SEXUAL ABUSE IN MY CHILDHOOD

     There were a few areas of my life I have had a lot of difficulty in understanding or dealing with.   A few of those areas I am still trying to understand and one of them is the sexual abuse that occurred in my life.  I even have a lot of trouble describing it as sexual abuse for I seemed to have been so much of a part of it, in more than just the physical sense, after all I was very lonely.  I have looked as to why it had happened.  Was it because I was, maybe unknowingly looking for it?  There had not been a lot of guilt feelings of this but yet I have never been able to talk of it to anyone and this abuse became the deepest secrets of my life.  It was strange to me I have never felt angry towards those people that abused me this way, not even at the most painful and fearful times.  That is unlike a lot of stories I hear today and those people I don't understand.  Why do they feel and show so much anger when I didn't?
     Since I have never talked with anyone about this abuse, I more or less had to actively deal with this on my own over the last five or six years.  Before that I didn't deal with it, I only thought of it.  I have found I can write about these things but I can't verbally talk of it.
     I have examined each sexual abuse event as it took place in my life.  How I was feeling at the time before it happened?  How they had acted towards me?  What were the circumstances that surrounded each event?  What I was looking for was the common denominator, why it had happened, the beginning of an understanding.
     In each instance I noted that I had been in an isolated environment, the only exception of this had been the subtle sexual abuses by my cottage mother Mrs. Beebee at the juvenile home.  In most instances it was directly related to my running away, either while I was gone or when I had gotten back and was in isolation.
     More than anything that would explain my lack of anger of this having happened to me was my attitude of my moral values, or should I say lack of them for I was in an environment where I was never taught any values except how to live in an institution.  Who was to teach me those moral values I should have been taught?  Ms. Gruber my cottage mother in the orphanage?  Who was abusing me.  Mrs. Beebee at the juvenile home?  Who was also abusing me.  Or maybe the Urquharts?  They were pretty busy in trying to break me of running away.
     At times I have thought, "Thank God, no one told me as a child I was being abused, sexually or any other way.  I had enough problems as it was, I don't know if I could of handled any more."   And I say that very seriously.
     By the time I was fourteen or fifteen I wouldn't have talked to anyone about sexual values, not very easily anyway.  Sex was one subject I avoided.  If I heard someone else, another boy talking about sexual things I would get up and leave.  It was a subject I didn't want to discuss nor be present at the time it was being discussed.
     I know now because of my lack of values and my trust, I had unknowingly walked into sexual abuse situations.  Sometimes it was forced upon me.  Even in New Orleans when I had unknowingly walked into that and then hadn't left, it had been because of my lack of moral values, a result of sexual abuse and my upbringing.  There was another reason I hadn't left New Orleans sooner than I did.  That was because I thought I had found what I had been looking for all of my life, a feeling that I had found someone that really cared about me.  I felt I was the center of his world.  I truly felt this man loved me more than anything else and I was willing to pay any price for that.  This had been due to a direct result of all love and attention being denied me all thorughout my childhood.  A lot of boys, and girls, submit to sexual abuse because of lack of love and attention from the normal sources in their lives, then they have to carry guilt feelings for the rest of their lives, never to tell anyone.
     It may sound like a contradiction but I didn't feel deep guilt within myself about this sexual part of my life but I did feel ashamed of it and wouldn't talk to anyone about it.  Why I felt this way I really can't say at this time.  All I can say, at one time I didn't want anyone to know of this part of my life.
     As with sexual abuse I have found that not in all cases but in most cases physical abuse was directly related to my running away.  It was as though they were thinking, "He didn't get the message the last time he ran away so we will make it harder on him this time."  And each consecutive time I ran away it did get harder on me.  It was as though they were telling me, it was my own fault I was being physically abused.  So as with physical abuse, sexual abuse has been hard for me to console myself into believing it was not my own fault.
      What has it done to me over the years of my adult life?  It has given me a sexual identity problem. What am I and what do I prefer to be?  Why?  I don't know.  A problem I shouldn't have to be faced with.  If it hadn't been for sexual abuse I wouldn't have to be facing that sort of problem.  I can understand the homosexual, gay, lesbian or whatever, but I can not be aggressively part of it.  I have found I can not be much of a part of anything, for I will not mix well with people, gay or the so-called straight people.  I now prefer to be alone, to be otherwise I fear will hurt me too much.  I don't know if I could survive the pain of losing again.

WORST ABUSE OF ALL

     There was another abuse, I don't believe that I mentioned it, but it shouts out from the pages of my book.  It can be most devastating to a child.  At times it can be a very subtle abuse, sometimes even the abuser doesn't know they are doing it.  And that is psychological abuse.  Take from a child often enough those things he wants, desires or needs and there will be a point when that child will start denying, maybe unconsciously, that he really wants them.  Or he will start looking elsewhere for those things he feels he needs to fulfill his life and do it by any means possible, such as running away.  For instance, there was a point in time I denied I needed or wanted my mother.  She had been denied me all of those years so how else was I to survive?  That feeling has lasted me all of my life.
     I lost my father when I was four years old, shortly after that I lost my mother, then passing through three foster homes feeling in turn I had lost each one of them.  I was sent to the orphanage where I lost my picture Bible book, though it may not sound like much, it meant a lot to me.  Then I was separated from my brother in a subtle way.  I was placed for adoption only to lose my adoptive mother and eventually my adoptive father and home when I was returned to the orphanage, only to be transferred from a cottage of boys my own age to a cottage for boys older than I, thus losing all of my friends.  This was to name only a few things I lost before I started running away.  How many times must a boy lose before he reacts?  Why was it so hard for them to understand why I was having problems?
     Part of the punishment for running away was for them to find something I liked or wanted and it would also be denied me.  Even when I was transferred to the juvenile home from the orphanage I was denied the few friends I had left at the orphanage, at a time when childhood friends are most important to a boy.  Childhood friends is a very important tool in the development of a child.  The denying me my mother's photograph when I was transferred was also a great loss to me.  I didn't understand it then but now I realize they had been trying to break all contact between my mother and I.  Quote from a letter written by Mr. Daines dated July 18, 1945. (see state juvenile records) "If this transfer is approved we recommend that neither the boy or his mother be furnished with any information regarding this transfer."  To me this meant that they were trying to permanently separate my mother and I from each other.  The only reason I could possibly think of why he would have done this to me is that he was very angry at me and this was his way of getting the last blow in.  Previously he had prohibited my mother from seeing me.  There was no justifiable reason for all of this. Once I was transferred I was no longer any concern of his. The only reason I can see is that he had done it out of spite to hurt an eleven year old boy because he complained of child abuse and could not conform to his ways.
     How do I feel as I write these words?  I feel very proud of that little boy and a slow burn within me and a frustration I can't tell this man what I think of him.  If he is still alive today he would be in his late nineties.
     In the juvenile home the denials continued as my book and my records bare out.  I was denied childhood friends practically all throughout my stay in the juvenile home.  An eleven, twelve, thirteen year old boy desperately needs friends his own age.  Soon as I was denied what I felt was the love of my last cottage father, I ran away after not having ran away for eleven months. The loss of my sister (when she went away and left me)  after the first time I was out of the training school to this day is hard for me to understand or describe.  The biggest denial of my childhood happened when I lost the friendship of Mr. Parker in the training school.  How much can a boy take before he will break? The loss of Mr. Parker and a few months later the death of my sister, something happened inside of me and I was never to be the same again. I withdrew, I shut down and wouldn't let anyone in.
     The strangest thing of all is I was never angry about the things that were happening in my life.  For you see I was blaming myself for everything that was happening to me, even the death of my sister for I felt that in some way it was my fault.
     Yes, I blamed myself for my sister's death even though it had happened over a thousand miles from me and two weeks after I had last seen her.  I believe that is a natural reaction but then in time you should get over it.  But you see I have never been able to accept my sister's death so I could never get over it.  I have never been able to get past the stage of grief.
     Self blame is a terrible thing to have to carry all of these years.  I am still dealing with it on my own, in my own way and still, even through better understanding I can not show real anger.  Who and what can I be angry at?  And what would it change anyway?
     From the time of my sister's death I have never been able to remember a person's name I was associated with only the year before.  But yet my memories of events is quite sharp, though at times I have a feeling I try to block some things out.
     Though I was in the Iowa Training School for Boys for a total of two years I can not remember the names of any of the boys there.  I believe it is the direct results of losing all of my childhood friends at the  juvenile home.  After that I no longer wanted any childhood friends only to lose them again.
     I believe the psychological problems that I had as I grew up not being addressed were more damaging to me than all of the other abuses put together.  Oh yes, the other abuses were to later cause me problems too.
    I was asked a few  months back, if I didn't feel real angry and bitter of those years and what they had done to me.  If at times I didn't feel like going back and seek my revenge.  No, I have never felt that way for they had also taught me something else as I was growing up and that was self-blame.  Something that was to cause all of the anger and bitterness of my life to turn inward to where I tried to bury it but where it was to eventually hurt so much it was to drive me very close to suicide.  ----- Let's put it this way, I am only here today to write this because I failed at any attempt I have ever made on my own life.