*******trigger warning – ritual, sexual, and emotional abuse*******
From here forward, it is difficult for me to tell the story in a linear fashion. After the ritual abuse started, I split into complex dissociative identity disorder (DID), and I did not recover the memories in a linear fashion. I will do the best I can to tell my stories in the order they happened.
S made it painfully clear that telling anyone about the abuse was not an option. However, I knew that my father had stopped my mother’s abuse, so I had hope that perhaps he could stop S. S’s biggest threat was harming my sister, so I made my move when my sister was not present. I don’t remember where she was – perhaps spending the night at a friend’s house. Regardless, my parents planned to bring just me over to S & L’s house.
I begged not to go. I said that I did not have fun there and that I really did not want to go. Both of my parents shrugged it off, touting how I got to swim in S & L’s swimming pool and play Connect Four in their basement. (That game still triggers me.) They disregarded my pleas and made me come with them.
When we go there, my parents laughingly told S & L about my reluctance to come, acting like it was such a joke that I wouldn’t want to be there. S did not take this well. She told my parents that she was setting me up to watch a movie in the basement. Instead, she made me take off my clothes, and she tied me spread eagle and naked to a bed in the downstairs guest room.
Then she taunted me as she took photographs of me in that degrading position. She mocked me: “So, you want to tell your father? He already knows! Who do you think these pictures are for?” It is a blur what else she did except that she left me tied naked to the bed for two hours. She told my parents that I feel asleep watching the movie, and it didn’t occur to them to come down to the basement to check on me.
I had recently gotten into making latch hook rugs, and I was very proud of one I had almost finished of an owl. Although I loved it, I knew I had to give it to S as a “peace offering” of sorts. I had put countless hours into this project, and my parents told me that I did not have to give it to her, but I knew that I had to. I had no choice. It was the overwhelming compulsion inside, probably to show submission so she wouldn’t hurt my sister, who came along for the next visit. I never saw the owl rug again. The b@#$% probably just threw it away.
Photo credit: Amazon.com
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Faith Allen. Faith Allen said: Ensuring Wouldn’t Tell https://faithallen.wordpress.com/2010/05/18/faith-allen%E2%80%99s-story-%E2%80%93-making-sure-i-wouldn%E2%80%99t-tell […]
I am shocked at the similarity of methods.
The cats, the trolls, the Russian dolls and the photos.
I walked to school one day and there was a photo of me on a tree for everyone to see. Obvious as an adult that this was planned and that no one but be saw it. It was in front of a house where one of the abusers lived. It was actually a store. On the way home there was a photo on a telephone pole at a different house.
It was always a case of me or my family.
How it was always made my fault and how there was no way to get to the truth.
I was told that my parents sold me to the cult. How many times I was told I would never see them again if I did not …
Often they told me that my family was already dead and that I was to blame. Then they would say they brought them back to life.
I have the same thing with memories not being liner.
It is hard work you are doing.
Keep telling, Faith. You are so brave.
ang
Faith Allen's Story ? Making Sure I Wouldn't Tell « Blooming Lotus…
I found your entry interesting do I’ve added a Trackback to it on my weblog :)…
I want to pummel her till I exhaust myself… and all the other hating shit eaters that do this. Sorry for the language. If you take it down I’ll underst
Having computer trouble… what I was saying is that I’ll understand if you take down my comment, but it is honestly how I feel. I know it does no good to be violent, but I can’t help it. I want to beat the shit out of them all.
Me, too. I have done so many times through visualization.
– Faith
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My abuser, too, took pictures of me. Thank you for sharing your story.
After reading your story, I can come to no other conclusion than you were in the presence and subjected to real evil.I very rarely use that word evil, but the adults in your childhood WERE evil. The fact that you managed to hold on to YOUR humanity is a miracle as they very systematically tried to take that from you. Abusers are often people who were abused as children, but what makes your situation so much worse is that your abusers seemed to take some twisted, sick pleasure into trying to make you grow up like them to abuse.I am also a survivor, and I am in absolute awe of you. You may have had to split to protect yourself, but the goodness and humanity were so strong in you that they were unable to destroy them.