I remember saying, “Two people can’t be joined together like that” and him saying, “Oh yes they can” and taking me to the bedroom. But the first time I had consensual sex, memories of someone on top of me came flooding back, his breath in my ear, the sensation. The abuse ended just before I hit puberty. But he’d still show up at family events such as barbecues – and act surprised when I stormed off. Once he “joked”, in front of my dad, about he and I running off to Gretna Green, and I thought Dad knew, but of course he didn’t.
In my teens I told Sarah about it, but I made her promise not to say anything.
Sarah ran into him at a bar where he was working. He put his arm around her and she lost it, saying, “I know what you did to my sister!” So he called my dad to get in there first, claiming Sarah had been rude to him for no reason. When it all came out then, Dad was devastated – but I never talked to him about it until years later, when I was 25 and told him I was thinking of reporting it.
