I'd be angry too. My church did not do a thing to help when incest became apparent. I chose to leave the town and I have no regrets.

I help myself a bit by trying to find out what values operated at the time.
If a man's home was his castle and the law supported it, I nderstand it would take a brave person to stand up. If the church was hands off on domestic problems at the time .....same thing.

((Hugs))

I'm sure that was the attitude. I was abandoned by my parents, my extended family, my church, my school, my entire community. I haven't been back there in 11 years and sometimes I would like to contact old teachers but my main question would be, " why didn't you or any other townsperson at least the hell, pat me on the shoulder and say, ' I know you are having problems at home, why don't you and your brother come over sometime for dinner'"? How hard would that have been? I don't to shame them because I'm not perfect either, but what the hell is the odds that no one would even do that much for me? Are people just that cold and indiffernt and drowning in their own lives so much that they can't do something like that? There is no question that it my family was the talk of the town at one point, the board of education had a meeting just concerning my brother and I. Nobody walked away going, " you know what, I'm going to take those poor kids out for an ice cream." Nobody! Not even kinfolk that lived nearby! Nuts! Thank you for your comment, does that make sense? Was it past the point of lack of bravery and into the realm of just totally writing us off?

It is really horrific that people knew enough to actually hold a BOE meeting about you, and yet nobody lifted a finger to protect you, to reach out to you, to comfort you, to support you. I'm so very sorry that was your experience.

It is shocking. At the same time, there is that human desire to deny the existence of such crimes or to distance ourselves from them by denying the humanity of the people involved. I have school-aged kids and I often think of their classmates "Some of these kids may be going through sexual abuse, or perhaps statistically some of them MUST be going through it." Yet even though I've been through it myself, it is hard to wrap my mind around such thoughts.

I think it's highly unlikely any of it was personal.

to judge your town you have to take yourself back into the past, into the history, into the environment. Then things will make sense to you. But they will never make sense to you without that because you have an entirely different set of facts and conditions. And awareness! Go ask your teachers why they did not help. But ask in a questioning way, an enquiring way, as though there is something they can explain that will make sense to you, and not angrily because then you won't get a result.

They will probably help you enormously when they explain. You can't know the dynamics of the prior generation without talking to them and learning. The world they inhabited is not the world you've got.

My mother did not know, at the age of 35, that such things as incest or homosexuality existed. Did not ever conceive of them. The idea of putting a penis in a bum hole was not perverse - it was irrational. It was a non-idea, it did not compute. It was a laughably ridiculous idea.

Not a thought in her head. And if she caught the stepfather cuddling the stepdaughter it never entered her mind that anything other than warmth and paternal love was happening. Never entered her head. Partly she was a bit of a dreamer; but she was raised on Woman in White, and Vicar of Wakefield, and Pride and Prejudice. She had a virgin's take on life and pretty much still has it.

I personally find that utterly mind boggling. But that's an example of the difference in the worlds she had, and I have. If she didn't read pornography where would she learn a single thing about sex? Nowhere, that's where. There was no internet, there were no television documentaries about incest. It was never discussed. Ever. I remember when the song "let's talk about sex" came out in the early nineties and I thought it was disgusting. Talk about sex? How foul. How coarse. How thoroughly unladylike.

A lady didn't talk about it, she just did it. I was 22 at the time.

And that was coming from someone who had been on the receiving end of incest. so try to visualise the cultural environment that allows you to disappear incest and consider it unladylike to talk about sex with anyone alive. :D

Anyhow you're cross now, and I totally agree with you - but this isn't the end of the story. When you've simmered down, go get in touch with those teachers you liked. And chew the fat and talk about old times, and promise yourself not to be upset at them. Because their world was not your world, and you never know, you might have behaved the same way if you had been them. :)

thanks donnawanna, that is helpful. I forget what a different world it was that my previous generation lived in. That is a good idea to find a way to talk to them about the culture at the time but not in an accusatory manner. :)

In my opinion you are absolutely entitled to feel whatever you feel about the terrible facts of your childhood. Whatever the reasons, the reality is that you were abandoned and betrayed by all the adults in your world. You were a child with no means to protect and defend yourself, and that's why the responsibility falls to the adults to take care of children. Yes, we can identify reasons for their denial. But according to you, they KNEW what was going on. But they did not act - revealing a lack of courage and a failure in their responsibility to their fellow humans and to the helpless children in their midst.

I am glad you have chosen to be different than those people! And I hope you are working with a therapist or counselor to heal the traumas of your past so that you can be as happy and fulfilled as you deserve to be. You deserve to heal from the past, and you deserve to be happy.

Thanks, I spent a lot of time working on this and I was hoping that I was past it but I'm not. I'm planning on attending a group next week. Thanks so much, the both of you, for your valuable feedback.

That's what required-reporting laws were designed to get rid of, that silence.

What happens when it is reported is another story, we need to work on that...

I am really sorry those grown people were all too chickenshit to do anything. That's angering.

Another funny thing is that maybe the incest wasn't reported but the drugs were. I was kicked out of school for having a pound of weed on me in class. The house was raided four times. I can only be better than them, that's all I can do. :)