Parents Whose children have been sexually abused Community Group
This group is for parents whose children have been sexually abused. We welcome both Mothers and Fathers. Here, we can offer support to one another. We can vent, cry and lift each other up. No condemning or criticizing allowed. We are here for support. We LOVE (((HUGS))) !
Hi. I just received some shocking news. My second oldest adult daughter has had many mental health struggles as well as anorexia. She's made a suicide attempt and has spent a lot of time off and on inpatient. She is currently inpatient and in our family session today she disclosed to me that a trusted family friend molested and raped her repeatedly when she was 11. She blocked it out and has been having severe panic attacks and flashbacks. We lived with the abuser and his family for 4 months.
My oldest adult daughter had disclosed molestation by this same abuser a bit after she turned 18. She only told me about being molested, but today after learning about her sister, she told me that she was also raped repeatedly. Neither girl has given much detail, and I let them know that if/when the time comes when they want to, I am here for them.
i cried so so much. I feel like my heart has been shattered into a million pieces. They were just 11 and 13 when this happened. And my husband and I were oblivious. We had never let our children stay with others or do sleepovers and this trusted family is the only ones we felt safe leaving our girls with. I am feeling immense guilt and anger.
My older daughter, at the time of her first disclosure, did not want to take any legal action. She was in therapy for trauma and didn't want to pursue anything. My younger daughter does want to take legal action. The thing is that this happened almost 10 years ago. In the state that it occurred (we have since moved), there is no statute of limitations on child rape. But there is also zero physical evidence. I believe my daughters 100%. We had noticed the man paying too much attention to our older daughter and we promptly moved out but it was too late. Do we have a legal leg to stand on? Do we start with contacting our local police department, the police department of the state and county where it happened? Or do we need a lawyer? At the very least, I would like this monster to be required to register as a sex offender.
How do you all cope with all of the feelings? I can't sleep. I could barely eat dinner. I can't stop thinking about this horrible human and what he stole from my girls.
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My 5 year old came forward on March 5th That another child in his class was reaching into his pants under his underwear and touching his penis each time he was in this class. The offending child and him sat alone at the table, clearly out of sight. He was trapped because he was afraid of disrupting class and afraid of the other kids, laughing if they knew what happened. The disturbed child...
First to the legal aspects. Yes, you can and should report this to the police in the town where this happened. That is different, however, from pressing charges. It just puts the guy on the department's radar. They can cross-reference with other reports of rape, but they cannot arrest. That requires your daughter (the one willing to follow through on legal action) to press charges so police can do an actual investigation. At that point, you would want to consider hiring a lawyer.
Late disclosure does complicate the matter of evidence, but there may be other ways to pursue justice. For example, 23 years later, my daughter can still describe her rapist's genitalia in detail (which she hasn't shared with me). That may be admissible in court. But we remain only one step ahead of you: we have gotten no further than reporting this to the police. I lack the procedural knowledge that others here have.
So, allow me to introduce you to this website: mosac.net. It is very thorough in its coverage of what you and your daughters may be experiencing. It also contains a lot of legal info, starting with this page:
https://www.mosac.net/WhatToExpect.aspx
I could not recommend a website more highly for anyone in your/our situation.
Another resource for legal information is RAINN.org, starting with this page:
https://www.rainn.org/after-sexual-assault
Thank God you believed your daughters. It is an incredible gift to them. You are doing everything right. And ALL of your emotions and thoughts are legitimate. I'm going to bump up an old thread about therapy, for your consideration.
Write again. Writing it all out -- and the support I found here from fellow travelers -- surely helped save my sanity.
Just to clarify, there's not really such a thing as "press charges." Your daughters can make a report, give their testimony to police, but whether to charge or not is up to the DA, not the police or the victims, and it is often based on whether they have enough evidence to prove their case under the laws of that state--which might be a totally different question than whether they believe your daughters and believe he actually did it, unfortunately. It would be good for your daughters to understand that going in. RAINN people could help explain it well.
That said, some victims find it healing just to tell their story, get it out there on the legal radar, and have at least a police interviewer tell them that they believe them. Also, even if they never charge anything, just having the police contact the guy and question him would put him on call that his victims (even if they aren't named, hopefully not, that would be a good thing to ask ahead too) are talking and he is being exposed even a little bit.
Naive also suggested contacting a lawyer in the state where it happened, that might be worth and I'm sure they'd do it by Zoom, they would be in a position to answer questions about what evidence would be needed to bring charges in that locality. You could just ask to pay for an hour of advice or whatever.
Glad you found this board. The mosac.net site is priceless too.
But not for your daughter, KittyVonMeow. She may be able to describe his experiences in enough detail that it will ring a bell with investigators. They might be able to correlate it to other reports.
If I were in your shoes, I would call Child Protective Services in the other state and ask questions. I would suspect that this person has been busy raping other girls too. They need to do what they need to do and give testimony about what happened.
We have all been betrayed here in this group and KNOW how you feel.
Stay strong, I could not have done it without Jesus to carry me through each day.