Dad
You may be getting old and weak, forgetting the truth
behind your lies, but I will never forget.
And I will no longer hide your lies.
I will not keep your secrets; they are my truths to
tell.
For years you have silenced me, but my time to rise
from the fear within me has come.
It is time to shout the truth of who you are, and what
you’ve done, for the world to hear. Your crimes are not forgotten and will be
spoken!
I am not
taking your secrets to the grave!
I know you don’t want anyone to know. I know you have
worked to hide it well, but I have no intention of hiding the truth for you. I have
been keeping your secrets for all these years. You promised you would never
hurt me; you said you loved me, then you became just like everyone else, maybe
worse.
I was a child, and you lived with us, helping mum to
take care of my sister and myself. You called me into your bed with words of
reassurance and love. I trusted you. My mother’s favourite brother, her only
brother. She thought the sun shone out of you. We hoped you would bring the
best out of our hard and uncaring mother. You were young and fun, you seemed
much better than my father, but in time that became a lie.
I don’t remember much of what happened in your
bedroom, in my childhood house, I just remember that it hurt. I had no control,
and you took every part of me. No, it wasn’t my first time, there had been many
times before. But you were the family’s favourite. The one us cousins loved;
you were a fun kind of country larrikin. You were our uncle, mum adored you,
and you had a special place in our hearts.
We moved into our new house as puberty was hitting me.
You called me possum; I seemed the only one with a pet name. I never really
wondered why until a few years ago. It’s always nice to feel special. But it
wasn’t really. At 14 years old I got my period; I remember it clearly to this
day. I also remember getting pregnant twice that year. There was no way mum was
ever going to let you face any backlash for that. “He shouldn’t have to deal
with this” were her exact words to me. Like it was my fault, and I was
responsible for your actions. Three months pregnant and an abortion was forced
on me. Before my next birthday I was pregnant again. You hadn’t even learnt
your lesson. I didn’t want to tell anyone what was going on. I remember telling
a friend I was pregnant, and she asked me what I was going to do. I said there
was no way they were going to let me keep it. I must of hid it for a while, in
the naïve hope that maybe I could keep it. There was no way in hell I would
ever have kept that baby either. That would have brought too much shame on the
family and on my mother. At 5 months
pregnant another abortion was forced on me. But this one was different, I had
felt this baby kick inside me. I knew its movements and it had become very real
to me. To this day, over 40years later, I still grieve the loss of the two
babies you made me conceive, and the guilt I have lived with for all these
years for having to get rid of them.
It has taken me years of therapy, to even be able to
face this pain and begin to realise that it is actually not my fault. I was a
vulnerable child you took advantage of, and a terrified teenager whose life you
irreversibly destroyed.
You cannot continue to hide in the shadows hoping that
I will not speak. That time has long gone. I am a woman now, stronger and not
willing to let such hideous behaviour kept secret.
You are my uncle, you were my favourite uncle, you
were such a strong part of my life, but now you are only another pedophile who
didn’t know how to leave a child alone. I haven’t had the ability to speak of
this before now, and I hope that you have not attacked any other young girls
because of my silence. It is not a life I wish for anyone. May you live with
the shame of what you have done.
