Finding Out What Happened To My Abusers?

[RileysMom]

I feel better! I thought I was the only one. I started looking for my abuser (my ex-stepdad) a few months before I started therapy. He was charged with 2 counts of sexual molestation and received 2 years in prison. He got out in 1 year. The thing is, I don't remember much from the time I told my mom that I thought he was hurting my sisters to the time he got out and made a point of stopping in front of our house the day he got out of jail. I eventually talked to my mom about what had happened because it was making me crazy that I couldn't remember anything from that time.

When I started reconnecting with my emotions I realized how angry I was. I was angry for what he did to us. I was angry because, at the time, I didn't think he had done jail time for molesting me (I thought he had only been charged for the abuse of my sisters). I was angry because he wasn't on a sex offender registry. I was angry and scared because he could be out there doing the same thing to other kids and there's not a damn thing I can do about it. I'm still coming to terms with the anger.

I know that he lives in a small town up north. I have days that I wish that I could call someone there and tell them what he did and that he may be doing it or has done it to other kids. But, I know I can't do that.

There's a part of me that wants to understand why someone would do the things he did. Some days I wish I could call him and tell him how angry I am and that it isn't fair that he took our innocence away. I want a part of my life that I can never get back. I can't go back and relive my childhood and adolescent years. They were stolen from me by a man that cared for nothing but his sexual gratification.

There's also the part of me that's angry with God. I know eventually I'll find some peace in the aspect of my life, but for now I have to be honest with myself and my feelings.

I hope that you are able to find some of the answers you are looking for.

 

[Grim]

Hi RileysMom - Thank you for sharing.

I think it's quite natural to want to know what happened to our abusers.

As adults, we should now be more able to comprehend better what happened and why. I feel that knowing and understanding is the key to recovery.

I respect that all of us are different and have different needs, but for me avoiding knowing more would seem like a further form of dissociation. Not that there's anything wrong or odd with dissociating, after all this is how the human brain protects us from abuse and events that disturb us. However, in my case I have made a decision to take back the controls - and challenge my fears.

To get better I need to know the truth of what happened.

 

[Grim]

Had a reply from the YMCA they will check their records - but they noted they are run from a different location now so may not be able to help! We shall see ..

 

[Grim]

The YMCA have email back they have records of the my abuser who worked for them and no record of the court case from the early 1980s when he was prosecuted. They suggest I search through the archives of our local newspaper.

I would have thought organisations like the YMCA would have kept some record of the child abusers who worked for them? Theoretically, they could have employed him again!

So it looks like I'm going to have to trawl through loads of newspapers.

 

[Kintsugi]

Grim, I understand your reasons for seeking out your abusers, I think, particularly the part where

it was like finally the world is seeing what I see. No longer could anyone doubt that he wasn't the great person he made himself out to be.

I know one of my abusers all too closely (my brother), but I don't know what's become of most of them. I can say that seeing my abusers fail or be held accountable for their abhorrent actions can be cathartic. But the inverse is also devastating. I feel like there's a lot of risk involved emotionally in researching this, and if the reward seems great enough, go for it, but consider the possible repercussions of knowing your abusers are doing dandy.

 

[scott_1971_h]

Partly because I didn't have to worry about him getting to me any longer but also it was like finally the world is seeing what I see.

Yes! After a lifetime of "She loves you" :poop: people are starting to see how much - and why - the bitch does what she does. And it does not exactly make her look good...

 

[pontifixmax]

Mine were all strangers. Well, one of them wasn't but he had no association to my family or whatever so I've no idea where he is, what he's doing, or even if he's alive or dead for that matter. I was a kid living on the street when the sexual abuse took place, or survival sex I guess you could call it. There were alot of predators out there. Who they all were I couldn't tell you, in part because I drank alot to block it all out, while it was happening and for years afterward I mean.

 

[atl22]

The only child abuse I suffered was from my father. I no longer have anything to do with him because I am inclined to seek revenge, so I just stopped talking to him. So, that's settled.

I experienced a great deal of "community" violence (hilarious term, in my opinion) which consisted of many shootings, stabbings, fistfights, huge brawls with up to 60 people, many of them armed with guns, knives, chains, bats, steel pipes, brass knuckles, etc.

But just recently, I realized that the older kids and men that "trained" us to survive our neighborhood were actually abusing us also. That was a stunning revelation.

They taught us to swim by throwing us in the water and watching us almost drown. They made us conquer any fear of heights by taking us downtown and hanging us off a skyscraper. They taught us to fight by beating us if we didn't practice with them.

They had this method of teaching us to ignore pain by getting broomsticks with rounded points and they jabbed us over and over in the back, stomach, shoulders, and legs. The pain was overwhelming at first but I had to get used to it ("pain is a message, blah, blah, blah...) or they didn't stop. I can still remember the terrifying sound of them sharpening the ends of the sticks on the concrete sidewalk.

Pressure points, vital strike points, chin na, those a-holes tortured me. Many of them were combat vets. I am still getting used to the idea that my closest "friends" abused me. I had never considered that until I found this forum and started to actually write things down, step back, and read what happened. Damn.

 

[Nemone]

I try to find out about the people who bullied or betrayed me but it's usually disappointing. The ex who deceived me and who I found out was actually planning to stab me to death on valentines ended up going to prison for stabbing another girl in the face and slitting her throat but it didn't really feel like his plans to do those things to me were something he was punished for which I think made me a little upset. I still don't really understand my feelings about that. My grandfather who is the source of pretty much all that is screwed up in my family hasn't been punished and even though the girls in the family all hate him, everyone is still keeping quiet about it and somehow the family still gets together and pretends nothing happened. I won't see him cause I hate his guts and wish he would just die already. A lot of the guys who bullied me and harassed me are settling down and a bunch have gotten married and are happy now which makes me really angry as well. Thinking about those people really makes my blood boil.

I think it's normal to want to see the people who hurt us punished but it feels like there's no point in finding out when we can't do anything to affect their life and personally when I think about it, I don't want to. If I had the power to hurt them and actually did it, I'd feel terrible about myself. I couldn't make someone else feel the way I feel. I think maybe that's the thing that makes it so hard, we know what it's like to suffer so it's hard to think of doing it to someone else. We want to punish the people that hurt us but we don't know how to do it without making ourselves feel bad. Even if we inflict physical damage, it wouldn't equal the emotional damages we suffered. If they don't realize what they've done and regret it on their own, nothing we can do to them will change that and I think knowing they regret it is the only thing that would make me feel better.

 

[Rissy215]

This has been a double-edged sword for me. One of my past abusers is on the registry for statutory rape of someone else and none of the others are listed that I know of. The one that is listed was enlisted at the time of the offense he was caught for and received a dishonorable discharge. I would have rather heard he was locked up somewhere and not free to find new victims. While it bothers me that the others aren't even on the registry I've also looked at my local area every time I've moved in the past 10 years so I feel like I know who to look out for and gain a slight sense of control. Unfortunately, I did this recently and found that a rapist works on the hospital floor that I'm a patient on a few times a year and has completely freaked me out.