My parents didn't protect me

[cakeandarse]

This is immensely hard for me to post so please bear with me. I will try not to drip-feed and keep to the point.

My DPs are, and have always been, loving, attentive and kind parents. I love them very much, and they love me, and we have always been very close and open. I am now 40 and have 4 DCs...the oldest DD is 14. I think this may be relevant.

The issue is that when I was 5 my DP's became best friends with a couple who had a couple of DCs around the ages of me and my siblings. They were VERY close to them until about 5 years ago when the friendship fizzled. We were forced to spend a lot of time with them, even though my siblings and I didn't like them much and expressed this to my DP's - most weekends, school holidays, holidays abroad, days out, Christmases was spent with them. Up until recently I looked back on the past as an annoying couple I had to spend a lot of time cos my DPs liked them - and also that the man in the couple was a bit 'overly affectionate'. However, I have recently started to have flashbacks and dreams about events and mostly feelings about that time, when I would have been 11-15, and it is scaring the shit out of me.

I have started to remember how he used to look at me and touch me, and how it made me feel. I remember how I used to avoid looking at him, because whenever I did he was always staring at me or a part of my body. He would look at me in such a leering way but i remember being confused about it. He used to insist on kissing me on the mouth - in front of parents - and how much I loathed it. I remember him insisting on rubbing suncream all over me in the summer and when we went on holidays and how the way he did it made me so so uncomfortable. I used to dread being around him. I remember how he used to make comments about my figure or he woudl hug me and pull me right into him. He would barge into my room on holiday or at home even if i was naked, and if i covered up he would just say, 'oh i've seen it all before'. I recall telling my DP's how it made me feel, how I didn't like it, and they just brushed it off as him just being sweet and affectionate. I knew, even then, that there was something very very wrong, but I wasn't sure what and I couldn't articulate it. I look at my DD now at the age I was and couldn't imagine for a minute not noticing or protecting her from something like this.

My head is all over the place and I just keep asking myself why are these memories and feelings suddenly coming up now? Am I imagining things? Did more happen? I have a sick sinking feeling every time I think of him (which I seem to be doing a lot lately) and I don't know why. Why am I feeling so angry at my parents, and for the first time unloved and unprotected by them?

Sorry if that is all jumbled but I am struggling to get my head around all this...feel like I am going a bit mad.

Bless you . Like you have pointed out upthread, it sounds like you have repressed some memories, not unusual for victims of child abuse. I know you are abroad, but are there any psychotherapists in your area? This type of talking therapy is appropriate for what you have described. The fact your DD is at the age when it happened to you is very relevant and likely trigerring otherwise repressed memories to surface. All the best.

Oh, OP - you've been really brave even to remember this, let alone to write it all down. Like others, I definitely think you need counselling to process this. I don't think it's at all unusual for people to start recalling behaviour like this when their own children reach the same age.

Your parents didn't protect you, but it is possible that they honestly, honestly didn't think that anything 'bad' was happening. I think it's hard for us to imagine now, but the world used to be a more naive place - people were more buttoned-up about sex, and didn't even see what was in front of their faces. On top of that, standards of acceptable behaviour WERE different. I think men, in particular, were allowed to get away with an awful lot of behaviour that would now be seen (quite rightly) as abusive, because of an awful, entrenched sexism and the view that 'boys will be boys'. Thankfully, we have now moved on - but I think it creates a dissonance for those of us who grew up in the bad old days in terms of first recognising, and then coping with abuse.

I want to state that the real 'baddie' in this situation is this awful, awful man who abused the trust of your parents and your own innocence. I am speaking generally here, and not about your particular case, but I have observed in a lot of cases that victims of abuse often displace the anger that they feel against an abuser onto parents or guardian-type figures - the accusation being that they 'should have known'. Often this anger is bound up with a lot of unnecessary and irrational guilt that the person feels about the abuse (at the back of their mind, the question 'did I ask for it, did I in some way invite or deserve it' - which stops them from directing the anger at the abuser who exploited them and refracts it off towards those who were bystanders). Let me be clear: of course, that is not a healthy way of thinking - no-one in their right mind would say that an abuse victim invited it in or deserved it. But it is the way many victims feel deep down, nonetheless, and it is this deep sense of guilt that leads them, in some cases, to blame authority figures - it keeps those ideas at one remove to do so.

It is part of the therapeutic process to explore - and hopefully to exorcise- those feelings in a safe place, with a counsellor, and I feel that this may well help you to proportion the lesser anger you feel against family members. Eventually, it may be important for you to raise this with your parents, but right now the priority has to be your own mental health and wellbeing!