About a year ago, I went through every one on my social media account and began the “UNFRIEND” process. I questioned myself, “Where was this person during my life's darkest hours?”
Nowhere to be found. Unfriend.
”Has this person ever expressed anything remotely close to my heartfelt beliefs, or a kindred spirit?” Another dozen got the unfriend treatment.
Remove the deadweight from my life, for what purpose do they serve? Read their posts, and they're pressuring me to act against my conscience.
One in particular stood out. A woman I believed was my friend since childhood. When I explained about how shabby my family treated me because they wanted to cover up childhood sexual abuse, she was the first to come forward, pressuring, that I needed to put it behind me and “Move on.”
Was she there for me as a shoulder to lean on, when at age 15 I told the matriarch about the crime but the matriarch CHOSE to sweep it under the rug instead of going straight to the Sheriff Department?
Was she there to console me when the matriarch said, “You CHOSE to start your sex life at that young age.”
No. She wasn't. She wasn't there at all.
She was not my friend and had no business doling out advice about things she has no understanding of.
Was she there when my brother mocked and scoffed that the sister he had pressured to drink, at age 13, so he could hand her over to his new friends to score points.
Was she there to encourage me, “We MUST report this crime to police!” No, she wasn't.
She was never there during good times or bad. She is nothing but a social media profile.
Was she there when I was all alone with my head full of false religious doctrines about how girls who preserve their virginity will be blessed by God, but the Bible oddly is absent about what God's recompense for rape victims is.
I had to look myself in the mirror every day, believing, “I am cursed now. No decent man will ever want anything to do with me. All my hopes and dreams of a good wholesome marriage have been destroyed.”
Was she there to help me carry the burden of this self loathing hatred, instilled from birth and to my eternal detriment? No, she wasn't there.
Was she there when I began exhibiting symptoms associated with rape trauma, that occur because your negligent mother, the matriarch REFUSED to seek rape counseling or report the crime to police?
Where were my FRIENDS?
Was she there during the years of isolation behind four walls, as so-called family sought to hide the blacksheep, pretend I didn't exist? Except to rewrite narratives that I was the villain, and they the “victim”.
Ah, she was absent.
Who was there? A friend I acquainted online during research about scientific origin of whales.
During our conversations I discovered he was a flaming liberal and myself, extremely conservative. The more he argued for women's emancipation from tired and worn out roles the more I gained introspection into my own troubled life.
After many years of being subjected to what felt like imprisonment for a crime I had not committed, relatives blaming me for victimizing those poor helpless rapists, the courage came from within to pick up the phone and call the police.
I was 35 by then. The crime was committed when I was thirteen.
22 years! allowed to roam by the matriarch to commit heinous acts against somebody else. But why should I be angry about that? “Just move on. Just put it behind me eh?”
22 years after the crime, I began to wake up and realize, “I was the victim.” Nobody, if rarely had been saying that. Nobody had affirmed it by their actions.
I picked up the phone and asked for a deputy. “If a brother, 19, pressures his sister to drink alcohol, and it leads to the crime against a child...” The Deputy stopped me mid sentence. “Ma'am, just the fact that a 19 year old provided alcohol to a minor would make him an accessory to the crime!”
First time somebody pierced that armor of silence lousy so-called family built around me.
GUILT CONFIRMED!
The law was on my side. My ears had not deceived me. I picked up the phone and called straightway to the Matriarch.
”I just spoke with the Sheriff department. The deputy said just the fact that Danny provided alcohol to a minor made him an accessory!”
In the background, chaos erupted. “She wanted to drink! She wanted to drink!” After years of being coddled and protected by the matriarch's web of lies, it all began to unravel.
Even Danny had enough sense to know if the Sheriff Department became involved she would happily throw him under the bus to preserve her own self-righteous reputation. That's why she protected him all those years.
She couldn't allow people to know HER son committed a crime against a child. All she cared about was her own precious reputation & public appearances.
From reports that filtered through after that fateful phone call, his behavior quickly unraveled and dangerously unhinged.
True to his cowardly nature, he departed and went to his dwelling place. There he proceeded to swallow all medication that had been provided to him to control blood flow in relation to a recently amputated limb.
He died that night, and I felt no loss. Justice was served cold.
He went to his grave the coward he had always been enabled by the Matriarch. Never once did he apologize, “Sharon, I'm sorry I ruined your life.”
The Matriarch would resort to claiming “Sharon is out of control!”
Why? Because for the first time in my life I was asking questions and standing up for myself against a Matriarch and a Bully and her Charles Mansonesque offspring cult following.
That crime? I was intimidated into isolation, silence for 35 years of my life. Brainwashed to believe it was “my fault”. Badgered with shame, guilt, accused.
My life was stolen.
Reports made their way to me that Danny laughed I was “licking my lips” at the rapists as if I encouraged them.
Forbidden justice. Forbidden rape counseling. The very people responsible for protecting me, completely and utterly FAILED me.
If it was justice I got when the accomplice took his life, I got it for myself by going against the Matriarch's criminal logic by reclaiming my human rights.
Diana, if it were you who never got their day in court, intimidated into silence YOUR entire life, would you be so willing to put it behind you?
2021 the matriarch died & by breaking my silence, I AM moving forward.
