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Well my opinion here might be triggering but I think that incest is far worse than any other type of sexual assault… no, I’ll say it, it’s worse than any other type of assault. Someone that commits incest not violates your body, but also your psyche in a way that a mere stranger could not. In “normal” circumstances this person would be a trusted individual, in the category of family. Family member - should be someone that treasures you, loves you unconditionally, stands beside you no matter what. Where can you ever find safety if those that were supposed to protect it, has violated it?
After being raped by a stranger or mere acquaintance, your first thought is “I just want to go home”. Home is safe. But if the person that molests you lives there, or comes over for weekends and holiday’s and mom and dad have no clue of the monster that lurks within. Where do you go to be safe?
My own personal opinion as to why other family members find it so hard to react the same to an incest situation and a stranger attack situation is that it’s hard to see that family member being capable of such horrible things. It’s so much easier to find “logical” excuses to white wash what happened because the reality is such a violation to so many people.
I’m not making excuses or rationalizations. We had our problems growing up, but I have no doubt in my mind that my parents loved me. My father was a police officer. He was trained to spot these signs. Yet he missed them in his own home. When a babysitter asked “why do you…” I made the mistake of answering her honestly. The babysitter had the absolute best intentions, she took what I said to the wife of the man that molested me.
If Jane Q Public would have come into my father’s office and given him the same information, he would have known without a doubt that there was molestation going on. But the fact that his daughter and his life-long best friend were involved somehow made this different, beyond the scope of reality.
I’ve been able to forgive them for not believing me. Not because several years later it he was caught molesting another girl, thereby proving my story true. But because I see now that it would have destroyed him to admit he brought someone into our home that hurt his children. He wasn’t denying me, he was denying himself.
I would like to thank you for this thread. This very second I realized something. At some level he did believe me. He stopped associating with this man immediately. Even if he couldn’t admit it even to himself at the time.
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I've been married for 24 years and have four wonderful children.
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