Anonymous Story: dad raped me, grandma covered for him

Hi, this is sort of a miniature biography, i just … i can’t keep thinking about it so hopefully i can get it out once and for all.

When i was a child my father took me to six flags. Along the way i was asking him about the circumstances of my parent’s divorce. He looked at me, a gleam of liquor in his eyes i was too naive to see and said with a shit-eating grin. “You look just like your mother” now that was rare, because, i usually heard i looked like him. Which isn’t what a little girl wants to hear. So i smiled and thanked him and he pulled over into an off road that had no traffic and asked me “do i want to take a ride on his slip and slide.” I completely misunderstood and said yes, happily. He said “ok,” and told me to get into the back of the van and take off all my clothes. Now, i thought it was odd, but he’s my dad, so what could possibly happen, right? I obliged and he came into the back and told me to turn around and open the doors, position myself between them, and be quiet. Then, standing behind me, out of my view, he took off his pants, kneeled behind me and slid his dick in between my juvinile thighs. Go ahead and assume what came next, you’re probably right. Afterwards he told me if i ever told a soul he would kill me and my mother. This memory rises up rarely to haunt my dreams but it’s been doing it a lot more these last few months.

Another fucked up thing he did was press a gun to my head. We were sitting at a stop light in a suburb around new orleans, i was in second grade and seeking advice from him on bullies. I had a huge overbite and the kids were making me miserable. His invaluable advice to me was cold metal to my forehead “if you hate school so much why don’t i shoot you? Won’t that make you happy? Ill shoot you, your whole family, my mother, and then myself.”

when i finally told my mother about the sexual assalt, its because they were watching law and order: SVU and i couldnt handle it. A started freaking out because i couldn’t contain it any longer and my mother and aunt were both urging me “whats wrong?” i said something to the effect of “daddy did that to me.” and that’s when it all fell to shit. We did the right thing, we reported to the police. The woman on the phone was very kind, and advised us to keep the fact that we were consulting the authorities a secret. If he found out, he could do something crazy. So we did, mostly. We called to tell my paternal grandmother about it. The phone call was long and emotional, and she seemed like she was on my side about this. I mean, what other side is there? The rapist? It seemed improbable. But that what happened. She hung up with us, dried her tears and called him. I don’t care if she did it to yell at him, or just to warn him. We told her that he could not know and she went right ahead and called him. Gave him our number.

A few minutes later, mom and i are snuggled on the floor next to the dresser that had the tv on it and the phone rang, she answered it and her eyes went wide. She put it on speaker phone, it was him, calling to tell me that i need to drop the charges right now or he was going to kill my aunt and uncle and their kids whom were living with him. I agreed. What else could i do? Let someone die over me? At least i was alive right. Well not everyone in the family saw it that way. For years since, i’ve dealt with my own family thinking the whole thing was a lie because i “gave up.” my uncle has even told me “i know what a petiphile looks like and he isnt one. Stop fucking lying.” it feels like …a lot of them chose his side. He’s still a family friend, and it is a large reason i have been ostracized by them. The worst thing is he eventually admitted it to us, said “he was drunk” and STILL no one believes, or cares. The mental damage that leaves … has been disregarded. And i’ve been labeled the family drama queen.

To make matters much worse i have recently learned that my grandmother did in fact tell him what was up intentionally, to prevent it from going to court, so as not to embarrass HERSELF. For months, recently, she played a cruel head game with me. Calling him to the house ( i lived with her recently, for about 4 months, 11 years after the incident) to “fix things” and forcing me to hide in the closet, doors locked, lights off, with an improvised weapon, texting my friend from the marines every scrape of information i had ‘just incase’ he finds me. I was in there for hours at a time, my chest aching from the stress i was under. She would force me to message him while i was there, and berate me for not wanting to, call me a terrible daughter and a plethora of other things. She threatened to kill herself or run off to some other country if i tried to take it to court. She told me i should be the one who is ashamed of what happened, that im lying, that im delusional…. I felt like i was constantly in danger, and eventually became a danger to myself. When i finally got the courage to leave, she took pretty much everything except the clothes i was wearing. This is just one of the innumerable things that those two have done to me, a handful of the ways that they have broken me. And i wish i could say it all. I wish i could sit down and write it all but i can hardly stand to write this.