My name is Meaghan. I am a 25 year-old graduate student in social work and child development. I am smart, funny, friendly, caring, and hard working. This is not all I am, though. I am also shy, anxious, and lacking in confidence. I believe these other qualities I struggle with are partly a result of the fact that I am also a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. When I was 10 years old, my mother’s boyfriend put his hand up my shirt while I was lying in her bed watching television. Soon after this incident, I decided to tell my best friend and she convinced me to tell my mom. I was terrified, but decided she was right and I told my mom while shaking and in tears. When I initially told my mom the story, she seemed to believe me. She told him not to come over that day and she kept telling me how sorry she was. However, that night, she invited him over to give his side of his story. Obviously, his story didn’t match mine at all. He said we were wrestling and he must have accidentally touched me inappropriately and he was so sorry and it would never happen again. As he told his story, I watched my mom’s face. She was allowing herself to believe him. That is when I realized that it didn’t matter what I said. She believed him. I ended up recanting (saying I had lied and made up the story because I didn’t want my mom to have a boyfriend). Two years later, this man moved into our house and the abuse escalated, becoming an everyday occurrence including every act you can imagine. He would have me come into his room everyday when I got home from school. He worked nights and would sneak into my bedroom nearly every night when he got home. I can still remember the sound of his car pulling into the driveway and his door shutting – to which I would always awake. Then the keys turning in the front door as I closed my eyes tight hoping he’d think I was asleep and just let me be. It never worked, but still every night I tried. To survive, I threw myself into school and it became my escape. I would use it as an excuse for why I had to leave his room or why I didn’t come home from school, saying I had to study for a test or I had a lot of homework. I also joined sports and clubs and AP classes to keep myself busy. Sometimes it worked, but often it didn’t. He didn’t care about what I had to do, just what he wanted from me. Because I had positive school experiences, though, school served as a distraction and as a source of self-esteem. I was good at something that nobody could take away from me.

Even with my success in school, I still struggled to hold it together and had very tough days. There were times I wished I wasn’t alive and days I seriously considered running away. There were a lot of days I was just confused. Here was this man who made me think I was loved and cared about and then there was my own adolescent body that was making me think I wanted it. At the same time, I knew this wasn’t how love was supposed to feel. You shouldn’t feel threatened or scared. You should be able to say no. You shouldn’t be forced into anything. You shouldn’t have to keep it a secret. It is difficult to describe all the mixed emotions I felt for all those years. I felt pretty, important, and loved. But then I felt disgusting and ashamed and crazy for feeling this. I felt guilty because I knew how much this secret would hurt my mom and I felt like people might see me as an accomplice. I felt ashamed of recanting and not telling anyone again. I was constantly worried that someone would find out what was happening and would blame me. There were so many nights I cried myself to sleep, asking “why me?” I felt like such an outsider in my family and with my friends. There was this huge secret that was such a huge part of my life that nobody knew. I felt so alone and so abnormal. I had to make up stories about my first kiss and my experiences with boys – pretending to be naïve about sex when my friends in middle school would talk and giggle about their relationships.

Finally, at 17, as I was getting ready to leave for college, the abuse ended. I had told him that I liked a guy and wanted to date him. He yelled at me and told me that nobody would ever love me like he did. But then he left. He packed up his things and moved out. I never thought that would happen. Just being free from the daily abuse was a weight off of my shoulders, but the secret was still there. The silence was a weight I continued to carry. It was soon after the abuse ended that I decided to tell someone what had been happening the previous seven years. As I told more and more people my story, I became very aware of the things that were helpful to me and the things that hurt. I didn’t need to be asked why I never told or how I let it go on for so long. Those comments were not helpful. I needed to hear that it wasn’t my fault because I carried a tremendous amount of guilt. I needed to know that I wasn’t alone in this experience. Growing up being sexually abused, I thought I was the only one. I felt so alone and thought I should keep this secret for fear of not being believed or understood. I felt like a freak and blamed myself. I needed people to listen and believe me and tell me I was strong and brave, people to build me back up.

Telling my story and being believed and validated was crucial to my healing. At 20, I met a friend who helped me find an amazing therapist who specializes in sexual abuse. I started therapy because I was in a place in my life where I felt like I had no idea who I was and I wanted to figure out how to make sense of how I was feeling about everything. I had never lived my life for me. I spent so many years keeping a secret to protect the man who abused me and my mom and my family, all at the expense of myself. In working with my therapist, I learned how normal this is, that I kept a secret to survive. My therapist also helped me understand that feeling loved and cared for were a normal part of my development and that he used these normal feelings to take advantage of me and manipulate me. It is normal for people to want to feel loved and wanted, but it is not ok for abusers to use these normative aspects of development to prey on children. For a long time, I felt immense shame, thinking that the abuse was at least partially my fault. I have finally come to understand that I felt powerless and stuck for so many reasons – his age, his financial contribution to my family, his role in my mom’s happiness, feeling that I would be blamed, not wanting people to look at me differently or less than. But I am no longer powerless. I am a strong believer that being able to tell your story in therapy to someone who can make you feel like your feelings and responses are normal and understandable brings you back your power. The abuse, the feelings around it, and the feelings about yourself because of it eventually stop controlling your life. A therapist listens without judgment and cares about you in a way that won’t lead them to tell you how you should be feeling or how they wish you’d be feeling (like a friend or family member might). A therapist allows all of your intense feelings to be ok and helps you do the hard work of moving forward, sometimes with the tiniest of steps.

When I began therapy, I knew I wanted to put this man in prison for all that he had taken from me and for what I worried he had taken or would take from others. Everyday that I lived not knowing where he was scared me. I worried he would come find me and try to make me be with him or that he would kill me. Seeing men who looked like him, or seeing the car he drove, or hearing a song he liked would send me into a panic. He haunted me even after he was no longer present physically. So, the day after my 22nd birthday, I decided to report the abuse to the police. My good friend made the drive with me, allowing me to stop, cry, and freak out as many times as I needed while holding my hand and reminding me of my strength. With her by my side and the support of my therapist, family, and friends, I was able to tell my story to a police officer that then forwarded it to the detective. I can’t sugar coat this and say that it was easy and constantly rewarding and that there weren’t times I second-guessed my decision. I can say, though, that it has been one of the most empowering things I have done in my life. I worked with the detective to locate the perpetrator and helped gather evidence by speaking to him on the phone so that he would admit what he did to me. I will never forget the terror I experienced in anticipation of having to speak with him after 5 years. But because I did it, I was able to get the evidence we needed to take the case to court. I often felt an overwhelming sense of unfairness during the criminal justice process, though. It wasn’t fair that I had to report, that nobody took care of that for me when I was younger. It wasn’t fair that I had to relive aspects of the abuse in order to make a case. It wasn’t fair that he was allowed to be called an “upstanding citizen” in court simply because he had a job and no prior criminal record. It wasn’t fair that I had to educate the district attorney working on my case that he had no idea what “a reasonable plea offer” was, having not lived a day in my shoes. I could go on and on about the unfairness of this. But that is less important than knowing that facing all of that unfairness head-on, fighting through it, crying through it, yelling through it, brought me out on the other end a stronger person, feeling so much better about myself.

Eventually, going through this criminal justice process and putting him in prison gave me some peace of mind for the next ten years. At least I know where he is. And it feels really good knowing I put him there. I read my victim impact statement (a statement about how the abuse affected my life and about who I am today) in front of him and the judge and the audience in the courtroom. This single moment was the most empowering day of my life so far. I finally got to look at him while telling him what he did to me and how it wrong it was, but how I survived and am doing well. Throughout, he stood there in his orange jumpsuit and chains and shook his head and mouthed, “Liar, you’re a liar.” And that was difficult. But I knew I wasn’t a liar and I knew, despite this truth, I stood a chance at happiness and fulfillment.

While being a survivor is not all I am, it has shaped my life in a huge way. I want to tell my story as a way to break the silence and secrecy that unfortunately go hand-in-hand with sexual abuse. I also think my experience has shaped my career path because I am so passionate about ameliorating, or hopefully preventing, these experiences in the lives of other children and families. Figuring out exactly how being a survivor is integrated into my life story is still a work in progress and I’m sure it will be ever-evolving as I gain new life experiences.

Looking back at my childhood and how I struggled to understand my situation and try to find “normalcy” amidst the chaos is the reason why I am so excited about The Global Sisterhood and all that Colleen Cira is doing to fight this epidemic. I grew up thinking that I wasn’t supposed to have a voice that was my own and believed that the voice I did have was small, quiet, and held no power. I thought it was inappropriate to tell someone I didn’t like something or that they hurt me or made me angry. I thought my role was to make sure everyone else in my life was happy, even at my own expense. I wasn’t supposed to rock the boat. These beliefs that were so engrained in me were part of the reason I initially recanted and then kept silent for the next seven years.

And I am by no means “healed” or “recovered”. The abuse is something that will stay with me forever. It has affected my relationship with my mom, feeling angry at her for allowing the abuse to continue, but feeling like we can’t talk about it because I don’t want to hurt her feelings. It also affected my relationships with men. I was in a relationship with someone who was very selfish and expected me to put his needs above my own, and I did so for many years. I can tell you, though, that even though I still struggle, I am not broken. Therapy has been a huge help in me realizing this – that, at times, it will be difficult, but I will be able to handle it and it will never be as difficult as it was in the moment.

I think The Global Sisterhood would have helped me realize this long before I did on my own. If I had been part of a group of girls that learned about sexual violence and was empowered to take a stand against it while having support, I know my story would have been written differently. The abuse couldn’t have continued for as long as it did, because I would have had someone to tell who believed me early on and who got me the services I needed. I think girls need to know that they should never ever be put in a situation where they feel uncomfortable and there should be no shame or guilt for telling someone when this does happen. The silence around sexual abuse is what allows it to continue. We need to start talking about the epidemic of sexual abuse. And who better to talk about it with than our children who are at risk of becoming victims?

Are you a survivor of sexual violence? Do you feel ready to share your story to help other women?

If so, please email us at theglobalsisterhood@gmail.com!