Well I’m now 25 years old and last April I started a blog in which I chose to speak out about my abuse. I am a survivor of childhood molestation by my stepfather and my uncle. Before I had spoken out I was silent for over ten years. The reason I didn’t speak out when it first happened was for two reasons. The first is because when I told my mom that my uncle molested me she didn’t want to believe it since it was her brother. It went on for a few weeks. He would touch me in places he should not be touching and then he would kiss my lips. I didn’t know what was going on. I was never taught good touch bad touch. I thought it was ok for an uncle to treat you like that. I’m not sure when this happened but it was around the age of 9 or 10. I say that was the first person who abused me but it was actually the same time my stepfather started molesting me. It started one day when I was sick in bed and I needed some Vicks vapor rub to be rubbed on my chest and back. Since my mom trusted him she allowed him to rub it on me. He started to rub it on my chest and when he did that, he began to rub my nipples. I felt really uncomfortable but again I didn’t know that it was an inappropriate touch. After that I’m not sure what else happened. I only remember a few things that happened. The next abuse I remember was again when I was sick. My mom had gone to Florida to visit my sister. She left my brother and me home since we were in school. I had gotten sick and stayed home from school. I was in my parent’s room which was also the living room at the time. I was on the couch resting and trying to watch the television. He began to kiss me on my neck and then made his way up to my lips. Again I didn’t know how to react to that but my body deceived me at that moment. My body liked that attention even though I felt disgusted and scared. I didn’t know what would happen next. Then he would bribe me with money and sweets since I was still young. Again I’m not sure when it happened but it was around the age of 10 or so maybe younger. Anyway I believe it was that same that this next thing happened. I had gotten up to go to my room and he followed me. The next thing...

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What happens to us – the sexually abused children – while and when we grow up? How does the abuse affect us? We often have difficulties trusting other people and we are always cautious. We sometimes cannot really love another person, because we just don’t know how. We are likely to use drugs, alcohol, pills etc. just to forget the abuse and to escape from the stress and pressure in our life. We can easily fall in love (with our image of love actually) because deep within we want to be loved too. We are likely to go into casual sexual relationships because we want to have positive sex experience and to forget the bad one. We get easily depressed, frustrated or desperate because we don`t really powerful and strong enough to manage the life challenges. We are likely to hate sex sometimes because we connect the thought of it with the abusive sexual experience in the past. We often think that nobody understands us because we cannot be completely honest to anyone. We often think we are not pretty/handsome or clever or strong enough and this is the reason for our low self-esteem sometimes. We often feel helpless and we are likely to believe that life is unfair because the abuse happened to us in the first place. We often end up in bad or abusive relationships because we are always looking for love, and sometimes in all the wrong places. We are likely to be abused again in our adulthood because we already have the “victim-thinking” and we think nobody can help us, or we are sometimes just promiscuous which leads us to dangerous social relationships again. We often do not understand what’s the reason for the many mistakes we have done in our life. We often live our life feeling guilty for what happened or because we didn’t tell about it. We are constantly afraid that probably our silence made others to suffer (other possible victims of the abuser), and that we didn’t prevent this from happening to others. We are likely to feel constantly ashamed of ourselves in case our body actually responded to the abuse, not realizing that this is just a physical body response to sexual stimulation. We often don’t think that it was really an abuse, especially if it was not physically painful. We are likely to minimize the damage and the facts. We sometimes try to forget the abuse by trying to keep our minds busy – reading, writing, movies, sports or other causes. We are likely to get involved in “bigger” causes – political, animal rescue, Red Cross volunteering etc. – and this is something like a “rescuer-syndrome.” When helping...

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 Are you condemned to be yourself? I thought this is all behind me. I thought I am stronger than this. I thought I am just so over the sexual abuse that happened to me when I was a child…I thought I won this battle by pretending the reason for it never happened. I struggled all my life with most common long-term effects of child abuse, such as: anxiety, depression, suicide attempt, poor self-esteem, many and confusing relationships, alcohol, lack of trust and always lots of fear. But I always wore that mask showing to the world that I am a happy person that is always positive. Ready to help. Ready to laugh. Only when people believed in this image they would never know my dark secret. And they believed. All my life. I was a very successful “actress.” Acting out that everything is fine until I go back home alone and just cry and feel and scared … I was so good in this performance, so many times I asked myself if the child abuse ever really happened. There were times when I didn’t believe myself or thought my mind is making this up. But why on Earth someone would make this up in his own mind? Nobody would want himself to suffer and go through this. I questioned my sanity sometimes. I thought what if this was just a bad dream or illusion? But it wasn’t. I tried to repress this memory and hide it so deep in my mind so when I questioned the facts I wasn’t even sure they were real. They were. No child would have such illusion. And so I didn’t. It was real. And the only way to escape from it was to pretend it never happened; to keep my life going. All the mistakes or bad decisions I took. of course about them I blamed myself. And the feeling of guilt about everything never left me. I didn’t know why I feel this way. Sometimes I thought if I am alive, and pretending to be happy, then I must be over this and perhaps it didn’t influence my life. I thought I must be such a strong person. And sometimes I thought how many bad things happened to me and how many bad decisions I took and still survived. I sometimes felt “impressed” how much someone like me could actually handle. I must be exceptional…I must be such a brave and strong person. This is what I thought…till about a month ago. I was at the University and just finished my first semester. My last exam was Philosophy and seemed to me so difficult. I was really worried. The exam was writing...

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My name is Boriana Todorova. I live in Bulgaria, and I am a survivor of child sexual abuse. Perhaps I should start with the fact that my father was an abusive alcoholic. He was the reason that my mother was in hospital several times to recover from severe beatings when I was still a baby. Eventually one day in his drunken delirium he grabbed a knife and went to my baby bed saying now he is going to kill me – the baby he believed it wasn’t his. Then my mother ran away with me and finally decided to leave him and get a divorce. My mother moved to another town with me. A few years later my father died of liver cancer, which followed naturally after many years of alcoholism. The new town is where my sad story began. I was safe when I was still in kindergarten. But later when I was six years old I went to school, which was two minutes away from our block. So when I finished school about noon every day I was supposed to walk home alone. I had a key to our apartment on a necklace. And then home I was alone till my mother comes back from work. Every day. This is when the abuse took place. We had this wonderful neighbors family in the apartment next door. The parents were my mother’s colleagues. They had two teenage kids, a boy and a girl. They were supposed to check on me in the afternoon if I needed something, help with my homework or else. The boy, I believe by then he was 15-16 years old. He usually invited me to their apartment or stayed in ours to make his deviant fantasies come true. By then I didn’t realize what was going on. And somehow I even agreed to all these “doctor-patient games.” I don’t remember much of the abuse or many details. I have been trying so hard to forget about it all. I blocked the memories so deep in my mind that sometimes I wonder if it ever happened. But then a scene of it surfaces and I realize that nobody would make this up. Nobody would lie that this horrible things happened to him. Nobody wants to be a victim. And I was. I learned a lot about child molestation recently and I know there should have been a grooming process when the molester wins your trust. But the truth is that I believed and trusted this guy because I’ve been told not to trust strangers, not to speak to strangers, not to take candies from strangers. So I never expected that the boogeyman is the guy...

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Sara Kruzan was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for killing her pimp when she was 16 years old. First molested at the age of 5, Sara was repeatedly victimized as a child suffering molestation, gang rape and being forced into prostitution ALL BY THE AGE OF 13. During her 18 years in prison, Sara has been a model prisoner. She has earned her high school diploma, a college degree and has been a mentor to other prisoners. Acting on a clemency request, then Governor Schwarzenegger commuted her sentence allowing her the possibility of parole. It is not enough. Sara has worked extremely hard to overcome the tragedy of her childhood and deserves a 2nd chance at life. To learn more about Sara’s story, visit www.iamsjk.com. Please sign the Change.org petition asking for her release from prison. Read more survivor’s stories… Read our Commenting...

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