Jenny
By: Connie Spector
Hidden under the stairs, behind the door, or in the cellar was always a child living in horror. Trying to escape the pain, she ran as far as she could one day, into the arms of another danger. Anything had to be better than the life she'd come to know. Almost anything.The abuse started at age 3 when Jenny was washing the dishes. Mother stood over her to be sure she did the job correctly. Being a toddler, Jenny had to stand on a chair to reach the sink. One day, she had the audacity to fall off the chair and break a glass. She began crying, grabbed for the glass, and cut her hand on the shards. She used the dishtowel to wrap her hand. That is when it started. She was beaten for getting blood on Mother's new towel.
Jenny started kindergarten in 1966 in a suburban Detroit grammar school. On her first day of kindergarten, she hysterically ran out of the school because she lost her handkerchief. She knew she was in big trouble. When Jenny got home from school, Mother asked her why she was crying. When Jenny finally confessed that she lost her hanky, her mother smacked her across the face and sent her to bed without dinner.
The summer before first grade is when Daddy decided that it was time to start playing. One day Jenny was in the bathtub and Daddy was giving her a bath. He touched her a little longer than usual, then he put his finger in her. It hurt a lot but not as much as when he put something else inside her.
This is one little girl, in one suburban neighborhood, in one city, in one state, back in the 1960s and 1970s. There are tens of thousands of baby boomer, now adults, trying to deal with the horrific memories, the guilt, and the endless pain that lasts an entire lifetime. It never goes away. It never stops hurting. It is never forgotten. But with proper help and a period of healing, life can go on.
For those of you reading this who are feeling that they will never get better, will never be rid of the nightmares and the anxiety and the fear, please read on. You CAN get better. There is light at the end of the tunnel. You just can't see it right now. I am not a doctor; I am not a counselor of any kind. I am, quite simply, a survivor. And you can be a survivor, too. I can't make the pain go away, but I have hope that you can learn to live with it, like I have finally done.
Let me tell you a little more about Jenny. She was a darling little blond child, the only child of hardhearted, unfeeling parents. Her father was the only child of a German immigrant and an American piano player who died in his 30s. Her mother was the youngest of three, her parents having had their first child out of wedlock. When Jenny was a child, the only person in the entire family who didn't abuse her in some way was her paternal step-grandfather. It was no coincidence. The only person who was a not a blood relative was the only one who loved her. The only one. Everyone else in the family seemed to have a mean, hateful, damaging attitude toward the helpless toddler. The family was dysfunctional, but no one ever admitted they had any problems in those days. Everyone wanted to be the happy American family. A crime is what it was, a damn crime.
By Jenny's seventh birthday, her father was having sex with her regularly. He muffled her screams with a pillow, nearly suffocating her a number of times. She shrieked from the excruciating pain as his member tore into her. Mother was downstairs, pretending not to hear. Looks like Mother wouldn't have to be bothered with his smelly, repulsive body that night.
When Jenny was 11, her father decided he wanted more. Jenny was a pretty girl, developed more than most girls her age. Her father would take her to the store and buy her all the bright, pretty make-up she wanted.
That night, she had to dress up for Daddy. He bought her pretty stockings from the petite department with a short little jumper and girls' lace panties. Jenny looked so lovely. It was hard to believe she was only 11. Actually, though, she'd had her childhood taken from her.
When Daddy started to get excited, he took off Jenny*s panties and made her masturbate. While she did so, he entered her mouth and she gagged. He got mad and slapped her. He nearly choked her to death but finally managed to disgorge his disgusting self all over her face. That became their Friday night fun.
One day Jenny told Mother that she was bleeding and that Daddy had been hurting her. Mother told her to shut up and never say that again. If she did, Mother warned, the police would come and take her away and she*d have to live with strangers who were dirty and awful people. What a shame that Jenny didn't realize that she already was living that way.
Jenny continued to be sexually abused by her father until she was 12. It was about that time that she started her period, and she was getting to the age where her father was afraid she would report him. Little did he know that she was so traumatized that she wouldn't speak of the pain for many years to come.
The sexual abuse stopped, but the physical and emotional abuse escalated. Jenny ran away when she was 15 and met a man at the bus station who seemed to take her under his wing. He was kind, friendly, and gentle. He seemed to understand Jenny like no one had before in her life. He took her to his house and gave her a place to stay. He never tried to hurt her. Jenny finally felt safe.
Just as Jenny began to feel comfortable with the man, he began to introduce her to some women in his "circle of friends." These women were prostitutes in an illegal brothel and showed Jenny how easy it was to make money. After all, they reasoned, she knew what sex was all about because of her father. The warped minds ignored the fact that her father's abuse was about violence, not about sex.
Jenny became involved in prostitution in order to live. She started taking drugs to numb the pain. She hated her life and herself. She blamed herself for everything that had happened. One night, Jenny went on a drug binge and overdosed on cocaine. Fortunately, she was with friends who called emergency immediately and Jenny was saved.
This turned her life around. She woke up in the hospital and realized that God must have a purpose in life for her, and that she was going to become a better person. She went to the police about her father and he was taken in for questioning. He was tried but found not guilty because of a lack of evidence. But Jenny had been heard, and it made her stronger. She was able to move forward.
She was placed in a wonderful foster home with loving parents at age 16. She went back to school and graduated with honors. It took many years of therapy, and many years of feeling useless, worthless, and suicidal before any healing took place.
Jenny is a survivor. She was one of the lucky ones, if anyone can be lucky in that situation. Many young children do not survive the abuse, and if they do, they end their lives themselves because they cannot bear the pain any longer. These are the kids, many of whom are now adults, that we have to save.
Copyright 2001 © Connie Spector
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