My Heart, My Soul, My Life.

This child a piece of my heart. She is at the heart of a lifelong educational campaign meant to spread awareness about childhood sexual assault, along with domestic violence, and all other forms of abuse that children endure.

This little girl represents a life that was crushed in such a way by people with power in her life, that I highly doubt she’ll ever be able to pick up all the pieces. If I was broken into a million pieces, and I felt me when I broke–I knew it at the time. If I was broken that badly, imagine how the actual victim must have felt. The terror, the pain, the absolute horror of being boxed in and unable to escape the reality. Other people can stay quiet about what they have been through, that is their choice. I will NEVER be quiet. No one can silence me. Silence is what allows it to happen to begin with. I have no secrets. My aim is to be educational. The aim of this post is to put that innocent little face out there so that people realize how old she was when it all hit the fan. I chose her. I will always choose her. My kids came first and unlike others, my words meant something.

When she opened up and gave me a clue that something was wrong on January 11, 1991- I knew instantly and down through the depth of my being that things would never be the same again. There are somethings that obviously, we just can’t get back. And just a disclaimer here, she is still on this earth. Living her life, and I assume happy. If I gave her half a chance she would disagree with some of the things that I will say. But, this isn’t written from her perspective. I can never write from her perspective. No matter how hard I try, the only place I can place myself in her life is of that of her mother. She was seven years old when “she told.” At seven years old your life rests entirely in other people’s hands, you wholly and totally dependent on elders to love you, comfort you, feed you, defend you, and support you in every way imaginable.

This is written from a young mother’s perspective, but with an old mother’s hindsight. From life experience. The pain and the joys both well up from the same spot in the heart. And no matter how sick you may think I am, I can tell you– that no one in the world could have loved that little girl more than I. I still love her, as she is. Though, I sometimes don’t like what she does. And if you are one of those people who can’t dislike something a person does without losing your love for them, then you are the pour soul who needs to search deep down inside. I am capable of loving, liking, disliking, and even hating another person’s actions all at one time. Just always remember there is a difference between an adult and a child. Today I am only talking about that little girl.

She was my first child and an only child for the first seven years of her life. So, she was bombed with lots of love going in. She was also over protected from the start as was the case with all my children. When she was born I had no clue that I had come from a highly dysfunctional family, and that I myself, was abused by my own parents. I had no idea that I was living with a man who committed domestic violence on a daily basis — what the heck was domestic violence? Things that I take for granted today, things that kids learn growing up these days, I learned when I was nearly 30 years old.
So this story, her story and mine are linked in such a way that one probably could not tell one without the other. So, I will proceed from my point of view. Because she is still on this earth, walking, talking, and I hope laughing and loving, I will not go into all the details of what happened to her. But, there is a lot in the public record. But, I do want to protect her dignity.

As my first born she was absolutely my heart, my soul, and my life. Motherhood took awhile to settle in with me. While my husband actually voiced it in the labor room, I must admit that I too, saw her as a little alien. He actually did call her, “E.T.” But, I can tell you my room in the hospital was right next to the nursery, and though I never heard her cry in the labor room, when she cried while in the nursery knew her cry. I knew her cry without ever hearing it. At the time, I knew, that we were linked by some unseen force and would be forever more. I soon learned that she was a gift one that I was letting go from from the very beginning. She was my miracle.

At no point in time, are you ever to assume that I believe I was a perfect mother. I was never any such thing. All I can say is that my heart and mind have almost always been in the right place. That I thought I was doing what was right at the time. I can look back and see mistakes, and absolute and such glaring and unforgivable lack of judgement that it just kills me. But, you can’t know, what you don’t know, and boy, was I raised to be deaf, blind, and dumb. Such is the case in a dysfunctional home. One thing I have learned is that the dysfunctional family assigns, for lack of a better word, roles to it’s members. We all learn to play those roles like super professionals because our very lives as children growing up in that atmosphere we must survive somehow. So, we wear what we are told to wear, we eat what we are told to eat, we see what we are told to see, we hear what we are told to hear, and we learn to deny, deny, deny.

On January 11, 1991 I openly wept. For the child I had realized I’d lost. I knew there was no part of whatever had happened could be undone. It was foundational in nature, it rocked our world (not in a good way). I wept for the situations I did not, could not, or however we choose to say it control. I wept because I was realizing that I had missed blatant clues as to the nature of what was going on and my own misinformation and miseducation, and total ignorance of these sorts of situations would allow me to come up with other silly explanations for what I was seeing. I wept for the past, I wept in the now, and wept because I understood on some level that there had a been a thief of time walk through my world and stolen some of the very best of the best of my life.

My mother had called that morning. She whispered into the phone. “Have Pammy watch the afternoon school special this afternoon.” I answered, “Oooookkkayyyy, Mom why are you whispering?” “Just have her watch the show.” Of course, I can look back now. Mom never whispered. It was a first. As a matter of fact, I was border line deaf even then, she’d bought me a speaker gadget that fit in my ear so I could hear everything better. So knowing that she knew that I was dealing with hearing loss, why was she whispering? She didn’t want to wake Jack, my step-father. I knew damn good and well she was in a separate room from him. Either completely downstairs or a least a couple of walls between him and her. Now, I know she was sneaking.
In the present, I can wonder what threat she might have lived under?!

It was pay day. We normally went out and got McDonalds on payday. But, this day I let my husband know right away that mom wanted her to watch this show. So, one of us went and got the food and we sat down to watch this show. The show was about childhood sexual assault though at the time it was not called that. It was very good for educational purposes. There was nothing wrong with it. But, what I took note of while we watched the show was that as it progressed my daughter went from sitting calmly on the couch to literally trying to climb the couch and then the wall behind to get away from the subject matter. I can tell you, a person just can’t make this stuff up. For the second time in her little life I saw terror in her expression, and the first was only a few weeks before that, when my step-father and mother showed up to take her with them to a movie. I did not understand the expression the first time, but I was going to come to know what it meant in short order.

“Mommy, I have something to tell you.” she said when the show finished. Realizing that we were on the cusp of a major revelations I somehow managed to say the right thing. “No matter what you say, honey, none of this is your fault. None of it is your fault.”

I listened to my little girl while she told me that my step father had touched her in unfathomable ways.
Yet, not all the details came out that same day. It tricked out over weeks and months, I could even say years and it would not be a lie. The kids can’t say it all at one time and it would be unfair for us to demand it. I let her say her peace. Her father and I heard her. I just hope we assured her enough that she was loved and protected and this would not be happening again, ever.

My first call was to the police. This all happened on a holiday weekend. It was in the early evening. It felt like a lifetime before a detective showed up and took a statement. He talked to our daughter in our presence. He explained about the holiday weekend and said that nothing would be done until Tuesday at the soonest. But, he had research to do before anything could be done. It was the longest weekend of my entire life.

Next I found the number for California Child Protective Services. I wanted to know what else I needed to do. It turns out, after hearing me out, the lady on the other end of the phone said I had done everything perfect. She was going to hook me up with resources the family would need therapy.

Next I called my best friend, Glenda. She made the trip from San Jose to Newark in nothing flat.
She understood why I was crying, I had lost a child and I was never going to get THAT exact child back. She was not surprised by the new information. One thing that caught my attention was when she said, “Peggy, you used to tell me about what happened to you.” I had no clue what she was talking about. “You said your dad would come into your room and bothered you at night.” She was smart in that she saw it as cyclical right away. If dad had done those things that would have been my exact verbiage. In our home we did not speak of some things, and I had no voice nor vocabulary to tell anyone about something like that. I didn’t know if she was telling me the truth. Denial, even with me who, has fought for the truth over all these long years, I still have fight with it on a daily basis. Having said that, I can make it pretty clear that I am 99.9% sure that my father came into my bedroom at night, and “bothered me.” There would be more from her before it was all over with. She would throw out “truth” that was both outrageous and sickening that I swallowed hook, line, and sinker before I turned around and was able to think critically about. In the end, I think the very first statement was the truth, and rest was all chaff. Chaff meant to disorient me from my own truths, and to protect her from my wrath and from having to deal with the truth, and perhaps offer an apology.

I had dealt with four people since my mother had called. A dispatcher, a social worker, a detective, my best friend, and my husband. I don’t remember a word I said to my husband. I don’t remember a word he said to me. But, my mother whispered her words. My best friend remembered me telling her that my father assaulted me. Toto, I don’t think we are in Kansas anymore. It was all playing out so painfully slow. Next I called another best friend. She heard me and was supportive. She had her own secrets to tell.

Later, I called my mother, informed her that I had called the police. She asked, “Why did you call the police?” The answer seemed so obvious to me, “Mom, he has broken the law.” Although, my mother did not carry the job title of truant officer that is exactly what an “attendance aide” is and that was her job title. Part of her job was that of a mandatory reporter for a school district. Bottom line was, she knew damn good and well, why I had called the police. But, her question while an honest one, shows what state her mind was in, not mine.

Sometime in all that mess, I called my sister. Who came to the house. I don’t remember what was said. But, we decided to go and see mom on the job. We drove over to the local high school where her work space was located. She still didn’t understand why I called the police. But, the point of the phone call and that trip to the school was to make the point that the police had been called, and that it was a holiday weekend and it would be Tuesday before anything could be done. That I needed silence from her, I did not want my step father having a clue that I had called the police. I did not want him to slip away never to be seen again.

There were signs. There were definitely signs. I was on a progression that would have eventually revealed the truth no matter who or what others around me wanted. My daughter was having issues that I recognized. She, like me, was scratching and making herself bleed. I knew that when I did that there was at least a bit of release from some pain, but I did not know what the pain was from. I only knew that there was a price to pay from that behavior. I didn’t want my child to face that sort of future. I was going to get to the bottom of it no matter what. I put her, and myself into therapy a few months before she told. I was put on antidepressants by my therapist. I had told her I knew something was wrong, but I did not know what. With her training, she had to have seen the train wreak that was coming. She was upbeat, she was supportive, to the point, and helpful with resources. I have to say that the doctors and other professionals at the Kaiser Permanente section of Newark/Fremont/Hayward gave me and my family the best support one could imagine though this awful time.

Her making herself bleed was not the only “sign.” She had bled into her panties. Just spotting. But, I had started my period on my 10th birthday. I thought to myself, seven years old isn’t too far from ten years old. I told myself I’d keep my eye on it, as it might be something that would require a doctor. And I let it go. Also, the day that my step-father and mother had showed up to take her to the movies, the day she looked so terrorized. If you ever see that look on your child’s face, don’t ignore it. It means something even if you don’t understand it in the moment. Then another time, step father came over for something, mom was at work, I think. On his way out the door, he kissed her on the mouth. My reaction was, “Gawd, how gross.” I mean, we are talking about a saggy 57 year old man. Bald, saggy, baggy belly. Myself, I could not picture a young man ever being in that body, let alone handsome. Just gross!!!! But, he’d been so kind to us that I gave him the benefit of the doubt. Which he truly did not deserve.

IF you are a parent right now, reading this, and you are wondering just how bad I felt, please always keep in mind, that while my circumstances played into this whole story and it was painful in just about everyway it could be painful that it was nothing compared to the hell my child had gone through. My step father had threatened her with a pistol, and told her that if he pulled the hair on his arm it would kill us (the parents). This is the very tip of the iceberg in terms of his threats. They didn’t have to make sense, she only had to believe them. I shouldn’t have to be pointed out just how vulnerable a six or seven year old truly is. Anyway, The result was, at least for a time, exactly what he wanted from her, silence.

And dear reader, at any point, should you decide this is all too much, and it can’t be the truth. I still own my notes and journals. I still have court transcripts and newspaper articles. I don’t throw away much. I can go to the courthouse and ask for the records. I’ve already done it just to see if I could, while she was still a minor. The records were never sealed as was promised. The records were handed over, and I never even had to show an ID.

more soon….

@pegrowe62.bsky.social