Sexual violence with any minor child is abhorrent and too common.
“There’s a difference between a 15 year old and a 5 year old” Megyn Kelly, defending Jeffrey Epstein.
Content Note: sexual violence, child abuse, politics, church, incest
Let me start by reminding everyone that sexual abuse of young children, ages 5 and 15, including boys and girls is not new. Here in Pennsylvania, we need only look to the Attorney Generals Grand Jury Report detailing the pervasive abuse of children by priests and the cover-up by the Church.
There’s also Penn State’s Jerry Sandusky and the deplorable response of the University. The USA Gymnastics sex abuse scandal. The Ohio State Athletic Department sexual abuse of nearly 200 young male students.
Dismissing the trauma and pain of any survivor because they are almost a legal adult is an extension of a larger culture that overlooks sexual abuse in general. Watching this dismissal and even just the back and forth takes a toll on survivors even though most of us want accountability and justice. I’m paying attention, but my heart aches every single day. I’m not the least bit surprised by the denial and the enabling – that has also always been part of the story.
I was a victim of child sexual abuse
I know this because I was sexually abused as a child by my paternal grandfather, whom I call my grandmonster. His name was John Kelso Kerr. He grew up in the South Side and Wilkinsburg, worked at J&L Steel, served in WW II as a radio operator, and then became a bartender in his retirement years. He died in 2000 in a nursing home, a pitiful shell of a human being and I’m glad he’s gone.
My grandmonster had a predilection for girls in their late teens, but he raped multiple adult women in my family and beyond. I literally saw it happen a few times.
Imagine being a 7 year old kid watching your grandfather rape an adult member of your family? In a McDonald’s parking lot. Carry that with you.
That’s a pretty heavy turn in this narrative. But it is important that you, all of you reading this, understand that these ‘crisis’ or ‘scandals’ impact real people who need and deserve your support. If you think the Epstein situation is the worst there ever is, you are erasing the 2,000 years of Catholic abuse of children. Maybe it is easier to think one or a few bad guys doing this because it doesn’t impact your life in the way that the institutions of church, Boy Scouts, Penn State, and gymnastics do. It is easier to take the high ground with Epstein because it doesn’t really impact our day to day lives.
Well, it impacts mine. My grandmonster wasn’t just some random isolated bad guy. I am not just some isolated victim. Turning away time and time again because leaving your church is complicated and your alma mater is important to you might make things less complicated for you. But it definitely sends a message to all the grandmonsters of the world who aren’t in mansions and don’t own private jets that they might get a pass, too.
He also molested young girls. I suspect he raped my grandmother as she two of her three children with him before marriage. She was a young teen when they met. She was addicted to him, but I realize in hindsight he likely groomed her. He was in her head and she made terrible choices as a result.
As for me? I believe I was his final victim. What he did was groom me all during my childhood. He deliberately isolated me from my younger brother and my parents. He exposed me to adult sexual content far beyond my years. He took me everywhere and never took my brother, something that always left me uneasy. He taught me to accept being touched, being discussed, being programmed to believe him.
He even took me for pony rides, to the circus, and bought me stuffed animals. He told me I was a special girl while tearing down my actual sense of self-worth.
I won’t describe other things he did, but being trafficked was in the mix. Maybe? See, that’s my self-doubt – I need to ask my therapist about it before I feel comfortable naming it. That’s so sad.
The long-term impact before I got help
He disrupted my psychological development to tear down my self-preservation instincts, teaching me that I was merely an object to meet other people’s needs. That damage lasted many years, it is still with me. For decades, I would enter any space with other people and feel that I needed to latch onto someone, to be someone’s sexual prop. It is hard to explain except that I always understood myself as needing to find someone to care for in all settings. But at the same time, I saw no value in myself, no ability to voice my own hopes and desires, and no understanding of what had happened to me. I had no sense of self-worth or certainly as someone to be liked.
He tried to destroy me. He almost succeeded.
I remembered, but I buried those memories. I reframed them to fit a new narrative. And when I finally got the mental health supports I needed, it took a long time to confront this part of my story.
There’s no way to know if I would have had mental health disabilities if I hadn’t been sexually abused by him. Depression and anxiety run in my family as do mood disorders. So perhaps I had the predisposition and his abuse of me (and the neglect by those who turned away) brought it out.
Once my mood was somewhat stabilized and my anxiety acknowledged, the trauma seeped out in all sorts of ways. So I began working with a trauma specialist and piecing together the story. I had my real memories, I had bits and pieces of the family history, and I had stories from other survivors. Even DNA testing for a genealogical site helped make the case.
And I had the vehement denial by most of my family. That spoke volumes.
After I got help
I also always dated older men (and women, to be honest.) Quite frequently, people told me I was mature for my age or seemed older than my actual age. I was not mature at all, I was just using maladaptive coping skills and putting on a front.
I’ve also been accused of ‘learned helplessness’ combined unironically with being considered very, very angry. They aren’t wrong, but it was actually ‘taught helplessness’ – my sense of self-reliance was intentionally disrupted. And, of course, I was angry. I still am. Disproportionate? Yes, sometimes. But the world is filled with people who want to manage my anger more than they want to address the underlying reason.
The cycle of my abuse was disrupted by my grandmonster’s age and dementia. By the time I was in puberty around age 13, he had early signs of dementia that my grandmother hid from everyone. He was still a creepy old fuck though and was still trying to complete his grooming. But my mother had caught on and was actively trying to steer me away.
I kept going over to see him, struggling to understand the conflicting need to keep his approval with my slowly growing sense of disgust and repulsion.
The cycle was disrupted, but after more than 13 years of predation and grooming. I was and remain still very damaged by everything. And it didn’t completely stop until I fled the state for college.
So I was the five year old and the fifteen year old. Predators like Epstein, the priests, the coaches, and family members know the difference between a teen who has had a healthy childhood and a secure sense of attachment versus the teens whose five year old selves weren’t great. Kids who may have been groomed, abused, or neglected and thus susceptible to sexual predation.
I grow older, I feel the distance between myself and that terrible experience lengthening – I thought my fifties would be great, but that hasn’t worked out so well. So maybe my sixties?
The reactions of people to the Epstein story is unsurprising. In my experience, people either feel immense pity, disbelief, or blurt out their own stories with uncontrolled heaving. In spite of all the evidence to the contrary, they want to believe this is rare or infrequent or a misunderstanding. The pity turns to “just get over it”; the disbelief leads to emotional distancing, and the encounters with other victims who have not processed their trauma can be devastating.
Why share now?
I wasn’t sure I’d publish this. Then I saw the reel posted below on Instagram. Nazis guised as law enforcement claim they were chasing a pedophile when confronted by residents of Charlotte, North Carolina.
I vomited a little, but I’m not truly surprised. These men with this attitude have surrounded me since I was born. One is in the White House. They are everywhere.
Everyone in my family was impacted if not traumatized by this predation. It was and continues to be a devastating
The heroes in my story are women. The elders who tried to get law enforcement involved in the 1960s. The family who moved to protect their children. The elder who got a restraining order in the early 1940s. The early 1940’s! Women who said something and spoke up and took action.
It matters to me that they tried. Just like it matters that so many people are trying around the survivors of the Epstein Files.
It matters that they try.
It is disgusting that ICE or any law enforcement officer would use pedophilia to cover their brutal hunting tactics. It is well within their wheelhouse to do so.
This has defined every moment of my life. I was put into the care of my grandparents at birth because my mother was hospitalized for psychiatric reasons. He had access to shape me from almost day one. I have deep resentment for every adult in my family who knew – everyone knew – and didn’t step in to care for me. Five aunts, five uncles, another grandmother, my dad had over a dozen cousins who were all adults. Great-aunts and uncles.
They turned away and I’ve paid a lifelong price for that decision.
If you are horrified and want to do something, you can donate to the many groups working on these issues. If you want to help me deal with how this manifests in my life now – I do need your help.
If you or someone you know has experienced sexual assault, you are not alone. RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline offers free, confidential, 24/7 support in English and en Español.
Call 800.656.HOPE (4673) * Chat at RAINN.org/hotline * Text HOPE to 64673
In Pittsburgh, you can contact PAAR 1-866-END-RAPE (1-866-363-7273).
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