By: AP

Grandpas are supposed to be protectors and someone to confide in right? Well tell mine that. At age 9, he taught me about sex. About my body and his. He told me he could give me a baby. I was 9. That day, my life changed forever.
My parents are separated. Divorced. Well, my dad and my grandpa were close. Every other weekend I would go to his house for the weekend. Most of the time he would take me to my grandpas and leave me there with my little sister. He had no idea what was going on and I don’t blame it, but sometimes I wish he would of listened to my signs.
I’m not going to go into detail, but he would do a lot of things to me. Make me touch him, rub on me, almost anything besides sex. One day, I was fed up. I know he told me if I told he would go to jail, but I didn’t care. He takes care of my sick grandma and without him she would have almost no one. I cared about that then, but now I don’t. I told my mom one morning after he did it again. That night he wanted to have sex. But I wouldn’t let him. That was at age 13. I’m 16 now and we just got done with trial. For 3 years he pleaded not guilty. The day before trial, he changed his plea to guilty so he could get a chance at probation. While I was testifying my grandma was saying “Liar” out loud for everyone to hear. That’s why I don’t care about what happens to her. I have no respect for that family. Finally, after all this time, after 3 years of waiting.. the Judge sent him to prison for 8 years. Not as long as I wanted, but it was something. I can start trying to get better. With myself and everyone around me. The healing can begin. But this is gonna be the toughest thing to heal. I’m so thankful for the family and friends I have by my side.
I plan on getting my story out. Helping kids with the same thing I went through. Helping raise the awareness and prevention of this type of thing. It’s out there, and those people are out there. You just have to watch and listen.

By: Nasreen Amina

A personal testimony about child sexual abuse. How the silence perpetuates the cycle of abuse and how important it is for adults to believe children when they speak up about abuse. Everything starts when you BELIEVE

A Pedophile’s Manipulative Strategy

By: Aisha Aberdeen, Toronto

1. Attack those people she holds closely.
Tell her, her family is faulty,
Make her distrust her friends.
NB. When she needs them
She’ll be lonely, in the End.

2. Attack her accomplishments,
Tell her, they are part
Of a spiritual punishment.
NB. She needs to believe that
your knowledge and ritual
Hold loving sentiments.

3. Attack her, physically if she refuse
To believe,
That you’re an angelic being.
Whisper near her, then tell her
She’s hearing things.
NB. Offer nothing, then tell her,
All she needs is the breath of life.
And if she ever raise her anger in strife
Tell her, she has the devil inside

4. Always appear to have her best interest
Raise your arm in public,
In a defensive posture
And none will know,
You’re an imposture!

5. Attack her mind every moment you get
Analyze her, psychologically
That’s how you keep ahead one step
NB. Show no emotions, for a woman
That will always get her upset.
Your goal is to make her look crazy
From the onset!

6. Attack her loyalty,
If she tries to take the baby to the mall
Claim she’s trying to run, taking all.
Tell her she wants the family divided
Not allowing you a chance to raise your kid.
NB. Make sure she’s filled with guilt
Then beg her to confess.
Ask her to give you a “written manifest”
Of all the things you detest, in her.

7. Attack constantly, her choices,
That’s how you take her voice,
And give her voices in her head,
It matter not if she does wrong / right
Its’ that she consulted not,
With what you said.
NB. That’s how you make her scared,
Make her constantly doubt herself.

8. Always appear to have her best interest,
To your mutual friends and family
Make her out to be a manic
And remember, this is where,
You must appear, your sincerest.

9. Attack anything she repeats.
Inform her that her education
Is a misrepresentation of an assimilated culture
Tell her that her professor’s
Are vultures
NB. Inflate your dichotomies with hate,
Tell her she loves’ not her own

10. Attack her sense of feeling;
If she’s on the floor choking,
Tell her she’s breathing,
And she needs more of the
Divine masculine
NB. Show her the best strategies to cope
Ensure she becomes silent in her hurt.

11. Infiltrate her space,
With negative and hate-filled imagery
Give her books and DVD’s
With the most hateful conspiracies
N.B. Then tell her she’s filled
With negative energy

12. Always appear, to have her best interest;
So act as though you mean,
To offer help.
When she wants to do it herself,
Make sure she gains debts
For what you do.
Thus you’ll have her down fall
through and through

13. Attack her, attack on your ruse.
Ensure her you have nothing, and
She everything to lose, then leave
N.B. This guarantee’s
That she will neither complain
Nor Plea to the police

14. Attack her love interests
Ensure they know your
Thoughts and not hers
Read all her communications
And make sure it’s understood,
That she’s crazy, lonely
Even the mother of your baby
N.B. Your ultimate goal is,
To make them stay away.
Neither should her heart or mind
Be given time away, from your game.

15. Ensure that she will ask not
Of you sexually,
Tell her that you must now reflect
On your spirituality
Then tell her, she’s “not sexually clean”,
And lack the spiritual aspect of your queen
NB. Say even,
You must remain clean, for you’re a chosen seed
The word god will send to her any-day

16. Appear to have her best interest in heart.
Ask her to reflect, and for you pray.
Tell her you’re not the same
Man you who appeared 2000 or 2012
Years ago to date!

17. Attack her for not believing, You
or any one is the messiah incarnate
If she question’s your authority
Tell her it was bestowed by HIM monarchy
N.B. Then claim you were welcomed
an stayed in an Ethiopian monastery
Or “even Bob Marley’s family, loves me”

18. Attack her, especially if she questions the way,
You talk, look and play
With her child
Tell her “its her paranoid demon inside”
N.B. Ensure she knows her ways usually hide,
And it’s when she speaks, she reveals her real vile.
Say all this with a smile
To “question a man like Christ, who only knows
How to love his child”.

“ It’s your evil mind running wild again”
Call her friends, attempt to have an
Intervention.
Tell them your intention is pure.
Babble some shit on “prophetic cosmic law”.

19. Attack her especially if she decides to leave,
Physically overwhelm her, with her child
In her arms.
Exact so much terror
That she’ll never again
upset the order of things.
NB. Make her believe that it’s all her doing
And when she flips the script
Calls you out on your very nature.
“You’re non-apologetic,
Delusional on your god trip,
Not prophetic, but pathetic”

With single words, I broke your logic.
Understood your cause was not,
Of the same God,
Most folks agree with.
NB. Spent too much time
Explaining to me “Christ was God
and God was Satanic”

20. Appear to have her best interest in heart
Wanting more time with the family you start
But then only the child.
And for a while she thought you were genuine
Until the same traits began to rear its head again.
For it’s the child who’d complain
That you profess thoughts
And actions that are demented.

“I expect that you’d soon blame
Her parentage”.

Reclaiming Together

By: Summer LaBrie

We had been hurt
In so many ways
We knew pain
And how to obey

We tried not to cry
We wanted to fight
But survival took over
We did what was right

We lived with the pain
Some days, some years
Taking the punishment
Controlled by fear

Evil is among us
It walks the Earth
Taking love and hope
And even self-worth

Now it is our turn
Take back control
Take back our dreams
Our thoughts and our souls

When you can’t stand
I will stand you tall
And you will catch me
Whenever I fall

United we will conquer
And begin to feel
Helping each other
Through our journey to heal

By: LivKatherine

Filling in the,
Blank stares,
Empty promises,
Scribble on the white pages of his lies,
Permanently etching in the lost words,
Losing days with hopeless cares,
Mistakes crowding her skies,
Feeding hideous monstersm
With her lullabies,
Out of song,
They watched her walk away.
Turned down the blinds,
Covered their eyes.
They never even heard,
Her heart scream.
How she yearned,
Achingly for that love.
Up for grabs,
Her common sense had highest
Bid farewell to desperate times.
They let her slip away,
Dissappear into the cracks,
She’ll never look back.
There’s no way to choose,
When both ways,
You lose.

This poem is from www.facebook.com/LivKatherine . It’s public facebook page that anyone can go to, put up by a survivor of 8 years of sexual abuse and rapes, and a seperate sexual assault that occurred a couple years later. The page is based on hope, encouraging others, and raising awareness to things such as victim blaming, and the horrifying statistics around sexual crimes.

He

By: Kelsey Thachuk

His hands resembled claws
His outstretched fingers were the nails that were used to pin children
His desire cast shadows over the little frames he sought to capture
they grew up to be tilted frames on others walls
the outlines destroyed from trying to be fixed a little too secretly & a little too quickly
pieces were mashed together endlessly again & again trying to desperately find some hidden reason hoping that maybe a profound truth was overlooked
and if we looked hard enough
if we dissected and analyzed it just one more time
wed find it
I have yet to find a good answer
he didn’t care
he doesn’t care
he just wanted to fill a hole with the type of touches that aren’t meant for those little worlds
he will walk freely down the street with a smile while his shadow crawls & catches more

Graphic** Trigger warning

By: Shreya Sen

They splashed it in the papers
like a tight slap
across my face-
the kind that leaves behind
a funny tickle.
They called it “a brutal rape”-
as if
there are degrees to it.
As if violation can ever be
non “brutal”.
They were trying be nice,
I’m sure.
They wanted to save the little girl.
The damsel in distress.
The hapless victim of circumstance.
They wanted to be the knights in garish armour.
But how can they know?
How can they speak?
They weren’t there when it happened.
The pushing, the pulling, the biting, the scarring,
The tearing, the screaming, the silencing.
They weren’t there when he said
“Shut up before I punch your cunt”
They weren’t there to hear it.
Vagina tearing. Vagina screaming.
They saw an outrage of my modesty.
I saw an outrage of my personhood.
They saw my life in ruins.
I didn’t.
I just felt the ache
Of the roughness of his cheeks on the softness of my face
Of his hands on my breasts
Of his dirty, cum filled dick as it jabbed into me
Here and there.
Again and again.
I just felt the ache
Of my struggle
Of his violation
Of their condemnation
But, they were trying be nice,
I’m sure.
They wanted to save the little girl
They wanted to be the knights in garish armour.
But how can they know?
They weren’t there when it happened.

abuse

By: synoum

I was abused from ages 2 to about 13 by my cousin and brother. First it was just my brother. Then when i was 8 my cousin started. It was terrible but i didnt really no a life without it. Once when i was young my stepmother walked in on my brother on top of me. When my dad came home he asked me questions i dont even remember my brother getting in trouble. My dad didnt even tell my mother what had happened. Life at my dads house just went on like nothing ever happened. When i was 14 i decided to tell my mother. She told my dad by this times in was trying to get over cutting myself. My father tried to act like he didnt know anything. When my brother used to mess with me my other brother used to keep him away from me. But when my father asked him he said he didnt know anything about it. Mu cousin molested his younger sisters too and tried to rape my other cousin. My other cousins mother still talks to my dad even though he says that he doesnt believe me

What is sorrow?

By: JessB

What is sorrow? Sorrow is loosely defined in the oxford dictionary as deep distress caused by loss, disappointment. In my mind I would define sorrow in much broader terms, but yet, at times I think sorrow, or rather the feeling of sorrow is difficult to explain, because I think words and feelings are two different things, and I am not so sure that words can always do feelings justice.
Is sorrow the feeling you get when you are sitting out under the night sky with all of the stars shining bright, and you are reveling in natures grandeur but you look to your side and no one is there, and you realize you’re all alone, and you wish like hell you had someone to share this exact moment with? Or is sorrow the feeling you get when you see a father and his little girl at the park and you can literally see his love for her radiating from him, and you can see this love just by looking at his face, and then it hits you like a ton of bricks just fell on your heart that you never once had that. Or is sorrow the feeling you get when you grasp the fact that it has been so incredibly long since you let someone hold you in their arms and just embrace you and love you for just being you? Or is sorrow the feeling you get when you wake up from a sound sleep because you had a horrible nightmare that he was in your room again and you could literally feel his sweaty, filthy hands on you? Or is sorrow the exact feeling you get when you realize you are just too fucking scared to have a “romantic” relationship because when you have put yourself out there, and you are in a certain moment, you immediately go back in your head to the horrible nightmare that was your childhood; and then instantly you push him away, and in your head you quietly walk back into that little room that has no doors and no windows and this is where you stay.
I wouldn’t have always defined all of these instances or feelings as sorrow, actually until just recently, (maybe today) I would have said most of these feelings would have been fear. However, what I feel now –I think anyway—is sorrow. Even as I write this I feel a sadness welling up inside me, kind of like if you are boiling water and you forget to turn the heat down and it boils over and it causes all this steam and makes a huge mess—that is exactly what I feel like right now—it almost brings tears to my eyes, and I have not cried for a very long time. In the end though, I have come to understand that I can’t change what was, and I can’t change what is, but as a very wise man tells me, I can hope and pray with all my might and try to find the courage and be brave enough to change what lies before me.

By: Anonymous

when heart is starving, food is survival
feeding oneself a means of revival

heart under bone, broken to eat
cracking oneself a way to the meat

heart was weak, softer than veal
under-nourished but enough for a meal

now heart is muscle, tougher than steak
medium rare but harder to break