Mt. Vernon, NY

I experienced 3 different situations of abuse/molestation from 3 different people, all who were family members. I grew up fairly poor in the islands but I had a happy childhood. My sister and I shared a room and one night when I was about 6 or 7 I was laying in bed and I remember my much older cousin climbing into my bed. We were always close and playful, but that night he was more playful because he started to touch my breasts and my privates. When I think about it now, he was aroused and rubbing his privates against me as well as making my touch him. I was scared and didn’t know what to do so I didn’t tell anyone. It continued for awhile until he moved away one day. He also did the same thing to my sister but my sister and I never talked about it.

Around the same age, or maybe a little bit older, another much older cousin was pushing me on a swing and he grabbed and rubbed my breasts while I was sitting on the swing. He had never done that before and it caught me off guard and I remember running away. He never touched me again.

The last time I was molested was after I left the islands and moved to the U.S.A. when I was 11. My mother became close friends with the home owner who we rented an apartment from and after a few years they got married. He was an elderly man, probably in his 70′s. Before my mother married him and before we moved out of our apartment and into his, I would cook his dinners for him a few days a week. One day when I was in the kitchen and just finished cooking his dinner, he came into the kitchen and walked up behind me…the whole time he was aroused. He began gyrating his privates on me and rubbing my breasts, he also tried to kiss and after letting go of the shock, I pulled myself away and ran outside. I was scared and didn’t know what to do so I tried to avoid him as much as possible. After he and my mother got married, he didn’t really try anything but one other time he tried to kiss me again.

After all three incidences happened I never told anyone. And they’ve affected me to this day at 35 yrs old. I hid the situations in the back of my mind for years until I was about 18 when I met my first love and simple things like kissing caused me to cringe or try to avoid contact. It was then that I realized that my behavior connected to the molestation from when I was younger. While I was sexually abused in terms of being forced to have sex with my molester or engage in other acts, what happened to me still affected my life greatly. I never confronted my molesters about what they did and the “hard to believe” thing is that I still see my cousin who first molested me and we laugh and talk as if everything is ok and as if nothing happened. I don’t think I will ever confront him about what he did to me.

My only concern about being molested is that I have and still do engage in promiscuous sexual activity with a lot of men. I’m not sure why I do it because I always feel bad about myself and feel worthless after I do it, but I still do it. Sometimes I wonder if I think that’s all I’m worth is being used by men. The only thing I hope for myself is that one day I will find the courage to seek counseling and accept that it wasn’t my fault and that I don’t deserve to be used or treated badly.