Growing Up with Sexual Abuse: Lisa's Story

This article is about a little girl that suffered horrendous episodes of sexual abuse. She is grown now and wanted to tell her story through me. I hope I am the person to best tell it for her. For her protection, I will call her Lisa.

Lisa admits to being sexual from the very first that she can remember. These are her words:

"I don't remember my father; he was out of my mom's life before I was old enough to remember. I wasn't even 2 years old when my parents split up. My mother was lonely and she started seeing this man. He was big and scary looking. I remember he didn't have many teeth. He was what I would call snaggle-toothed. My mother started living with him when I was three. I don't know where she was; maybe she walked to the store for some cigarettes or something. I was alone with this man that called himself daddy.

"He took my clothes off and sat me on a trunk and he placed one leg over the other, my ankle over my knee and he took a picture of me. He said not to tell mom; this was between he and I. He gave me a Popsicle; it was orange. I liked orange Popsicles. There was lots of time he sent my mom to the store. The store was about 3 blocks away and she had to walk. We lived in Brooklyn, New York. She didn't drive in the city, so she walked everywhere she went, or took the subway.

"He took more pictures of me. He liked to play tickle wars with me. And then he took pictures of me sitting on his lap. He held the camera out from me and him at an angle and captured me sitting on his lap. I always got orange Popsicles afterward. He never hurt me, and I didn't know what was really happening. I know that he was friendly and liked for me to sit on his lap.