Erin Merryn Quotes

Imagine the message that sent to my sister and me. A cousin violates us, confesses, and walks away with barely a slap on the wrist. I learned at a young age that if I was ever going to see justice for the wrongs done to me, I had to find it myself.

Because it is so hard, some people wait until they are in their thirties, forties, fifties, or even older before breaking their silence.

As in so many cases of sexual abuse within the family, it is much more complicated than had it been done by a stranger.

So often parents of abused children feel helpless. When a child falls, and scrapes her knees parents can erase the hurt by kissing it and putting a Band-Aid on it, but not so with the pain of sexual abuse.

While my sister and I were reminded we did not cause this pain, it was knowing that because we broke our silence about what had been done to us, our parents were hurting. That knowledge was hard on us.

She was so upset about a blog that maybe a total of six people read yet had no compassion for her granddaughters who had suffered the physical and emotional pains of sexual abuse and whose lives were changed forever. The two cannot even be compared, yet when someone is in denial about what happened, they cannot perceive what is true. It seemed too hard for her to let her mind go there and believe her grandson could do such terrible things.