VICTORIOUS!!

As I'm walking home from school on Friday, I'm wondering what my new and "third" babysitter would be like. As I got into the car to drive to her home, I had no idea what the weekend would hold. By now I'm nine years old. My babysitter has two young children and a husband. I remember my mom driving away as I sighed and walked around the neighborhood scoping things out. There were plenty of kids, and a playground with swings, a merry-go-round and  jungle gym. I thought to myself, "that's pretty cool". It didn't take me long to make friends and from this day "two girls"still remain my friends. I have to admit, at first it wasn't so bad. I enjoyed going there on the weekends and for the first time, I wasn't being sexually abused.

I was there about a month when I experienced my babysitter being physically abuse. The husband of my babysitter would go out drinking and come home mad at the world. He was a small guy and had a chip on his shoulder. I've heard it called a small mans complex causing the need to compensate by acting strong towards those smaller than him. Men at the bar would say things to him that would upset him and since he was of small stature he didn't dare try to fight them, instead he would come home and take it out on my babysitter. I've seen such terrible things and have actually feared for my life. I watched this man pull rollers out of this woman's head, try to drown her , throw beer cans at her legs until they bled, slapped her and at the end, held us all hostage with a knife, saying that if the police came he would kill us all, us meaning his children as well as me.

You are probably asking yourself why I never told. First of all my babysitter would plead with me not to and second I wasn't being sexually abused so therefore I felt this was better than what I had endured in the past. But the knife was the straw that broke the camels back, even for my babysitter. And for the first time she was ready to leave and I was free to tell and that I did! I even had to testify at her divorce hearing as to what I had observed. Needless to say, the divorce was granted. And I began to think we were finally safe.

However with the divorce came a different life style for my babysitter. She was wanting to go out more and at times would leave us with a neighbor boy to watch us while she went out. He was in High School and I knew him, he had been around and seemed nice. I was allowed to stay up later than her children since I was older, but also because this kept my mouth shut. One night it was getting late and I was laying on the couch watching television and he approached me and tried to touch me. I was older and wiser and this was NOT going to happen to me again. I refused and stood my ground for the very first time in my life!! Of course this made him mad and he chocked me, but I didn't care, he could KILL me, but he wasn't going to touch me! No one was, not ever again, not without my permission and he didn't!

The next day I told my babysitter as well as my mother what had happened. Of course he denied it, and the sad thing is, everyone believed him, but he was never to watch us again and he never tried to touch me after that! I had won, I may have been kidded about my "exaggeration" that he would even be interested in such a young girl, but I didn't care, for I had WON! For the first time I was VICTORIOUS!!


If a child ever comes to you and says they have been touched in an uncomfortable way, NEVER dismiss them. Always  investigate and NEVER make then feel unvalidated. You have no idea how much courage it took for them to reveal the hurt, shame and guilt that they have endured. You have no idea how scared they are of what you might think of them! If they are brave enough to come to you, DO NOT make them feel unworthy or abandoned. Do not brush them off...you may be their only hope of refuge!! And by all means, if you ever suspect a child is being abused, don't ignore the signs, talk to the child, if he/she denies it then watch. If you find that you may be right...report it, it's far better to error on the side of caution then to find out later that you were right but did nothing about it.


I'm happy to say that   FINALLY  my mother decided to quit working on the weekends, but by that time I was almost able to stay on my own. I had lived through sexual and physical abuse and by this time I had  built up a thick skin, a hardness, but at the same time I was still that little girl, crying inside, insecure, with feelings of abandonment, loneliness, shame and guilt. Would I ever be able to feel safe, to trust anyone, to love anyone? Would I ever be able to get the imagines out of my mind? I was damaged goods, but hid it well. I had become a master deceiver, and had a hard heart, but my extrovert personality compensated for all of that and had helped me to keep my secret well hid...until now!


2 Corinthians 3:5 [My power and ability and sufficiency are from God. Greater is He that is in me that he that is in the world].