Editor's note: This column contains descriptions of sexual violence that may upset some readers. If you or anyone you know is a victim of sexual violence, you can contact The National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800-656-HOPE (4673). You can also reach out via online chat: online.rainn.org and in Español: rainn.org/es.

In 1976, Jimmy Carter defeated incumbent Gerald Ford to become president. I was 6.

It was dark. A TV on top of a chest of drawers broadcast the election results. I was in my mother and her boyfriend’s bed watching. My mother was at work on the third shift at a plastics plant. I had fallen asleep.

That night, I was raped for the first time by a man whom my family trusted. He took my pink flannel pajama bottoms off and sexually abused me. I cried. I had no idea what was happening.

It would be the first time of many over the next eight years. And 48 years later, it might as well have been yesterday.

This is incredibly unpleasant to write about it. I am tense and sick to my stomach as I type. I don’t like remembering. I tried to write about it in a fiction writing class in college ‒ figuring I could hide the truth in the fiction name. I dropped the class after writing the first chapter. Too much, too soon.

My story........

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