TW: child sex abuse, suicidality
PILAR: My thoughts are a jumble of memories and feelings and flashes of things I’d rather forget but cannot because everyday the Epstein files remind me of my past. The current world has become an absolute dumpster fire, and, as we watch, Trump, an adjudicated rapist, continues to sow chaos and denial by pursuing ever more violent distractions to keep the American public from looking at his role in Epstein’s world of power and pedophilia. Some of us–the victims of childhood sexual abuse–will not be distracted.
When I was a kid, I was molested by an older male relative. He was also a minor (though almost 5 years my senior), and he sexually experimented on my young body for years. I internalized the religious teachings I had heard at church. Pres. Spencer W. Kimball’s vitriolic messages about fighting for your chastity included that a woman should lay down her life rather than lose “her virtue.” My own mother, though well meaning, always stressed to me just how much she agreed that she would much rather die than be sullied.
These teachings were so deeply ingrained into my psyche that, as a teenager on the cusp of puberty and well into my twenties, I was often suicidal because I was harboring a deep secret. Too terrified to ask for help, I hid my abuse and harbored self-loathing for not having died defending myself. I hated myself for surviving. As a college student who was still grappling with my secret, I went to my bishop and told him what had happened to me. I was hoping that he would offer me counseling. I had spiraled into depression and a deep suicidality that scared my roommates.
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Sisters Quorum 