Welcome to Episode 4 where Sandi shares her experiences of being groomed and sexually assaulted when she was a child. Please take care of yourself and take breaks from listening if you need to. You are loved.
Welcome to Episode 4 where Sandi shares her experiences of being groomed and sexually assaulted when she was a child. Please take care of yourself and take breaks from listening if you need to. You are loved.
Hello, beautiful people! This is Candy.
And I'm Sandi . Hello!
It's good to have you back. Last week I shared my story and it was heavy and I hope you're all doing well after listening to all of that and today we are going to have another heavy episode where Sandi is going to share her story.
We indeed are and it's been quite a long time since I've done this and so, like, Candy last week. I'm feeling a little bit nervous, but, um, it's my story, it's ingrained in me like the rest of my body parts, , and, , for as much as we'd like to think that our trauma is fully integrated, , there are some things that I am still feeling a little nervous about as far as presenting today.
, what I'm really hoping to do is to tell my story in a couple of different ways. First, you're going to get my personal experience, and then you're going to get my clinical opinion on what could have been done differently to save me from experiencing the things that I did.
That sounds great.
So I had a pretty normal, loving awesome childhood up until about fourth grade. , I liked Barbies, I liked to go out and play with my battery operated lightsaber in the summertime, and catch fireflies, because we lived in the Midwest, and I really, really loved growing up, um, In Illinois, I grew up in the suburbs outside of Chicago and, , had a lot of good memories of my family and, , my extended family and growing up with some of my aunts and uncles and their children.
We had a very close knit neighborhood, which was really, really cool. I was like the oldest kid of all the kids on my block, so I was like the built in babysitter being the older kid. So here I am, seven, eight years, nine years old, ten years old, babysitting for like seven little ones who were all under the age of five.
Oh my god, wow.
And I loved those kids. Um, I still have maybe three of them that I'm still in connection with these days, , on social media, , from a very far distance, but, , they've all grown up into amazing young people, which is actually really cool to watch. , you know, cause I wasn't a grown up either, but I was like saddled with Here's all these fucking kids!
Okay, cool.
I was, , a little bit awkward as a young child. I developed early, I was taller, , I got boobs in third grade, and I had very curly hair that my mom did not know how to style, and so I often, um, looked like I had sort of a q tip thing going on, and it was sort of cut like a bowl cut. , so, and I was pretty gangly and athletic, and I played softball, and so I had a lot of muscles, and so I was a pretty strong kid, but I was not the most traditionally feminine, as you would say, kid on the block, and I remember being bullied a lot because of that, and I did not like that, and I was, I thought, a pretty cool kid, and I thought people should just like me for who I was inside. Turns out, that's not what kids in school thought.
Definitely not.
So, we know kids can be incredibly cruel. , and I think that this was, you know, a long time before we came into, let's, you know, be nice and social emotional, emotional learning. And I think they tried to look out for kids who were bullied, but I was definitely one of those kids. , and I was always sort of attracted to, like, the other kids. The kids who didn't fit.
Yes.
You know?
Yes. I can appreciate that.
Yeah. The misfits. So, , things through third grade were awesome. At that point, , my favorite toys when I was growing up, and this'll, you can have whatever response to this you like, but my favorite toys were Barbies. I had two giant chests that were like five foot tall chests that went up, I don't know, about six feet wide of just Barbie stuff. And I had the Barbie townhouse, and I had the Barbie mobile, and I had the Barbie shower, and I had, I had everything Barbie. My mom used to make clothes for my Barbies, which was amazing.
That's awesome.
And I loved that. , so I had, when I moved from, well, I'm, I'm skipping ahead a little bit, but when I moved from Illinois to Colorado, when I was 12 years old, or 13 years old, I had 36 Barbies.
Wow! That's incredible. That's a lot of Barbies.
And, and one Ken doll.
Wow.
Just to balance things out.
Ken had a harem.
I wasn't, even growing up, I wasn't so much interested in what Ken was doing because he, he just was sort of, Ken, and I was way more interested in the Barbies having lives, and I had all kinds of, you know, different storylines with the Barbies that I would act out, and I do remember acting out some of the bullying that I received with my Barbies.
Oh, that's interesting.
So I was like doing play therapy with myself without even really knowing it.
Wow.
Yeah,
that's cool.
And I had one doll in particular that I was really attached to. Her name was Darcy. And she was a taller, dark haired, very wide face, very wide hips, wide I mean, she was built. Barbie was like built built like an Amazon woman. She was amazing. And her shoes, she had such big feet, which I identified with because I had like a size nine foot when I was like, you know, you know, tiny.
Yes, me too. Yes.
And I always identified with Darcy. Um, and sometimes she would just get real sassy with the Barbie's and be like, you know, fuck you, you, you know, you skinny little, you know, blonde, blah, blah, blah, because I was getting bullied by the typical kind of blonde, young girl that just couldn't accept that my femininity and my looks didn't fit. And so that was just the bullying from the girls. The boys were another thing. It was just awful, you know, the snapping of the bra straps, the making fun of me because I had boobs, the whole thing. So yeah, it was not, it was, that part was not fun, but I always really liked school, , and was a very good student.
Um, that my biggest complaint was, you know, she talks too much. Well, future written in stone right there, which is delightful looking back. , and, So in fourth grade , I entered a class in my elementary school and we had a very tall man who was a teacher. He was this booming, he had this big deep, booming voice, and he was a very tall African American man, , and coming from where I come from, it was very diverse. Like, you know, having, having, in some places having a black teacher and having diversity in your student body was not a thing.
Right.
But from where I was raised, I mean, I was like the minority in my junior high school. Um, so I was used to having, you know, Puerto Ricans, Chinese, Indian. I mean, it was just a very diverse growing up, which I loved, , and I kind of wanted the same thing for my kid, so there's the whole thing there, but that's a different episode. So I started fourth grade, and I don't remember exactly when it started, but it was very close to the beginning of fourth grade. My teacher, who was probably 6'4 Maybe 260 pounds. He was a tall, beefy, booming structure with a big, deep voice. Oh my. And these gigantic hands, which unbeknownst to me starting class, I had no idea that those hands would be touching me in an inappropriate way. This teacher would bring me and every other child, and maybe it wasn't all of them, but there were many in the class, and he would bring us up for desk time. And he would put his arm around us and sort of, because he was so large and hulking, he could just, like, scoop our entire body toward him.
Mm hmm.
And it started with, um, molesting us. between our legs, over the clothes, , and I knew that he, I wasn't the only one that he was doing this to. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what to say, so I said nothing. , I remember being, feeling like he loved us, but I was also terrified of him.
Completely understandable. He's person of power.
Yeah.
You know, somebody that you're supposed to be safe with.
Yeah. The person in a position of trust. And I've had, I had, you know, several years of successful schooling with lovely teachers prior to this from preschool and on, or kindergarten and on, and just didn't expect this. So he would sort of cradle us, our body, our little bodies into his body and pull us behind his desk.
And it just started with him touching us. Well, I can only speak for me, but I can only imagine, because I know this happened to other kids in my class, um, because we would sit, and then it, when it, like in our desks, and then when it was time for us to have, like, desk time, one on one time, we would come up and he would cradle us in and touch us, and he was whispering things in my ear, like Mr. B loves you, and You know, I love you and you're so sweet and you're such a good kid and talk all of these sweet nothings almost as he was doing what he was doing.
Oh my god.
Yeah. Yeah So if that wasn't bad enough, um, I had a few friends in the class and the one the one kiddo's name was (__) and we kind of, like, I think we liked each other, but we didn't know how to, like, say we liked each other. You know, you're in fourth grade. What do you know? And so we just were friendly and friends. And I remember seeing sitting up at that desk, and I'm watching him. And I remember seeing his little face twist in such a way that I was absolutely convinced he was not just doing it to me.
Oh, that's heartbreaking to have to watch that, not just experience it, but watch it from,
Yeah
Yeah. And so there was sort of this like, almost like a secret club. that we were in, he and I. I remember we went away for camp, I think for a week, and it was through the school and we had older kids who came in and they were, you know, taking care of like, you know, the, the, not the den mothers, but like, you know, like a house mother and house father, you know, and older people who would like be in charge of us. And there was one night that we went on like a nighttime nature walk, and it was probably, It had to have been like past nine o'clock, um, because it was dark out and it was still a school year. And maybe it was only three days. It's hard to remember because, you know, I'm just looking back like, God, I wish I had more, more written more at the time, but I wasn't, my brain wasn't thinking in those terms. And often, like, when we look back at sexual assault or sexual abuse, , we look back in hindsight's 2020. We could see exactly what was going on, but not then.
Right.
So we went to camp and we were on this nighttime walk, and (____) reached over and started holding my hand, and we were at the very back. Our teacher who was offending against us was in the very front leading us on this thing. And I, I think I remember like having these thoughts about like, how can, how is this okay? Like, how is this okay? You let us go for a wilderness trip and stay overnight with a. A teacher who's doing such things and like, I don't think I was so conscious of those thoughts, but I remember thinking something was really weird about that.
Yes . Yes. I remember feeling that way myself. You don't have the words to explain what's going on, but you can tell that it's just not right.
Yeah. And the only, only introduction to sexual education at this point that I had had was a book that my dad gave to me. . And we never talked about the book.
In fact, I still have the book. And it was a book about puberty, and it was all comic books. And it's called, it was called, What's Happening to Me. And I still have the book on my bookshelf. And it, it just, I, I think there's a part of me that wants to look back and go, How did you not know that this was wrong? But then I remember how old I was.
Right.
And if nobody specifically spells out, like, that book didn't talk about sexual abuse. It talked about masturbation, it talked about how you're gonna grow boobies, and how you're gonna grow hair all over your body, and it's gonna be fuckin weird. And it was a great book. It was just such a good, informative book. But it did not talk about bodily consent.
Right. We didn't have anything like that back then.
It was the 70s. What is bodily consent in the 70s? Well, people can just grope the shit out of you and it's, you know, perfectly normal. They can catcall you and it's perfectly normal. So I, I don't remember that I did anything with this information and what was happening to me, um, again until fifth grade. And then we had sex ed and we were sitting in the room and I don't believe they had split us up, boys and girls. But maybe they did, because I think they had two different books, and I still, in my little bucket of old stuff from my childhood, I still have the book. And it was the book for girls, and it was pink on the outside, it was this little like folded chap book, and it was sort of like the companion to the movie that they were showing us. And at the time, we were still watching movies on a reel.
Oh, my goodness.
You know, you bring in the projector and you hear the ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta. And I remember we got to a point in the video or in the movie that, and I'm hearing the sound, the ta ta ta ta ta ta ta, as it's going around, and they were talking about something about sex or, or something sexual was only supposed to happen between, um, between married people. Like a husband and a wife. And I think at the time, of course, they named that because, you know, there was no in between. It was just the binary. Um, so they weren't catering to that even then. , when that's a very real part of human sexuality and it varies from person to person. So I remember bursting into tears. And my teacher was very pregnant, Mrs. P, and it was her first child. And I tear out of the room, and I'm in the little quad area that there's like four classrooms around, and then there's like the doors to the classrooms in a little kind of corner, and then there's a little empty space in the center. And I got to the floor in the center, and I just crumbled on the ground. And I, I don't remember what I was thinking, but I know that I had this very significant emotional reaction to what had happened. And the abnormality of what had happened to me and so many other children. And my teacher, of course, comes out of the room and she's, she says, What is wrong, Sandi ? And she's like pleading with me. And I remember she kind of got down on her knees and she got this big, you know, like huge belly. She was maybe two months away from birth. And I'm like, that can't be easy. Been there, done that. She gets down on the floor with me and she said, honey, what is wrong? What is wrong? And she kept asking me and asking me. And I finally looked up at her and I said, Mr. B touched me. And the look on her face in those moments, Like, I can still remember, her eyes got wide, and all of a sudden she just melted down. And just started crying. And she said, Oh my God. And she wrapped her arms around me, and then said, Big, gigantic, loving hug, and she said, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, and I just continued to sob. I don't remember how we sort of pulled out of that embrace, um, but at one point when things had maybe not been so escalated, she looked at me and she said, Honey, we need to go tell the principal. We need to go tell Mr. L. Are you able to do that? I said, I guess so. So she got one of the teachers to come in, finish up the class, and she marched down to the principal's office with me. And I remember her asking me, again, I don't remember her words, but I remember she basically, you know, asked me, will you please tell him what you told me. And I told Mr. L. I said, Mr. B touched me. and he then asked me some questions, and he was also a very, I remember him, he was a very sweet older man, probably in his 60s, which was older at the time to me, you know, , bald hair, big, big blue eyes, and these glasses, like the big coke bottle type glasses, and he was also very large and hulking, and could be really intimidating, but he was a very sweet principal. He was very nice. And, , he asked me more details. And what ended up happening in that is that he said we need to, we need to get this on record. So they brought out one of those tape recorders that was like, had the little cassette, and it had the handle on it, and you could push like play and record, and the double play record, but you'd hit both of them at the same time. And I just remember, and the sounds that, that occur to me in my brain is the the whip, whip, whip, whip, whip, whip, whip of the movie that was being shown that triggered this episode in me, and then the, the clicking of that cassette tape.
It's a very distinctive sound.
Yeah. And then they called my parents. My, both my mom and dad came into the office, and they made me recount all of the things. And then, I'm starting to think, like, this was 1980. 82? Then they went and grabbed Mr. B.
What?
And brought him into the room. And I was fucking terrified.
As you should be.
And we kind of talked last session about we don't just bring in the offender and have you do a face off. Like, but this is 1982. They didn't know what they were doing.
I mean, that's fair. And also, damn.
Yeah. So now I'm sitting at this very, this big round table with this tape recorder in the center, and I'm telling these things to the principal. My parents are there. And I remember feeling incredibly ashamed, incredibly embarrassed and just wanted to fucking disappear. And my parents, I, I don't know that they ever fully registered what had happened. And I know for certain they did not know what to do with it because it was never mentioned again.
What!?
Oh. Wow. Okay.
So, I'll back up. They bring Mr. B in. The principal recounts for him what I had said. And he said, I didn't do this. I am not that. What are you? I mean, it was just defense and I remember him getting very big and angry. And I remember the energy in the room shifted. And even back then I was a very empathic little person. I could tell people, I could read people's feelings and read energy and he just got big and angry and I was scared. And I still remember my parents were sort of sitting like, I was sort of sitting at the table by myself. And my parents were sort of off on the side, and the principal's off on the side, and the teacher that I had disclosed to was off on the side, and maybe even the secretary. And it's sort of like, you know, when somebody's doing like a medical procedure at like a teaching hospital. And I just remember feeling like, by myself in these moments, why am I not being attended to? And that's what I think looking back, but I was literally sitting this little kid at the table by myself with the big hulking offender screaming and getting really upset and his energy is discharging anywhere and he's angry and he's denying it. And we never, after that day, I never saw him again. He left teaching that day.
Wow.
And he lived in a place that was like a park where there was a skating rink. It was just this gorgeous place and he lived off of the lake and had this very nice house with his wife. And he moved shortly after that, and I didn't know where he went. And the teacher was, I mean, obviously he was replaced at the school. But there were no records beyond that little cassette tape.
What happened to that?
In 2021 or 2020, whenever the Me Too movement happened, I called and found the school district and I did a FOIA request asking for any and all information pertaining to this teacher. Because at this juncture, I think I looked up, I looked him up online in my 20s. Right after we had the internet, like the internet would have just become a thing. And I was like, who's the first, what's the first thing you want to go look up? Your fucking molester!
I can appreciate that.
Yeah, that's, that's what I did. And I found him and he now makes condiments and had a barbecue restaurant. And his LinkedIn profile says, I left teaching because I wanted to pursue my passion for barbecue. Yeah. So that's how that turned out. And no adult ever brought that up again. My parents didn't check in. And, and I don't blame them because I don't know that they knew how.
Sure. I get that. I get that. And it's still really hard to not be acknowledged.
And my clinical self is just sitting here going. Oh my fucking God.
Yeah.
Nobody at like if I had to personify myself in third person and sort of, you know, have that out of body experience like I can see myself. I knew I was dissociative at that point because I my memories of it are from a distance like above like you're looking at myself like I'm watching this movie.
Yep.
And then of course with the sound and still when I get any kind of flashback material. It's on a film.
That's interesting. I mean, I get it. I have my own, the sound of a waterbed.
Mm hmm.
So many, so many different, things.
yeah, yeah,
I get that.
So, it's interesting because I think back, like, how did that affect me? And in my childhood, I don't think it did. Except that, and this, this happened over the course of a full year.
Okay.
I was molested for an entire school year by this teacher. And I, I take heart in the fact that he switched over from teaching to pursue barbecue because he has no business around children. He has no business in a position of power over anybody, or quite frankly, anything. , And to see his face now, I just, I mean, I just, you know, I Googled it a couple of weeks ago and we were starting to do some prep for these things. And I was just like, Jesus Christ, this fucking guy is still out there.
Right.
Living his life, made a bunch of money.
Yeah.
And I could fuck that up for him.
Yes, you could.
But I have no desire to do that.
I want to ask you real quick. Do you struggle with At times or did you struggle at times with? Feeling like major anger major resentment over the fact that this person got to get away with all this shit for who knows how long
Yeah
And Continue to live their life and be successful and be presumably happy.
Yeah...
And you were left as a pile of dust, shattered, whatever you want to, whatever metaphor works and you have had to gather those pieces up and rebuild yourself and work hard.
Yes. The answers to that question are emphatically yes. There were times that I had fantasies of him dying.
Oh, yes, I can relate to that.
You know, like if he could just get hit by a bus, that'd be awesome.
That'd be too quick.
Not nearly painful enough.
Indeed.
Right. Because we know the kind of residue that this caused for me because 35, 40 years later, I'm still talking about it.
Right.
And the thing that really sucks about this, the worst part that sucks about this, is this led me to be in a position where I was groomed again. And that's where I'll start from here. When I was in seventh grade, sixth grade, my parents decided that they were going to move to Colorado and I did not want to go. because I had at that point entered middle school and I had made some friends and I had a core group of people that were misfits just like me and we all loved each other and we had a great time together and they felt like safe people. They had some pretty fucked up situations in their homes going on so again I was attracted to that sort of, you know, person who's got, you know, a bunch of shit going on. Um, and I feel like on some level, even though my childhood was very happy, these things made me feel like I stuck out like a sore thumb.
Yes, absolutely. You're an other.
I just didn't fit anywhere. And because I had all this trauma response and residue sort of camping out and hiding in my body and in my soul that nobody was asking me about, And I felt so ashamed and embarrassed that this had happened to me and that I had let it gone on so long That I just never talked about it so that felt like the setup for me into the next situation that has If I had said if I say that it ruined my whole life that makes sense on the surface and it didn't, it didn't ruin my whole life, but it fucked me up relationally to the point that again, it was a setup for another poor, awful relationship.
And I'll get to this. So we moved in, in, well, we were planning to move to Colorado. So I was the six months prior having to say goodbye to all my friends, enjoying my last summer, because we were going to move in the wintertime. So not only did we move in the middle of middle school, but we moved in the middle of the semester.
Oh, man.
And we moved in the wintertime. So the summer before, my, my uncle and his wife and his two kids, my cousins, they moved It was my dad's brother, , and his family. They came out to Illinois to see us and they stayed with us for, I don't know, five days a week. And all I remember is that my oldest cousin, he would take forever in the shower. He was just in the shower forever. And he was one of those, Like kids who like, it was like, you know, the 1980s, the OP shorts and, you know, the fucking polo shirts with the popped collar and, you know, the Lacosta and, you know, all the fucking preppy and the deck shoes with no socks, which just made your feet fucking stink to high heaven. Like it just, like weird fucking eighties were weird, man. Thank God we got to the heavy metal portion, because that preppy shit I could just give two shits about, like it's just so abhorrent to me even now, ah. Um, and he, you know, they were a nice, white, Christian family from the suburbs. What could be wrong?
All the things.
Oh, and the other part that gets me a little stuck, just to back up to Mr. B, um, he went, he was raised Baptist and went to a Baptist college.
Wow.
So, a highly religious dude molesting a bunch of kids. Super. All right. Flashing back forward. Um, they came out that summer and they stayed with us for five to seven days and I remember my cousin taking forever in the shower Like he would take so long that he'd actually like make us make us late for dinner Like we had to fucking wait on his ass because he was like fixing his hair and he'd blow dry his hair and like, you know Oh god, just so much grooming that he did with himself. I'm like, dude, what did you like? I didn't even spend that much time in the fucking shower and I'm 12 year old girl.
Right?
So, it was the summer that I was 12 and then I turned 13 in the fall And so I remember at one point they were getting ready to leave And we were I was down in the basement And that's where all my Barbies were. I had, like, the two big yellow, dressers filled with all my Barbie shit and the Barbie condo and all the stuff's laying around. This was literally my play area. And he came down to the basement when I was in there and I was playing. And I got up, and I think he was trying to say, it was like the, I think it was the night before. And he said, well, I just came down to say goodbye to you. And I was like, okay, so I get up and I give him a hug and he grabs me in such a way that I just kind of froze and locked up. And I still remember what I was wearing and he pushed me up against the washing machine and he looked down at me. He was probably, I don't know, six inches taller than me. He was not very tall. Um, I think he was only like five nine as an adult and he was grown. He was seven years older than me, almost eight years older than me at this time and he pushed me up against the washing machine. And all I remember is that his eyes, he looked down at me in such a way that made me feel like an object. And I just remember he got his eyes just darkened, like they were just looming over me. And he said something to the effect of, I think you're really pretty. And I was like, flattered, because no boys had responded to me, and here this older boy who was 20 years old, responding to me in such a way. Right. And then also having the immediate recognition at the same time, this is a family member. Like, this is a man.
Mm hmm.
And then he said, I can't wait to see you in January. Okay. And he went to bed, and I went to go back and play with my Barbies. And that was the end of it. Until January. So we moved, we moved here in 1986 from Illinois. And I think he had sent me a couple letters in between that time. And I wish that I had saved them. I wish I knew where they were. I have a box in my cellar that has all my, like, childhood notes. And, remember those little thingies that you used to make? That you'd fold the origami and they'd have the answers in them? And you'd, like, 1, and then you'd open them up?
Yeah, and then you'd flip the flap open and there'd be an answer there?
Um, I It's in a box with a lot of those and letters that I wrote to high, wrote to my high school friends backwards and upside down. We learned how to do that so we could pass notes in class and the teacher couldn't read them.
Ooh upside down? I never tried that. Now I want to try it.
I couldn't do it now to save my life. I've tried, but it, yeah, it doesn't work. So I, um, I started school when we got off Christmas break, I think probably mid January. I think we rolled into Colorado like on the second or the third, so it was right after the new year. And we'd driven all of our shit from Illinois to Colorado. And we were living in Castle Rock, and, um, very suddenly, my cousin became a fixture in my life. He would come over and spend the night, and he was 21 or 22 at that time, and he was able to drink, so he would come over and have beers with my dad, and they would hang out, and smoke some pot, and chill, and watch, you know, listen to music, and hang out, and my dad was, like, loving it, because I think that, you know, he was just like, oh, you know, I have this kid who's my nephew, you know, and he's really cool, and my dad wasn't exactly, like, the best at grown upping. Um, he worked hard in his life, but he also did a lot of substances and had bipolar disorder. So he was self medicating since he was probably about 10 years old...so they would get together and party and stuff. And then, you know, he would have to, the cousin would have too much to drink and then he'd end up staying at our place. And he started to groom me from day one. and saying things that were really inappropriate and setting me up for this is what girls do and this is what men do and this is what women do and you're a little woman and that was one of his nicknames for me my little woman.
Oh, ewww.
I know.
That is so gross.
I'm 13 years old and I had brought all my Barbie shit with me. So I had the same setup. The two yellow dressers with all the Barbie stuff and at one point, , I decided that because I was a little woman that I would now sell all my Barbies.
God.
So when we moved into the house, , I mean I was very quickly groomed into a position of I'm not a kid anymore. I'm now a little woman who is ready for all the things that women do.
Oh, okay.
I'm getting red just thinking about it. I like, I get so enraged thinking back about the process that he used on me.
Right.
And it obviously escalated. , and he took my virginity in a parking lot. In a dirt lot in his car outside of the Castle Rock.
And you were, again, what age?
Thirteen.
Thirteen.
I had just turned thirteen in October.
This was probably March of eighty six, so I was thirteen in six months, five months. And I don't remember. And then he would take me back home and say, Oh, we went bowling or we did, you know, whatever. And he would just look at me and I would be like, yeah, good time bowling. And I think I was pretty dissociative from that moment on.
Sure. Naturally.
And there was a thrill to it in some ways because I was being treated special. I was being told all the nice things.
Yes.
You recognize that.
Yeah, you're getting, , positive reinforcement.
Yeah, yeah. And it escalated, and I, I think he probably started to pick me up from school when I was in eighth grade,, because that was a full year later.
And then we decided to move to Littleton, and we moved into a house that my parents had bought and had built. And he was a pretty constant fixture at our house, because we didn't live in Castle Rock anymore, and they lived in Littleton, so there was a whole lot more easy access within about a year to a year and a half, probably two years.
And he had been, and I'm going to use the word assaulting me, he had been assaulting me weekly, two to three times a week. and taking me places and picking me up from school. And my parents thought this was great because I didn't have friends here. I had to start over socially. And I met one girl that I became friends with for several years. And, during the time that I was a freshman in high school, he had basically nominated himself as my boyfriend. And I began to look at him like he was my boyfriend.
Sure. Yeah.
But, nobody knew what was going on. Nobody in my family knew. We would go over, when we lived in Littleton and they lived in Littleton too, it was much easier access to, get to me. So we would spend a lot of time at my aunt and uncle's house, and then they would spend time at our house, and we'd go over for dinner on the weekends, and have picnics and barbecues and all that other stuff. And there were times, and I remember, , and their house still stands, the house where all a good portion of my abuse happened, still stands, and I drive by it, and I love the neighborhood. We literally moved five minutes away from where all of this happened.
Wow. I can imagine that can be hard sometimes.
It's not now, but it used to be. It very much used to be. But I've been able to rewrite over those memories. And take that back.
Yes! I love that. There is so much power in taking, in writing over. It's like the VHS, old VHS tapes.
Yeah. Blip!
Exactly. You just record over that. Yeah. That part.
Yeah. I don't need ten episodes of The Muppets. I'm going to record over it and record something way cooler.
Yes.
Cause you can get the Muppets on DVD, just as an aside. , I'm distracting my own self from going further because I'm noticing that I'm getting really uncomfortable. Owning the part of this, and I don't care what anybody says, no, I shouldn't have known better. No, I shouldn't have been able to stop it. And no, I had no idea what to do to fend for myself and to fend him off. Right. I did not have those skills. And so anybody else who wants to come in, or listens, or thinks that we can blame a 12, or a 13, year old child who has already been groomed by a teacher.
Right.
Good luck with that.
Yeah.
Good fucking luck. So there were times we'd go over for barbecue, and we'd get done eating. I'd be done eating, and I remember I, at this point, I was starting to kind of like Even though I saw him as my boyfriend, I always was really like self conscious and like worried about myself like and and what I can look back on and go oh I was having significant anxiety.
Oh sure,
yeah. You know? Yep. Feeling nervous, feeling sick to my stomach, having my body shake, getting really red, sweating, heart palpitations, not being able to literally find my fucking voice. Because nobody in my family had a fucking clue what was going on. They did not know that he would, I would go over to my aunt and uncle's house and spend the night. And I would sleep downstairs. And he would, after everybody went to bed, he would creep down from his bedroom, two floors down, and rape me. And he would show me his dad's collection of Playboys. He would show me pictures and say, this is what I want you to look like. This is what I want you to wear. We need to find you some things. So yeah, I mean, it's just, the whole thing was just disgusting.
Right.
And there were times that we'd get done with dinner. I'd finish, he'd finish and he'd say, hey, you know, let's go do something on the computer or whatever. And he would take me upstairs, and literally his bedroom was right over the dining room table where we were eating.
Oh, God. Yeah.
And every time, I mean, having those assaults happen, I think back to like the details of it. I was completely checked out. I don't remember, except I, I do remember, but I remember from that standing up above and watching myself, watching myself lay there, be pinned down, and him talking about really, really graphic sexual things while he was getting hard, and while he was ejaculating on me, and while he was using my body for whatever thing he felt like he wanted to use it for. And there was nothing inherently. violent about it or threatening about it, but the whole act itself was just that, violent and threatening. But he made it very much seem like this was a sanctioned thing, and this was at the point where I had a few pregnancy scares, and he said to me, Multiple times. Well, if you ever did get pregnant, then we'll just be those marrying cousins and have retarded babies.
Oh, my God.
Ugh. I know. I, I know.
Ugh.
My stomach churns as I'm telling this.
Mm hmm.
But these are the things that people who groom children do.
Right.
And when I think in my clinical head, because I've worked with hundreds of people who have stories like mine. but this lasted for six years. This was a six year long episode after episode, episode after episode. One of the things that really got under my skin about being abused in such a way was that my parents Found out, I think when I was a I maybe was a sophomore. I think I was a sophomore in high school. And my parents found out what he had been doing. And actually, how I remember it sounding was, they found out what we were doing. And sort of put me in a position of, like, being a willing participant.
Oh, gosh. Did you feel any way, in any way, that you were a willing participant at the time?
Yes. But only because I was told to. Right. I mean, it was just grooming. Mm hmm. All grooming.
Mm hmm.
And he started to have a series of, like, girlfriend relationships outside of what he was doing to me. And I remember feeling very jealous and very upset about that. So not only was he abusing me and using my body at a whim, but he was abusing Like abusing me further by discarding me but at the same time using me if that makes sense
Breaking your trust.
Yeah, yeah and so at the juncture that my parents found out I think it was right around the time that my uncle passed. The cousin at this point was like, because I think his dad knew, his, yeah, everybody knew, because I remember we had a, like a, a round table, we were sitting at that same dining room table right below his fucking bedroom, and they were talking to me in such a way that they were, I remember how the adult, and I don't remember what they said, but I remember very, feeling very distinctly that the adults at that table, besides my cousin who was abusing me, were like, blaming me. Like, I should have known better. And treating me as a woman who made conscious decisions to set out and do this.
Despite the fact that he's 7 years older than you?
Yes. Right. Yes. And his mother was a big part of what he did the situation because they eventually moved to a much bigger house in a very swanky neighborhood and it had like a master bathroom with like this hot tub in it and bidets and this very like all the things, , and a huge property and, he would pick me up, and I would, he would say, well, let's tell everyone that you're staying at such and such house, and then I'll come pick you up, because my parents are gone. And this is, you know, a 24 year old man.
Mm hmm,
24, I think he was 24 at the time living with his parents and not going to school, you know, hanging out, and he basically had everything he could have wanted. He had all the money, he had all the smarts, but knowing more about my history, my family's history, later, I found out from another cousin that he had tried the same thing, not only with his sister, but with her as well.
Oh, my God.
And the same cousin that I have is adamant that she thinks that something was done to him by my aunt's brother.
I mean, it's probably guaranteed.
Yeah. Something happened to him.
Yeah.
And I don't discount his pain, and I understand that he was clearly confused and had no boundaries because when someone breaks your boundaries like that repeatedly over and over, you don't know how to have them.
Correct. Yep.
So, we had some pregnancy scares. I was terrified. At one point, my parents sought counsel with a person who, a female provider, who was a psychologist and an attorney. And her advice to them was, just give her to him. With the understanding that he is now in charge of all your care and feeding, your college education, your clothing, your food, your sustenance.
I am struggling to reconcile a counselor slash,, attorney that even back then, how could this possibly be sound advice for a child?
Uh huh.
Because, I mean, until you get out there and have life experience, we're all fucking children. Yeah. You know, 18 doesn't mean shit.
Right, right. And meanwhile, no one was talking about this with me.
My parents weren't bringing it up, my mom was treating me like, and I understand because they did not know how to handle this, but they were treating me like I had done this, I had done wrong. This was my fault. I let this happen. And they didn't know what they didn't know.
Right.
But there wasn't any, do you need help? I mean, my dad at one point literally threatened to kill him. Like he was going to kill this man. He was like, if he ever comes near you again, I'm going to fucking kill him. And I had been so groomed and brainwashed by that point that I was clinging desperately to this so called boyfriend,
Right.
Because nobody else was attending to me.
Mm hmm.
This was also, at one point I had a friend and they lived in a very small town with not a lot of supervision, no dad figure, this friend of mine was having sex with a, and being abused and molested herself by like a 36 year old man that she'd started a relationship with. And my cousin offered one night. Well, if, if so and so, because this man broke things off with her, and she's 15 years old, he's 36 years old, like, what the fuck are these men doing? And he came by and said, well, you know, I know that so and so's heart must be broken because you know, so and so broke up with her. Well, do you think, you know, I should, I should fuck her to feel better.
Oh my god, what?
Yeah, I know. So things did not go well for me at home. I was smoking a lot of pot from that point forward, from about 15 to 18. Um, 15 to, 17. Yeah, 17. And I was not doing well in school. I was leaving school. I was ditching school for months at a time. I would call myself in, say I had mono. I made up all kinds of excuses and just basically covered my ass. I was doing terrible in school and they came to me in my junior year and they were like, You're not going to graduate unless you, like, do something about this, because I had, like, faked all my report cards, all my grades, because all of my energy was sunk into pleasing this abuser.
Naturally.
Yeah.
Yeah. So I didn't really have a life that was social and meaningful and friends, and I had, like, two friends this entire time. So he had really sequestered me and isolated me in this bubble of, I'm just going to have these things done repeatedly to me. And this is called Love.
All in the name of love.
At one point for a Christmas gift, he got me a gold cross to wear around my neck and bought me a promise ring.
Oh, the rings. The romance of the rings.
And of course, I'm a teenage girl. I fell into that hook, line, and sinker.
Right.
And he started to split me from my parents, and I did not have good relationship with my parents during this time. It was a series of a couple, probably two and a half, really uncomfortable years because I was still living at home, but I would go and I would leave high school and I would go visit him at his condo and I would get home and my mom would smell me to smell him on me.
Wow.
And confronted me. And of course I denied it. I hadn't been over there. I hadn't seen him. Blah, blah, blah.
Mm hmm.
Um, and apparently his dad's last dying wish was to have us separate. And for him to have normal relationships. So in April of 1990, I was 17 years old. I had been placed in my junior year in a program that was at my high school where you worked by the point system and you could get caught up on things. And so I exited regular classes, and I entered the world of learning. And that is where I learned that I liked to learn more, and high school was not for me in a traditional way. But when I can do independent study and things, I do really well. And so I was reading all kinds of things that were, I mean, I was doing a research project on Charles Manson. Survivors of, you know, natural disaster. Like, I was really, I was fucking weird, but guess what? Trauma made me fucking weird.
Trauma made me weird. That would make an excellent bumper sticker.
Yeah, yeah, it would and and it did its number on me and I ended up graduating early because they were like, you could get out of here as soon as you get all these points done. And I was like, how many points? And I was like, bitch is on fire. And I typed and wrote and got things done. And I ended up graduating like two and a half months early. My cousin broke things off with me in April of 1990 and said, it was my dad's dying wish that I let you go. I think what happened is because in between he had been seeing a woman who had a child who was 10 years younger than me. And I quite honestly think the reason he broke it off with me is because I looked like a woman now.
And I aged out. Right. Which, just, I know, the look on your face, you're just like, ugh, yeah, I mean, it's fucking heavy and slimy in here, and so gross, and just, like, I still, even when I tell it, it's been so long now, that I'm like, Is that really me? Or am I still just real fucking dissociated from the content of that?
Right. Yes.
But I know what happened, and I know how it fucked me up. It fucked me up relationally, because in April of 1990, he broke things off with me. at the same time, simultaneously, right after my grandmother's birthday in the beginning of April, I think April 4th, she was dying. And so we had to leave Colorado in an urgent manner.
My dad and I, we drove 20 hours straight to get to Chicago. I don't even think it's that long now. We drove straight through, with the both of us driving and she was really sick. And she died on that trip back home. And I was devastated. I loved my grandma. She was my dad's mom. She was amazing and she sat with me and we did crossword puzzles and read Reader's Digest together and talked about these big ideas and these big meaningful things and like my other grandmother was just like a nitpicker, like bitchy and just complaining about the day and would just, you know, a conversation to her was like, well, here's how many squares of toilet paper I used. And here's what I did today. There was no depth. There was no acknowledgement of me being a really smart kid. Um, and my grandma was that her death was absolutely devastating to me. And I miss her. I miss my grandma so much. She was a good person and she had not had any idea what had been happening to me. And I'm so glad, cause I would have never wanted her to go out of this world, having that weigh on her heart beause she loved me so much.
So. I was dealing with the loss of this "boyfriend" and "relationship." I was dealing with the loss of my grandmother and then at the same time my parents are like we're going to buy a house in the mountains. You could come. I was like, I'm not moving to the boonies. Fuck all that. I want to be down here where my friends are because I'd had the same job for three years and I was not leaving. So I ended up meeting a guy who was an absolute fuck up. And a raging alcoholic. And Sandi moved in with him.
Mm hmm.
With him and her best friend.
And then I found out that I had an abnormal pap smear and I had HPV.
Mm hmm.
And I got it from my cousin.
Oh, Jesus.
So I had to go in for treatment. I had the top of my cervix burned off. All of these, and that was like June of 1990, all of these fucking things happened within like a six month period. And I was smoking a little bit more weed, I was drinking a little bit more than I probably should have been, and I was coping the best I could. Sure. But then I got into this relationship with this, this man that I worked with, and um, young man, and he was a raging alcoholic. He sexually assaulted me a few times within our relationship because he was so drunk and he doesn't remember. He also gave me another sexually transmitted disease. and you know, Sandi was so smart that she moved in with him two more times at two different places. So I've lived with him, and it was about two years that I stayed with him. And at 19 years old, I was like, okay, I got to get the fuck out of here. This guy is making me miserable. He's taking up my time. He sucks up my money. Um, so it basically just set me up. Like I was set up for my fourth grade teacher to think that me fulfilling needs of men was my job.
Yes.
And then it was perpetuated. Yeah. Yeah. Again and again and again. So I met my husband when I was 19. I think I met, I think I met my husband when I was 19 and we have been married since then. Wow. And he is my, he's my normal. He's my normal guy. Wouldn't hurt a fly. He's a good guy, he doesn't drink. I had just only been with piece of shit men who wanted what they wanted from me and that was it.
Right.
My husband, we, we hung out for like a year and I was like, is he gay? Because he didn't ever, like, try anything. And immediately, my brain was like, what? That seems reasonable.
This isn't how it's supposed to be. Right.
Right. If you weren't, you might have tried all the things, and I had spent the night at his apartment sleeping on the couch. Like, we were completely.... we just had this really lovely year-long courtship. And then one night, he tried to kiss me in the parking lot, and I freaked out. I was like, what are you doing!? And he was a bit put off, but I thought....I said, no, I'm glad I just didn't expect it! I mean, and he was, he was the first normal man in my life, and I love him for that. He is a safe person. But I didn't have any of that. I did not have normative dating. I did not have normative teenage experiences. And so now I make up for that by driving my turbocharged Saab a little bit faster than I probably should sometimes. On the open road, wind in my hair, my music on the radio.
Yes!
And I look like I live in an office where a teenager works because my interest in all things horror and all things really dark and gruesome all sort of stem from the abuse that I suffered for a decade. Right? Nearly a decade. It was a decade. So ten years of my life being abused and ending when I was 19 years old. That's not normal.
No. God.
But, but I'm here. And that story was not nearly as hard to tell as I imagined it would today. Because it lives within me, but it doesn't run me.
Yes. Big difference between the two. Yeah. I spent my life letting my trauma run it and it wreaked havoc. Yeah. Yeah.
And it did so for me in my twenties and thirties until I had my kid. And then when I went to grad school for counseling, I learned a whole lot of things about myself that I was like, whoa, if I don't deal with this shit internally, I'm not going to be helpful to other people.
Right, right. We kind of, we reach our tipping point and decide, I don't want to live like this anymore.
Something has to change.
Yeah.
Okay. So that's where things are now. Um, and I have a 15 year old son who is amazing. My husband's awesome. I have two awesome cats who I love beyond measure. Um, and life is good and, and I would not be that sort of person that I am or the helper that I am without those experiences.
Right.
Because when someone tells me something that is I've been abused, I've been raped, I've been assaulted, I have had my boundaries stripped down to nothing and I don't know where to start. I know how to help those people.
Yes, I love that so much.
And so every day my comeuppance against the world is I get to help other people navigate stepping out of pain and integrating it in such a way that, yes, this happened, but it doesn't have to control my life.
Right. And it doesn't have to wreak the havoc.
I have spent decades, probably three solid decades now, working through this shit and I wouldn't be who I am without it. Right. So there's that.
That's awesome. I want to take a moment to thank you for sharing your story and being vulnerable with me. That's really hard.
And the rest of the world. Yeah. Yeah.
Hey world!
It's just a, just a little thing...
It's fine. It is no small feat to lay yourself bare. And let everybody hear all the fucked up detail. Well, not all but the major fucked up details of your life.
Yeah
And you know you mentioned in my story and during your story there are some people that will come at us and say how the fuck did you let this happen? There's no letting it, that is the biggest thing. That is probably the most important thing to come out of talking about this. I think is the understanding that when something like this happens to us in I want to say any form. it takes our voices away, especially as children, before we even learn to have voices. It takes away our voice and it takes away our boundaries and we're just left open. It's open season and we don't know how to say no. We don't know how to say, um, we don't know how to have dialogues about this with people because as you mentioned, in sex education, I don't know how it is nowadays. It wasn't, it's not taught. No. Like, Hey, somebody touches you like, like this, this is inappropriate. You know, it, we don't, we aren't taught those kinds of things. And so having a template of how things are quote unquote, supposed to be crushed before it's even developed. Yeah. Yeah. We'll affect every. decision and thought process after that.
Yeah. It sure does.
Until we get help.
It sure does. And that's why I, I wanted to be just open about this for myself because as a clinician, it's important to me that parents have conversations about consent and their bodies with their children over and over. I don't care if you sound redundant, do it in such a way that you say your body belongs to you and no one is supposed to or allowed to touch you in any way, unless you specifically permit it.
Right.
And I know that that works because my son could have had something really bad happen to him at a very young age but I told him about consent from the time he was two and three years old, during the time he was developing language centers, and being able to understand "my body is mine." No, I don't want to hug this person...you know, oh, come, you know, those people, oh, hug your grandma, you know, hug this person. If they don't want to hug you, do not force them.
Right.
And listen to your kids and give them the autonomy and give them the boundaries and give them the educational and conversational talks that say, you are your own person. Your body belongs to you. It doesn't belong to anybody else. Because if I had had those conversations, these things would not have happened to me I know they wouldn't have.
Right.
Because I when it started, I was still playing with my fucking Barbies. It's like in my imagination, reading books, playing Barbies, being a kid, and then I didn't get to be a normative teenager and tweenager because of what happened to me.
Yeah, you didn't get that natural progression.
Yeah.
So I'm living it up now and I'm going to continue to do that and I'm going to continue to help and I'm going to continue to help people find the peace that they need.
I love that. And that's why I'm here.
Same.
Well, I think we're at time.
I think so too. I really appreciate you.
I'm going to take some deep breaths.
That's a great idea.
And there's probably going to be some post process tears.
Definitely.
As soon as you turn the recorder off. Let's grab this roll of toilet paper that you so lovingly gathered for me from my bathroom. So, that's that, folks. I thank you so much for listening today. Um, I know this was a lot, and I get it. It doesn't seem normal, and it doesn't seem right. Well, that's because it wasn't, and it's not. So if you can do anything to help anybody in your sphere, or yourself or somebody you know, or somebody you're raising, do those things, have those uncomfortable conversations because they matter and they work.
And the other conversations are much more uncomfortable.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Thank you all for being here.
Yeah. Good times. See you next week.
Bye.