Guest 77, I don't know how you arrived at the feelings/comment which you did. The Topic for this thread is: "Child Sexual Abuse Not in 10 Commandments, Why Not?" By posting the scriptures from Leviticus, I was merely adding to the subject of the thread, i.e., though not a specific command in the Official TEN, there are references to incest in the bigger List of Laws. Period. That's the entire sum of what I was contributing to this thread. Nothing more, nothing less, no commentary, etc. Sometimes I'm way tooo tired to make a commentary, so I just offer info/facts, and everyone can use it as they see fit. Why did the Leviticus scriptures bother you? I'm sincerely not sure I understand.
Now, to answer your many questions/assumptions:
Grits, all your scripture citing is well and good, but let me ask you, have you ever had any personal discussions with people who have been victims of pedophilia? If not, try it.
Dear Guest: For your information, I am a child sex abuse survivor, having been raped three times and molested about 20 times over a month-long period by the same (non-JW) individual when I was 11 years old. I spent summers at this person's house because I was best friends at the time with his sister, we were in Girl Scouts together and went to Catholic School together. By molested I mean he literally stuck his fist up inside of me and would turn his fist around and around. When he raped me the first time he put his fist on my pubic bone and said, "If you tell ANYBODY, I will fix it so you can NEVER HAVE BABIES." Now am I qualified in your eyes? I felt helpless and could only whimper, all the times he would take my arm and walk me back to his bedroom, like a SILENT LAMB BEING LED TO SLAUGHTER is EXACTLY what it felt like. I never heard of a "period" when this occurred as I had not had one yet. The first raping he took me in the bathroom and pulled up my nightgown and began to grease me up with vaseline and asking me, "Have you had a period yet?" I whimpered through my tears, "What is that?"
NEXT ABUSER: My uncle, my father's brother, is a (non-JW) BONA FIDE PEDOPHILE in the TRUE SENSE of the word, who when he was younger spent time in the seminary to become a priest, but he never made it to priesthood (Catholic Church). This pedophile molested ALL of my siblings (there were EIGHT of us kids) and he got to EVERY ONE over a course of MANY years, from the time some of my siblings were 4 and 5 years old, clear up to the time they were in their teens. He got to us at our grandmother's house when he would visit, and as kids we were sent off to vacation/visit with him at his home TWO AT A TIME. Not only did he molest/rape/abuse my immediate siblings, but our many cousins as well. He is the "perfect" pedophile, since he contiually brought all of us gifts. He would go on trips out West and take a handful of boys with him (my brothers/cousins, etc.) This pedophile & homosexual had a large range of relatives to pick and choose from, since as you can see, we came from a large family. When this came out in the open in 1992, no one wanted to do anything about it. My parents didn't want to discuss it. They told me NOT to talk about it. I was incensed, since I was at the same time coming to terms with my own "remembered" abuse as described above at 11 years old.
With six months I called the Pedophile uncle myself to confront him since no one else wanted to do it (he lives in another state so I called him on the phone). He freely admitted that yes he had abused all the kids, and that he felt he had done nothing wrong. I was furious. I asked him whether he ever got to me or not? (as I had no memory of him getting to me). He backed down and said, "The ONLY thing I ever did to you and your sister was WALK IN ON YOU when you were CHANGING YOUR CLOTHES." (Yeah, RIGHT!) Then he added, "I never messed with the GIRLS much." (Meaning myself and my two sisters).
Shortly thereafter I called the Police Dept. of the town he lives in and spent an hour on the phone with the detective in the Sex Crimes Unit to at least let them know of this man, where he lives, and what his history is in case they ever have any other children appear who might be abused by this same individual (he's an old man now, but the perverts NEVER STOP. I know he is online all the time, and could be hooking up with kids that way, for all I know.). That's all I could do regarding the uncle, because as the detective said, because the abuse happened over 30 years ago, there was not much that could be done. My siblings who DO REMEMBER the abuse by this uncle would have to take him to court, and none of them want to mess with it. I have posted his name and address at Silent Lambs Guestbook in the past, along with the name of my other abuser even tho they are not JWs, they are still abusers.
As I said, I have no memory whatsoever if this uncle abused me personally. I called all my siblings when I first found out and they all DO have memories of it and they confirmed what the uncle had done to them. All I have is a reoccurring dream/nightmare which I used to have as a kid, over and over, and "dissociation" episodes when I was in the first grade (feeling like everything around me was unreal, even though I knew I was sitting in my little desk at school). When I relayed the dream to a therapist, she asked, "Can you hear the fear in your voice?" I said I was not aware it was fear, but that I felt severely OUT OF BREATH, as in gasping for breath. Someday I will post this dream maybe here, or maybe Silent Lambs. I believe without a doubt the "monster" in that dream was the pedophile uncle, but there is no way to prove it since I do not have a conscious memory of him abusing me, but only what this "monster" in the dream would do to me every night. My older sister told me (when this came out in the open in '92) that this uncle used to go on and on about how beautiful I was as a kid, how much he liked my darker skin tone and brown eyes. Me and my brother (see next paragraph) both had this same skin tone and dark brown eyes. We were also always known as the "black sheep" of the family because of our "emotional problems" (me/emotional problems; my brother drugs/alcohol/problems with the law, stealing, etc.) Boys act out differently than girls.
This pedophile uncle, as reported by my siblings, had and took nude photographs, porn videos, etc. which he would show to my siblings, even when they were 4 and 5 years old. He made my youngest sister and the brother next to her in age perform intercourse as he watched (she was 4, my brother was 5). He would play "games" with their minds when they were small. He would entice my younger sister by locking her out of the bedroom, where he and my younger brother were, and as she would bang on the door (she didn't like being left alone in the other room), he would tell her, "You cannot come in and play cards with us unless you agree to take off all your clothes." As a 5 year old, she would agree because she did not like being SHUT OUT/left alone. When the boys got older, the uncle introduced cigarettes, cigars, and booze. He told the boys he was "preparing them to be with a woman," and he made it "fun" for them with the booze and smokes. My oldest brother remembers the first time this uncle got to him was when my brother was sleeping over at my grandmother's house and my brother was woken up with this uncle giving him a blow job. My brother was seven years old. This brother was willing, more than all the others, to go into great detail when I called him in '92 and asked about the pedophile uncle. My brother said, "You know, I've never told anybody. I've never even told my wife" (who he'd been married to for 25 years). I called all the other siblings as well. One brother dealt with it on the phone as a big joke, saying, "Everyone has a funny uncle." This brother, even though in his 40s now, is hooked on meth and alcoholism. My other brother when I called him, he did not want to discuss it at all. He merely said, "Yes, it happened." The baby of the family I did not discuss it with until '95 when he was visiting my parents with his wife. I brought it up as we were out in the garage having a smoke, and he immediately began hollering loudly. He became so freaked out. It was the SADDEST THING I EVER SAW, and it makes me cry now thinking about it. At the same time he was hollering, he and his wife looked at each other and they both welled up with tears in their eyes. Then we all cried, and as he calmed down, he related that yes, it happened OVER AND OVER AND OVER. This brother had a lot of pent up anger that he had never discussed with anyone in the family except the woman he married. Praise God for her! She is so good for him.
Have you had enough graphic details yet Guest?
One of my younger brothers was The Pedophile Uncle's favorite, whom he especially tormented from the time Rob was 5 years old clear up to his being an older teenager. This brother from a very young age was showing the signs of abuse, but who knew how to recognize them back then? (early 60's). He was starting fires, stealing, fits of rage. He later moved on to sniffing glue, drugs and alcoholism, problems with the law, jail, etc. He felt crazy and out of control and did not know why. (I never knew WHY I felt crazy either. We had not put the "pieces together" yet, i.e., how abuse affects personality, development, etc. etc.) This brother died when he was 35 years old, after being brutally beaten by a gang of thugs from a pool hall who followed him home (no doubt he may have provoked them). He developed an aneurysm in his chest cavity from these thugs stomping on his chest with the heels of their cowboy boots, and they kicked him in the head with their boots as well. My Dad took pictures of the injuries. This aneurysm is what killed him, but we all know it was the PEDOPHILE UNCLE who killed him (and I TOLD the Pedophile Uncle this when I called him on the phone). If Uncle Pedophile had not warped my brother's brains throughout his entire life, my brother might have had a chance to grow up normally. It was only two years before he died that he finally got the guts to call my parents and begin to tell them what had been going on for most of his life. Guess what? My parents did NOT BELIEVE HIM. They assumed, because he would only call them to talk about it when he had had a few drinks, that it could not be true. So my brother went to his grave without ANY VALIDATION for his abuse, not even from his own parents. It wasn't until '92 when my younger sister called my father and told him for the first time what had happened to she and Rob, that my parents became believers of Rob's stories five years previously. And my younger sister would never had called if she hadn't been going thru very difficult emotional turmoil, yet her boyfriend at the time encouraged her over and over to call and tell my parents. Then my father called me after that and told me, and I flipped out. As I said, I was in the midst of reading the book, "Incent and Its Aftereffects in Women" during that same exact time period, not even knowing all my other siblings had been through the same thing. The timing was TOO MUCH TO BEAR. I thought I was going to die. And then to have my father say to me on the phone, "Don't talk about it down there (where I live, at work, etc.). YOUR MOTHER doesn't want you to talk about it." (My Father was such a coward. Blaming it on my MOTHER! Baloney! ) Well, you can bet I talked it up as much as I felt like, and immediately got on the phone and began calling all my siblings as described above.
Am I yet qualified in your eyes, Guest, to post on the subject?
Again, I sincerely do not understand why you take issue with the scriptures in Leviticus. Click on the Topics I have created at this forum. Though not that many, 98% of them have to do with Silent Lambs and/or sex abuse. Maybe you should try clicking on that in the future before jumping to conclusions about people.
One of the first barriers your going to come across is 'mistrust'. I don't want to mention the other hurdles that your going to be faced with.
Guest: I can assure you, you do not need to explain to me about mistrust. And the other hurdles of which you speak? Try this on for size: How about teenage overdoses and adult suicide attempts (about five total, some extremely close calls, near death -- it's a wonder I'm still alive at all)l or how about spending time in the looney bin (about 4 times throughout the decades since the abuse); or how about despair, hopelessness, severe depression, PTSD (at times so severe I would be paralyzed in the fetal position); or how about agoraphobia, incessant crying, feeling as if I am being "looked at," unable to sleep at night, anger, fits of rage and not even knowing WHY, geeez, I could go on and on and on. How about severe PTSD and Luteal Phase Dysphoria (becomig practically psychotic during the menstrual cycle due to the fact it was my abuser who "taught me" about menstrual cycles) for every period through your entire life? (Thank God for menopause!) Am I qualified yet to share scriptures about abuse?
All the scripture citing (at least for me) goes in one ear and out the other.
We must be on different planets. The fact that incest IS covered in the broader laws of the Hebrew scriptures says to me that Jehovah/God knew it was something that needed to be addressed. Why incest did not make it into the TOP TEN? I don't know. You'd have to ask Moses. He was there.
As much as you like to be of help, it is very, very, very difficult. You can't even begin to imagine how it affects the victims mind and life.
Re-read ALL of the above.
Have you read some of the stories at silentlambs and other forums? Please do.
What is your code name at the Silent Lambs Guestbook? From what you are saying here, I can't quite zoom in on who you might be over at the SL Guestbook. You must not post there very often, or I would think I would "recognize" your demeanor.
I post an over-abundance of comments at SL Guestbook almost every other day. My PTSD story is on there, as is the complete story of my pedophile uncle and my other abuser. I read all of the stories last fall of the abused lambs when I first found the site, and cried my guts out since I am one of the survivors myself. Again, you are so off-base I really don't understand your problem with incest being covered in the Laws in Leviticus, nor how posting them here is such a problem for you. I posted the same exact info at Silent Lambs Guestbook in the past when the question came up as to child abuse being in the Bible, and got nothing but Many THANKS from MY FRIENDS over there. Sheesh! And I was in such a good mood from just reading and laughing endlessly at the comments in Ozzie's weekend post. As John would say over at the SL Guestbook, "Waiter! Another round of crow for my friend here."
Grits
Edited because Single Spacing between Paragraphs is not showing up! This has occurred several times today. Is it my computer or the website? Therefore, I am putting in DOUBLE SPACING so all the paragraphs do not run together. ---- Edited again as I got too many spaces. I give up for now! Anyone else having this problem?
Edited by - Grits on 25 August 2002 20:26:26
Edited by - Grits on 25 August 2002 20:42:42