Father Denies Everything

by Annie
(UK)

I was sexually abused from around age 2 until I was 17. My father was the abuser and threatened to drown me if I told anyone. I dissociated and was unaware of this abuse until the 1990s when I had started having flashbacks, nightmares and hallucinations. I've suffered mental health problems for most of my life, with recurrent depression, but even after remembering two incidents I was unaware of the extent of the abuse I suffered.

I started psychodynamic psychotherapy about four years ago. For the first eighteen months, I danced around my childhood only concentrating on current problems I was having regarding my daughter's mental health and how it was affecting my grandchildren.

Until 2 years ago, I was completely unaware of what abuse had happened to me. I was orally, anally and vaginally abused. Not only my father, but two of his friends abused me sexually.

I got pregnant when I was fifteen, but had a miscarriage at 12 weeks. This was after I had been raped by my father and various other men at a strange house on my 15th birthday. These memories have only recently come back into my consciousness.

I have found it so difficult to speak about some of these issues to my therapist but eventually I find a way. I have a lovely female therapist who is very understanding and I regard her as a substitute mother, even though she's a bit younger than me.

I started to remember during therapy sessions and most of the time I only get new memories during our sessions. I see her three times a week.

Since getting my memories back, I have taken 10 overdoses and started cutting myself. I find I doubt my memories, as they are so awful. I can't believe a father could do such terrible things to his own daughter. How could I have lived with such awful abuse and not remember it?

My father denies everything. He also physically abused my brother, half-brother and half-sister. My half-sister doesn't believe me now, even though when I first told her she said she believed me and would support me. Now she says I should take a lie detector test to prove to her and her mother that I'm telling the truth. I decided to break off all contact with her and report my father to the police even though it was over 45 years ago.