then again I wonder if such men are capable of feeling guilt or any other emotion
In my experience and to address a couple of points.
Please make sure your quest for justice doesn’t destroy you instead. You can’t make the people in your family choose your side. Some of them may indeed never believe you. The effort and pain of continually dealing with those people was not worth it for me so I closed them out of my life and filled my “family” with people who were healthy for me to be with and who honestly cared for me. My “family” these days are not all blood relatives but they have stood by me more than any of my relatives ever did and I am a happier and saner person for it!!
There is no way to bring these allegations out without hurting people. This is an emotionally charged issue and many people have very visceral reactions to it. You can not control how they will feel and react but you also can not hide your own feelings as they are important too!
You really need to get counseling and address why you keep ending up the victim. There are places that will do free and sliding scale care. Just ask! Call a crisis hotline. You will be surprised at the number of women who can relate to your tale! I know I am always surprised when someone else tells me their story. All those years I thought I suffered alone.
I never forgot my abuse. It was a continual almost daily thing from as far back as my memories fo (age 3 or 4) until the day I got keys to my own apartment at age 23. I can’t say anything about how repressed memories return and how I reacted to it.
Many of these men probably feel no guilt. My father doesn’t. He still sees me as an ingrateful child who betrayed him. In his eyes I was his property to do with as he pleased! He would pretend remorse sometimes when it suited the martyr trip/mind game he was playing at the time but it was always all about him. No one else had feelings like he did. Empathy was not anything he understood. I had a psychology professor in college whom I worked for who spent a lot of time talking to me about him. He gave me some reading material on narcissistic personality and borderline personality disorder that described my father quite well. I don’t know your uncle but check both of those terms at the library and see if that helps?
Mustang, i’m glad you raise that question. i’m pretty sure you already know the answer, too.
no. no, they most probably are not capable of feeling that much guilt.
bald, but there it is. people like that are in major denial that their behavior is bad. and the self-justifications they can come up with could be hair-raising to an outsider. everything from “she was tempting me” (a 4 YEAR OLD???) to “it’s my right”. (oy. just … oy.)
like many other psychological conditions, blame can (and usually is) shifted to any and everyone else, other than the perpetrator himself. otherwise, if they really and truly “felt” how wrong their behavior was, how could they continue doing it?
perhaps after a lot (and lot and lot and LOT) of counseling and therapy, they might eventually come to understand how what they did was wrong and hurtful. but right now, it feeds some twisted need inside themselves, and therefore (in their eyes), it’s good.
I’ve got one more word of advice for you.
move.
Get the hell out of this small town and the bullshit idea the everything must be swept under the rug and kept out of sight. Move move move. Go away and don’t look back. Flee. Exodus. Vamanos. Relocate. Expatriate. Come on, haven’t you had enough of this?
Mustang, my wife was repeatedly raped by her stepbrother (19 yrs old) when she was 8-12yrs old. Despite being a drug dealer who brought nothing but guilt and harm to her family, the family thought the world of him. He eventually had enough threats on his life to have to leave the area. His parents, well, his father, still puts him on a pedestal.
After many years my wife finally told her parents the whole story. The stepbrother had expressed desires to come back to the area. She has a younger sister and wanted to make sure she was protected. The parent’s reaction was denial, then they blamed my wife for not telling them sooner, saying “We could have got help for both of you.”
This was quite a blow to my wife, and she has not had a good relationship with her stepfather since. I say good riddance, but it does hurt her. Her mother has come around and insisted that her sister will be fine. But, they still have no clue how hard this whole thing has been on my wife. The nightmares, the anxiety, etc…
My wife did what others suggested, she joined the military and got the hell out of that small town. She met a supportive guy, me, and was able to get on with her life. I believe a little distance is always good for perspective and would suggest you keep your spirits high, remember that the guy was a total f*cking scumbag who will get his in hell if nowhere else, and go for whatever it is you dream of doing.
I am actually looking for jobs somewhere else so I can move… and hopefully it works out soon. and considering the man has convinced himself that he was helping me…I doubt he’s capable of feeling that guilt.
Sorry, just a question about the memories coming back…what exactly does this mean? It’s just that I’ve been led to believe that thoughts don’t just “return,” and that repressed memories are basically a hoax. But it would be interesting if it happened in this case.
actually the mind can repress memories if you’re not mentally able to deal with the situation. It’s a form of defense that occurs during very traumatic experiances. For the longest time I knew something had happened I didn’t know what. Even during I’d leave not knowing exactly what had went on alot of times and for a while wasn’t sure the reason I hated being around him…entirely sure but I knew it was something sexual just…had no idea exactly what it was and to this day I can’t tell you if he had intercourse with me or not…that is something I’d really like to know. My ex-bf said I told him the answer while I was sleep talking during a bad dream one night…but he won’t tell me what I said cause he thinks I’ll remember when I’m ready to. The fact that he won’t tell me pretty much gives me my answer…I must have said something bad enough that he doesn’t want to be the one to tell me about it…Anyway from the women I’ve talked to…most of them didn’t get their memories back until they were in their 30s or 40s.
And to be honest, those ages are what I came up with remembering some things that were going on around me while this happened…like my grandfather getting sick and I think it started then but it seems like it could have been before but I know he got sick when I was 8 and being 12 when it stopped…that’s as far as my memories have really gone but I half way remember things happening well after so I can’t be totally sure about that either. (this is why I want my memories back now…it’s hard having so many blanks)
Repressed/blocked memories are very real, as MustangSpirit described. While there have been cases of false memories, those are usually brought about decades later by counsellors trying to “help” someone get to the root of their problem (this was a big problem in the 80’s, but most counsellors are more responsible about such things now). False memories certainly aren’t what’s going on with MustangSpirit, especially given her age and lack of outside influence in bringing the memories back.
BTW, good luck with the job search / moving out of town, MustangSpirit - I hope all goes well for you. 
Thanks bunches Sionach I’m looking to move outta state too…this whole place holds nothing but bad memories it seems and it’s time to get as far away from them as possible…of course the memories come with but at least there won’t be as many reminders. I can’t even drive down certain roads here and I don’t even know why…it’s all gotta go far far far away…and if I don’t get him put away somewhere I won’t even be able to visit my own grandmother cause that’s where he lives so when he gets outta jail now he’ll be back there. grrrr
You guys have convinced me…soon as I’m back on my feet from this surgery I’m going into town to have a meeting with the DA then an off the record meeting with our wonderful sherrif to ask him what can be done legal both to get him behind bars and to protect me…so that way I know how I can be protected before I decide to press charges.
I currently work for attorneys who have cases related to Catholic Priests.
It is not necessarily too late to file charges.
Get a good local lawyer.
But be prepared…the questions are rough. How long was his penis, were there any specific markings, was he cut or uncut, what time of day did it happen…it gets really ugly.
You will be considered a whore. You will be belittled. You will be treated as a psycho.
And before you go to court, you better not have any skeletons in your own closet…they will find them and use them to your disadvantage.
I have to have a good lawyer I know and just thinking…this will get kinda expensive won’t it…but all worth it, I know!
It won’t help my case any that with what memories I do and dont’ have I could only answer about two of those questions will it… I can remember details about strange things like him reading books filled with stories from women who had been raped and molested by family members and telling me we had to try that or even making me read them I can even remember one of the specific passages…or the porno he would make me watch I can remember the videos perfectly every detail…strange the things I do and don’t remember…some things I can remember like they happened yesterday and others like a very very old dream.
Anyway Dmark, you work for attorneys or anyone else who happens to be a lawyer or work for attorneys…how hard do you think it will be for me to build a good case with such broken memories??
This really could work against you. I would like to recommend consulting the DA about the statute of limitations; then, if you have some time to spare, see a therapist who can help you recover some memories (I’m not talking about hypnosis here, I’m talking about gentler techniques that can help bring things back. My therapist has had a few tricks up her sleeve, and while I’ve had nothing like total recall, I have recalled a number of things). Because DMark is right: if you don’t know personal details, it seems that just that would create “reasonable doubt”. I certainly believe what you say, but you can understand how the courts have to be careful about sending someone to jail based on vague memories, intuitions and feelings.
I also am curious if anyone in the know has a good guess as to how likely it is that there could actually be a conviction in this case. Won’t it just come down to her word against his?
Max, in cases without physical evidence, that’s exactly what it comes down to.
However, the public awareness has gone up dramatically about this issue in the last ten years, and I believe juries have become more inclined to give victims, particularly young victims, the benefit of the doubt.
wheeee on a trip outta state to the beach, feel very good without all that extra weight on my shoulders for the moment…sigh but I do have to return. Anyway you guys are right getting away does help so now I’m more determined than ever to move. Anyway… I don’t know he might still have some of those books packed away at my grandmother’s house and possibly the videos would that help if they found them???
Do you know what the statute of limitations is Dmark?
Statute of limitations in child molestation cases varies state by state - some states have 2 years from date of rememberance, some have 5 years from 18th birthday . . . the best way to find out the statute of limitations applicable to a specific case is to speak to a qualified attorney in your state.