Feeling Too Much At Once

[dalisabeth]

Please let me do it

[dalisabeth]

I'm ready now. I know what steps to take

[dalisabeth]

Let me do it please

[dalisabeth]

But I don't want you guys to do anything. If you do anything it will only hurt me. I need to talk to people I can talk to in person. So let mW take care of everything

[Sam W]

If you're in a place where you're ready to tell your counselor, that's a huge step and important step in taking care of yourself and we can help you with it if need be. Since the report has been made, having a report from you and your counselor as well will make it even more likely that this is taken care of and that you're safe, and having your counselor involved will mean you have on the ground support.

[dalisabeth]

You already made a call?

[dalisabeth]

Please tell me you didnt

[dalisabeth]

Message me privately please I need to talk to you

[Sam W]

I did, right after I posted my last message to you. Believe me when I say it wasn't a call I would have made if there were other options. We made the choice to report because we're concerned about your well-being and we want you to be safe. Hurting you is the last thing we want to come of it, and as I said, if we get more information about what's happening as a result we'll share it with you. And at a certain point, if we know someone is being repeatedly assaulted with no sign of it stopping, we have a moral obligation to do what we can to make it stop, so that you can be safe and your cousin can get the help and support he needs. Does that make sense?

We can't do PM on the boards, but Jacob gave you my email a few posts ago if you want to contact me that way.

[dalisabeth]

Wait so what happens?

[dalisabeth]

What happens after the call?

[Sam W]

Right now, the person I spoke to is writing up a report, which will likely get passed on to the DHS in your county. Once that happens, if they read the report and see reason to investigate, they will likely contact you or your family. What happens next depends on what you tell them and what they find at the house, and what they decide the next steps should be. I made it as clear as I could to them that you have concerns about your parents and how they will react, so if they do come into contact they hopefully have that in mind. I've also told them to contact me if possible or if they have questions, because we want to be able to advocate and support you in the event that CPS does investigate.

[Redskies]

Hi dalisabeth,

you and I haven't talked here yet - hi, it's nice to meet you properly! - but I have been reading along with your thread while doing other work here on the boards.

Further up in the thread, you said you weren't sure if anyone could or would understand, and you said it helped to know that you weren't alone in this kind of situation. I wouldn't say that I understand, exactly, because you and I are different people in slightly different situations - but there's so, so much that you're saying that I do understand, very personally. I was sexually abused by my older cousin for several years when I was slightly younger than you are now.

All of the ways you've told us you feel, I remember feeling. I no longer feel those ways, because I've been able to heal a lot in the years since then, but the memories of those feelings are so strong I could almost reach out and touch them.

I can hear how afraid you are after reading Jacob's and Sam's posts above. I know that I was deeply, bone-achingly afraid of anyone ever knowing what was happening to me, and deeply afraid of anything that could possibly happen next. I know I would have been terrified if I'd read or heard something like these.

I want to be honest with you and tell you that even with the solid memory of that fear, in our private staff conversations it's been me who's been one of the strongest voices in favour of reporting the situation you're in.

When I read what you've written to us, I see more times than I can count where you've said "no" or "we can't" or you've tried to be somewhere else away from your cousin. And he's repeatedly over-riding and ignoring you. That's really wrong of him, that's not how this should ever go, with anyone. You deserve to have your wishes and needs about your own body respected. Your words should be enough. But he's doing what he wants anyway, against your wishes and against your words and actions: that's why my colleagues here have been saying that the sexual contact between you is something that he's doing and not what the both of you are doing, and why my colleagues have been saying that it's abuse. The age difference really matters too: three years is a lot, developmentally, between 11 and 14; it's very normal for the younger person to want to please and impress the older one, and in situations like yours, your cousin has been badly mis-using that dynamic and that imbalance of power between you. None of this situation is your fault or your responsibility.

Because this is happening in your own home and you were fairly young when it started, him ignoring you and just carrying on abusing you can't be the end of the story (or even the end of the story for now). Like I said, you deserve to have your wishes about your own body respected. Because he's not responding to you, it's right for someone else with more power to step in and wield power on your behalf to get one thing that you want: for your cousin to stop behaving this way to you.

We really, really want to work with you. We want to be on your side, in your corner. I know that the prospect of other people knowing about the abuse and changes happening must be immensely scary, and I do hear that many parts of different outcomes aren't things you want. I'm sorry you're in this whole situation - it's very unfair on you, and you didn't create any of it, he did. I hear you earlier in the thread saying you didn't know what to do and you couldn't handle this situation any longer. I know that in the immediate future, to be very honest with you, there was no puppies-and-flowers option. People knowing and officially dealing with abuse in the home is very, very hard indeed. But if you can, I'd ask you to think longer-term. If you try to stay where you are, exactly how things are, every time your cousin assaults you it'll hurt you more and make it harder and longer to try to deal with and get over once you've left home in your late teens or early twenties. Every single assault will make it harder. You don't deserve that. You deserve it to stop right now. You can get through people knowing and changes in your home life. Even if things are very hard in the short-term, making a big change to stop the abuse is the start of a journey to something better. You deserve to start that journey right now, not in two or five or ten years' time.

If you'd like to talk with me about any of the ways I personally understand, I'm very happy to do that with you.

[dalisabeth]

I'm reporting it right now. Just please stop. Everybody. I need to do this not you

[dalisabeth]

Please stop everybody. I'm making a report right now. I want to do this on my own

[Sam W]

That's a huge and really brave step to take. We can't undo the report that was already made, but you reporting and telling your own story can go a long way towards you being able to get the safety that you deserve. If you need help or support during the reporting process, or during anything that comes after, we are more than happy to provide that here or to connect you to other resources that can also act as supports for you.

[dalisabeth]

What did the report say?

[Sam W]

The report that got (or is getting) typed up is based on what I told them. I shared some of what you told us here, the pieces that would be relevant to someone deciding whether or not to look into a case. That includes a timeline of the assaults you've told us about, as well as the previous DHS visit and what happened in the wake of it. When possible I tried to use your words to describe what was happening, so that they could have a sense of your experience rather than my interpretation of it.

[dalisabeth]

Everything I told you here has already been reported and had a case on it. Its all been taken care of. Why are you guys trying to make me go through it again?

[Sam W]

From what you told us, the report made to DHS in the past never disclosed the rape component, only touching. And the requirements put in place, like you two not being alone, have not been followed by him, which is something DHS needs to know. But more importantly, it isn't taken care of because he is continuing to assault you. You're not safe, and our reporting is the tool we have to make those assaults stop and get you the support you need and deserve.

We don't want you to have to go through this again. We wish you'd never had to go through it in the first place. Believe me, I want nothing more than to be able to snap my fingers and make your cousin never assault you again without you ever having to face something scary or difficult. But that's not how the world works, and from what we know about assault, those who assault pretty much never stop on their own. So this was the step we had to take, and hopefully we can work with DHS if the case is opened to help the process be as un-awful for you as it can be.

[Jacob]

Hi dalisabeth,

I am just wanting to check in with you.

How have things moved on since Tuesday?

I am wondering if you contacted your counsellor? You could definitely do with someone to talk to in your corner!

Well done for everything you must be doing to get through this.

We are thinking about you a bunch.

[Iwanthelp]

I don't know what's happened in the interim but I hope you're okay. I hope you're afforded more peace and what you need rather than the DHS' initial failing - I hope the report involved passing the details of that on because some of what they said was seriously, seriously failing you. You didn't deserve to have a lot of the adults in your life downplay what happened.