Enamored with the new portable Pac-man game. I kept guard, watching in awe. Like a moth to a flame, I went where it went. I hung on every pac-dot, power pellet, popped fruit & eaten ghost. The sounds were road maps. A countdown to my best day ever, or was it my worse?!

Little did I know that Pac-man was just the bait in a larger plot that would change me & those I value, forever.

I was 7 years old. This would be the third day that I would get to play.

It was a competition to see who could get a turn. I didn’t know what awaited me, but on this day, I was violated. As I played, my molester put his hands under my skirt & inside me. It was only a few seconds this first time but it would not be the last & that was enough to do damage.

We were all sheltered by our grand-mother, raised in a tight knit community. All that love & support wouldn’t stop this predator. They play by different rules & shirk convention. They act without regard for getting caught, the deception is a part of their thrill.

How insidious that they could do it in plain sight of my grandmother reading her ‘Daily Bread’!

Though I was raised Catholic, we were not overly religious at home but I did all the things a dutiful catholic girl needed to do. I attended church every Sunday, Bible study weekly, joined the Legion of Mary & joined a missionary singing group ‘The Goretti Group’. Since my childhood I’ve always wondered why kids weren’t permitted to speak up.

I spoke to myself often, knowing that no one would object nor shut me down. Besides, I knew what consequences awaited me if I dared speak out of turn. I told no one of that abuse and though some time had passed til my next encounter with my abuser, he pursued me incessantly.

As a mother of 2 sons, I can now appreciate the tactics, structure & rules that can keep children suppressed & controlled vs an environment that empowers their self confidence & allows them a safe space to speak up for themselves. My personal empowerment would only come decades later because I’d learned that the truth comes at a price and some secrets can lead to illnesses & familial fissures.

If I knew then what I know now, I would have raised hell. I would not have kept that secret. I was in the dark. No one ever had ‘the talk’ with me. No one dared to bring up sex in a predominantly Roman Catholic stronghold. The only time that sex was mentioned during my adolescence was to warn against having pre-marital sex.

The irony of all ironies I would discover decades after my first violation were the revelations of systemic & rampant sexual abuse within the Roman Catholic Church. To my eyes, the protection of the gospel superseded the safety of young children. Organized religion, being an extension of the family unit (from pre-birth to death), implicated themselves in maintaining the family unit at all costs.

After all these years, I still feel tinges of guilt, shame, anger & confusion for something that happened without my permission, without a full awareness. All it takes is one time or multiple times by the same abuser or multiple times by multiple individuals. It was almost a death sentence. Becoming someone you don’t know, possessing a heightened sense of feelings & sensations that you don’t understand nor want.

It would’ve be easy to give up, but I didn’t.

I forgave him. I forgave myself. I forgave my guardians for what they didn’t know.

I couldn’t speak up about my abuse because I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what sexual molestation was. I didn’t know what the profile of an offender was. No one ever spoke about predatory behavior & what to look for. No one told me to kick a guy in the cojones or punch a girl in the chest for touching me inappropriately.

In a society that places patriarchy or matriarchy over basic humanity, it can become a scary place for survivors. Not knowing who to trust with this sensitive information, calling someone out for an act of a sexual nature scars & brands the girls (and boys) for life. It also ruins careers & reputations. They can never shake the labels nor the mental, physical & physiological demons.

Speak to your children, parents, colleagues & friends about predatory behavior. Speak on the possibility that the last person you would ever suspect is perfectly capable of being a sexual predator. Those are the secrets people take to their graves. The old adage of ‘don’t speak to strangers’ won’t work in the digital age. Strangers now have direct access to kids via their devices. Masking their true identity.

The more we resist the need to empower our children, the easier it makes the grooming process for the molester. Sex is not a bad word, but pretending that the sexual exploitation of children isn’t an epidemic is the height of passivity. Education surrounding all aspects of sexuality/ childcare must be at the forefront moving forward.

Lobbying for children includes addressing adequate childcare, affordable childcare, better wages & working conditions, mental health resources, access to fresh healthy food & outdoor exercise therapy. A failure to address these issues reflects an indifferent attitude towards the well being of children. And by extension the health of the family.