annabelleleigh1, I've seen ads on tv for that Menendez brothers show you watched. Thanks for summarizing it here as to how it relates to those of us here at DSPTSD who are sexual assault survivors.

Mine was when & was 10 and 11 years of age, by a pedophile who assaulted me and 4 other elementary school classmates of mine. As you may know but it bears repeating, justice was done for us all, but not by the courts. As pedophiles never stop, years later he did get caught, tried, and convicted. Then he found out how other inmates hate pedophiles, because one of them stabbed him to death in prison. The 5 of us, now adults, met then and processed the death of our abuser together.

What made the years between when the abuse took place when I was a kid and when we adults met to process the abuser's passing was abuse heaped on his abuse by my mother. When in a class at school the teacher suggested that if anyone ever touched us inappropriately we should tell our parents, at age 12 I told my mom. She had a repressed secret of having been abused as a girl herself, though, and rather than open up she spent the rest of her life taking her pain out on me. In particular, she tried to get me to kill myself from that day onward constantly for the next 50 years until her dying day.

I had to leave home young at age 17 because weekly she would lie to my dad and, as he was an untreated bipolar, that would get him to beat me with his fists. He kept his shotgun under my bed in my room, and after he broke my nose in my bedroom, lying there in pain I realized that as his violence escalated, it could get to the point that the shotgun entered into it. I didn't know if that would mean he'd use it or I would in self-defense, but I didn't want to wind up like the Menendez brothers so I flew 5,000 miles away to start college all on my own. I was the adult in the situation, not him, but I had to do what the situation called for.

Obviously, I never had mentally healthy parents, and somehow that prepared me to be on my own from age 17 on. I was smart enough to get into therapy and get on with my life before that jailhouse justice was done to the pedophile who set in motion the addition of my parents' abuse. It sounds like you have, too. I hope someday either here on earth or in the hereafter, as you say, you get what you deserve regarding your cousin who abused you. We get it here, as you can tell from my own story I certainly do. We're here for you whenever you need us. Sending you support.

Everything in this post is super relatable, and I thank you both, Annabelle Leigh and Muji, for sharing your stories. For me it was my great uncle when I was 5 and 6. My great aunt took in babysitting to provide her husband with victims, and made sure the girls stayed close for when he came home form work for lunch so he could choose his dessert. I feel certain that not only did he hurt my mother when she was that age, but that she knowingly left me there so it would happen to me as well and I would never be able to have a better life than hers. She IS the stereotypical monster type of borderline, and my father a classic malignant narcissist. She responded to my trauma behavior with cold rejection and gaslighting, and my father with physical violence. They taught me repression and shame, and never to trust anyone or show my feelings and experiences. Karmic justice on Earth happened to my great aunt and uncle though, such a rare occurance: my great aunt went blind after a lifetime of pretending not to see, and was unable to care for him the way they did all their married life. She always acted like a high priestess tending a living god. He died of prostate cancer after what he did to so many little girls. Knowing this helped my healing process.

Muji, I know what it is to live with a relative to tries to manipulate others into suicide so they won't have to feel it themselves; with those who use violence and fear to maintain their power over what others think and feel, because it isn't enough for them to have power over what you do and say.

Annabelle Leigh, wanting the death of those who cause this kind of harm is fundamentally human; it's a violation of our sanctity and in some cases, like what these boys survived, a threat to our lives.

I think it is very sad and disgusted when an adult has to hurt a child like that. It shows that they do not care how they are hurting that person, most people who had been abused do not have children, they can't have children, especially girls go through this but some where inside of her she wants a family of her own. She would love to hear someone call her mom or mother, she would want to have someone who would love her unconditionally. But she can't have any of that because the asshole who victimized her had taken it all away from her.

My example is in the 1980s, I used to read the ladies in the newspapers that was Dear Meg and Dear Emily. Dear Meg had

annabelleleigh1, as you can see we can relate.

Thank you for your kind words and responses. I am so sorry to hear about your predicaments. I think that God doles out justice for us, whether it is here on Earth where we can see it, or after the perp's death. One way or another, they will pay. I'm having a tough day today, but it's for other reasons. I will pray for all of you and I pray that you continue to heal and be successful. Thank you again, and God bless all of you.

annabelleleigh1, I'm with you about divine justice, having gotten it myself in time. That's the thing, though, the timing of divine justice is not always synchronized with the desires of human timing. It helps, then, to have the peer support we have here so as to bridge the timing of the one to the other. Thank you for YOUR support, then, and you can count on ours any time--ANY time. :-)