John Bradshaw once said, \u201cIf your family has any secrets you can bet they are about sex.\u201d In looking back through my years of recovery from incest I see how accurate he was. Just finding out that I was an incest victim, even though my father had told me twice, was a shock in itself. My best friend, reluctant to believe this, asked, \u201cDo you think your father did rape you?\u201d I view my response as one of the most idiotic things I\u2019ve ever said, \u201cOf course not. He\u2019s Catholic.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the light of all of the Catholic church\u2019s problems regarding child sexual abuse it is even more idiotic. While I progressed through my recovery, there were several other revelations that knocked me to my knees. The first was finding out that my husband was cheating on me. Then I found out that he had sexually abused his sister for over ten years and that he had been sexually abusing his teen-age daughter. I had already figured out that he was a sex addict. I learned in recovery, while tracing my family history, that \u201cno woman was safe from my paternal grandfather. Half way through recovery I found out that my ex- husband had sexually abused my two older daughters. These were the only family secrets I learned.<\/p>\n
If you have even a whiff of possibility that you were sexually abused, trace your family history. Through it you will see a pattern that helps to access the truth. Once you discover the dysfunctional family members that are a part of your history, you\u2019ll understand that raising a healthy child with those tools was an impossible task. You literally were a pawn on a chessboard.<\/p>\n