Do you know what children who are sexually abused have in common?
The sound, the smell, the thought, the image, the memory of their abuse. And in the case of the U.S. family courts, they share this in common too: They come to learn that it will happen again and again, and there is no help.
One five-year-old was forced to sleep in the same bed as her father, an opera singer who masturbated to orgasm next to her knowing that she was awake or wakened to the sounds of his masturbatory orgasms. Each night, You weren’t supposed to hear … I didn’t know you were awake … each night he said the same thing. Each day she woke knowing that it would happen again, and each day she said I can’t get the sounds out of my mind … I can’t get him out of my head.
Another child, age 12 said, “I close my eyes, but I can see his look as he insists I stand in front of him in a bra and panties as he adjusts my breasts in my bra as I’m trying to dress for school.”
The last words of a 16-year-old girl to her mother as she drove the car given to her by her father off a cliff, I cannot take it anymore … Her suicide note said, I cannot get him out of my head, I cannot take it anymore.
Now her mother cannot get her daughter’s voice, her last word,s out of her head, the suicide note in hand.
What we of the FCVFC cannot get out of our heads are the words spoken in family courts across the land: “Unsubstantiated/ unfounded sexual abuse … coaching. The dismissive, supercilious comments by Judges, GALs, and others. “You will have a relationship with your father. I do not care if you say he is sexually abusing you.”
These are the words we want to hear: “You are being arrested for sexual abuse of your child” and you will go to jail for the rest of your life.
We want a world where there is justice for children.
Please call the Foundation for Child Victims of the Family Courts at 866-553-6931.
Or call the Foundation For Law In The Public Interest, a WhistleBlower Law Firm.
JILL JONES SODERMAN
