daylights out of me. Like she always said, at least I had a roof over my head and food to eat.
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What I want you to know is that 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 and yelling for her dad to stop as he was taking turns whipping three foster kids with his leather belt who had been doing nothing but arguing with each other over something silly.
My brother, who I’m pretty sure my foster dad hated because this little boy would never live up to the potential of his dead son, always got it worse. Oh, my sister and I really got it, too, but my brother fought back. He knew he didn’t deserve that belt striking him over and over and he knew his little sisters were next. So, he fought it.
My little sister knew how to play the game, though. Even before the belt reached her bottom, my sister whaled. 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, he was even more determined to make me cry. Those whippings were hard. They hurt my bottom and the back of my legs. But I didn’t care how many times he hit me with that belt, I wasn’t giving in. Period!
Each time, though, mom knew he was 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 always said, “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.
That doesn’t mean I never cried. Of course, the abuses hurt. And there were 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 emotional abuse--the name-calling, the degrading things said to me about how I was going to turn out just like my biological mother who was an alcoholic, drug addict, prostitute arrested several times for prostitution, and the constant comparing me to their biological daughter.
Even worse, though, was the sexual abuse and what the sexual abuse did to me and my perception of men.
By the time I became an adult, I had the roar of a lion inside of me in the form of rage. There was a huge part of my psyche that wanted to reach out and help other girls who had been through the same. Of course, during those years sexual abuse was taboo.
But after spending nearly a whole summer as a teenager, reading taboo magazines with my neighbor and best girlfriend, told of one girl after another who had been sexually abused, I knew I wasn’t the only one.
In those magazines, left by her mother in the basement that opened into the back yard and 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. 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.
So, I knew they were out there. All of those other victims who knew what I knew.
Once I graduated from high school and started out on my own, 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’ve 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. Why not?
As a child, there was always the threat hanging over my head, “If I didn’t do what [they] said I would go back to the juvenile court.” I knew I didn’t want to leave my brother and my little sister, 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.
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 the housework, the yardwork, cleaning the garage, the basement, and my bedroom in the basement, I didn’t care.
And as for my shadily constructed bedroom in the basement, I was happy to have it because that meant I would get away from them. By them, I meant, my foster parents. It never, NEVER occurred to me that I would be awaked in the middle of the night by a man who found a way to get sex for himself.
He came creeping down the basement stairs in the middle of the night. The first time he scared the heck out of me when he lightly shook my shoulders. I rolled over, terrified for a second that someone had come into the basement. I heard, “sssssh,” and still was sure who it was. Then when he said, “It’s me, keep quiet,” I recognized his voice.
I was furious! Enraged! I could feel my face turning red and my fist clenching as he got on top of me. I could not believe what was happening. I pinched my eyes closed and didn’t move, thinking my lack of participation would discourage him. But, no, it didn’t. He did what he did and vanished back into the night.
After that night, there were many, many nights. After that first night, I pretended to be asleep, but he shook me until I rolled onto my back. Disassociation became my best friend. I closed my eyes and pretended I was somewhere else. I loved the field behind the house in the summertime, so that is where my mind took me whether it was summer or winter. By the time I ran to the end of the 25-acre field and back, he was off me and gone like he hadn’t been there at all.
What disturbs me to this day, is that I never cried when I was sexually abused. NEVER! I thought I deserved it. I believed I was the throw-away child that no one wanted and deserved whatever I got from anyone.
I’ve always believed that once my foster mother realized how hard it was to take care of three orphans and a boy they adopted a couple years after went were taken into their home, it would never have happened. Maybe they would have adopted my foster brother, but they would never have fostered the three of us.
This is a Poem I wrote that describes how I felt as a little girl. 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, there was no way I had any tools to help another person. I needed to help myself, the kind of help that was not available in those days.
The best thing for me to do 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 began.
SEXUAL ABUSE IS DESTRUCTIVE!!!!
It is an act that damages victims, often for a lifetime. Because offenders are often someone the victim knows, trust, that can never be regained, is stolen from the victim. For many, it is their innocence that is stripped away. For others, it is their ability to function, and still others, it is their future dreams and goals that are pushed down into a place of darkness surrounded by fear and hopelessness.
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 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 that 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 shoulders, I was an obsessive thinker, and I thought I had to be perfect.
I had to dress perfectly, I had to have the perfect place to live, drive the perfect car, have the perfect job. Even when I first moved to the new city and had no more than a couple hundred dollars, I lived by the motto, Fake it til you make it. A couple of nice outfits and I was on my way. The rest of this is history, which you can read about at About Lee Davis.
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After I moved, I learned about self-improvement classes. There were no such opportunities in the small town. I took those classes, 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 as 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 was 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.
Finally, after the fifth year of living in the new city, I was finally 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. Finally, 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 and/or physically abuse, 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.
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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 and thought about it and 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 story—the undoing and the rebuilding. And that was it, Barriers to Self-Esteem and Building 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 to undo the damage that was caused by your abuse. 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, bring in the new.
Now, that is not a promise that life will be great once you’ve finished the Me and 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 journey with me as I will be with you. Thank you for taking the time to read this, Lee