Exposing The Truth: The Stuff I Wish I Had an Opportunity to Say in a Courtroom.
Introduction:
For a few years now, I’ve been meaning to write in this Livejournal about a defining part of my life. I want to discuss the abuse that I encountered as a kid. I want to do this in depth, and place everything on this Journal that I’m willing to speak about in such a public forum.
There are several reasons why I want to do this:
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Before I get started, I want to make a disclaimer: I will not give graphic testimony or details about the actual abuse itself. Yes, I do remember all the disturbing and humiliating shit that happened and I will not answer questions about that, or volunteer it. So you creepy fuckers out there that lean in too close when this subject comes up can piss off.
I have spoken about the details in the places where it was necessary, or when it gave me a benefit. I’ve written about it in private journals. I’ve talked about it with other Survivors and with psychologists and in recovery groups, women’s groups, women’s resource centers, and on abuse Survivor on-line forums. I have discussed details with the District Attorney that put my offender in jail, and I have written details to my offender’s Parole Board.
I am aware that talking about the details of the abuse takes the power out of it. Talking about abuse repeatedly makes it an event in your past, rather than an event that can still hurt you now. I sought that out in counseling, and it helped. There was a very long period of my life where I couldn't stop these horrible reenactments that would monopolize my mind with graphic and disturbing images from my past.
But today the details feel much more clinical. They do not overwhelm me. Much of the time it just feels sort of like cause and effect: This trauma happened, which had that affect on my psyche. I can still get into the emotion of the past when I feel like I need to work something out.
But I haven't had bad dreams in a long time, and I haven't been haunted by those details and memories in a long time, which I'm grateful for. I know that many abuse Survivors never get to that point.
And I do have another reason for refraining from details. Nobody that loves me knows more that a few snap shots of the abuse. I’ve been working on my healing for many years, and I have a giant bag of tools to deal with my experiences. My family and friends do not, and the raw information would be an unkindness to some very important people that read my Journal.
I may add other disclaimers as I flesh this out. But that’s it for now.
My parents’ marriage was in trouble from before I was born. I’m still kind of surprised that I was conceived. My mother’s personality make-up includes a great deal of tolerance & respect for equality, but very little back-bone. My father was a religious man in an unhealthy way, who’s personality traits are quite the opposite. The two of them often seem to be night and day. I have a brother that is eight years older than me. I’ll call him Calladus for this post. We have both been described as blends of our parents’ better traits.
I'm making such a face in this photo. What do you want? I was three.
My parents’ inevitable divorce started about the time of this photo. By the time I was 4-and-a-half most everything was finalized, and my mother set us up in a trailer park. Our mobile home had a room for each of us, and we got a cat that I apparently named Sobby. (I don’t remember naming her. Calladus never let me live that silly name down, though.) My father got a tiny studio apartment in a horrible crime, rat, and bug infested building downtown. He stayed there for at least 5 or 6 years, and my brother and I always visited him on the weekends. Twice a year we would make a trip across Texas to visit my father’s side of the family in New Mexico for a week or ten days.
Calladus was my most favorite person in the whole world. He was fascinating. He could do magic tricks, and I could climb him like a tree. He made my lunches for me, and took care of me if I got hurt while playing outside. He made me laugh. He was always doing something interesting and if I was quiet, he would let me watch over his shoulder when he was drawing or when he made things out of electronics.
My abuser’s name is Ronald Darsey. He goes by Ronnie. His parents were first-cousins and he has the severe dyslexia that seems to be common as a product of consanguinity. I was about 4 or 5 when my mother first spoke about him. I remember her saying that she though he was so handsome.
Ronnie was 25 when they hooked up. My mother was 37. Recently, we’ve discovered that Ronnie was married at the time. He had been married for maybe three to six months.
Ronnie was a piece of work. There’s not much to his personality. He’s one-dimensional. He is loud. He believes that he is the most important thing in any room. He is arrogant. He likes to cuss, he likes honky-tonk, and he is vulgar. He likes to drive around in his truck, lean out the window, and make disgusting noises and cat-calls to anyone that is young and female. We’re not talking about a lot of character development, here. Brilliant writers never make Ronnie into their epic antagonist. In Shakespeare’s world, Ronnie is the dumb thug in the background.
But at the time I was five, my brother was thirteen, and my mother was psychologically unhealthy. So when Ronnie moved in, he took over.
Ronnie does have predatory behaviors that are typical of an abusive personality. He feels a sense of entitlement that is overblown and undeserved. He is super controlling. He has an excuse for everything and nothing is ever his fault. He is manipulative. He’s a liar. If you complain about him, he will say that you deserved it because you are being so unreasonable. He will use head-games, change the subject, twist your words around against you, claim you were feeling something you weren’t, make wild accusations, twist things into their opposites, play the victim, & deny the obvious.
I listened to his arguments with my mother for seven years. Part of me paid careful attention. I knew it was insanity, but I couldn’t name it when I was little, any more than my mother could. What I was raised in was not healthy. I didn’t really know what “healthy” was when I saw it. Not for a long time.
My father had deep associations between his faith and shame. He applied these associations to his views of sex. It was obvious in his speech and manners that he felt incredible shame about sex and the human body. He stumbled over words that parents need to use with their little daughters. Words like 'panties'. That alone he could barely say without stuttering.
That sort of insecurity can rub off, folks. I had a distinct impression about forbidden subjects- almost before I could speak. I did not have words to talk about my own body parts. I was too uncomfortable to talk about anything that might be seen as "dirty". This was the beginning to many permissions that I needed in my childhood, but at the time I did not believe that I had.
I remember the first time that the abuse happened, but I don’t remember how old I was. I’m guessing that I was seven or eight. It was excessively confusing. I honestly had zero clue what was going on. I was trying to rack my little girl brain to try to figure out what was happening, and I came up with nothing. But I did know that I was not comfortable. Ronnie was a coward, and would run away if I yelled for mom or got loud. My mother is deaf in one ear, and sleeps on her "good ear" so Ronnie would be gone before my mother would ever wake up enough to check on me.
After some time, I understood more about what was going on, and why, but I had no idea what to do about it. It was lonely. I was the only one that knew. I wanted to tell my mother, but I was so afraid and creeped out. I couldn’t tell Dad. Hell, I still haven’t told Dad to this day, though my reasons have changed. Dad was not an approachable man. And his abundant sense of shame made me imagine only conversations of humiliation.
The reality was that if I had told, my father would have saved me from that trailer, and his bizarre views, callous demeanor, and prejudiced ways would have given me a much different set of demanding challenges to deal with, but I didn’t know that at the time.
And I couldn’t tell my brother. I mean, sure- if I told Calladus, he would fly into an incredible rage, and at 16, he would have done who-knows-what to Ronnie, which I didn’t want. Calladus would never hurt a fly. Did we both need to lose our innocence for Ronnie’s sake? My little kid’s brain did have some respect for that, but I know I wouldn’t have been able to put it in words at the time.
And of course I didn’t want to break my brother’s heart. I knew that Calladus would hurt over this. And I thought that in some ways he would hurt even more than me. It took me 20 years to finally tell him, and I think this is the main reason for my silence.
But also at the time, my biggest reason was that I didn’t want my brother to see me differently. The way that I was starting to see myself. I knew things that kids shouldn’t know at that age. I felt like I was dirty, used, and ruined. Many years later when I referred to that feeling I would describe it with the term ‘damaged goods’.
With Calladus not knowing, I could just be a kid around him. He didn’t look at me different or treat me different. It was a way to preserve what I wished I was. In his eyes, I was still an innocent little girl… and a pest. Normal. If it weren’t for Calladus, I wouldn’t have had much of a childhood at all.
I remember wondering what would happen if I told a teacher. Would they come take me away? Would they put me in a home somewhere? What if I couldn’t see my mother?! I would die if they took me away from my mother!! She was the most important thing in the world to me!!
But Ronnie’s pursuits were becoming more frequent. The only way to get it to stop was to tell. I didn’t want to tell ANYBODY, but I didn’t have a choice.
The first person I told was my daycare/sitter’s daughter, Michelle. I was eight. She was ten. She said I had to tell my mother so that I could get help. This was a natural thing for her to say. She had great parents.
So that afternoon, my mother picked me up in the car. I was beyond nervous. On the very short drive home my heart began to pump adrenalin into my veins. My arms and legs were warm with nerves. I looked at her.
“Ronnie is teaching me sex.” I said.
She kept looking straight ahead and I kind of "heh-huh" almost laughed. This was crazy. She wasn't reacting. My heart was thudding in my ears.
She didn’t say anything. Nothing!
I started to repeat myself, but she cut me off and said she heard me.
I needed something from her. It took so much nerve to say it, and now I was hanging. Was she going to tell me it was okay? I needed to know- will he get kicked out of the house? Could we move away? But my hearing sounded like it does when you are under water, and all I remember was the thud-thud in my chest and ears until my mother said, “I will talk to him.”
Talk to him?
That’s when I knew I was stuck with Ronnie. Even if he molested me.
And that is how it went for the next four years.
Ronnie would commit crimes on me as a child. I would try to dodge him. I would complain to my mother. Soon, she started telling me excuses for him. One time she told me that he was on prescription medication, and that he couldn’t help himself.
Over time I learned that Ronnie molested his nieces and sisters. And in later years, one of my aunts told me of a time that Ronnie attacked another of my aunts in the middle of the night while our family was staying at Eagle Lake.
When I was nine, I had growing pains in my legs for much of the year. I would wake up in the middle of the night in agony. Sometimes a warm bath would help. I woke up crying one night and Ronnie came in to my room. He carried me out of my bed and fixed a bath for me. He sat me on the toilet and talked to me in a soothing voice while the water ran. I was shaking. What was he going to do? He checked the water temperature and put shampoo in to give it bubbles. Then he brought me a towel and told me to get in the tub and he left me alone. After my legs felt better, he opened the door to the bathroom just enough to put my mother’s robe in on the floor and told me to go back to my room and get ready for bed. It’s the only time that I remember him being that nice and me being that vulnerable.
Also, when I was 9 I broke my leg from falling off a horse in New Mexico. I don’t remember Ronnie ever attacking me when I had a cast on. I also had broken my arm around the age of five and I had the chicken pox at about the age of 6, but I don’t believe that Ronnie had started his crimes at that time. I do remember feeling weird about him seeing me in the tub covered with Calamine lotion, though.
I have pieces of memories. Like the time that my mother opened the front door and Ronnie fell in through the doorway. He was too drunk to stand. I’m not sure what happened next.
Another time I heard them fighting again. I came out of my room to find Ronnie pinning my mother down on the kitchen floor, holding her by the wrists. I said, “What’s going on?” and my mother told me to go back to my room.
I remember when Ronnie's oldest nephew killed himself. At least, I think that is how they were related. We went to Ronnie's brother's home, and one of the bedrooms had tape across the door. That was the room where the young man had blown his head off with a shotgun. I remember going to the funeral and viewing the body. He had tattoos on his knuckles. Love and Hate.
There are things I don’t remember. My mother once held Ronnie at gunpoint, threatening to shoot. My brother had “run away”. (He spent the night on the roof of a vacant trailer in our neighborhood.) Years later, she told me that she put the gun down because she saw my face. My eyes were very wide.
I mention this, because I want to say that some traumatic events can be forgotten, depending on the circumstances. I’ve never “recovered” this or any other memory. I can be reminded of something that I haven’t thought about in a very long time and I remember parts of it, or I remember it in a bit of a fog. Other times I can be told about something that I can’t remember at all. There’s some important information about memory that I want to talk about in another post. For Survivors out there, you may have heard many controversies on this subject. Of course, memories are important to address.
When I was ten years old, my mother wanted to “give me a break” from him. For some reason, Ronnie and my mother had obtained a first class plane ticket. (I’m not sure how.) So my cousin and I spent that summer in Florida with my grandmother. I remember how weird it was that my mother was “giving me a break”. Why didn’t she just leave him?!
As I got older, his advances became more aggressive.
We lived in that trailer park for seven years. I have not yet lived in a single place for a longer period of time. I shake my head at the irony of it. That filthy, roach-infested trailer of abuse was the most steady residence in my history. But we did finally move out into an apartment in Pasadena.
I was eleven and it was the middle of my sixth grade year. My brother tried some college and a few jobs. In our new home, I was glad to get a big bunk bed. It was awesome. I slept on the top bunk and I was hard to reach. My mother and Ronnie fought all the time. His days in our lives were becoming numbered.
I made a bunch of friends in junior high, and I started to get some relief from my home life. I made a good friend named Nathan that was the easiest person in the world to talk to. He was just there for me. He was a tender-hearted guy that I always felt so safe around. I wish I still talked with him today. We lost touch and I still have a hard time with that. I don't think Nathan really ever knew how comforting he was to me then. I lived next door to a family with kids my age- Henry and Theresa. We were always hanging out. Henry’s family knew what I was dealing with, and invited me to come over any time after school to be there until my mother got home. I had friends at school- April, and Carlie that I could talk to about my problems, and that helped. They also made me laugh. A lot. My mother started letting me spend the night with friends, and that helped too. I'm so grateful that April and I are still friends to this day, I deeply cherish the happy memories with her at that time of my life.
I don’t remember exactly how Ronnie moved out. My mother never told me that he wouldn’t be around any more, or that they were getting a divorce. My memories don’t serve me well regarding the circumstances. I believe that Calladus may have a better idea. I do know that I was starting to act out and rebel. I enjoyed crafts and making things. I had found a box of interesting materials in the house one day and I helped myself to the different fabrics. I cut them in to shapes and made toys and stuffed animals out of them. Then one day I came home from school, and Ronnie told me that he had a bone to pick with me. He said that the fabric was his and that I had no right to touch it. I was sort of excited to realize that I didn’t care if it was his! We got into a big fight and I screamed at him. I was even more excited to realize that I had no intention of backing down. I got sarcastic and sassed at him.
It was an empowering moment for me, but only my first crude explorations into empowerment.
I know that Ronnie got his own studio apartment. I remember seeing it one time and thinking to myself that the construction of it was interesting. It had a loft. I had never seen a loft before. After he moved out, my mother, brother and I were the three amigos again. Our apartment was just brighter. Ronnie's stuff was gone, so there wasn't so much clutter. It stayed clean more easily. Calladus and I could have friends over. The intimidating anger and outbursts were gone, and replaced with peace. It was a very good, but very brief time.
My brother joined the Air Force. My family and I all still laugh about how bad I cried on his shoulders the night before he left. He had to ask me to switch shoulders as I soaked one and then the other with tears. I’m so glad he let me cry that much.
I still think of that moment as a very defining time for me. This is the doorway that separates different eras of my life. This was the end of my early childhood and the beginning of my adolescence. For weeks I just felt lost. Calladus was my protector, my playmate, and my third parent from the moment I was born. Now I had to learn to live without him. I missed him so bad. Every time I thought I couldn’t feel any more pain, then more came.
This was my first face-to-face encounter with deep loss, and it became a yard-stick that I used for many years to measure other losses. I knew my brother and I would likely never live under the same roof again, and that devastated me. Slowly, I started learning my first lessons about acceptance, and moving on.
Not long after my brother joined the Air Force, Ronnie had a very bad accident. He was employed as a mechanic at a garage. He was filling a tire in one of those big rim clamp tire machines. Maybe he over-filled it. Maybe he was installing a 16 inch tire on a 16.5 inch rim. For whatever reason, the tire exploded, and his hand was in the way. The accident ripped most of the flesh off the back of his hand, broke every bone at least once and some as many as three times, and his pinky was hanging on by skin alone. He was immediately rushed into his first of several surgeries, where his bones were set with rods that protruded from his knuckles, ala Wolverine. They grafted skin from his thigh. It didn’t take very well, and they later considered sewing his hand into a flap of skin under his naval to keep the skin alive until it took. I thought that would be pretty cool, but they took a different approach instead.
Of course my mother felt sorry for him, and took me to visit him in the hospital. I was getting pretty good at making stuffed animals by then and I brought a green and purple dragon that I was especially proud of to keep me company at the hospital. Ronnie assumed that I made it for him, and I felt like a heel about correcting him. So I let him have it. Yes, he was a mess. Yes, he was reduced to this helpless state. Yes, I still want my damn dragon back.
Then as you can imagine, my mother continued to feel sorry for him and it wasn’t long until he was back in the house. My mother set a bed up for him in the living room.
Gross.
As Ronnie got better, my life got worse. Soon he was back to his old tricks. His last attack scared me pretty bad. He and I were the only ones in the apartment and the situation got dangerous. It turned out to be his worst attack on me and I didn't think I would get away this time. He didn't seem to even hear me screaming- like he was in his own world. I was terrified. After I got away from him, I locked myself in the bathroom and I wouldn’t come out until my mother came home.
I told her, “Either he goes or I do. I’ll go live with Dad.”
She tried to argue with me. Ronnie was denying everything I said and my mother tried to tell me that she couldn't make a decision. She said she didn't know who to believe. But I dug in, and made sure she knew I was serious.
I said, "I don't care if you don't believe me. I'll tell Dad this weekend that I want to live with him." I knew Dad would be happy to stop paying child support.
And you know what happened next? Ronnie left.
And I was told how it was such a huge deal for him and my mother to bend over backwards so he could leave for me. They made sure I knew how inconvenient it was that he left all on my account. All because of me. Like I had put the whole world on hold or something.
But for just a little while after that, it started getting better. Ronnie would call our house in the middle of the night. I would answer and he would tell me to put my mother on the phone and I would hang up on him.
Also, something very good was happening. My mother and I were talking. I needed to figure things out with her. One night, we both hung out on her bed and she told me the whole story of how she got together with my father and why their marriage had so many problems, and why she left. This was going to be the first part of the conversation. In the next part, she promised we could talk about Ronnie. She started reading some interesting books like Richard Bach’s Bridge Across Forever. She started believing in herself again. She started being proud of her accomplishments. She was going to go out and do interesting things, and become an interesting and dependable person. She joined Parents Without Partners.
And one night when she was at Parents Without Partners, she met Dan.
I came home and my mother wasn’t there. That was okay and normal. But the afternoon wore on, and evening came. The sun went down and she didn’t show up. Was she okay? I thought she would be at Parents Without Partners, but I had never been there. I grabbed the phone book and looked up the number.
A nice man answered and I explained that I was looking for my mother and gave him her name. He asked me to hold on, so I did for a very long time.
Then finally, I heard the phone being picked up and my mother said, “Tanya?” I wanted to know what was going on and she assured me that she was coming home right away.
Soon after that my mother introduced me to Dan and his two sons. I was thirteen. Dan and my mother were married before I turned fourteen. That year, I failed the eighth grade. Right after that, we all moved to California. Nobody, not even my mother’s new husband ever thought to have Ronnie arrested. Nobody ever asked me if I would be willing to testify against him or talk to a police officer. Nobody ever considered the empowerment or sense of protection I needed at that time.
No adult sought justice for me.
There was some attempt to go to counseling, but the purpose was to get me to fall in line with my mother’s new and dramatic choices. Not to address what I went through. That subject never came up in counseling. I kept hoping that it would.
In fact, the only time the subject came up, was when I brought it up. I needed help. I kept asking for it, or acting out when I didn’t get it. In San Diego, my mother found a suport group called Daughter’s United, but she wasn’t very good at facilitating my access to it. For whatever reason, I never even saw the place- I only heard about it.
I started something at this point that is very common with survivors: I started many desperate hopes that I would one day need to vanquish in my quest for healing. Every Survivor wants to believe that they will be believed and comforted. They hope to be offered the kind of nurturing and support that is necessary to shoulder their burdens on road ahead. They want guidance: How do you get through this?
Abuse Survivors should never have to expect to be discounted, ignored, scapegoated, or attacked. When the response is negative or non-existent, what can you do? If you carry all this confusion and baggage- if you do not see any options for recovery, then where do you wind up?
For me, I leaned heavily on coping mechanisms. Some of these were very self-destructive. And I continued to hope for our day- mine and my mother’s. I kept hoping for a long, long time.
My mother had her friend, Jan talk with me. This part pisses me off a great deal. Jan sat me down and told me that I had to let everything go and put it all in the past or else Ronnie would still have power over me and my mind. Every ounce of anger and sorrow and confusion that I felt was instantly invalidated. I was only fourteen, so I was green enough to believe her. All that grief- not only was nobody interested, but I wasn’t allowed to feel any of it, or else Ronnie would win.
What a total mind-fuck.
That year in school I buried myself in my schoolwork. It was the eighth grade all over again, but this year wasn’t going to be like the year before. I was placed in Gifted and Talented Education. I made all A’s.
We weren’t doing well. Dan couldn’t find work, and the “Parents” (as my step-brothers and I had come to call the pair) couldn’t pay the bills.
We all had to move into a hotel together. We were in a single room kitchenette with two queen sized beds. I slept in a small closet on the floor. We were there for several months until school let out. We had more than enough time with each other and drove each other crazy. I started acting out more, and took many queues from my favorite music bands- all 80’s long-hair metal and glam groups that could give classes on juvenile delinquency. My step brother, Danny started acting out too. He stole from my mother’s purse. One time I told her, “Mom, I saw Danny take a dollar out of your purse.” What I wanted was justice and safety in my home. But instead, she gave me a dollar.
What could I do but shake my head. Everything was just so fucked.
Danny had started stealing my clothes and masturbating on them. Later, when we could afford a home again, I would find my clothes in wads in his room- shoved behind the drawers under his waterbed. In other news, Dan and my mother became obsessed with the lottery. There were always lottery tickets stuffed in drawers and fallen behind the couch and under tables. Danny stole $1400.00 from a little old lady that he worked with in Orange County. I couldn’t believe it. After that I never trusted him again, and kept anything that I really loved at friends homes, knowing that he would steal it from me just because I loved it.
I was in the ninth grade. I not only lost interest in school, I also kind of lost all sense of direction. I didn’t have much in the way of success at school or at home. By tenth grade I dropped out.
The only thing that offered me an escape for a while was getting attention from friends for being rowdy or getting attention from guys. Drugs, and parties were welcome escapes. Part of me knew that my behavior was self destructive. But it was an easy distraction, and it kept me from having to face my circumstances, which I had no clue how to handle.
The parents never stopped me either. There was no structure, and I had no respect for them. I could get rowdy, bully them, ditch school, and there were no consequences. This was 1988 and early 1989. I went completely wild. I snuck out as often as I could and I was gone to where ever the world would take me. I didn’t have much respect for myself or my body. But I had never really learned that my body or I should be respected.
I met a guy named Vaughn who felt like a really good friend at the time. Vaughn and I could talk on the phone and in person for hours. We were friends for a long time before we started dating. I wanted to be more than friends, though. I wanted so much attention, and I desperately wanted a deep connection that I could count on.
Vaughn’s family wasn’t perfect. But they weren’t insane, either. His parents were divorced and his grandparents and aunts were doting, so he had several homes and and a half dozen adults in his life that he could count on. Vaughn was a very comfortable person to talk with, and he was interesting. He was easy on the eyes, he was in college, and he had traveled to all kinds of places- London, Whales, Scotland, Kenya, South Africa, Swaziland, and Lesotho. He was a drummer. He was working on his journeyman as an electrician. His father worked for the Old Globe Theater and I could see plays for free.
But Vaughn didn’t date losers that did drugs or dropped out of high school. So on May 13th, 1989 I quit meth and I have never touched it since. He used to tell me, “Tanya, I’m not brilliant about school. If I can do it, anybody can do it.”
So I did. First I got my GED, but then I went to night school and made up my classes. I graduated the year that I was supposed to. I’ve got my little leather-bound diploma. A real diploma.
Vaughn and I dated until I was 20. I made several attempts to move out of the parents’ house. I knew that my mother and step-father were not good for me, but I also wanted my mother’s approval and attention so badly. I wanted to finish that conversation we started years before. I wanted to heal from this and get past it.
I started talking about Ronnie with Vaughn, but he didn’t know what to do or say about it. He was so great to talk with about other subjects, but when it came to this very important subject-he just checked out. When I broke up with Vaughn, it was one of the most difficult decisions I made in my life. But it was the right one. I had other reasons for breaking up with him than just this. But I do need someone that can keep up with me emotionally, and Vaughn- as wonderful as he is- was never that person.
At nineteen, I moved up to Orange County and got a job in Commerce. I was in an icky roommate situation for a year. I started having dreams about girls. Terminator Two came out and I thought about Linda Hamilton every single day. I bought the movie on video and watched it every chance I got. I also thought about Sigourney Weaver almost as much as Linda Hamilton. I had taped copies of Alien and Aliens that I watched all the time.
The LA riots happened and scared me back down to San Diego. I wound up stuck at my parent’s place, sleeping on their couch or friends’ couches. What a nightmare. Would I ever get away?
I was dating around. I missed Vaughn, but I couldn’t bring myself to go back to him. But there was another guy named Joe that was big, handsome, and not too bright. But he had something that Vaughn didn’t have. He had a ticket away from my parents. I took it. I got married and moved to North Carolina, where Joe was stationed as a Marine.
This started a decade of failed relationships, and soul searching. When my husband was gone for months, I had an opportunity to sort out things in my head. I wrote a lot. But the marriage didn't last. The early ninety’s found me drifting. Without a college education, or an established skill set, I had challenges finding employment and a desirable home. I had so many crazy experiences in this time. I tried everything. Sometimes I tried things to see if it would fit my life. Sometimes I tried things just for the distraction, like when I was younger. Not all of my misadventures in this time were self-destructive, though. I want to stress that I had opportunities to learn from these awkward years. I reflect on this time often. There are still lessons that it has to teach.
When I found avenues, I joined women’s groups and Survivor’s workshops. I got my bug for journaling in my first marriage. After that divorce, I was back to California, and I lived with someone that was deeply involved in 12-step recovery. He encouraged me to seek any avenue I wanted for healing from my own past.
I started growing distant from my mother and step father. Two of my closest friends, Trish and Robert, were getting married. Trish refused to invite them. She and I started having many long conversations about them. She admitted that she was not comfortable around either of them, and had not been for years. Trish was the one that always took a moment to tell me that I was being treated badly, and that maybe I didn't need to value my mother's opinions or advice so much. I have to give her a great deal of credit in supporting me as I gradually stopped chasing my mother for approval and support.
One of the guys that I dated in October of 1996 turned out to be a real jerk- the really bad kind. The dangerous kind. When I broke up with him, he got drunk and showed up at my apartment with an axe. He kicked in the door, pulled the phone cord out of the wall and then he beat me up pretty bad. I had to figure out how to get away from him. He held me by the throat with one hand and the axe in the other- threatening to kill me. He was much stronger than me. I had to think quick.
I played him. I told him, “Baby, why didn’t you just let me have a couple days to be mad at you? Let me take you home. I’ll pick you up after work tomorrow and we can go out for a nice dinner. We can talk it over.” He was drunk and he bought it. I took him home, and then drove back to my apartment- stopping once along the road to throw up.
When I got home I called the police. Then I called Trish and Robert. They came to my apartment to wait for the cops with me. Then I called my mother and step-father to wait with me too. I shouldn’t have called them. Dan started talking about how I was a loser and that I got myself into a situation that I probably deserved. Trish was understandably horrified. She hasn’t spoken to my parents since.
There were times in all of this that I said very catty things to my mother. Remember those hopes that I needed to vanquish that I spoke of earlier? I realized that the nurturing I craved from my mother would certainly never come, and I hated facing this fact.
She would never go to counseling with me for this. She would never let me cry on her shoulder over my lost innocence. She would never offer her loving apology- only excuses. She would never talk about it with me or allow me to talk about it with her. She felt guilty and she couldn't stand feeling guilty. Avoiding that feeling was more important to her than a healthy relationship with her daughter. It was the absolute hardest thing for me to face.
I was bitter. When I’m bitter, I’m ugly and sarcastic, and I'm biting. I hurt her. I said horrible things to her. I hit below the belt. It's only recently that I apologized for that, but I carried the guilt about it for years. It was just wrong of me. That's not the person I want to be.
When I married Victor, my second husband, I guess I felt like I was settling. But I wanted to settle down. I wanted security, and stability. I thought that being single was keeping me in a world with no direction.
I wasn’t as passionate about this guy as I was about Vaughn. But he seemed to be really crazy about me. He was for a while, until the new wore off.
Victor introduced me to Rebecca. Rebecca eventually came out of the closet. But I had a crush on her before that ever happened. I used to think about her all the time. I would have to make myself stop thinking about her. I had to remind myself all the time about my commitment to my husband and to be there- be in my marriage. I started playing tapes over and over in my head about believing in my marriage and my husband.
I also joined the Women’s Resource Center in Oceanside. I kept it a secret from Victor. One time, he found me writing in my recovery workbook and asked what it was. I didn’t lie to him. I told him. His response was, “Oh, that again.”
I tried to tell myself that I didn't need my spouse to take this journey with me. I tried to shrug off the loneliness. I wished so much for the sweetheart guy that treated me so well those first two years would come back. I wrote him poems when he was mean. Trying to draw him out. I was determined to make this work with Victor and to have stability in my life.
Four years after our wedding, Victor started sleeping around and then he finally left. I had placed a great deal of investment and personal identity in that marriage, and I was devastated. By the last year of our marriage, I wasn’t Tanya any more. I was Mrs. Victor. I was ready to go along with whatever my jerk of a husband wanted, even if it was bad for me psychologically. Victor, conveniently, didn’t believe in psychology. Instead he became a constant shower of criticism and contempt. I never did anything right.
I started secretly taking Prozac and hiding food- cookies under the shoe rack, M&M’s in the back of my sock drawer.
When Victor left, he did me a great favor, but I didn’t see it at the time.
I have to say that when this happened, my mother came to my home and let me cry and cry like a little kid in her arms. That was a very important moment for me, with many healing and nurturing aspects. I also saw this as an opportunity to talk about Ronnie and I took it. Today I wouldn’t have, but I did then. There was too much that I craved. After all those years, I still yearned to cry out my grief for what that little girl that I was had gone through. When I mentioned Ronnie, my mother stiffened. Her defenses crept back into her eyes. I let it go. I had enough grief to cry about already.
In a fog of depression I lost 50 pounds in 4 months. I took on a fatalistic attitude. What ever happens next- happens. I decided at that moment that I never again wanted to be with anybody unless they truly enjoyed my company. And that I don't ever want anybody to be with me again only because of a sense of obligation. When that happens, then both partners die inside. Don't do me any favors.
I made the decision seek out Rebecca. As long as my life was falling apart, I might as well figure out once and for all if I had a real thing for girls, or if I was just curious.
Let me stress something that is very important here. When it comes to Rebecca, I just got very lucky. I didn’t suddenly wake up and realize how to make any sort of relationship work. I didn’t study relationships, psychology, and healing so much that I rose to some level that granted me a healthy relationship. I lucked out. Over the past five and a half years with her, we have learned a great deal about our abilities as a couple. We are kind to each other. We laugh. We talk all the time. But we’re not masters of this at all. We are both still learning. We are both also still very willing to be good to each other. And I’m still very lucky.
Okay, enough about the relationship side of things. Let me button up the family and Ronnie story lines.
Over the years, I continued to distance myself from my mother. For a while I was only reaching out to her when I had great need, or when there were significant family events. But Dan always said things to kick me when I was down. A year after Rebecca and I got together, the Christmas holidays were approaching and I knew I had to put my foot down about catty behaviors. Rebecca is a very gentle personality. I had a responsibility to not bring chaos in to her home.
I wrote my mother and Dan an email asking them to promise me to have supportive and loving attitudes when they came into my home, and that they could not be catty, critical, unsupportive, or apathetic at us over Christmas dinner. I asked them to be nice.
They couldn’t do it. Dan didn’t write back at all, and mom cancelled Christmas instead. There were a few emails back and forth between her and I, where we kept telling each other that we loved each other. But I kept my boundaries, and my mother would not accept them.
After this I made even greater efforts to avoid my mother. To stop finding excuses to chase her for attention. I wasn't very cognative about it at first; I just had a desire for more distance. In 2006 I realized that this was the transition that I was making, so I made the actual commitment to myself to stop chasing her for attention. There was a significant feeling of relief after this.
Then finally... finally.... I started a huge process that gave me the ability to put to bed those inner demons regarding my mother- all of that emotion and need that was still affecting my judgment. I made use of an abuse recovery workbook, and I made a big commitment to journaling in this book, and completing the assignments. But I related all of the assignments to my mother instead of my abuser. I didn't work it every day, but kept at it on a regular basis.
I was steady about it, but took my time to experience it and think about it. It took a full year, but I have it. I can pull that journal out and reference it any time I want. I now have a much greater understanding of myself and my mother.
And I let her go.
Today we do talk, but our conversations are rare. I love her. I want her to be happy.
I do not need her.
I accept that I cannot trust her. It is a sad circumstance, but I accept it anyway.
And whatever happened to Ronald Darsey? Well, in March of 2002, when I was in group counseling with the Women’s Resource Center, I was also part of an online Survivors forum. Sex offender registries were also becoming common. My recovery was stepping in to the cyber world. So I looked up Ronnie on the Texas Department of Public Safety website. What I saw floored me.
He was registered. He had done it again and he got caught. They had his name, birthday and description. He had gone to jail for it. Five years.
I called my brother. After 20 years, I finally told him what happened. I sent him the website. We talked for a long time. I cried so hard, and part of my heart healed that day. That little girl and everything that she had been through had finally been acknowledged. She was important. She mattered. When I got off the phone I cried so hard. This was just a few months before my husband left, and I was grateful that he was not home. I was also grateful that I didn’t have to shoulder this alone anymore. And I was so desperately sad for the pain and anger that I knew my brother must be feeling at that moment.
I continued to monitor that website.
In October of 2003 something else happened.
I saw his face.
They took a picture of him. He had done it again. He had molested another little girl and they put his picture on the internet. I did not realize it at the time, but he had been arrested. The website still had a street address for him.
There was age in his face. The beginnings of white in his beard. One of his eyes was getting that droopy look- a glimmer of what his appearance will be when he is elderly. The other eye was obviously pissed at the photographer. It was a very familiar look. My inner little girl responded to that immediately. I called my brother and we talked for a long time.
I kept looking up that website every 6 weeks or so. Just whenever I had a hobby horse about it. In June of 2004 I looked it up again, and I saw that they had taken down his residential address. Instead of a residence, it said 0 INCARCERATED CO JAIL. After some searching around the Harris County Sheriff’s website, I found out he had a court date in August.
I looked up the number for the District Attorney’s office, and called with the case number from the website. They actually put the prosecutor (first name=Dan) on the phone. I told him who I was & why I was calling and asked him to do everything he could for this case. He said he wanted details of everything and that he would call me back for them that weekend.
I could not believe that I was going to talk to a prosecutor about the crimes I endured as a child. It felt surreal. I was all nerves, and too easily excited.
A couple nights before his phone call I wrote everything down that I was going to say to him. Details. Things that I had never written down before. Things that were humiliating, that could very easily be described as the lowest points in my life. After I wrote them down I would read it over. It was like seeing the words float on the page but lose their meaning. I felt so disconnected.
It was a smart decision to write things down. When the prosecutor called me, I was relieved to hear his voice. He asked me questions and I answered. The writing had helped with my perspective. I was able to say the words without choking on them, and the words didn’t seem to have as much power over me any more.
Dan took notes. He repeated my story back to me, but it sounded much more sterile because it was all in legal-eese.
Dan was planning to put me in to testify during the penalty phase. I thanked him. I thanked him for taking me seriously. He said, “Of course!! Thank YOU for calling me!!”
I called Calladus right after, who described my feelings perfectly. He said he imagined I was feeling both trepidation and giddy. He made plans to come with me to Houston.
Rebecca’s response was highly entertaining. She did a little math about the fact that Ronnie doesn’t weigh much, and added that together with stories that we’ve all heard about child molesters in jail, “He’s gonna be somebody’s bitch!!!,” She chirruped, “Some big guy will come up to him and say- oh, you like little girls? Congratulations, you just became one!!”
Dan told Ronnie’s defense attorney (a Harris County Public Defender named Loretta) about my existence on June 30th, 2004. That was the day that I showed back up in Ronnie’s life. Dan had to give the defense my phone number, and he let me know that they may call to ask me questions. He said I did not have to talk with them if I do not want to. I got in touch with the Oceanside Women’s Resource Center and asked them what would be the best approach if I received a phone call. Their advice was to be brief and state that I was not interested in speaking with them, wish them a good day, and politely hang up.
I called mine and Rebecca's therapist at the time, Dr. Savage, and scheduled an appointment for just me.
Later that night I had a panic attack. Adrenalin shocks and shakes took over my arms, my chest, my legs. I said at the time that it was like stage fright, but not as happy. Like I could feel him hating me.
On July 2nd, I got my subpoena for the trial in Houston. I looked at it for a long time.
I have a binder that I keep important documents in. Car titles. Birth certificates. Easements for our house… I keep that subpoena in there. It is a document that is from a governing body that has my name and says Ronnie’s name and his crime.
It was a powerful & validating moment to first see that subpoena.
On August 9th 2004I got a call from Dan, who said that Ronnie was going to plead guilty and get 10 years. He would be eligible for parole in five years. He said that I kept the defense from going to trial. They were planning on it until Loretta heard about me. She told Ronnie that I showed up, and proceeded to talk him in to pleading guilty. She told Dan that she knew that if he was convicted at a trial, then my testimony would get him the full 20 years for sure, so she tried to get him to take a plea. It worked. He admitted his guilt.
I wasn’t going to go to Houston after all.
I had mixed feelings about it. I was disappointed that I wouldn’t have a showdown and a court transcript that recorded my story. But I was also a little relieved that I wouldn’t have to see Houston, or Ronnie in person. I still think about going back to Houston and seeing all those places. Our trailer is long gone, but the park is still there. Sometimes I want to go back just to see if it would look or feel a little smaller to me. And to think. And to assess what those places still have on me. I think it would be interesting, but it will take a lot out of me emotionally too.
I think that the prosecutor made the right choice in letting Ronnie cop a plea. Either the prosecutor or the defense could have gone all the way to trial. Dan did not like the idea of shooting for all or nothing. He didn’t want to risk an acquittal. Dan wanted Ronnie to have a record for this crime. Dan also told me that sexual crimes against children are the type of crimes that make parole boards seethe. He expected that Ronnie would serve his full ten years.
Like I said, the feelings were mixed. The more forceful winds had left mine and my brother’s sails. But there was unquestionable satisfaction as well.
I thought about a little girl in Houston. I thought about how she would not have to go to the stand and say things that are embarrassing and humiliating about her body. I thought about how she wouldn’t have to feel invaded all over again.
A few days ago, I wrote the first letter I’ve ever written to any parole board ever. It tells my story. It gives details. It tells how even when Ronnie had gone through a severely painful accident, he still continued to pursue me. I let them know under no uncertain terms that Ronald Darsey does not have the ability or desire to control his crimes on kids. His parole date is currently set for September 25th.
My brother has written an excellent description of Ronnie and Ronnie's crimes. It is located on my brother's blog. This has caused a much needed hit for any Google search with Ronnie's name.
I doubt that any girlfriend that Ronnie targets would think to Google Ronnie's name. However her family, friends, and daughters might. If they do, they will see his photo on my brother's blog, and a full explanation of what he is capable of doing to people.
As I said in his introduction, Ronnie does not require a lot of character development. He is not complex; he is a fraction of a personality. Since I haven’t seen him in person for 25 years, he doesn’t feel like an individual person to me any more. His presence has simply been incorporated into my own psyche. He just feels like a presence in my own mind, rather than a flesh and blood person.
I don’t run away from my memories, my anger, my sorrow- none of it. It all has a say, but it doesn't own me. I own it. It doesn't have to be the center piece of my life, but it will never be ignored again. Jan was horribly wrong.
She was wrong about how to overcome abuse the moment she suggested that I emotionally deny my past. In fact, when as an adolescent I attempted to apply her absurd suggestion, I may have stunted my healing by as much as ten years. Who can really say?
What I do know is that Ronnie is a part of me the very same way that pedophiles are a part of our society. But in my mind I can do what I wish our society would do with pedophiles. I wish very much that heavily driven pedophiles such as Ronnie were placed in maximum security mental hospitals where they could be studied in great detail.
That is the area of my mind where Ronnie lives. He is in my own personal mental maximum security laboratory. I study him. I have invested years of my life to reading, writing, and researching the subjects of abuse, warning signs, sexuality, healing, trauma recovery, healthy boundaries, societal responses, and law.
For now I just want to say that while there is no "closure", there can be a "new normal". Or maybe a "normal for me" which would be defined as managing my life based on the merit of my current circumstances, rather than with the anger and fear that I learned from my past.
All that anger, heartache, grief- those tears, the nightmares, the lack of trust, the fear- it is all valid. It deserves an equal, but not overpowering say at the table. My life has so much more than those feelings of trauma. I have a home that I love that is peaceful. I can be myself. I have a relationship where we treat each other with kindness. I'm successful at work and I can take care of myself. I've realized my abilities, my strengths. I have good, loving friends. My brother is still a gift to me.
The moments where I still feel the traumas of the past are now uncommon. But when I do feel them, it does not mean that my abuser has some weird ability to pull my strings from some vast distance. Ronnie has never controlled me with my own feelings. They're mine, not his. And after all, in my mind he’s stuck in that laboratory.
And in real life, at least for now, he’s in prison.
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Updated: 9/22/08 to advise of the Parole Board Decision.
For a few years now, I’ve been meaning to write in this Livejournal about a defining part of my life. I want to discuss the abuse that I encountered as a kid. I want to do this in depth, and place everything on this Journal that I’m willing to speak about in such a public forum.
There are several reasons why I want to do this:
Statistically, childhood sexual abuse is very common. Some sources say it's one in every three girls. Some say that it is one in every four. I don't know the statistics for boys, but I know that the numbers are only a little less often for boys. Every Survivor that tells about their experiences is helping to raise awareness. I wonder what it would be like if people could just talk about their experiences without having to shoulder a stigma that they are really broken. Sure, people will say to your face that you are brave and strong for what you went through. But maybe they're uncomfortable with the thought of a sexual abuse survivor teaching a second grade class. I wonder how many people could live healthier lives if they had access to support and professional trauma recovery. I will wonder what an investment it would be to community. I will wonder how many Survivors would gain some benefit- some inner peace- to know that they are not the only ones that struggle. I will wonder what crimes could be prevented if we all understood more about sexual predators. I wonder how many things could be addressed if this were more of an open conversation for everybody- all of us- society.
There are many abuse recovery programs, and most of them suggest writing your personal history. It is a way to take inventory of what happened, and to reference it. Having all of this information in one spot could be a useful tool in my psychological healing, I believe. I can keep it as a living document, and add to it.
As long as there are abuse Survivors, there will be a need for people to understand abuse Survivors. The “Get Over It” attitude is common. It does not fly, and it is insulting. Anybody that has an expectation that an abuse Survivor should be able to step away from their experiences unaffected has a malfunction within their own sense of compassion. But the reverse of this is that those willing to listen are amazing; they have to carry a burden when they take in this information. I do have respect for folks that cannot hear it. I really do. But I would rather those folks please not listen by plugging their ears, instead of covering my mouth.
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Before I get started, I want to make a disclaimer: I will not give graphic testimony or details about the actual abuse itself. Yes, I do remember all the disturbing and humiliating shit that happened and I will not answer questions about that, or volunteer it. So you creepy fuckers out there that lean in too close when this subject comes up can piss off.
I have spoken about the details in the places where it was necessary, or when it gave me a benefit. I’ve written about it in private journals. I’ve talked about it with other Survivors and with psychologists and in recovery groups, women’s groups, women’s resource centers, and on abuse Survivor on-line forums. I have discussed details with the District Attorney that put my offender in jail, and I have written details to my offender’s Parole Board.
I am aware that talking about the details of the abuse takes the power out of it. Talking about abuse repeatedly makes it an event in your past, rather than an event that can still hurt you now. I sought that out in counseling, and it helped. There was a very long period of my life where I couldn't stop these horrible reenactments that would monopolize my mind with graphic and disturbing images from my past.
But today the details feel much more clinical. They do not overwhelm me. Much of the time it just feels sort of like cause and effect: This trauma happened, which had that affect on my psyche. I can still get into the emotion of the past when I feel like I need to work something out.
But I haven't had bad dreams in a long time, and I haven't been haunted by those details and memories in a long time, which I'm grateful for. I know that many abuse Survivors never get to that point.
And I do have another reason for refraining from details. Nobody that loves me knows more that a few snap shots of the abuse. I’ve been working on my healing for many years, and I have a giant bag of tools to deal with my experiences. My family and friends do not, and the raw information would be an unkindness to some very important people that read my Journal.
I may add other disclaimers as I flesh this out. But that’s it for now.
My parents’ marriage was in trouble from before I was born. I’m still kind of surprised that I was conceived. My mother’s personality make-up includes a great deal of tolerance & respect for equality, but very little back-bone. My father was a religious man in an unhealthy way, who’s personality traits are quite the opposite. The two of them often seem to be night and day. I have a brother that is eight years older than me. I’ll call him Calladus for this post. We have both been described as blends of our parents’ better traits.
I'm making such a face in this photo. What do you want? I was three.
My parents’ inevitable divorce started about the time of this photo. By the time I was 4-and-a-half most everything was finalized, and my mother set us up in a trailer park. Our mobile home had a room for each of us, and we got a cat that I apparently named Sobby. (I don’t remember naming her. Calladus never let me live that silly name down, though.) My father got a tiny studio apartment in a horrible crime, rat, and bug infested building downtown. He stayed there for at least 5 or 6 years, and my brother and I always visited him on the weekends. Twice a year we would make a trip across Texas to visit my father’s side of the family in New Mexico for a week or ten days.
Calladus was my most favorite person in the whole world. He was fascinating. He could do magic tricks, and I could climb him like a tree. He made my lunches for me, and took care of me if I got hurt while playing outside. He made me laugh. He was always doing something interesting and if I was quiet, he would let me watch over his shoulder when he was drawing or when he made things out of electronics.
My abuser’s name is Ronald Darsey. He goes by Ronnie. His parents were first-cousins and he has the severe dyslexia that seems to be common as a product of consanguinity. I was about 4 or 5 when my mother first spoke about him. I remember her saying that she though he was so handsome.
Ronnie was 25 when they hooked up. My mother was 37. Recently, we’ve discovered that Ronnie was married at the time. He had been married for maybe three to six months.
Ronnie was a piece of work. There’s not much to his personality. He’s one-dimensional. He is loud. He believes that he is the most important thing in any room. He is arrogant. He likes to cuss, he likes honky-tonk, and he is vulgar. He likes to drive around in his truck, lean out the window, and make disgusting noises and cat-calls to anyone that is young and female. We’re not talking about a lot of character development, here. Brilliant writers never make Ronnie into their epic antagonist. In Shakespeare’s world, Ronnie is the dumb thug in the background.
But at the time I was five, my brother was thirteen, and my mother was psychologically unhealthy. So when Ronnie moved in, he took over.
Ronnie does have predatory behaviors that are typical of an abusive personality. He feels a sense of entitlement that is overblown and undeserved. He is super controlling. He has an excuse for everything and nothing is ever his fault. He is manipulative. He’s a liar. If you complain about him, he will say that you deserved it because you are being so unreasonable. He will use head-games, change the subject, twist your words around against you, claim you were feeling something you weren’t, make wild accusations, twist things into their opposites, play the victim, & deny the obvious.
I listened to his arguments with my mother for seven years. Part of me paid careful attention. I knew it was insanity, but I couldn’t name it when I was little, any more than my mother could. What I was raised in was not healthy. I didn’t really know what “healthy” was when I saw it. Not for a long time.
My father had deep associations between his faith and shame. He applied these associations to his views of sex. It was obvious in his speech and manners that he felt incredible shame about sex and the human body. He stumbled over words that parents need to use with their little daughters. Words like 'panties'. That alone he could barely say without stuttering.
That sort of insecurity can rub off, folks. I had a distinct impression about forbidden subjects- almost before I could speak. I did not have words to talk about my own body parts. I was too uncomfortable to talk about anything that might be seen as "dirty". This was the beginning to many permissions that I needed in my childhood, but at the time I did not believe that I had.
I remember the first time that the abuse happened, but I don’t remember how old I was. I’m guessing that I was seven or eight. It was excessively confusing. I honestly had zero clue what was going on. I was trying to rack my little girl brain to try to figure out what was happening, and I came up with nothing. But I did know that I was not comfortable. Ronnie was a coward, and would run away if I yelled for mom or got loud. My mother is deaf in one ear, and sleeps on her "good ear" so Ronnie would be gone before my mother would ever wake up enough to check on me.
After some time, I understood more about what was going on, and why, but I had no idea what to do about it. It was lonely. I was the only one that knew. I wanted to tell my mother, but I was so afraid and creeped out. I couldn’t tell Dad. Hell, I still haven’t told Dad to this day, though my reasons have changed. Dad was not an approachable man. And his abundant sense of shame made me imagine only conversations of humiliation.
The reality was that if I had told, my father would have saved me from that trailer, and his bizarre views, callous demeanor, and prejudiced ways would have given me a much different set of demanding challenges to deal with, but I didn’t know that at the time.
And I couldn’t tell my brother. I mean, sure- if I told Calladus, he would fly into an incredible rage, and at 16, he would have done who-knows-what to Ronnie, which I didn’t want. Calladus would never hurt a fly. Did we both need to lose our innocence for Ronnie’s sake? My little kid’s brain did have some respect for that, but I know I wouldn’t have been able to put it in words at the time.
And of course I didn’t want to break my brother’s heart. I knew that Calladus would hurt over this. And I thought that in some ways he would hurt even more than me. It took me 20 years to finally tell him, and I think this is the main reason for my silence.
But also at the time, my biggest reason was that I didn’t want my brother to see me differently. The way that I was starting to see myself. I knew things that kids shouldn’t know at that age. I felt like I was dirty, used, and ruined. Many years later when I referred to that feeling I would describe it with the term ‘damaged goods’.
With Calladus not knowing, I could just be a kid around him. He didn’t look at me different or treat me different. It was a way to preserve what I wished I was. In his eyes, I was still an innocent little girl… and a pest. Normal. If it weren’t for Calladus, I wouldn’t have had much of a childhood at all.
I remember wondering what would happen if I told a teacher. Would they come take me away? Would they put me in a home somewhere? What if I couldn’t see my mother?! I would die if they took me away from my mother!! She was the most important thing in the world to me!!
But Ronnie’s pursuits were becoming more frequent. The only way to get it to stop was to tell. I didn’t want to tell ANYBODY, but I didn’t have a choice.
The first person I told was my daycare/sitter’s daughter, Michelle. I was eight. She was ten. She said I had to tell my mother so that I could get help. This was a natural thing for her to say. She had great parents.
So that afternoon, my mother picked me up in the car. I was beyond nervous. On the very short drive home my heart began to pump adrenalin into my veins. My arms and legs were warm with nerves. I looked at her.
“Ronnie is teaching me sex.” I said.
She kept looking straight ahead and I kind of "heh-huh" almost laughed. This was crazy. She wasn't reacting. My heart was thudding in my ears.
She didn’t say anything. Nothing!
I started to repeat myself, but she cut me off and said she heard me.
I needed something from her. It took so much nerve to say it, and now I was hanging. Was she going to tell me it was okay? I needed to know- will he get kicked out of the house? Could we move away? But my hearing sounded like it does when you are under water, and all I remember was the thud-thud in my chest and ears until my mother said, “I will talk to him.”
Talk to him?
That’s when I knew I was stuck with Ronnie. Even if he molested me.
And that is how it went for the next four years.
Ronnie would commit crimes on me as a child. I would try to dodge him. I would complain to my mother. Soon, she started telling me excuses for him. One time she told me that he was on prescription medication, and that he couldn’t help himself.
Over time I learned that Ronnie molested his nieces and sisters. And in later years, one of my aunts told me of a time that Ronnie attacked another of my aunts in the middle of the night while our family was staying at Eagle Lake.
When I was nine, I had growing pains in my legs for much of the year. I would wake up in the middle of the night in agony. Sometimes a warm bath would help. I woke up crying one night and Ronnie came in to my room. He carried me out of my bed and fixed a bath for me. He sat me on the toilet and talked to me in a soothing voice while the water ran. I was shaking. What was he going to do? He checked the water temperature and put shampoo in to give it bubbles. Then he brought me a towel and told me to get in the tub and he left me alone. After my legs felt better, he opened the door to the bathroom just enough to put my mother’s robe in on the floor and told me to go back to my room and get ready for bed. It’s the only time that I remember him being that nice and me being that vulnerable.
Also, when I was 9 I broke my leg from falling off a horse in New Mexico. I don’t remember Ronnie ever attacking me when I had a cast on. I also had broken my arm around the age of five and I had the chicken pox at about the age of 6, but I don’t believe that Ronnie had started his crimes at that time. I do remember feeling weird about him seeing me in the tub covered with Calamine lotion, though.
I have pieces of memories. Like the time that my mother opened the front door and Ronnie fell in through the doorway. He was too drunk to stand. I’m not sure what happened next.
Another time I heard them fighting again. I came out of my room to find Ronnie pinning my mother down on the kitchen floor, holding her by the wrists. I said, “What’s going on?” and my mother told me to go back to my room.
I remember when Ronnie's oldest nephew killed himself. At least, I think that is how they were related. We went to Ronnie's brother's home, and one of the bedrooms had tape across the door. That was the room where the young man had blown his head off with a shotgun. I remember going to the funeral and viewing the body. He had tattoos on his knuckles. Love and Hate.
There are things I don’t remember. My mother once held Ronnie at gunpoint, threatening to shoot. My brother had “run away”. (He spent the night on the roof of a vacant trailer in our neighborhood.) Years later, she told me that she put the gun down because she saw my face. My eyes were very wide.
I mention this, because I want to say that some traumatic events can be forgotten, depending on the circumstances. I’ve never “recovered” this or any other memory. I can be reminded of something that I haven’t thought about in a very long time and I remember parts of it, or I remember it in a bit of a fog. Other times I can be told about something that I can’t remember at all. There’s some important information about memory that I want to talk about in another post. For Survivors out there, you may have heard many controversies on this subject. Of course, memories are important to address.
When I was ten years old, my mother wanted to “give me a break” from him. For some reason, Ronnie and my mother had obtained a first class plane ticket. (I’m not sure how.) So my cousin and I spent that summer in Florida with my grandmother. I remember how weird it was that my mother was “giving me a break”. Why didn’t she just leave him?!
As I got older, his advances became more aggressive.
We lived in that trailer park for seven years. I have not yet lived in a single place for a longer period of time. I shake my head at the irony of it. That filthy, roach-infested trailer of abuse was the most steady residence in my history. But we did finally move out into an apartment in Pasadena.
I was eleven and it was the middle of my sixth grade year. My brother tried some college and a few jobs. In our new home, I was glad to get a big bunk bed. It was awesome. I slept on the top bunk and I was hard to reach. My mother and Ronnie fought all the time. His days in our lives were becoming numbered.
I made a bunch of friends in junior high, and I started to get some relief from my home life. I made a good friend named Nathan that was the easiest person in the world to talk to. He was just there for me. He was a tender-hearted guy that I always felt so safe around. I wish I still talked with him today. We lost touch and I still have a hard time with that. I don't think Nathan really ever knew how comforting he was to me then. I lived next door to a family with kids my age- Henry and Theresa. We were always hanging out. Henry’s family knew what I was dealing with, and invited me to come over any time after school to be there until my mother got home. I had friends at school- April, and Carlie that I could talk to about my problems, and that helped. They also made me laugh. A lot. My mother started letting me spend the night with friends, and that helped too. I'm so grateful that April and I are still friends to this day, I deeply cherish the happy memories with her at that time of my life.
I don’t remember exactly how Ronnie moved out. My mother never told me that he wouldn’t be around any more, or that they were getting a divorce. My memories don’t serve me well regarding the circumstances. I believe that Calladus may have a better idea. I do know that I was starting to act out and rebel. I enjoyed crafts and making things. I had found a box of interesting materials in the house one day and I helped myself to the different fabrics. I cut them in to shapes and made toys and stuffed animals out of them. Then one day I came home from school, and Ronnie told me that he had a bone to pick with me. He said that the fabric was his and that I had no right to touch it. I was sort of excited to realize that I didn’t care if it was his! We got into a big fight and I screamed at him. I was even more excited to realize that I had no intention of backing down. I got sarcastic and sassed at him.
It was an empowering moment for me, but only my first crude explorations into empowerment.
I know that Ronnie got his own studio apartment. I remember seeing it one time and thinking to myself that the construction of it was interesting. It had a loft. I had never seen a loft before. After he moved out, my mother, brother and I were the three amigos again. Our apartment was just brighter. Ronnie's stuff was gone, so there wasn't so much clutter. It stayed clean more easily. Calladus and I could have friends over. The intimidating anger and outbursts were gone, and replaced with peace. It was a very good, but very brief time.
My brother joined the Air Force. My family and I all still laugh about how bad I cried on his shoulders the night before he left. He had to ask me to switch shoulders as I soaked one and then the other with tears. I’m so glad he let me cry that much.
I still think of that moment as a very defining time for me. This is the doorway that separates different eras of my life. This was the end of my early childhood and the beginning of my adolescence. For weeks I just felt lost. Calladus was my protector, my playmate, and my third parent from the moment I was born. Now I had to learn to live without him. I missed him so bad. Every time I thought I couldn’t feel any more pain, then more came.
This was my first face-to-face encounter with deep loss, and it became a yard-stick that I used for many years to measure other losses. I knew my brother and I would likely never live under the same roof again, and that devastated me. Slowly, I started learning my first lessons about acceptance, and moving on.
Not long after my brother joined the Air Force, Ronnie had a very bad accident. He was employed as a mechanic at a garage. He was filling a tire in one of those big rim clamp tire machines. Maybe he over-filled it. Maybe he was installing a 16 inch tire on a 16.5 inch rim. For whatever reason, the tire exploded, and his hand was in the way. The accident ripped most of the flesh off the back of his hand, broke every bone at least once and some as many as three times, and his pinky was hanging on by skin alone. He was immediately rushed into his first of several surgeries, where his bones were set with rods that protruded from his knuckles, ala Wolverine. They grafted skin from his thigh. It didn’t take very well, and they later considered sewing his hand into a flap of skin under his naval to keep the skin alive until it took. I thought that would be pretty cool, but they took a different approach instead.
Of course my mother felt sorry for him, and took me to visit him in the hospital. I was getting pretty good at making stuffed animals by then and I brought a green and purple dragon that I was especially proud of to keep me company at the hospital. Ronnie assumed that I made it for him, and I felt like a heel about correcting him. So I let him have it. Yes, he was a mess. Yes, he was reduced to this helpless state. Yes, I still want my damn dragon back.
Then as you can imagine, my mother continued to feel sorry for him and it wasn’t long until he was back in the house. My mother set a bed up for him in the living room.
Gross.
As Ronnie got better, my life got worse. Soon he was back to his old tricks. His last attack scared me pretty bad. He and I were the only ones in the apartment and the situation got dangerous. It turned out to be his worst attack on me and I didn't think I would get away this time. He didn't seem to even hear me screaming- like he was in his own world. I was terrified. After I got away from him, I locked myself in the bathroom and I wouldn’t come out until my mother came home.
I told her, “Either he goes or I do. I’ll go live with Dad.”
She tried to argue with me. Ronnie was denying everything I said and my mother tried to tell me that she couldn't make a decision. She said she didn't know who to believe. But I dug in, and made sure she knew I was serious.
I said, "I don't care if you don't believe me. I'll tell Dad this weekend that I want to live with him." I knew Dad would be happy to stop paying child support.
And you know what happened next? Ronnie left.
And I was told how it was such a huge deal for him and my mother to bend over backwards so he could leave for me. They made sure I knew how inconvenient it was that he left all on my account. All because of me. Like I had put the whole world on hold or something.
But for just a little while after that, it started getting better. Ronnie would call our house in the middle of the night. I would answer and he would tell me to put my mother on the phone and I would hang up on him.
Also, something very good was happening. My mother and I were talking. I needed to figure things out with her. One night, we both hung out on her bed and she told me the whole story of how she got together with my father and why their marriage had so many problems, and why she left. This was going to be the first part of the conversation. In the next part, she promised we could talk about Ronnie. She started reading some interesting books like Richard Bach’s Bridge Across Forever. She started believing in herself again. She started being proud of her accomplishments. She was going to go out and do interesting things, and become an interesting and dependable person. She joined Parents Without Partners.
And one night when she was at Parents Without Partners, she met Dan.
I came home and my mother wasn’t there. That was okay and normal. But the afternoon wore on, and evening came. The sun went down and she didn’t show up. Was she okay? I thought she would be at Parents Without Partners, but I had never been there. I grabbed the phone book and looked up the number.
A nice man answered and I explained that I was looking for my mother and gave him her name. He asked me to hold on, so I did for a very long time.
Then finally, I heard the phone being picked up and my mother said, “Tanya?” I wanted to know what was going on and she assured me that she was coming home right away.
Soon after that my mother introduced me to Dan and his two sons. I was thirteen. Dan and my mother were married before I turned fourteen. That year, I failed the eighth grade. Right after that, we all moved to California. Nobody, not even my mother’s new husband ever thought to have Ronnie arrested. Nobody ever asked me if I would be willing to testify against him or talk to a police officer. Nobody ever considered the empowerment or sense of protection I needed at that time.
No adult sought justice for me.
There was some attempt to go to counseling, but the purpose was to get me to fall in line with my mother’s new and dramatic choices. Not to address what I went through. That subject never came up in counseling. I kept hoping that it would.
In fact, the only time the subject came up, was when I brought it up. I needed help. I kept asking for it, or acting out when I didn’t get it. In San Diego, my mother found a suport group called Daughter’s United, but she wasn’t very good at facilitating my access to it. For whatever reason, I never even saw the place- I only heard about it.
I started something at this point that is very common with survivors: I started many desperate hopes that I would one day need to vanquish in my quest for healing. Every Survivor wants to believe that they will be believed and comforted. They hope to be offered the kind of nurturing and support that is necessary to shoulder their burdens on road ahead. They want guidance: How do you get through this?
Abuse Survivors should never have to expect to be discounted, ignored, scapegoated, or attacked. When the response is negative or non-existent, what can you do? If you carry all this confusion and baggage- if you do not see any options for recovery, then where do you wind up?
For me, I leaned heavily on coping mechanisms. Some of these were very self-destructive. And I continued to hope for our day- mine and my mother’s. I kept hoping for a long, long time.
My mother had her friend, Jan talk with me. This part pisses me off a great deal. Jan sat me down and told me that I had to let everything go and put it all in the past or else Ronnie would still have power over me and my mind. Every ounce of anger and sorrow and confusion that I felt was instantly invalidated. I was only fourteen, so I was green enough to believe her. All that grief- not only was nobody interested, but I wasn’t allowed to feel any of it, or else Ronnie would win.
What a total mind-fuck.
That year in school I buried myself in my schoolwork. It was the eighth grade all over again, but this year wasn’t going to be like the year before. I was placed in Gifted and Talented Education. I made all A’s.
We weren’t doing well. Dan couldn’t find work, and the “Parents” (as my step-brothers and I had come to call the pair) couldn’t pay the bills.
We all had to move into a hotel together. We were in a single room kitchenette with two queen sized beds. I slept in a small closet on the floor. We were there for several months until school let out. We had more than enough time with each other and drove each other crazy. I started acting out more, and took many queues from my favorite music bands- all 80’s long-hair metal and glam groups that could give classes on juvenile delinquency. My step brother, Danny started acting out too. He stole from my mother’s purse. One time I told her, “Mom, I saw Danny take a dollar out of your purse.” What I wanted was justice and safety in my home. But instead, she gave me a dollar.
What could I do but shake my head. Everything was just so fucked.
Danny had started stealing my clothes and masturbating on them. Later, when we could afford a home again, I would find my clothes in wads in his room- shoved behind the drawers under his waterbed. In other news, Dan and my mother became obsessed with the lottery. There were always lottery tickets stuffed in drawers and fallen behind the couch and under tables. Danny stole $1400.00 from a little old lady that he worked with in Orange County. I couldn’t believe it. After that I never trusted him again, and kept anything that I really loved at friends homes, knowing that he would steal it from me just because I loved it.
I was in the ninth grade. I not only lost interest in school, I also kind of lost all sense of direction. I didn’t have much in the way of success at school or at home. By tenth grade I dropped out.
The only thing that offered me an escape for a while was getting attention from friends for being rowdy or getting attention from guys. Drugs, and parties were welcome escapes. Part of me knew that my behavior was self destructive. But it was an easy distraction, and it kept me from having to face my circumstances, which I had no clue how to handle.
The parents never stopped me either. There was no structure, and I had no respect for them. I could get rowdy, bully them, ditch school, and there were no consequences. This was 1988 and early 1989. I went completely wild. I snuck out as often as I could and I was gone to where ever the world would take me. I didn’t have much respect for myself or my body. But I had never really learned that my body or I should be respected.
I met a guy named Vaughn who felt like a really good friend at the time. Vaughn and I could talk on the phone and in person for hours. We were friends for a long time before we started dating. I wanted to be more than friends, though. I wanted so much attention, and I desperately wanted a deep connection that I could count on.
Vaughn’s family wasn’t perfect. But they weren’t insane, either. His parents were divorced and his grandparents and aunts were doting, so he had several homes and and a half dozen adults in his life that he could count on. Vaughn was a very comfortable person to talk with, and he was interesting. He was easy on the eyes, he was in college, and he had traveled to all kinds of places- London, Whales, Scotland, Kenya, South Africa, Swaziland, and Lesotho. He was a drummer. He was working on his journeyman as an electrician. His father worked for the Old Globe Theater and I could see plays for free.
But Vaughn didn’t date losers that did drugs or dropped out of high school. So on May 13th, 1989 I quit meth and I have never touched it since. He used to tell me, “Tanya, I’m not brilliant about school. If I can do it, anybody can do it.”
So I did. First I got my GED, but then I went to night school and made up my classes. I graduated the year that I was supposed to. I’ve got my little leather-bound diploma. A real diploma.
Vaughn and I dated until I was 20. I made several attempts to move out of the parents’ house. I knew that my mother and step-father were not good for me, but I also wanted my mother’s approval and attention so badly. I wanted to finish that conversation we started years before. I wanted to heal from this and get past it.
I started talking about Ronnie with Vaughn, but he didn’t know what to do or say about it. He was so great to talk with about other subjects, but when it came to this very important subject-he just checked out. When I broke up with Vaughn, it was one of the most difficult decisions I made in my life. But it was the right one. I had other reasons for breaking up with him than just this. But I do need someone that can keep up with me emotionally, and Vaughn- as wonderful as he is- was never that person.
At nineteen, I moved up to Orange County and got a job in Commerce. I was in an icky roommate situation for a year. I started having dreams about girls. Terminator Two came out and I thought about Linda Hamilton every single day. I bought the movie on video and watched it every chance I got. I also thought about Sigourney Weaver almost as much as Linda Hamilton. I had taped copies of Alien and Aliens that I watched all the time.
The LA riots happened and scared me back down to San Diego. I wound up stuck at my parent’s place, sleeping on their couch or friends’ couches. What a nightmare. Would I ever get away?
I was dating around. I missed Vaughn, but I couldn’t bring myself to go back to him. But there was another guy named Joe that was big, handsome, and not too bright. But he had something that Vaughn didn’t have. He had a ticket away from my parents. I took it. I got married and moved to North Carolina, where Joe was stationed as a Marine.
This started a decade of failed relationships, and soul searching. When my husband was gone for months, I had an opportunity to sort out things in my head. I wrote a lot. But the marriage didn't last. The early ninety’s found me drifting. Without a college education, or an established skill set, I had challenges finding employment and a desirable home. I had so many crazy experiences in this time. I tried everything. Sometimes I tried things to see if it would fit my life. Sometimes I tried things just for the distraction, like when I was younger. Not all of my misadventures in this time were self-destructive, though. I want to stress that I had opportunities to learn from these awkward years. I reflect on this time often. There are still lessons that it has to teach.
When I found avenues, I joined women’s groups and Survivor’s workshops. I got my bug for journaling in my first marriage. After that divorce, I was back to California, and I lived with someone that was deeply involved in 12-step recovery. He encouraged me to seek any avenue I wanted for healing from my own past.
I started growing distant from my mother and step father. Two of my closest friends, Trish and Robert, were getting married. Trish refused to invite them. She and I started having many long conversations about them. She admitted that she was not comfortable around either of them, and had not been for years. Trish was the one that always took a moment to tell me that I was being treated badly, and that maybe I didn't need to value my mother's opinions or advice so much. I have to give her a great deal of credit in supporting me as I gradually stopped chasing my mother for approval and support.
One of the guys that I dated in October of 1996 turned out to be a real jerk- the really bad kind. The dangerous kind. When I broke up with him, he got drunk and showed up at my apartment with an axe. He kicked in the door, pulled the phone cord out of the wall and then he beat me up pretty bad. I had to figure out how to get away from him. He held me by the throat with one hand and the axe in the other- threatening to kill me. He was much stronger than me. I had to think quick.
I played him. I told him, “Baby, why didn’t you just let me have a couple days to be mad at you? Let me take you home. I’ll pick you up after work tomorrow and we can go out for a nice dinner. We can talk it over.” He was drunk and he bought it. I took him home, and then drove back to my apartment- stopping once along the road to throw up.
When I got home I called the police. Then I called Trish and Robert. They came to my apartment to wait for the cops with me. Then I called my mother and step-father to wait with me too. I shouldn’t have called them. Dan started talking about how I was a loser and that I got myself into a situation that I probably deserved. Trish was understandably horrified. She hasn’t spoken to my parents since.
There were times in all of this that I said very catty things to my mother. Remember those hopes that I needed to vanquish that I spoke of earlier? I realized that the nurturing I craved from my mother would certainly never come, and I hated facing this fact.
She would never go to counseling with me for this. She would never let me cry on her shoulder over my lost innocence. She would never offer her loving apology- only excuses. She would never talk about it with me or allow me to talk about it with her. She felt guilty and she couldn't stand feeling guilty. Avoiding that feeling was more important to her than a healthy relationship with her daughter. It was the absolute hardest thing for me to face.
I was bitter. When I’m bitter, I’m ugly and sarcastic, and I'm biting. I hurt her. I said horrible things to her. I hit below the belt. It's only recently that I apologized for that, but I carried the guilt about it for years. It was just wrong of me. That's not the person I want to be.
When I married Victor, my second husband, I guess I felt like I was settling. But I wanted to settle down. I wanted security, and stability. I thought that being single was keeping me in a world with no direction.
I wasn’t as passionate about this guy as I was about Vaughn. But he seemed to be really crazy about me. He was for a while, until the new wore off.
Victor introduced me to Rebecca. Rebecca eventually came out of the closet. But I had a crush on her before that ever happened. I used to think about her all the time. I would have to make myself stop thinking about her. I had to remind myself all the time about my commitment to my husband and to be there- be in my marriage. I started playing tapes over and over in my head about believing in my marriage and my husband.
I also joined the Women’s Resource Center in Oceanside. I kept it a secret from Victor. One time, he found me writing in my recovery workbook and asked what it was. I didn’t lie to him. I told him. His response was, “Oh, that again.”
I tried to tell myself that I didn't need my spouse to take this journey with me. I tried to shrug off the loneliness. I wished so much for the sweetheart guy that treated me so well those first two years would come back. I wrote him poems when he was mean. Trying to draw him out. I was determined to make this work with Victor and to have stability in my life.
Four years after our wedding, Victor started sleeping around and then he finally left. I had placed a great deal of investment and personal identity in that marriage, and I was devastated. By the last year of our marriage, I wasn’t Tanya any more. I was Mrs. Victor. I was ready to go along with whatever my jerk of a husband wanted, even if it was bad for me psychologically. Victor, conveniently, didn’t believe in psychology. Instead he became a constant shower of criticism and contempt. I never did anything right.
I started secretly taking Prozac and hiding food- cookies under the shoe rack, M&M’s in the back of my sock drawer.
When Victor left, he did me a great favor, but I didn’t see it at the time.
I have to say that when this happened, my mother came to my home and let me cry and cry like a little kid in her arms. That was a very important moment for me, with many healing and nurturing aspects. I also saw this as an opportunity to talk about Ronnie and I took it. Today I wouldn’t have, but I did then. There was too much that I craved. After all those years, I still yearned to cry out my grief for what that little girl that I was had gone through. When I mentioned Ronnie, my mother stiffened. Her defenses crept back into her eyes. I let it go. I had enough grief to cry about already.
In a fog of depression I lost 50 pounds in 4 months. I took on a fatalistic attitude. What ever happens next- happens. I decided at that moment that I never again wanted to be with anybody unless they truly enjoyed my company. And that I don't ever want anybody to be with me again only because of a sense of obligation. When that happens, then both partners die inside. Don't do me any favors.
I made the decision seek out Rebecca. As long as my life was falling apart, I might as well figure out once and for all if I had a real thing for girls, or if I was just curious.
Let me stress something that is very important here. When it comes to Rebecca, I just got very lucky. I didn’t suddenly wake up and realize how to make any sort of relationship work. I didn’t study relationships, psychology, and healing so much that I rose to some level that granted me a healthy relationship. I lucked out. Over the past five and a half years with her, we have learned a great deal about our abilities as a couple. We are kind to each other. We laugh. We talk all the time. But we’re not masters of this at all. We are both still learning. We are both also still very willing to be good to each other. And I’m still very lucky.
Okay, enough about the relationship side of things. Let me button up the family and Ronnie story lines.
Over the years, I continued to distance myself from my mother. For a while I was only reaching out to her when I had great need, or when there were significant family events. But Dan always said things to kick me when I was down. A year after Rebecca and I got together, the Christmas holidays were approaching and I knew I had to put my foot down about catty behaviors. Rebecca is a very gentle personality. I had a responsibility to not bring chaos in to her home.
I wrote my mother and Dan an email asking them to promise me to have supportive and loving attitudes when they came into my home, and that they could not be catty, critical, unsupportive, or apathetic at us over Christmas dinner. I asked them to be nice.
They couldn’t do it. Dan didn’t write back at all, and mom cancelled Christmas instead. There were a few emails back and forth between her and I, where we kept telling each other that we loved each other. But I kept my boundaries, and my mother would not accept them.
After this I made even greater efforts to avoid my mother. To stop finding excuses to chase her for attention. I wasn't very cognative about it at first; I just had a desire for more distance. In 2006 I realized that this was the transition that I was making, so I made the actual commitment to myself to stop chasing her for attention. There was a significant feeling of relief after this.
Then finally... finally.... I started a huge process that gave me the ability to put to bed those inner demons regarding my mother- all of that emotion and need that was still affecting my judgment. I made use of an abuse recovery workbook, and I made a big commitment to journaling in this book, and completing the assignments. But I related all of the assignments to my mother instead of my abuser. I didn't work it every day, but kept at it on a regular basis.
I was steady about it, but took my time to experience it and think about it. It took a full year, but I have it. I can pull that journal out and reference it any time I want. I now have a much greater understanding of myself and my mother.
And I let her go.
Today we do talk, but our conversations are rare. I love her. I want her to be happy.
I do not need her.
I accept that I cannot trust her. It is a sad circumstance, but I accept it anyway.
And whatever happened to Ronald Darsey? Well, in March of 2002, when I was in group counseling with the Women’s Resource Center, I was also part of an online Survivors forum. Sex offender registries were also becoming common. My recovery was stepping in to the cyber world. So I looked up Ronnie on the Texas Department of Public Safety website. What I saw floored me.
He was registered. He had done it again and he got caught. They had his name, birthday and description. He had gone to jail for it. Five years.
I called my brother. After 20 years, I finally told him what happened. I sent him the website. We talked for a long time. I cried so hard, and part of my heart healed that day. That little girl and everything that she had been through had finally been acknowledged. She was important. She mattered. When I got off the phone I cried so hard. This was just a few months before my husband left, and I was grateful that he was not home. I was also grateful that I didn’t have to shoulder this alone anymore. And I was so desperately sad for the pain and anger that I knew my brother must be feeling at that moment.
I continued to monitor that website.
In October of 2003 something else happened.
I saw his face.
They took a picture of him. He had done it again. He had molested another little girl and they put his picture on the internet. I did not realize it at the time, but he had been arrested. The website still had a street address for him.
There was age in his face. The beginnings of white in his beard. One of his eyes was getting that droopy look- a glimmer of what his appearance will be when he is elderly. The other eye was obviously pissed at the photographer. It was a very familiar look. My inner little girl responded to that immediately. I called my brother and we talked for a long time.
I kept looking up that website every 6 weeks or so. Just whenever I had a hobby horse about it. In June of 2004 I looked it up again, and I saw that they had taken down his residential address. Instead of a residence, it said 0 INCARCERATED CO JAIL. After some searching around the Harris County Sheriff’s website, I found out he had a court date in August.
I looked up the number for the District Attorney’s office, and called with the case number from the website. They actually put the prosecutor (first name=Dan) on the phone. I told him who I was & why I was calling and asked him to do everything he could for this case. He said he wanted details of everything and that he would call me back for them that weekend.
I could not believe that I was going to talk to a prosecutor about the crimes I endured as a child. It felt surreal. I was all nerves, and too easily excited.
A couple nights before his phone call I wrote everything down that I was going to say to him. Details. Things that I had never written down before. Things that were humiliating, that could very easily be described as the lowest points in my life. After I wrote them down I would read it over. It was like seeing the words float on the page but lose their meaning. I felt so disconnected.
It was a smart decision to write things down. When the prosecutor called me, I was relieved to hear his voice. He asked me questions and I answered. The writing had helped with my perspective. I was able to say the words without choking on them, and the words didn’t seem to have as much power over me any more.
Dan took notes. He repeated my story back to me, but it sounded much more sterile because it was all in legal-eese.
Dan was planning to put me in to testify during the penalty phase. I thanked him. I thanked him for taking me seriously. He said, “Of course!! Thank YOU for calling me!!”
I called Calladus right after, who described my feelings perfectly. He said he imagined I was feeling both trepidation and giddy. He made plans to come with me to Houston.
Rebecca’s response was highly entertaining. She did a little math about the fact that Ronnie doesn’t weigh much, and added that together with stories that we’ve all heard about child molesters in jail, “He’s gonna be somebody’s bitch!!!,” She chirruped, “Some big guy will come up to him and say- oh, you like little girls? Congratulations, you just became one!!”
Dan told Ronnie’s defense attorney (a Harris County Public Defender named Loretta) about my existence on June 30th, 2004. That was the day that I showed back up in Ronnie’s life. Dan had to give the defense my phone number, and he let me know that they may call to ask me questions. He said I did not have to talk with them if I do not want to. I got in touch with the Oceanside Women’s Resource Center and asked them what would be the best approach if I received a phone call. Their advice was to be brief and state that I was not interested in speaking with them, wish them a good day, and politely hang up.
I called mine and Rebecca's therapist at the time, Dr. Savage, and scheduled an appointment for just me.
Later that night I had a panic attack. Adrenalin shocks and shakes took over my arms, my chest, my legs. I said at the time that it was like stage fright, but not as happy. Like I could feel him hating me.
On July 2nd, I got my subpoena for the trial in Houston. I looked at it for a long time.
I have a binder that I keep important documents in. Car titles. Birth certificates. Easements for our house… I keep that subpoena in there. It is a document that is from a governing body that has my name and says Ronnie’s name and his crime.
It was a powerful & validating moment to first see that subpoena.
On August 9th 2004I got a call from Dan, who said that Ronnie was going to plead guilty and get 10 years. He would be eligible for parole in five years. He said that I kept the defense from going to trial. They were planning on it until Loretta heard about me. She told Ronnie that I showed up, and proceeded to talk him in to pleading guilty. She told Dan that she knew that if he was convicted at a trial, then my testimony would get him the full 20 years for sure, so she tried to get him to take a plea. It worked. He admitted his guilt.
I wasn’t going to go to Houston after all.
I had mixed feelings about it. I was disappointed that I wouldn’t have a showdown and a court transcript that recorded my story. But I was also a little relieved that I wouldn’t have to see Houston, or Ronnie in person. I still think about going back to Houston and seeing all those places. Our trailer is long gone, but the park is still there. Sometimes I want to go back just to see if it would look or feel a little smaller to me. And to think. And to assess what those places still have on me. I think it would be interesting, but it will take a lot out of me emotionally too.
I think that the prosecutor made the right choice in letting Ronnie cop a plea. Either the prosecutor or the defense could have gone all the way to trial. Dan did not like the idea of shooting for all or nothing. He didn’t want to risk an acquittal. Dan wanted Ronnie to have a record for this crime. Dan also told me that sexual crimes against children are the type of crimes that make parole boards seethe. He expected that Ronnie would serve his full ten years.
Like I said, the feelings were mixed. The more forceful winds had left mine and my brother’s sails. But there was unquestionable satisfaction as well.
I thought about a little girl in Houston. I thought about how she would not have to go to the stand and say things that are embarrassing and humiliating about her body. I thought about how she wouldn’t have to feel invaded all over again.
A few days ago, I wrote the first letter I’ve ever written to any parole board ever. It tells my story. It gives details. It tells how even when Ronnie had gone through a severely painful accident, he still continued to pursue me. I let them know under no uncertain terms that Ronald Darsey does not have the ability or desire to control his crimes on kids. His parole date is currently set for September 25th.
My brother has written an excellent description of Ronnie and Ronnie's crimes. It is located on my brother's blog. This has caused a much needed hit for any Google search with Ronnie's name.
I doubt that any girlfriend that Ronnie targets would think to Google Ronnie's name. However her family, friends, and daughters might. If they do, they will see his photo on my brother's blog, and a full explanation of what he is capable of doing to people.
As I said in his introduction, Ronnie does not require a lot of character development. He is not complex; he is a fraction of a personality. Since I haven’t seen him in person for 25 years, he doesn’t feel like an individual person to me any more. His presence has simply been incorporated into my own psyche. He just feels like a presence in my own mind, rather than a flesh and blood person.
I don’t run away from my memories, my anger, my sorrow- none of it. It all has a say, but it doesn't own me. I own it. It doesn't have to be the center piece of my life, but it will never be ignored again. Jan was horribly wrong.
She was wrong about how to overcome abuse the moment she suggested that I emotionally deny my past. In fact, when as an adolescent I attempted to apply her absurd suggestion, I may have stunted my healing by as much as ten years. Who can really say?
What I do know is that Ronnie is a part of me the very same way that pedophiles are a part of our society. But in my mind I can do what I wish our society would do with pedophiles. I wish very much that heavily driven pedophiles such as Ronnie were placed in maximum security mental hospitals where they could be studied in great detail.
That is the area of my mind where Ronnie lives. He is in my own personal mental maximum security laboratory. I study him. I have invested years of my life to reading, writing, and researching the subjects of abuse, warning signs, sexuality, healing, trauma recovery, healthy boundaries, societal responses, and law.
For now I just want to say that while there is no "closure", there can be a "new normal". Or maybe a "normal for me" which would be defined as managing my life based on the merit of my current circumstances, rather than with the anger and fear that I learned from my past.
All that anger, heartache, grief- those tears, the nightmares, the lack of trust, the fear- it is all valid. It deserves an equal, but not overpowering say at the table. My life has so much more than those feelings of trauma. I have a home that I love that is peaceful. I can be myself. I have a relationship where we treat each other with kindness. I'm successful at work and I can take care of myself. I've realized my abilities, my strengths. I have good, loving friends. My brother is still a gift to me.
The moments where I still feel the traumas of the past are now uncommon. But when I do feel them, it does not mean that my abuser has some weird ability to pull my strings from some vast distance. Ronnie has never controlled me with my own feelings. They're mine, not his. And after all, in my mind he’s stuck in that laboratory.
And in real life, at least for now, he’s in prison.
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Updated: 9/22/08 to advise of the Parole Board Decision.