Maureen, a young girl at the time, was just 8 years old when her life underwent a permanent transformation. The little girl had no one to turn to when her mother, stepfather, and older brother began assaulting her, so she kept her suffering a secret for many years, even after giving birth to her brother’s child.
Maureen described the day it all started, saying, “I remember every detail of that day. “My brother, John, entered the restroom as I was drying off after participating in a water fight outside and immediately began touching me. Although I couldn’t explain what he was doing, I knew it felt wrong and was terrible.
Maureen recalls that on her ninth birthday, her brother raped her for the first time before continuing to abuse her ever after. She was being raped by her brother a year later when her stepfather John entered the room. “I was relieved; I had assumed he would put a stop to it.
I believed he’d take care of me,” Maureen stated, but she quickly discovered she had been gravely incorrect when her stepfather started mistreating her as well. “I desperately hoped that my mother would intervene and assist me. She entered my bedroom, though, and called me a “little wh**e.” By the time she was 10, her mother had also ruthlessly joined the abuse.
They used to force me to sleep in their bed, between them, and they alternated between abusing me, according to Maureen. My mother assisted in getting me ready for my stepdad to rape me. “It seemed as though the world was ending. I had no else to turn because they were all against me, she said.
When Maureen was 13, she fell pregnant, horrifying her mother who was worried about what the neighborhood would think. Her mother instinct instantly began to take over when Maureen gave birth to her son, Christopher. He was everything to me, and I experienced love for the first time in my life, Maureen gushed. She could only be with him for a month before discovering him dead in his cot.
“When he passed away, I thought my life and the world had come to an end. I could only truly love him, Maureen remarked. The day we buried him, it rained. I had the impression that the sky was weeping with me. I only wanted to pass away. Once her kid passed away, her mother and brother stopped assaulting her, but her stepfather persisted until Mauren, then 16 years old, ran away from home.
Mauren didn’t feel ready to sue her family until she was 37 years old. She was informed at the time that she would require the body of her son to support her claims. “His DNA would verify that my brother was his father and that I had been telling the truth,” Maureen stated.
She then ordered the exhumation of her son’s body from the ground, and authorities discovered that the DNA samples matched. “It seemed almost as though Christopher was keeping an eye on me and supporting my legal cause. He served as my guardian angel and still does, the mother continued. The now 51-year-old woman, who is the happy mother of five children, witnessed the two-year prison terms for her brother, mother, and stepfather.
The book A Family Secret: My Shocking Real Tale of Survival is another way she has shared her story. Dear readers, in light of current claims that child sexual abuse has increased in America during the pandemic, we are republishing this story.
