Jessica
Survivor of Childhood Sexual Abuse
I was a victim of childhood sexual assault for 9 years during my youth, and I didn’t know there was anything wrong until I was going to a Girl Scout field trip with all my Girl Scout friends and the Girl Scout Leader was driving the car. We were in the fifth grade, and all the girls were talking about all the things they had done with boys, how far they had gone, and I remember saying, feeling like I fit in, saying, “Oh, I’ve done basically everything with my friend’s father.” I’m very surprised the Girl Scout leader didn’t run off the road.
The grooming began at age two, so I just didn’t realize. I thought that you play for a little while with your friends, and sometimes their father touches you and then you play outside and this is just the way things were. But if someone had told me, “No one’s supposed to touch you in the private areas where you wear a bathing suit”, I would have said “Hey, you don’t get to touch me!”, but I never knew that so I just accepted it.
I found out soon afterwards that my Mom was also a survivor of childhood sexual assault and that many people in my family were survivors of incest. I felt mad that my family history had kept these safety concerns a secret for so long and I felt just enraged that this happens to other people. Why isn’t everyone as outraged as I am? I have a big mouth, I have a knack for resilience, I have sense of humor that keeps me going and I just felt the need to teach more people about how horrible this is and that nobody knows about it. I’m actually glad that so many people are disclosing right now, I didn’t think it would happen in my lifetime, that we’d be having this discussion in newspapers and on TV. I never thought we would ever live in a day when we can openly talk about this.
I just threw myself into activism and trying to make sure that this happened to as few people as possible. After my first baby was born I felt like it was imperative, that I had to know exactly what to say to make sure this didn’t happen to my child. So when I became a parent I volunteered for (my local crisis center’s) education department and I learned what to say to children in an age appropriate way, and help them identify trusted adults.
So, basically, parenthood turned me to activism. I thought, OK I need to take this issue (sexual abuse prevention education) to the State and with the help of my State Senator we drafted a bill to identify best practices in this kind of curricula and we got it signed into law. We were able to get included in the NH Health Curricula and now 250,000 kids get this information in schools. Once that happened, I felt, “OK I can die happy.”
I’m a loudmouth, I’m kind of a whistle blower. In high school, I got “Most Informative” and “Most Talkative” so if there is injustice I can’t not talk about and this is happening to our children. The overriding message that I want to get out to survivors is that you can survive from this and come out of it stronger than you ever were, and that it’s everyone’s duty to help eradicate this. Everyone needs to step up, stop it from happening, and be an up-stander, not a bystander.
