She had only just started school when her brother began abusing her. It started off innocently enough, a little game, a shared secret. He made her feel loved, valued, special. These were things she didn't feel from her parents and so she was vulnerable. Over the next couple of years as he grew older it evolved into sex, one slow step at a time. She didn't want it but when she refused she thought she would die and so she stopped refusing. She just accepted whatever was done to her and was numb.
In third class her school showed the movie "where did I come from?" as the start of very early sex education. She learned that a girl could become pregnant if she had sex. What she missed out on hearing was that a girl needed to be menstruating first and so she became terrified that she was pregnant. For the next 6-7 months every night when she went to bed and every morning when she woke up she would punch herself in the stomach over and over again so that she would lose the baby. She had seen something about that on TV so she thought that was the answer. She read the 'where did I come from' book over and over again trying to figure out what was happening to her. Her parents sometimes commented about how much she was looking at it but it was only in passing and not from any real interest or concern. After about 6 months she realised that her stomach wasn't getting any bigger like it should have been and she guessed she wasn't pregnant after all.
But for 6 or so months that little girl lived in absolute terror of being pregnant, of having a baby, of shame and fear and humiliation, of fear that someone would know what was happening to her.
It took another 2 years before the abuse stopped. I still cry for this little girl.
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