Finally , My Confrontation Letter
My dear brothers ,
As I have told some of you before I am going to confront the perpetrator who sexual assualted me . That person is my older sister (she is 6yrs.older).
I've learned from many of you that some have not had the opportunuty to confront or the circumstances where just not right to do so. I respect and am grateful for all of the excellant and heartfelt advise I have received on this issue .I dont have all the answers but am giong to go with my gut instincts on how to do this.
I am going to personally confront her in the presence of my younger sister . I am going to use this letter in two ways :
1.As a guide for my verbal confrontation
2.I'm also going to leave her a copy so she can read for herself the damage that she has caused.
I would as always appreciated your comments , suggestions and advise. I'm planning on doing it in the next week or so.
Below is the letter
Yours in solidarity ,
Jack
1. What you did to me.
Physical Abuse – *** for some reason you chose to take out all of your frustrations and stress by physically abusing me (beating me up) most of my memories of my childhood are bad. One of the most prevalent memories of childhood I have is a constant and all encompassing fear of you. I remember how you used to punch me, scratch me, pull my hair and kick me. I remember the bruises and lacerations on my face, arms and body. You were so much bigger than me. Why did you hit me so much? You have even been known to say recently how I was such a well-behaved boy.
Why did you hate me so much that you were always hurting me? What did I do to you, that you needed to instill so much fear in me? You did this to me my entire childhood and teenage years. I never had a sense of safety even in my own home because of you. I knew that I could not count on my parents, who did not care about anyone but themselves. I guess this made you the big guy on the block, the bully. Where you could say or do anything to anyone, without consequences. I remember that even well into my teenage years you made it a point that whenever you came near me, you would try to hit me either in the face or the genitals. You did this to me so often that any time you came near me I reflexively flinched from an impending blow. If your goal was to terrorize me than congratulations because you truly were a terrorist to me. Even to this day, I am in fear of you. Anytime I am near you, I am uneasy and nervous (I wonder why)
Sexual Abuse/ Molestation/Incest – Sometime when I was around 12 years old you began to molest me. This is when we lived at 42-13 78th street. It started one night in bed when you began fondling my genitals in the bed in the middle of the night. I remember being so scared, confused and paralyzed with fear, I did not like what you did to me, but was to scared to say anything or to protest, you had so much power of fear over me. You did this to me many times, why did you do this? What did I do to you? I wish you had just stopped there but that wasn't horrible enough for you. You then began to take my hand and put it into your genitals, I was so scared. I didn't know what to do. What if I had done something wrong would you have hurt me? I was just a little boy; I did not know what was going on. All I cared about was school and baseball in those days. I had no interest or any knowledge about girls. You forced this upon me from my intimidation of you.
Then many times in the middle of the night you made me go into the bathroom with you. You wanted me to have sexual intercourse with you. You put me on top of you. But I did not have an erection, how could I have, I was terrified to the point of paralysis and just an innocent child. You forced me through your intimidation to put my limp penis into your vagina. When you saw my inability to achieve erection you mocked and ridiculed me. Why did you do this, I was just a little boy? You were 18 years old. You were my older sister, somebody I was supposed to be able to trust. You did this to me many times. You also made me have intercourse with you in the car when the family was at the beach, I was so humiliated, and I was so scared. All this took place in a span of over a year. There may be more and I am sure with time more horrible memories with come back.
I took the opportunity to look through the New York State Penal Law and had you been caught and arrested for what you did to me you would be charged with many counts of rape, sexual assault and endangering the welfare of a child and you would be looking at more than a 120 (one hundred and twenty) years in prison.
How it affected my life - Your sexual and physical abuse of me has stolen my childhood, teenage and adult life . You began to molest me when I was around 12 years old. I had, up until then, been a very good student, always doing well in school and in tests that I took. In fact, I had recently been tested for the reading comprehension test where I scored a college reading level. I started the 7th grade in an honors class. , after enduring sexual and physical assaults from you, my school started to fall and I was transferred from my honors class to a regular class. This started a downward spiral in my educational progress. The 8th grade I continued to do worse, the 9th grade I did so poorly that I was left back. My second attempt at 9th grade I was completely demoralized, confused, hurt and frightened. That year I got up every morning for school, got dressed, and made believe I was going to school. Then I would turn around and come back to the apartment I was living in with my Father. I was so afraid of school, the people and just about everybody. Nobody noticed or cared to notice what was happening to me, it was only in retrospect a classic cry for help. Which of course went unnoticed. My ability to sit in a classroom and learn, like others can, was stolen by you. To this day, I am unable to attend formal educational process.
Your abuse has affected my ability to be around people. Because of your molestation of me I became an isolationist. I avoided everything and everyone known or unknown. From the age of 15-17, I remember that I rarely left my Fathers apartment; I had made no friends in Astoria where my Father lived. This pattern continued on into my adulthood, and continues to this very day. An example, that you might remember, is how I for many years avoided coming to family gatherings. You can imagine how I must have felt that I would not even come to see my own family. Even to this very day, even though I am much bigger and stronger than you, I still feel like that scared little boy, nervous, anxious and with butterflies in my stomach, anytime I am near you.
Because of your physical and sexual abuse of me you have ruined my ability to trust and be comfortable with women. For many many years I hated all women and felt that they would all try to manipulate and abuse me like you did. This had a devastating effect on my ability to have good relationships with women. Which up until only recently I have been in one bad relationship after another. If I was to get into an elevator and a woman was to stand near me, I would get very nervous and uneasy. Is this normal? Do other grown men have this problem?, I think not. One of the lasting effects/incestual sexual abuses is the inability of the adult survivor to have a functional parental relationship with their children. Does this sound like somebody you know? And here I was thinking I was just a terrible person that I could not be a good Father to a daughter who loves me so much.
As you know,
I have suffered from clinical depression for the last 12 years. What you may not know though is how often I contemplate suicide and have nearly done it several times. Death is no longer something I fear as a normal person would. I see death now as a possible escape from the constant pain, anguish, self-hatred and all encompassing rage I live with every day of my life. I fantasize that maybe if I died that God might just give me another chance at life, a chance to have the normal childhood and adulthood that you have stolen from me. Logic seems to have no place in my decision-making. Since you did what you did to me, I have set a pattern of self-destructing anything and everything in my life, educational, career, relationships, financial, physical well-being and any type of productive life.
One of the early things that my sister Yolanda said to me after I revealed to her what you had done to me, was quote “this answers a lot of questions”, I guess she had always wondered why an apparently smart guy always self-destructed himself. As I said earlier, it was not enough that you physically and sexually abused me, but you also mocked and ridiculed me when I could not achieve and erection in order to please you when you were molesting me. You have no idea how badly this scarred me. I will however give you a couple of examples. When I did not go to school for the entire 9th grade, I would stay at home and masturbate all day, trying to achieve as many erections as possible, to the extent that I would do it until the skin on my penis would bleed, but this would not stop me. I did this also at 41-50 78th street. I would get up in the middle of the night go in the bathroom (sound familiar) and masturbate furiously until the skin on my penis would bleed. I also would take razors and cut myself in places where people would not notice (You caused me so much pain that a little boy would do this to himself)
I have felt that since you did this to me and to this very day, a sense of alienation of not quite fitting in or being like other people, I felt like a leper. Because of what you did to me, I have always had a very low self-esteem and low confidence in myself. I am now a dysfunctional person; basically I am unable to care for myself. Whenever left alone for more than two days I become disoriented, confused, unable to focus on tasks, unable to feed and care for myself and seethe with a raging anger. This anger though present in my every day life, something I live with, a constant companion, becomes uncontrollable when none is there to take care of me. You have stolen my childhood and my adulthood. You have taken my ability to lead a successful life. Unlike you or my sisters, who have relied on men to provide for and support yourselves, I as a man did not have anyone to do that for me, I was expected to do for myself, as are all other men. The problem is, you stole all the tools I needed in order to succeed in life as a man.
How I feel about what you did – I have really struggled trying to understand why you did this to me. Everyone including you have always said how I was such a well behaved boy while growing up, yet I still wondered, was it my fault, or asked myself many times what did I do to deserve this. I recently asked our youngest sister to reflect back on our childhood to see if there had been anything I had done to deserve such abuse. I guess it's the denial in myself, a low self-esteem talking again thinking maybe it was my fault, but I know now that it clearly was not my fault.
I did nothing to deserve this abuse. I feel that you simply saw me as somebody smaller and weaker without a voice and noone to protect me. Easy Pickens for you, very typical of a bully, picking on someone who cannot adequately defend themselves. I feel what you did against me was a cowardly act against a much smaller, younger and weaker boy. I have lived with unbelievable rage my whole life never understanding where it came from. I finally know the cause of the rage and where it should be focused on, you. I feel such an injustice has been done to me and nothing I can put on this paper will begin to touch the sense of loss of an entire life. Loss of innocence of the 12-year-old boy. The loss of happy healthy teenage years, the loss of a productive and successful adult life. I now focus this strong anger towards you ***, I no longer look inward as to the cause of my problems, I know now that you are the single and only cause of what was done to me and the effects it has had on my life.
How I feel about you – *** you are my sister, someone who I was suppose to look up to, to go to for advice to learn things from and most importantly you were suppose to be someone I could trust and someone I could feel could protect me from the world. I feel such a sense of betrayal and loss almost as if I had lost you to an accident. Thinking back I can't help or feel some of the same interests and opinions we used to discuss, debate and laugh about. Of everyone in the family you and I were most like Daddy. We always asked, why about the things in life and appreciated so much of this countries history. That is all gone now. As I right this letter I am both sad and angry, sad for the loss of a sister I once cared about, anger for the pain and fear you have caused me.
What I want you to do about this – *** you sexually and physically abused me when I was just a child. This caused massive psychological and emotional damage that I live with to this day. As a man I was to provide for myself, never having the luxury to have someone just take care of me, like you and my other sisters have had. This is what society expects from a man and there is nothing wrong with it. However because of your abuse and the trauma that came from it my abilities or tools that I needed to be productive and successful as a man were taken from me by you. I have been unable to attend formal classes of any kind since you did to this to me. This has inhibited my ability to educate myself.
I have been in therapy for the last month. My psychologists believe that I have been suffering from post traumatic stress disorder since the abuse occurred. From this disorder comes many problems, disassociation, self-destructive behavior, self mutilation, isolationism, the distrust of others; especially women, anger issues, intimacy and sexual problems, low self-esteem, suicidal thoughts and an inability to be a parent, and I have every one of these problems. I have also been diagnosed with clinical depression and generalized anxiety disorder with panic attacks. I am currently taking medicine in order to control the panic attacks and is very likely I will have to take this for the rest of my life, in addition I will probably need therapy for many years to come. Because of what you have stolen from me you must now take on the moral and financial responsibility for me to build a new productive life.
Nothing can bring back what you took from me and no amount of apologies can possibly give back that which was taken from me by you. My only hope lies with getting better and building a new life. You must therefore be the one that will make that possible for me.
As I have told some of you before I am going to confront the perpetrator who sexual assualted me . That person is my older sister (she is 6yrs.older).
I've learned from many of you that some have not had the opportunuty to confront or the circumstances where just not right to do so. I respect and am grateful for all of the excellant and heartfelt advise I have received on this issue .I dont have all the answers but am giong to go with my gut instincts on how to do this.
I am going to personally confront her in the presence of my younger sister . I am going to use this letter in two ways :
1.As a guide for my verbal confrontation
2.I'm also going to leave her a copy so she can read for herself the damage that she has caused.
I would as always appreciated your comments , suggestions and advise. I'm planning on doing it in the next week or so.
Below is the letter
Yours in solidarity ,
Jack
1. What you did to me.
Physical Abuse – *** for some reason you chose to take out all of your frustrations and stress by physically abusing me (beating me up) most of my memories of my childhood are bad. One of the most prevalent memories of childhood I have is a constant and all encompassing fear of you. I remember how you used to punch me, scratch me, pull my hair and kick me. I remember the bruises and lacerations on my face, arms and body. You were so much bigger than me. Why did you hit me so much? You have even been known to say recently how I was such a well-behaved boy.
Why did you hate me so much that you were always hurting me? What did I do to you, that you needed to instill so much fear in me? You did this to me my entire childhood and teenage years. I never had a sense of safety even in my own home because of you. I knew that I could not count on my parents, who did not care about anyone but themselves. I guess this made you the big guy on the block, the bully. Where you could say or do anything to anyone, without consequences. I remember that even well into my teenage years you made it a point that whenever you came near me, you would try to hit me either in the face or the genitals. You did this to me so often that any time you came near me I reflexively flinched from an impending blow. If your goal was to terrorize me than congratulations because you truly were a terrorist to me. Even to this day, I am in fear of you. Anytime I am near you, I am uneasy and nervous (I wonder why)
Sexual Abuse/ Molestation/Incest – Sometime when I was around 12 years old you began to molest me. This is when we lived at 42-13 78th street. It started one night in bed when you began fondling my genitals in the bed in the middle of the night. I remember being so scared, confused and paralyzed with fear, I did not like what you did to me, but was to scared to say anything or to protest, you had so much power of fear over me. You did this to me many times, why did you do this? What did I do to you? I wish you had just stopped there but that wasn't horrible enough for you. You then began to take my hand and put it into your genitals, I was so scared. I didn't know what to do. What if I had done something wrong would you have hurt me? I was just a little boy; I did not know what was going on. All I cared about was school and baseball in those days. I had no interest or any knowledge about girls. You forced this upon me from my intimidation of you.
Then many times in the middle of the night you made me go into the bathroom with you. You wanted me to have sexual intercourse with you. You put me on top of you. But I did not have an erection, how could I have, I was terrified to the point of paralysis and just an innocent child. You forced me through your intimidation to put my limp penis into your vagina. When you saw my inability to achieve erection you mocked and ridiculed me. Why did you do this, I was just a little boy? You were 18 years old. You were my older sister, somebody I was supposed to be able to trust. You did this to me many times. You also made me have intercourse with you in the car when the family was at the beach, I was so humiliated, and I was so scared. All this took place in a span of over a year. There may be more and I am sure with time more horrible memories with come back.
I took the opportunity to look through the New York State Penal Law and had you been caught and arrested for what you did to me you would be charged with many counts of rape, sexual assault and endangering the welfare of a child and you would be looking at more than a 120 (one hundred and twenty) years in prison.
How it affected my life - Your sexual and physical abuse of me has stolen my childhood, teenage and adult life . You began to molest me when I was around 12 years old. I had, up until then, been a very good student, always doing well in school and in tests that I took. In fact, I had recently been tested for the reading comprehension test where I scored a college reading level. I started the 7th grade in an honors class. , after enduring sexual and physical assaults from you, my school started to fall and I was transferred from my honors class to a regular class. This started a downward spiral in my educational progress. The 8th grade I continued to do worse, the 9th grade I did so poorly that I was left back. My second attempt at 9th grade I was completely demoralized, confused, hurt and frightened. That year I got up every morning for school, got dressed, and made believe I was going to school. Then I would turn around and come back to the apartment I was living in with my Father. I was so afraid of school, the people and just about everybody. Nobody noticed or cared to notice what was happening to me, it was only in retrospect a classic cry for help. Which of course went unnoticed. My ability to sit in a classroom and learn, like others can, was stolen by you. To this day, I am unable to attend formal educational process.
Your abuse has affected my ability to be around people. Because of your molestation of me I became an isolationist. I avoided everything and everyone known or unknown. From the age of 15-17, I remember that I rarely left my Fathers apartment; I had made no friends in Astoria where my Father lived. This pattern continued on into my adulthood, and continues to this very day. An example, that you might remember, is how I for many years avoided coming to family gatherings. You can imagine how I must have felt that I would not even come to see my own family. Even to this very day, even though I am much bigger and stronger than you, I still feel like that scared little boy, nervous, anxious and with butterflies in my stomach, anytime I am near you.
Because of your physical and sexual abuse of me you have ruined my ability to trust and be comfortable with women. For many many years I hated all women and felt that they would all try to manipulate and abuse me like you did. This had a devastating effect on my ability to have good relationships with women. Which up until only recently I have been in one bad relationship after another. If I was to get into an elevator and a woman was to stand near me, I would get very nervous and uneasy. Is this normal? Do other grown men have this problem?, I think not. One of the lasting effects/incestual sexual abuses is the inability of the adult survivor to have a functional parental relationship with their children. Does this sound like somebody you know? And here I was thinking I was just a terrible person that I could not be a good Father to a daughter who loves me so much.
As you know,
I have suffered from clinical depression for the last 12 years. What you may not know though is how often I contemplate suicide and have nearly done it several times. Death is no longer something I fear as a normal person would. I see death now as a possible escape from the constant pain, anguish, self-hatred and all encompassing rage I live with every day of my life. I fantasize that maybe if I died that God might just give me another chance at life, a chance to have the normal childhood and adulthood that you have stolen from me. Logic seems to have no place in my decision-making. Since you did what you did to me, I have set a pattern of self-destructing anything and everything in my life, educational, career, relationships, financial, physical well-being and any type of productive life.
One of the early things that my sister Yolanda said to me after I revealed to her what you had done to me, was quote “this answers a lot of questions”, I guess she had always wondered why an apparently smart guy always self-destructed himself. As I said earlier, it was not enough that you physically and sexually abused me, but you also mocked and ridiculed me when I could not achieve and erection in order to please you when you were molesting me. You have no idea how badly this scarred me. I will however give you a couple of examples. When I did not go to school for the entire 9th grade, I would stay at home and masturbate all day, trying to achieve as many erections as possible, to the extent that I would do it until the skin on my penis would bleed, but this would not stop me. I did this also at 41-50 78th street. I would get up in the middle of the night go in the bathroom (sound familiar) and masturbate furiously until the skin on my penis would bleed. I also would take razors and cut myself in places where people would not notice (You caused me so much pain that a little boy would do this to himself)
I have felt that since you did this to me and to this very day, a sense of alienation of not quite fitting in or being like other people, I felt like a leper. Because of what you did to me, I have always had a very low self-esteem and low confidence in myself. I am now a dysfunctional person; basically I am unable to care for myself. Whenever left alone for more than two days I become disoriented, confused, unable to focus on tasks, unable to feed and care for myself and seethe with a raging anger. This anger though present in my every day life, something I live with, a constant companion, becomes uncontrollable when none is there to take care of me. You have stolen my childhood and my adulthood. You have taken my ability to lead a successful life. Unlike you or my sisters, who have relied on men to provide for and support yourselves, I as a man did not have anyone to do that for me, I was expected to do for myself, as are all other men. The problem is, you stole all the tools I needed in order to succeed in life as a man.
How I feel about what you did – I have really struggled trying to understand why you did this to me. Everyone including you have always said how I was such a well behaved boy while growing up, yet I still wondered, was it my fault, or asked myself many times what did I do to deserve this. I recently asked our youngest sister to reflect back on our childhood to see if there had been anything I had done to deserve such abuse. I guess it's the denial in myself, a low self-esteem talking again thinking maybe it was my fault, but I know now that it clearly was not my fault.
I did nothing to deserve this abuse. I feel that you simply saw me as somebody smaller and weaker without a voice and noone to protect me. Easy Pickens for you, very typical of a bully, picking on someone who cannot adequately defend themselves. I feel what you did against me was a cowardly act against a much smaller, younger and weaker boy. I have lived with unbelievable rage my whole life never understanding where it came from. I finally know the cause of the rage and where it should be focused on, you. I feel such an injustice has been done to me and nothing I can put on this paper will begin to touch the sense of loss of an entire life. Loss of innocence of the 12-year-old boy. The loss of happy healthy teenage years, the loss of a productive and successful adult life. I now focus this strong anger towards you ***, I no longer look inward as to the cause of my problems, I know now that you are the single and only cause of what was done to me and the effects it has had on my life.
How I feel about you – *** you are my sister, someone who I was suppose to look up to, to go to for advice to learn things from and most importantly you were suppose to be someone I could trust and someone I could feel could protect me from the world. I feel such a sense of betrayal and loss almost as if I had lost you to an accident. Thinking back I can't help or feel some of the same interests and opinions we used to discuss, debate and laugh about. Of everyone in the family you and I were most like Daddy. We always asked, why about the things in life and appreciated so much of this countries history. That is all gone now. As I right this letter I am both sad and angry, sad for the loss of a sister I once cared about, anger for the pain and fear you have caused me.
What I want you to do about this – *** you sexually and physically abused me when I was just a child. This caused massive psychological and emotional damage that I live with to this day. As a man I was to provide for myself, never having the luxury to have someone just take care of me, like you and my other sisters have had. This is what society expects from a man and there is nothing wrong with it. However because of your abuse and the trauma that came from it my abilities or tools that I needed to be productive and successful as a man were taken from me by you. I have been unable to attend formal classes of any kind since you did to this to me. This has inhibited my ability to educate myself.
I have been in therapy for the last month. My psychologists believe that I have been suffering from post traumatic stress disorder since the abuse occurred. From this disorder comes many problems, disassociation, self-destructive behavior, self mutilation, isolationism, the distrust of others; especially women, anger issues, intimacy and sexual problems, low self-esteem, suicidal thoughts and an inability to be a parent, and I have every one of these problems. I have also been diagnosed with clinical depression and generalized anxiety disorder with panic attacks. I am currently taking medicine in order to control the panic attacks and is very likely I will have to take this for the rest of my life, in addition I will probably need therapy for many years to come. Because of what you have stolen from me you must now take on the moral and financial responsibility for me to build a new productive life.
Nothing can bring back what you took from me and no amount of apologies can possibly give back that which was taken from me by you. My only hope lies with getting better and building a new life. You must therefore be the one that will make that possible for me.
And I am sure it will be even harder for your sister to read. That is GOOD. She needs to come face to face with what she did to you!! 
