Reply #176: I hope your mother believed you. [View All]

[moriah]

I want to believe that the vast majority of mothers would believe their children. I have only met one person whose mother did not believe her about what her father was doing to her when she finally told... and if I ever met that person's mother I would be hard-pressed not to slap the shit out of her. However, I can't lay blame when a mother was fooled into trusting someone. I can't see how any mother in their right mind would marry or date someone who they thought was capable of molesting their children (yes, some do, similar to the ones who believe their man over their children, but they aren't in their right minds, in my opinion). Rapists and molesters are extremely talented manipulators -- while I am sure that in some cases the failure to recognize what was happening to the child was the result of denial (it isn't just a river in Egypt), I think most of the time it is because they honestly didn't believe that the person they trusted was capable of such vileness.

When my sister was molested, my mother didn't realize what was going on. At the time she was working as an inventory clerk for a retail chain -- she would have to leave town Monday morning and didn't return back home until Friday night. She hated to be away from us, but we had to have a roof over our head and she wasn't able to find another job that would let her be at home every night that would also pay enough to keep the roof over our head. She had already left him when my sister's friend forced her to tell Mom -- and my sister only relented to her friend's pressure because he wanted to have visitation with me.

I don't think my mother has ever forgiven herself for trusting him. Because she no longer trusted her own judgment in men, she stopped dating after that -- she swore that we would never have a stepfather again, and swore that she would never let it happen to me. She gained over 100 lbs, partially because she was so guilt-ridden over what happened, and partially as a subconscious way to keep men from wanting to date her. She only started dating again a few years ago, and is now married -- but she punished herself for more than 20 years. When I was targeted despite her sacrifices for me, I couldn't bring myself to tell her that she had punished herself for years in vain.