Thank God for Facebook

I've been wanting to confront the man who abused me. I was best friends w/ his sister & he used to rape me regularly - I was in elementary school & he was in HS/college.

Well, I found my former best friend tonight on Facebook and am one step closer to confronting her brother & mother. To make matters worse, his mom found out about it and told me "I heard about the stuff you did when you lived here." She never saw it as me being molested. I was an elementary school kid going around willingly having sex w/ her son. Stupid B@$#@!

Anyway, I want to cuss her out more than anyone else. She's an adult & she made my abuse my fault. I can't stand people like her & can't wait to tell her about herself and her son.

Hey,
How did your communication go with the perpetrator and his family?

Sylvia

I got in touch w/ my childhood friend & asked her for her mom's number. She never gave it to me. I also found out another friend in the neighborhood was molested by the same boys who molested me. The mother I wanted to confront told me that she heard it from this friend. So when I confronted my friend about it, she revealed that she was being molested as well and never gossiped about it.

I still can't get in touch with any of them.

What I'm about to say, I share with you with the highest love and support and I want to be completely honest....Sadly, many parents like her are in denial. I don't want to make excuses for her, but I wonder what lies her son told her about the two of you. Also, I always tell sexual abuse survivors to do the following BEFORE they confront the perpetrator or his family: 1) Ask yourself why you want to confront the perp. Is it to gain closer? To demand an apology? To get them to admit their wrong? 2) Are you hoping confronting them will make you feel better? I ask all of this not to discourage you from confronting but to prepare you because sometimes when you confront, the perp and his family will deny your allegations. Will you get angry and become demanding? If your motivation for doing so is any of the above, then you may be still in the "victim mode" since sexual abuse survivors are recoving from a victim mentality. When you're in the victim mentality, you seek external validation from others where there is an expectation for them to make you feel better. Little do we know that we are giving away all of our internal power when we seek external validation. I do not say any of this in judgement of you or your decisions, because anger is a very important step to healing. However, having gone through the process, here's what I suggest, if you do confront, make sure that you discuss it before hand with someone you know and trust and have a person from your support system there to help you deal with the aftermath whatever it may be....On a side note, it took me years to confront my perpetrators. I did so in a letter. Neither one responded, but I know they received it. 10 years ago, this would have PISSED me off and ruined my recovery. The only reason it didn't is because of all of the hard work I put into the healing process beforehand to get to the point where I no longer sought validation from my perpetrator or others... Let me know how you make out. I truly admire your courage and honesty!

I just read this; wish I read it sooner. I ended up writing the mom a letter. It was full of anger and, I admit, venemous. She insisted she never said it and my friendship with her daughter is strained. I really didn't care about validation; I was sick of keeping things in. I needed to confront her. I really don't care about confronting the perpetrators. They're sick. My biggest issue are the adults who knew about it and blamed me. I still need to confront my mom. That scares me.

And since I wrote the letter and spoke to her, I was finally able to lose weight! I had been yo-yo'ing for years but it seemed like all of the self-hatred is gone. I've lost 18lbs and am running marathons! 

I can't wait for the next stage of my life.