17 February 2000

Donna

I'm 18 years old, a college freshman. I used to have an older brother. He was about six years older than myself.

When I was five or six, my parents were at work with my 12-year-old brother left home to babysit me. He came into my bedroom and made me look at magazine pictures of a woman performing oral sex on a man. I didn't really know what to make of it, but from his behavior I quickly understood that these pictures were "dirty." Next, my brother made me take off my shirt and pull down my shorts. He fondled my genitals and touched my chest. This scene repeated several times in the next couple weeks. Eventually, my brother removed his own shorts and asked me to touch his penis. To be honest, I don't know if I ever did. My memory of those encounters is so faded. At the time, all I remember feeling is confusion, disgust, and guilt. My brother made me swear on a Bible that I would not tell anyone about our times together.

Eventually, my brother was overcome with guilt and he told my mom. All I remember about that night is her calling me into her bedroom (my dad was still at work) and telling me not to tell anyone about this. She might have used the words "This never happened," but I'm not sure. That's the impression I got, anyway. The one good thing about that night is that it never happened again.

I didn't tell anyone for a long time. Once I tried telling my two best friends, but they laughed at me and accused me of making things up. I thought, maybe I am. But then a few years later, when I was about 13 or 14, I realized what had happened, that I had been sexually abused by my brother.

The first person I told was my best friend during my freshman year in high school. I don't think she really cared, maybe she didn't believe me. Next, I told a male counselor at a summer camp when I was 14. He talked to me about it for a long time one night, hugged me, and promised me he'd always be there if I needed to talk. Then after camp, he never responded to my letters or answered my calls. The following summer I had a nervous breakdown from all the stresses in my life - keeping this secret from the rest of the world, resenting my mother for not giving me the help I needed in coping with this, hating my brother, school, and the fact that no one I reached out to reached back.

Next, about a year and a half ago, I got my first boyfriend (I was 17). A month after dating him, I gave in to having sex because I was afraid I'd lose him otherwise. He was a pretty popular guy in town (2 years older than myself) and for the first time in my life I felt worth something. A week after I lost my virginity to him, I found out he'd been cheating on me repeatedly with both his ex-girlfriend and an older woman. He contracted an STD from one of these women, and had passed it on to me.

This person and I are still dating. We are much more serious about each other now and quite monogomous, but he emotionally abuses me daily. He lays a guilt trip on me if I won't have sex with him at least once a day. But sometimes I wonder if I'm the one abusing him, because I need so much from him. I need him to be the protective older brother I've always wanted, the caring mother. The only person in my life I really trust is my father, who to this day does not know about what happened when I was little. I've never accused my brother or my mom for any of this for fear that it would hurt my father.

A year ago I caught my brother masturbating in my bedroom with a pair of my panties. I immediately phoned my mother at work and demanded that he be kicked out of the house. He was. I have not spoken to him since.

Today, when people ask me if I have any brothers or sisters, I say no. Sometimes I want to say that I don't have a mother, either. I still feel dirty about what happened. I've always had a self-esteem problem. I've always hated my appearance. I've always been obsessed with sex. I can be really agressive sometimes, but I continuously let people walk all over me and verbally and emotionally abuse me. I thank God, though, that the sexual abuse stopped after only a couple months, and that it never resulted in penetration.

Perhaps my story doesn't belong here. Yes, I survived the sexual abuse, but daily I think about what it has done to my life and my self, and how my parents nor brother even know how much this has affected me. I haven't survived anything. In a lot of ways I'm still living it.

Donna you can email me at [email protected]