HAUNTED BY HIS ABUSE.(violent father sexually abuses daughter)

She was 12 when he started fondling her and 16 when the rapes began. Her father is finally out of her life the fear remains.

* I grew up in the rural Northwest in a house surrounded by many acres of unpopulated land, 25 miles away From the nearest town. There was a reason for the solitude--my dad, a violent and domineering man, was an antigovernment separatist who wanted to keep his family away from civilization and under his control. I was the first of seven children (four girls and three boys), and when we grew older, my mother home-schooled us. As a result, we had almost no contact with people outside our immediate family. So when my dad started to abuse me sexually, I had nowhere to turn.

THE ENDLESS NIGHTMARE

The abuse began gradually, as if my father was trying to get me used to it. The first time it happened, I was only 12 years old. It was the middle of the afternoon, and I was on my way to the bathroom, which was next to his office. My father came into the hallway and grabbed me in a hug, quickly fondling my breasts. Startled, I tried to push him away, but he hugged me harder and told me, "It's okay" Afterward, I thought it was just a freakish one-time occurrence, but it continued... and escalated. When I was 14, he started touching my genitals. Then he started performing oral sex on me. Sometimes he'd catch me on my way to the bathroom and take me into his office; usually, he'd wake me up in the middle of the night and make me go downstairs to the living room with him. I was disgusted by what he was doing hut scared of what would happen if I resisted him. I had seen him hit my mom and call her stupid and worthless, and I knew he'd do the same to me.

The only thing I was thankful for was that he never made me give him oral sex. Sometimes he'd grab my hand and by to put it on his penis, but I'd jerk my hand away. He'd always tell me "I have a special love for you" and not to tell anyone else. I tried to avoid him, never going into a room alone with him or riding in his car without my siblings. But we lived in the same house, so ultimately, there was no escape. By the time I was 16, he was waking me tip late at night and raping me in our living room. When I tried to resist, he would beat my rear end with a wire coat hanger or threaten to punish the rest of the family, saying things like "We won't go to Grandma's Thanksgiving if you don't obey me." Each time he raped me, I'd close my eyes and by to think of other things until it was over.

I wanted to tell my mom what he was doing, but I knew my dad would start beating her if she tried to interfere. I was also afraid she'd blame me. My father was very manipulative, and he'd molded my mother to obey him without question and think what he wanted her to think. I don't know if she knew what Dad was doing to me or not--she was always asleep when the rapes happened. She must have noticed that I wasn't affectionate with him like the other kids were, but she never asked me about it. My sisters and brothers were too young to understand, and I thought if told my grandparents, my father would find away of hurting them too. With no one to talk to, I became severely depressed. I stopped eating, and my weight dropped to only 97 pounds. Eventually, I became suicidal. I'd hold a knife and think about slitting my wrists or pour a bunch of pills into my hand and imaging myself swallowing them--it would have been so easy just to go to my room and get it over with. But I was always too seared to go through with it .

A WELCOME DISASTER