By Sandra
March 2001

I am thirty years old, married, with two young children, and have been on disability due to mental illness for the past eight years. I was born into an insane family where my grandfather physically and sexually abused me from a young age until I was fifteen. Part of what he did was send me to strangers' homes for child prostitution where I was also used for child pornography. My grandfather would take pictures of me, as well as show me haunting pictures of other kids who looked drugged and dazed.

Growing up and trying to fit into a normal life after so much abuse is hard. I have nightmares, flashbacks and struggle with everyday tasks that most people take for granted. I have been going to therapy for the last twelve years, and in the last four years I have been going eight hours a week. I hate it and wish I didn't need to go. I would much rather be home with my family, but that never works. Not going keeps all the terrible images and thoughts of the past trapped in my head, and if I don't talk about what I see I end up depressed and isolated. Therapy has very little to do with what I want, but a lot to do with what I have to do to keep it together for myself and my family. There is a lot that simply stinks when you live through abuse -- never feeling like you fit in, never trusting, always dreaming of a chance to just collapse, but never feeling safe enough to do so -- but all that is my secret. No one I don't tell knows when or how I was hurt. This is where the pornography is different. There is a haunting that surrounds me constantly reminding me that I don't have control over keeping my past a secret. The pictures that were taken when I was so young are still out there. Who knows where they are and how many people have seen them. I wonder if they will show up when I least expect it. I am away from abuse now, but know that some pervert could be pleasuring himself while looking at my pictures or showing them to kids. So, in a way, I am still being used after all I have tried to do to get away from that horrible life.

The memories of posing for those pictures are so painful, more so than the physical and sexual abuse. At least then I was fighting with someone or I could get caught up in the pain of the struggle to distract myself. Posing was different. It was more vulnerable and exposed. I often prayed to God that he wouldn't look at me until it was over. I was so ashamed and didn't want him to see me like that. I also would worry about other people seeing the pictures and was terrified of what people would think of me. Having someone stare at me and judge me from ten feet away while taking pictures, as I stood there naked, cold, exposed, embarrassed and humiliated, made me wish I could be nothing. He would talk to me as if I was an object and was oblivious to my pain. I wanted to turn into an object but I couldn't, no matter how hard I tried I couldn't go that numb. My soul and heart just hurt so much every time the flash from the camera would go off. It felt like someone was knocking my worth down lower and lower, and by the time the roll of film was done I didn't have any worth. When it was over, getting dressed was like getting some dignity back. The worry of what would be done with those pictures would plague me from then on.

People have asked why I didn't tell, and I think I did or tried at times to some people, but they didn't respond. I wasn't about to tell about the pictures because then maybe someone would see them and I didn't even want a nice person to see them. The people who are into exploiting kids know what they are doing. They had me convinced that it was okay that people looked at those magazines. It just wasn't okay to take the pictures and that is why they used bad kids that no one cared about. So my thought was that people knew and thought I deserved it. After all, I was in those magazines and no one came to rescue me, so they must have thought it was okay. Those are the thoughts of a kid who is used by disturbed grown-ups. That is why I think it isn't something a child is prone to speak out about, because of its embarrassing hurtful nature. The pedophile knows how to convince a kid that there is no way out and can get a child to have no hope. I have been away from it for fifteen years now and it still hurts.

I am crying as I write this. I don't think the pain and humiliation will ever go completely away. They did too much. That is why I am writing this. Please don't feel bad for me -- that won't do me any good. If anything that I wrote made you feel something at all, the next time you turn on the TV and hear generic words like child porn, using children, child abuse, remember those kids hurt. Think what they must be feeling and how when they grow up the hurt, shame and feeling of being exposed to all will follow them. I feel dirty every time I take a picture of my kids innocently playing. I want to scream and run in panic every time someone approaches me with a camera at a party telling me to "say cheese." I hear the news talk about catching a pedophile with pictures and my heart stops in fear, because I am afraid I will hear that they found my pictures. Please, if any of this meant anything to you, help our society stop glancing over this issue. There are others like me, even though I don't know any personally, I saw their pictures when I was a kid and their faces are still in my mind. I pray every night that they have found a way to live after being stripped of dignity.

After I wrote this, my husband read it and hugged me. He told me that I didn't deserve what had happened. He meant well, but all I could think was that no one does. There is never any reason that anyone should have this done to them. People need to end this sick behavior instead of letting it be accepted in any form. Kids aren't objects - they're people. They grow up and one day will be trying to have a chance at life. Life is hard enough -- give them a chance to succeed by not allowing people to exploit them. I am proof that kids don't just overcome abuse, they struggle with the effects for the rest of their life.

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