After giving birth to the most beautiful little girl in the whole world, I began to wonder how any one could ever hurt such a small and completely defenseless little person. With that thought I began to understand how, as this little girl’s mother I would die a thousand times over to protect her from this world, and I wondered why my mother did not have the same instinct with me.

When I was six years old my father was sent to prison for reasons that I am still not clear on and my mother had to move my brother, sister, and me into a trailer that could scarcely be called a home. My best friend at that time was are very old dog and with the stress of the move, died shortly after we moved into our new “home”. With my world caving in around me I was looking for anyone who would show me some sort of compassion and stability in this world, and what I found or rather what found me, would haunt me for the rest of my life.

Shortly after moving into our home we met our new neighbors. They lived in a very nice home down the road from us and seemed to have only good intentions. My mother at that time was associating with very unsightly people, and us kids did everything we could to be out of the house as much as possible. That is how I was befriended by our neighbors. They were every little kids dream, they had a whole room full of toys and were more then willing to buy me every thing that I could possible want, and I spent lots of time over at their home. This, as an adult, would have sent up a huge red flag, but my mother was oblivious to her child’s impending fate. I can not remember when I was molested by them first but I know that as a child I knew that something was not right but a six year old can not comprehend how wrong these people were. After the first time that they molested me I went home confused, not able to understand what had just happened, but I was afraid to tell anyone. My mother thought the world of these people and my brother and sister were never around enough to even realize who they were. For many days after the first time I did not want to go back over to their house, but my mother not knowing what was happening, sent me over to their home so that she could be with her friends and do whatever it was that they did. With that started the five years that I was molested by these people that seemed to be the perfect neighbors. When my mother told me to go to them, in my six year old brain, thought that this must not be that bad of a thing.

Now up to this point my mother was oblivious to what was happening to me, but the story does not end there. When I was 11 years old my mother asked me very casually, as I was getting ready for school, if our neighbors had ever touched inappropriately. I broke down crying and told her everything. My mother’s response was “don’t cry”, “and hurry up you are going to miss the bus.” For years I have tried to rationalize this response and to this day I have not been able to understand how she did not drop everything that she was doing to call the police, or at least give her daughter a huge.

Every day that goes by I fear what my daughter may be subjected to by her peers at school, and what she may she or hear on TV that is inappropriate for a little girl to see or hear. But I know, with every inch of my being, that I will never let anyone hurt her, in any way. Now as I look down at my little girl I know with out a doubt in my mind that I will never let something like that ever happen to her. Unlike my mother I will never turn my back on my child, and let unthinkable things happen to her.