When a mother doesn’t see the abuse

“It was only at the age of 32 that I became aware of the sexual abuse I suffered as a child for years by my mother’s eldest son, from their first relationship.

They say the brain blocks memories to “defend” itself against pain and trauma so it can go on living. I’m sure that’s what mine has been doing for so many years.

It was January 1, my one-and-a-half-year-old daughter and I had spent New Year’s Eve alone at my mother’s house, where we had been staying for a few months amid a momentary separation from her father. I remember it was noon and I was in the kitchen doing the dishes when my mother’s eldest son came into the house. His face was weird and his eyes were wild. Later I discovered that he was under the influence of drugs. He came in screaming, taking quick steps towards me. I greeted him not understanding what was going on, but only managed to say hello before he teased me and started hitting me.

I didn’t understand what was going on, I tried to start, but I couldn’t. He was hitting me and holding my hair tight. I heard my daughter scream and my despair grew even more. I tried to look for her, but I couldn’t see where she came from. I tried to hit him, but my body didn’t respond. In the middle of the beating, he asked me why I was doing this to my mother. I had no idea what he was talking about.

It was during this scene that images of a girl being sexually abused started to pop into my mind; raw and painful images. I understood that it was me and that the attacker was him.

So, in the middle of the beating I had the revelation; I learned that I had been sexually abused as a child, and that the abuser was my mother’s son, ten years older than me. The same one that hit me then.

I don’t know how after a few minutes I managed to let go and run around the house looking for my daughter. I found it hidden under the stairs, so I took it and ran to hide in the bathroom. From there, I heard him say that I hadn’t answered my mother’s phone and that, according to him, this made him think the worst: that she had tried my life and that of my daughter. Honestly, I don’t know where he got that idea from.

When he left, after calming my terrified crying daughter a bit, I called my mother to tell her what had happened. His response was: Maybe what did you do to make him so angry.

At that time, I was in the middle of a separation, without a job, so I had no other place to live with my daughter. I thought if I reported this guy, I would have to get out of this house with my mom, so I didn’t. And what’s worse: I had to keep putting up with my mother’s complaints about what I was supposed to have done to her son to make him react like that.

I called my daughter’s father and asked him for help. I told him about the beatings and also told him what I had discovered. He understood me and helped me out of there. Within two weeks, I had rented an apartment where we were going to live with our daughter.

After a few days, I called my sisters to tell them about the sexual abuse. One of them hung up on me without saying anything. Her silence confirmed to me that she too had been the victim of abuse. And later I found out that my other sister had been through the same thing. All three of us were abused by our mother’s eldest son.

I grew up in a very poor and violent environment, where there was a lack of food but lots of shouting and fighting. After my parents separated, we went to live with my maternal grandparents, where my mother’s two children from her previous relationship already lived. They were seventeen years older than me. There was also a sister of my mother and one of her cousins. Sometimes I wonder, with so many adults living there, how nobody realized that three little girls were sexually abused.

Although the abuse started when I was two or three and happened when my mother left us in the care of this eldest son, when we got to my grandparents it increased. Surely he took precautions not to be seen and threatened to hit us and for us not to say anything.

Where was my mother? This is a question I ask myself daily. She in those years was mired in a depression; I spent days in bed crying. When he stood up he would yell at us and beat us for everything we did. Even when he found a job, after separating from my father, he would often send me to a payphone to call his boss to apologize for not going to work. All of this made us spend a lot of time alone at the mercy of this abuser.

Years passed and I, unlike my sisters, blocked out the memories of the abuse. We never talked about it with my sisters, they were probably out of fear and me, because of my ignorance of the facts.

When I remembered what had happened to me and we met my sisters to tell our mother, she claimed that I had made it all up to get revenge after being beaten; He told me that I colluded with my sisters to make up this story about his son.

With one of my sisters we went to the PDI and the Carabineros to lodge a complaint, but the cause was time-barred and the complaint was not admissible. It was terrible to know that neither the courts nor our own mother would do anything for us. We had no defence. We had no voice. Our own mother did not believe us that we had been abused by her son for so many years.

I think one of the worst things I’ve been through, aside from the abuse of course, is our mother and our family in general not believing what happened. It’s been over ten years since I disclosed the abuse and my mother refuses to talk about it, she gets angry when me or my sisters say anything about it, or against her son,

His arguments, uncles and aunts, are the typical and absurd phrase And if it was true, why didn’t they speak before?

Since then, I have been in psychological therapy, trying to learn to cope with this double pain: the abuse and my own mother who does not believe me. They were hard years, of great pain, of a lot of internal work to be able to manage everything, because I cannot remain regretting the facts, I have to move forward, to be well to take care of my daughter who is now a teenager, seek happiness and take care of myself.