Copyright 2019, August 4, 2019- Peggy Ann Rowe-Snyder
I have been a victim.
I have been a victim in many ways, many times —
I have been victimized and held helpless against my will
I have been tormented, maligned, …physically wounded.
Mentally, and emotionally worn down.
It started when I was tiny… and lasted throughout my childhood.
My father hurt me in multiple ways.
He let me know once that I was too much like my mother, and that I deserved to die. He had me open the glove compartment of his vehicle and there was the weapon of his justice. A huge knife.
He used sadistic behaviors to keep us where he wanted us. Killing a dog along the freeway that mom wanted to pick up and take to a shelter. I lived in 100% fear (terrorized) by this ‘man’.
I watched him hit my mother over and over when I was very little. I hung on his knee and begged him to stop.
Mom was proud that I loved him, but did not like him at all and could voice that.
But my mother allowed it to happen.
She could have left him.
Maybe she was unaware that marriage has never been forever.
She kept up appearances
– worked hard to keep the household appearing normal.
In all reality, no matter what transpired between those two
there was a perfect partnership of perpetrator and assistant.
A little later in life, not very much later, a neighborhood girl touched me.
It was clearly inappropriate and I said, “NO”.
As any other perpetrator would do, I was ignored and the behavior went on.
For months or more.
I learned to enjoy it, but I was filled with guilt and shame for almost the rest of my life.
It remained our little secret for years and years to come…
Because when I finally told someone, it was my (ex) husband, and his reaction was to ask me to sleep with his sister, and let him watch.
I have been a victim….
many, many times.
With broken teeth and bruised limbs and bruised pride
I SURVIVED that marriage.
Through the torture of being kept up all hours so that I’d agree to what he wanted to living with the fact that I was not capable of thinking for myself nor for thinking of consequences, I spent nearly 16 years letting this boy/man think for me.
For nearly 16 years, I heard that I was his,
“empty headed play thing.”
I endured, in private places, the pain of physical objects: coke bottle, fists, homemade dildo’s, and more.
{Question: Will a dildo made using a SEMI-TRUCKS’ water hose (Thank you Black’s Tractor Trailer of Cincinnati, Ohio) as a mold using silicone (which contains ACID) hurt? It was bright blue. And yes, it hurts.}
Through tears I would answer his question: “Does it hurt?” Thinking that I was OBLIGATED to perform my ‘wifely duty’, I conformed.
“No, it does not hurt.” And so, he had what he needed to persist. And I slept walked through life; a whole lot of life…
Alas, it all came full circle. Another man abused my baby.
For three to four years, he educated my child.
Aged three or four to aged seven.
I actually tried to kill him. Though I never came close.
I thought I might beat the crap out of him first.
But he grabbed my arm as if I were a rag doll
He looked at me like I was crazy.
He had the nerve to ask me what I thought I was doing.
In that humiliation I began my long climb
up and out from having been a victim.
He did time in jail.
The judge remarked it was the most undercharged case he’d ever seen.
That child molester died old, and alone.
Nothing nice was said in his obituary.
I could not celebrate a human’s death any more.
I asked for and received a divorce.
A first step away from being anyone’s “empty headed play thing.”
But, it was not over yet.
My mother who wallows in perfect appearances,
and worries about if what her daughter does is legal…
and surely voices her concerns as if she were really
CONCERNED….
Tried to sue me for custody of my injured child.
She made up lies for an order of protection, against me.
She claimed I endangered my children.
She told my sister that made up stories,
and put them in my seven-year-old babies head.
My sister and I did not speak for at least two years.
We’ve never been able to speak of mom since…
Because she cares about the bitch,
And I have trouble allowing her the time of day.
My mother and my step-father worked together to get a
judgement of 1.4 million dollars thrown out.
Money for my daughters future,
for therapy, for any need….. today she has MS.
Through thick and thin, including one divorce, my mother
and my step-father were a perfect partnership of perpetrator and assistant.
When family speaks of reconciliation,
My mother lies and says she’s willing.
But, her actions are louder than her words…
And after nearly 30 years she finally admits,
that I “betrayed” her.
After nearly 30 years her harassment and abuse persist.
The myth she has created with help of ONE friend,
and one well known child molester protector lawyer-
Has quite a few people convinced.
Of the very same thing that she screams,
When it came to my step-father and my child,
SHE WAS THE BIG VICTIM.
I’m sorry Bitch—my child, was the BIG victim.
And you were wrong, she has NOT survived.
NOT LIKE YOU DID.
Wait, did you? Survive that is? How is your life?
Is it everything you dreamt it might be?
So, to this day, my mother screams toward me that
I am a perpetrator of so many bad things… and yet.
People who know me, really know me….
would beg to differ.
They know what my mother says,
Can never be.
There have been abusive people
during the in-between…
Boyfriends and lovers…
some who tried very hard to control me.
Father of a child, who actually thought
said child could be used
to fence me in,
and catering to his needs.
But, by this time,
I was coming
into my own.
You can try to beat me down.
You can use words, your fists, and even the law.
The truth of the matter is that, you cannot hold me down.
I was a victim.
But a victim I am no more.
