My Abuse Story (Part 2): I got away
Content warning: mentions of sexual abuse, abusive dynamics, sexual assault, religious trauma and mental health struggles.
This is Part 2 of my story about surviving sexual abuse. If you haven’t read Part 1, you can find it here.
When I started this project, I failed to fully comprehend the emotional strain of putting my story into words. In the past, whenever I have tried to verbalise this time in my life, I have found myself lost in my own memories, and my train of thought often escapes me. Trauma has an odd way of making any narrative less clear and less linear.
So while I have shared the first part of my story many times, I have rarely gone into any detail about that final year of abuse and how I got out. To me, at least, the year after I left high school doesn’t feel as black and white or as cut and dry.
A part of me still blames myself. I banished that kind of thinking about my time in high school a long time ago. As an adult, it is so clear that while I was 17 and later 18, I was still very much a child. I may have been legally over-age for much of the most physical sexual abuse, but mentally and emotionally, I was entirely incapable of consenting.
But what about as I got older? Shame is a sticky thing. It doesn’t detach itself easily.
That said, I think it’s important to share how I ultimately got away from my abuser. Spoiler alert: I grew up.
The majority of the people in my life didn’t help me, and God absolutely did not help me, despite all my prayers. You could say, “God helps those who help themselves,” but that is not biblical. It was my own strength and will to live that saved me.
After being let down time and time again, I told someone who didn’t have ulterior motives and who cared enough about me to help.
My aim in sharing my story, all of it, is first and foremost to give solace to other survivors. I personally find great comfort in reading other people’s stories and how they made it through. I also want to help others better understand the dynamics of abuse. Just as rape is rarely perpetrated in dark alleys, sexual abuse is insidious and doesn’t always align with people’s preconceptions. Finally, the people who continually protected my abuser and put so little value on my well-being or the well-being of others like me need to be called out. As long as institutions exist that protect (and I’d argue create) abusers, vulnerable people will continue to suffer.
My abuser attended my high school graduation. I remember sitting on stage and looking up to see him watching me. I knew why he was there and who he was there for. Of all the things that happened that day — the excitement, the feelings of accomplishment, the time spent with my classmates — the moment I remember most clearly was looking up and seeing him. To this day, I could still point to where he was sitting.
After the ceremony, the graduating seniors and their friends and family gathered in the school auditorium. We had each prepared boards filled with childhood memories and our proudest moments from high school. We displayed swag for our future universities and had books for people to sign.
He was there too, sitting at a table with the school superintendent, watching.
The superintendent waved me over, and I said hello, asking polite questions about his new job. I was relieved to learn he’d landed a role with a publishing house that sold his logic and rhetoric curriculums, where he taught homeschool students. Only later were the implications of that made clear to me. In that moment, I was simply happy to put aside some of my guilt, knowing he and his family were not suffering financially because of me. The interaction was brief, and in a way, I felt like I had closure.
Two weeks later, I started my job at the US Forest Service.
I loved that job. I woke up every morning around 5:00 am and started the workday at 6:00 am by hitting the gym with my crew.
It was my first time out in the ‘secular world’, and I had so much to learn. I was working with people who were not necessarily all Christians. They used curse words, made dirty jokes, and had sex outside of marriage.
My naivety and lack of awareness provided my team a constant source of entertainment. One day while priming the firehose, I exclaimed, ‘I just keep jerking it and jerking it, and it just won’t come!’ The guys hid behind the fire engine to avoid explaining what was so funny to me.
We worked hard, told stories, and laughed a lot.
But at the end of the day and whenever I checked my phone, my abuser was there. He expected a constant stream of communication. The non-stop messaging impacted my work during the day and my sleep at night. There were even occasions when I fell asleep on the job because my abuser kept me up so late texting.
Every time I lost cell service, I was both anxious and relieved. For that short time, I could live in the moment, but I knew my abuser would be annoyed. So I constantly checked my phone.
He judged my crew because they weren’t Christians and was jealous because most of them were men. Instead of being as open-minded as I wanted to be, I felt I had to keep my abuser happy. I was turning into something I hated: a stuck-up, judgmental prude.
I hate that I let him undermine me at a job I loved, and that I simply did not block him. I wanted so badly to just live my life and experience the world outside my Christian bubble.
For all his holier-than-thou attitude, my abuser still sexted me regularly, and I went along with it even though it made me feel alien and disgusting. He asked me to tell him my fantasies, but my only real fantasy was wanting to feel safe and loved. So I parroted his words back to him.
One day, while I was sitting alone in the fire engine, my abuser reprimanded me for my obsession with sex. He told me it wasn’t healthy that I always brought it up, that I was abnormal and sinful. I truly believed there was something wrong with me. After all, I was an 18-year-old talking to a fat 53-year-old.
What I wouldn’t have given to have a cute boy my own age to figure things out with.
The church had taught me from a young age that, as a female, I was the gatekeeper of sex. Boys couldn’t help themselves, so it was up to girls to dress and act modestly to avoid tempting them. I was responsible for how men acted towards me, and if a man was sexual towards me, it was my fault. It never once occurred to me that he was the problem, that he was a predator, and I was easy, pre-groomed prey.
I did not know I could say “no.” I don’t think I’d even heard the word “consent” at this point in my life.
I believed I invited the attention with my bubbly personality and taste in clothes. I thought if men showed interest in me, it proved there was something evil in my heart, attracting them and telling them I was available.
I stayed despite the guilt and disgust because my abuser knew just how dirty and impure I truly was, and he said he still loved me regardless. When he reprimanded me for my sexual behaviour, I believed it was for my own good. I was filled with shame and was even further bonded to my abuser. Without him, I believed I would be completely alone and unlovable and that no one around me would want me if they truly knew me.
I’d been primed to think this way over the past six months. The people who knew what had happened ignored me, never checking to see if I was okay.
Every day after work, my abuser expected me to drive an hour and a half to see him. He had found a hidden spot that required balancing across a log over a stream and hiding in a secluded section of a park. There, he kissed me for the first time, and there he regularly assaulted me.
On one of these occasions, shortly before I left for university, he told me he wanted to ‘pray’ for me. He was worried about my spiritual well-being, particularly as I ‘struggled with sexual sin’, and I would soon be surrounded by sexually liberal college-aged men — as if my abuser would actually let me seriously date anyone else.
He assaulted me again that day. Afterwards, he said he was surprised that I didn’t stop him. It was clear that I was in pain, but I was still so dissociated at that point that I couldn’t form a single word in response.
Years later, when I had sex with my future fiancé for the first time, I dissociated again. He immediately stopped and asked if I was okay. I didn’t have to say anything for him to know instantly that he shouldn’t continue. I wasn’t okay. We were basically strangers at this point, yet he was still aware and stopped. Only after I gave enthusiastic consent did we continue. It was in that moment when he stopped that I knew I really was safe and okay.
It took all that time for me to learn that consent is not the failure to say no; it’s saying yes and meaning it. Only by having safe, consensual sex as an adult was I able to understand the difference and realize that what happened with my abuser was assault.
After my abuser assaulted me that day in the park, he grabbed my new shirt and wiped the sweat off his face and neck. That was just one more violation and degradation. I felt sick knowing I would have to leave that place wearing his sweat.
I parked my car in another part of town, got out, and promptly passed out on the ground. My head felt tight, and my whole body hurt. I couldn’t process what had happened, what kept happening, and so I shut down. When I woke up, I went to the store and purchased a new shirt.
After that summer, I began university in Washington, DC. Like most students living away from home for the first time, I felt lost and homesick. I sought out the familiarity of Christian community, joining every Christian group on campus and jumping from one Bible study to the next. Each Sunday, I tried out a new church.
My mother had picked out a reformed church for me, and we had visited while I was checking out the university during my junior year of high school. However, when I admitted to the pastor of that church that I wasn’t currently a member of another church, he told me I could not partake in communion. For so long, I had felt like an outsider, that I wasn’t good enough for my community, and as deeply as I believed in God, I still thought I needed to prove my faith.
To be denied communion, just as my abuser had been denied communion in those weeks shortly after the abuse was discovered, crushed me. It reinforced the idea that despite my genuine belief and devotion to God, I wasn’t good enough for the real Christians. I was never fully confident in my salvation. The doctrine of the church in Moscow is one that breeds insecurity and leaves believers constantly needing to prove themselves and their faith.
Only later did I learn that it was the strict, problematic ethics code that caused my guilt, shame, and inability to share what was happening.
Trying not to cry in public, I snuck out during a hymn to find a bathroom. Tears welling up, I accidentally stumbled into the men’s room and hid in a stall crying.
Next, I tried a charismatic church associated with one of the campus groups I was attending. But after they had us paint rocks and talk to them as if they would cry out, as Jesus described in Luke 19:40, ‘“I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out,’” I left, embarrassed for them and myself.
I joined a campus group called Intervarsity. They had freshman Bible study once a week in the cafeteria run by one of the seniors. It was the kind of Bible study where each person took turns sharing their struggles and how God was ‘moving in their lives’.
Every time my turn came, I wanted to blurt out my whole story. But everyone else’s ‘sins’ and prayer requests were so safe and normal. I couldn’t just drop that I was being abused, and it was destroying me with guilt after another student finished pouring out their heart about a stressful midterm.
While I didn’t feel able to open up to anyone, I desperately wanted to.
One other student also signed up for every Christian group on campus. He constantly carried a Bible with him, sometimes hooked to a loop in his cargo pants. While he was embarrassingly aggressively Christian, we got along well. He was the only other student I’d met who knew the Bible as well as I did. He’d found a good church and told me about a van that transported students from the metro station on campus to church every Sunday.
I boarded the van the next week. My friend wasn’t there, but I was pleased with the convenience. Once at the church, I got separated from the other students in the crowd. I felt so lost until a kind Australian couple said hello. They’d just come from Perth so the husband could do a pastoral internship.
I felt slightly less awkward and alone. The music started, and with it, the homesickness. I knew the hymns from school and found myself choking back tears, but not the tears of rejection like before. I decided I was done looking for a church.
I lived on a satellite campus where many of the freshmen were housed. The university had a bus that ran between the campuses. One day, while on the bus, I sat next to a friendly German student who was visiting friends. The bus got stuck in traffic, and we found ourselves chatting for close to 45 minutes.
Then, a week or so later, I ran into him again. We grabbed coffee and sat on the lawn watching soccer. After what was undeniably a lovely afternoon, I went back to my dorm only to receive a call from my abuser. He was incensed.
My abuser tracked my phone and noticed when I diverged from my ordinary routine without telling him. He wanted to know what I was doing in the campus commons and why I had failed to respond to his messages.
He claimed that we had scheduled a video call and that I had stood him up. In reality, he was just angry that I wasn’t constantly available when he wanted me. I made the mistake of telling him about my German friend.
According to what I was taught at school, girls and guys could not ‘just be friends’. Guys always wanted ‘one thing’, and the girls must maintain their purity. Looking back, this teaching demonstrates just how obsessed fundamentalist Christian communities are with sex. An innocent coffee, which led to premarital soccer watching, was ‘compromising myself with a non-Christian man’. According to my abuser, I had betrayed him. He had been ‘worried about my well-being’ while I was ‘flirting’ with some guy.
I cried, and despite wanting to, I didn’t arrange to get together with this guy again while he was in the US. Years later, I would visit him in Germany. To this day, we remain friends, though I’ve never told him about the tongue-lashing I received for spending time with him.
My Christian faith was a perfect tool for my abuser to control me. As a girl, I had been taught to submit to the male leaders in my life, first my father and then my future husband. I’d been primed to submit to the will of any man who asserted authority over me, and my abuser wasn’t just any man; he was a church leader.
If my abuser said something was God’s will or called out something I did as sinful, I took it as gospel. He implemented a cycle where our conversations would gradually become more sexual until they crossed a constantly fluctuating line in the sand.
At that point, my abuser would reprimand me. He’d refuse to speak to me sometimes for days, other times for weeks. While these gaps gave me a reprieve from his constant monitoring, he was always in complete control of when and by what means we spoke. During those times when he cut off communication with me, I kept a journal. I also tried to write when my abuser was speaking to me, but I simply didn’t have the time.
Re-reading my words, I’m slowly reconnecting with and learning to have compassion for the girl I was, even as I regret how those years of my life played out. I was so broken and confused.
Once, I wrote, ‘So here it is God, for Christmas I want joy, no more need to cry myself to sleep, no more excruciating loneliness, no more fear of showing myself flaws and all.’ Later in that same entry, I wrote, ‘When I lost [my abuser], I lost myself.’
My abuser had taken so much control over my life, and I didn’t know who I was or how to function without him constantly there.
He controlled how I dressed, who my friends were, and what I believed. And I let him. That is the part that is so hard to deal with now.
In a previous entry during another period of isolation, I wrote, ‘Now that [my abuser] is gone, I don’t have that outside reassurance of my worth.’ I spent the rest of the entry trying to parse out the mystery of self-worth.
I missed him. I thought I loved him. I had trauma bonded to him through the constant fear of rejection and public shaming. My self-esteem was so low that I believed I was the cause of the abuse or the perpetrator of the ‘sin’.
When he cut me off, I was filled with all the guilt and shame from what had happened. I was certain that if anyone really knew what had happened between my abuser and me, I would be left completely socially isolated. I imagined it would be like that final semester of high school, completely alone and suicidal.
I thought I was unlovable because of what had happened between my abuser and me. If even my abuser rejected me, where did that leave me?
Every time my abuser accused me of causing him to fall into sin, of tempting him, it further established in my mind that this was all my fault. I imagined that I was the seductress, the evil woman, the temptress, an agent of the devil sent to cause a godly man to sin.
As a result of this yo-yo-ing cycle, I reverted back to my most self-destructive behaviours. I would starve myself, running for miles simply to burn calories. I put myself deliberately in danger by running at night in remote DC parks and through underpasses populated with tents.
But I also started to explore what college and independence had to offer. I tried alcohol, even sneaking into a few clubs underage. I made non-Christian friends. When the pastor at my new church said, ‘Jesus wept for our unbelief’, I wrote, ‘I want a God that laughs’. I started, slowly, to make healthier choices and was self-aware, writing that I needed to invest more in my friendships.
But on the flip side, I felt guilty for my natural experimentation and exploration. I thought I had a problem with alcohol because I got drunk a few times, and I constantly worried about what my abuser would think. I weighed every action and every adventure against the ‘moral’ code of my abuser, fearful I would anger him, even when he wasn’t there.
Inevitably, when I started to experiment, expand my horizons, and see the light at the end of the tunnel, my abuser would re-insert himself back into my life.
Just when I started to have hope, when my depression would lessen, he’d restart the cycle.
Thanksgiving has always been my favourite holiday, but that year, I chose to stay at school. Partly, it was practical as I would be flying home in a few weeks for Christmas. Part of me did not want the additional trauma of seeing my abuser in person.
I was so homesick. When Christmas came, I was filled with both excitement and dread. I was eager to tell my family about my time at university, to pet my cat, to ride my horse, and to eat my mom’s cooking. But I also hated the idea that I would be compelled to sneak around and lie to see my abuser.
I didn’t believe I had a choice. On New Year’s Day 2016, he met me in a parking lot, where he made me jerk him off. He didn’t climax, I suspect because, having never given a handjob, I simply closed my eyes and pretended I was milking the family goat.
He reassured me that I had done fine and it was okay that it didn’t happen. I had no idea what he was talking about but didn’t ask. Hadn’t I done what he told me?
Looking back, I’m grateful that he did not climax. I only learned what he meant when at 22, I experienced a man coming for the first time. I was completely and utterly shocked, but I think I hid it well.
I remember thinking that this was a bad omen for the next year. I felt completely hopeless and did not think it would ever end.
When I went back to school, the cycle of abuse continued.
Sometimes my abuser would make passing comments that chilled my blood. He mentioned seeing my little sisters around town and said they were beautiful, like me. They were beginning to turn into women, like me.
There was a girl in one of his classes that he said paid him a lot of attention. He said she reminded him of me. The girl was fourteen, but it didn’t stop him from mentioning her looks and telling me about the moments he spent with her one-on-one. When I asked him to stop, he told me I was just jealous.
That came to a head when his employer emailed him.
His employer’s concern was clear: my abuser might make the church look bad to its detractors. His employer, who ran a business providing curriculum and online classes to homeschool children, was worried not about the children but the reputation of the church. He was just one more example of complete moral bankruptcy rampant in that community.
Did he enquire about the well-being of the child in question? Did he restrict my abuser’s access to her? He knew that my abuser had been “inappropriate” with me. No, he warned my abuser that people might get the wrong impression if he flirted with young girls.
Despite his obvious paranoia about getting caught, my abuser was not particularly careful. He overestimated his intelligence or, it seems, correctly estimated the consequences, which were minor. It wasn’t long before the fact that he was following and engaging with my social media came to the attention of the pastor in Moscow.
The pastor confronted my abuser, and when my abuser admitted that he was still in contact with me, he reprimanded him. My abuser overestimated his power over me and forwarded me the email train when I asked.
Wilson’s concern was not that my abuser was abusing me again. He wasn’t worried that my abuser was once again grooming me for his sexual gratification or that I was in danger from a man who’d repeatedly shown himself to be a predator. No, the pastor’s concern was not for my well-being at all. He was worried that if his enemies found out, he risked losing money.
If I were to ever see the pastor again, I would want to ask how much money was at stake. How much money is the well-being of a young girl worth? If I had killed myself to escape my abuser, would the amount of money he saved have outweighed the cost?
The pastor referred to the molestation of a student as ‘folly’ and pointed out that my abuser risked his career. He didn’t risk jail time or any reasonable consequences for his actions. His punishment for continuing to force himself into my life, destroying my mental health, and sexually assaulting me whenever he got the chance was that he could no longer serve communion at church.
And my abuser made me feel guilty for that.
I decided to stay in DC over the summer break and applied for an internship with my Congresswoman. My abuser was furious. He believed I was avoiding him, which wasn’t false. For the first time, I made the choice to distance myself from him. I did not want to be assaulted again.
I got the internship but didn’t think too much about my housing. Thankfully, a woman from my church reached out to a few connections and found me a place to stay on Capitol Hill. I moved in with a young couple, their baby, and another boarder, all from the church. I had little money and even less of a concept of costs, particularly in DC. They let me live in their basement for next to nothing. For that generosity, I will be forever grateful. That housing situation changed my life.
Part of why I write is to voice my concerns about abusive religious communities, and I believe the church I stumbled into in DC was one of those problematic fundamentalist groups. You can read more about my experiences with that church in my post about my deconversion here. However, one thing high-control groups like this do well is community.
The other boarder was a speechwriter to a senator who was approximately ten years my senior. Despite the age difference, we instantly hit it off, and I began to trust her and rely on her. Needless to say, she was much better at adulting than me, from cooking regular meals to negotiating life on Capitol Hill.
During that summer, an old high school friend of mine came to visit. My housemate had made dinner for us and her boyfriend. Over the meal, we told high school stories and took friendly jabs at each other. Then my friend went too far, saying, ‘at least I didn’t get a teacher fired’.
Until that moment, she had never mentioned what had happened to me in high school. When she said those words out loud in front of my housemate and her boyfriend, I panicked. I abruptly shut down that line of conversation. But when I went to bed that night, I messaged my housemate and asked to talk with her.
A week or so later, on a road trip to Philadelphia, I told her what happened in high school. I didn’t divulge that my abuser was still in my life.
To my shock, she stayed my friend. She was supportive and sympathetic. She told me that it wasn’t my fault, not that I was sinning.
She still loved me as her friend. I wasn’t unlovable.
Maybe, just maybe, I could be open and honest without fear of rejection. If I could tell someone and admit what was happening, I could get away.
A few months later, I told her that my abuser was still abusing me.
Telling another person broke the spell my abuser had over me. Until then, I believed everything my abuser said. I believed him when he told me I was sinning and when he told me that I had caused him to sin. I believed that what happened with my abuser destroyed my worth as a woman. The sexual shame that I had been indoctrinated with cemented my fear of speaking out.
I started to grow up, seek independence, and give myself space from my abuser. I chose to confide in a friend. For years, I prayed that God would help me escape or let me die, but prayer did nothing. I saved myself with the help of a supportive friend. After telling my housemate, I began to make small choices for myself. Ultimately, when my abuser arranged to attend a conference in Richmond, Virginia, I found the courage to tell my housemate.
He had wanted me to come stay with him in his hotel room. The idea made me sick even then. I told my housemate, and she had my back as I wrote him a final message saying I never wanted to speak to him again. It was the first time that I had cut off communication. I blocked him from messaging me on Facebook and Instagram. Though foolishly, I deleted the messages. At that time, I wanted to put my abuser behind me and never look back.
Later, I would have to block him on LinkedIn and Twitter as he continued to try and slide back into my life.
He begged me not to cut him off. He said he didn’t know what he’d do and said that he was worried for his personal safety alone in the hotel he’d booked.
I no longer cared, saying anything that would stop him from messaging me. I had matured enough to realise he was simply trying yet again to manipulate me.
He begged me not to hate him. I told him I wouldn’t, but even then, I loathed him for the pain he caused in my life. Today, I wouldn’t piss on him if he were on fire. He very nearly destroyed me.
He came to Virginia for the conference and posted cryptic photos of the bed at the location where he was staying. I saw them when I checked his socials, wanting to know if he was near. I knew the photos were for me. That was the bed he planned to rape me in, and now he couldn’t. He knew where I lived, where I worked, where I went to classes. He even knew who my friends were and where they lived.
I went to New York and played tourist for a week. I cannot express the relief I felt when he flew back to Idaho, and I was once again far away and relatively safe. It took me moving across the world to completely remove the paranoia that he would show up at my church, school, or work.
I have only spoken to him once, and that was to reiterate that I never wanted to hear from him again as he continued to try to contact me. I’m incredibly proud of getting away from that monster. My only regret is that my story has not been enough to remove him from the streets and protect other young girls in his orbit. I have no doubt that he will try to molest any young girl he gets access to. I wasn’t special; I was just vulnerable.
E.D. Paige now lives happily ‘in sin’ with her partner. Since leaving Christianity, many of her PTSD symptoms have subsided. Follow her on Medium at @ed.paige for more articles about her thoughts and experiences in religion.
