My rapes over 14 years ago. TW: CSA

TL;DR: I was regularly raped by my step-father, his brothers, and other men from 9–13 years old.

Shortly after my 9th birthday, my stepfather began molesting me nearly daily. A couple months later it turned into outright rape. Initially I kept asking him to stop, saying I was uncomfortable or it was painful. I told my mom when he was molesting me, but she didn't believe me. He was very manipulative and I was afraid because he guilted me that the family would be separated, that I wouldn't be able to see my mom or half-sisters (from him and mom). He was also well known and respected in town, so he would be believed over me. Eventually I basically just accepted it and assumed I had to live with it, knowing it was inevitable. I couldn't fight it. Also, I was always a tiny person, so I felt even weaker and unable to fight back or stop.

I never got along with my step-father. He and my mom used to ask me to call him "dad", to make the family more whole. I always refused, and missed my dad. While he would rape me, he kept telling me call him "dad" or "daddy". Other than one single time, I always refused, and he would sometimes punish me by forcefully anally raping me. The one time I accidentally called him "daddy", my therapists think I was wishing for my dad to be there to protect me, and accidentally vocalized it. After a few months of him raping me, he started to bring his two brothers to also rape me, or taking me to their houses or work places, or in RVs or a cabin one of them had. Not long after that, he started bringing in other friends and men he knew. They paid him to have sex with me, or would use me to pay off favors or debts like car repairs or sometimes instead of paying some of his employees. If he was there when of the other men made me to call them "daddy", I would do it just to spite him. That usually got me punished. Sometimes he would raise the punishment to tying me to the bed in the cabin for most of a weekend and letting those men do what they wanted nonstop. During these times mom would be visiting family, and step-father told her I was staying at a friend's house.

It stopped when I was 13, at a friend's house for the first girls' sleepover I'd been to. My friend had found and snuck her mom's vibrator for the night, and the girls were giggling about it and daring each other to touch it, etc. Girls being girls. When it came around to me, I told them exactly what it was and how to use it, and when dared, I showed them. That's when my friend's mom caught us, and she called my mom to come pick me up. While waiting for my mom to arrive, she pretty much thought I was the ringleader, being a bad influence. She asked why I would do that, and I told her that's what I know men like, because of my experience, and I started telling her about everything I could remember. She asked if my mom knew, and I told her she knew about the touching a long time back, but didn't really believe me. I completely broke down at opening up all the details and for being believed. At that point, my friend's mom called police to report ongoing CSA (it's the law for an adult to report suspected CSA. It's also just a decent thing for an adult to do). When my mom got there, my friend's mom tried to tell her that I had been abused for a long time, and my mom initially said I was making it up "like Lilly always does". She tried to get me to leave, and I wouldn't go.

After the police arrived, everything came crashing down. My step-father was immediately arrested in front of my step-sisters. My mom was also detained and questioned, but eventually released. I was interviewed for a long time. It was exhausting. At times I was an emotional wreck, and just crying for my dad to come get me (but he couldn't). Sometimes I'd just emotionally shut down, and describe the events robotically, just numb to everything. I think sometimes that kinda disturbed the investigators. I stopped talking to them that night when I saw one of the police officers in the station was one of the men who raped me. After that I was afraid of the police station and all the male officers and investigators. From then on, for several follow up interviews, only women investigators in plain clothes interviewed me at my friend's house or in a crisis counselor's office.

For the first month or so after the reporting, I stayed with my friend's family (the same one who had the sleepover). They were very nice and caring to me, but it was clear they couldn't keep me long term. I was becoming difficult, and my emotions caused me to shutdown, or sometimes act out defiantly. I went back to live with my mom and younger half-sister (my older half-sister had moved out, and was struggling with drugs and a series of bad abusive relationships). It wasn't a great environment to recover in. My mom's attitude went from "this is so awful this is happening to all of us", to being silently resentful that my abuse broke up a stable family, to outright blaming me for seducing her man. These attitudes changed on a weekly basis.

Because of the severity of the abuses, and also because the dumbasses videod and distributed many of the rapes, there were a lot of quick convictions. There were about 3 dozen men involved – yes, over 35. Around 25 were sentenced, after pleas, for 10–15 years. Most of the convictions were primarily based on CSAM charges, aggravated by being in the material. My step-father got a 35 year sentence. He killed himself in his first week after sentencing. I don't feel bad about his death in the slightest. My mom sued some of the offenders and/or their employers (for various reasons) in civil court, claiming the results of their actions resulted in loss of husbandly or parental influence in her, mine, and my youngest sister's lives. I had to sit through all of the suits, and my mom lost all of her and my sister's cases (juries thought she was as much or more to blame for her situation than the people she was suing), but several of them found in favor of my cases. The proceeds that paid, mostly by insurance policies of those defendants, went into a trust for my psychiatric treatments, and for living or education expenses, at the judgement of a court-appointed guardian paid for by my dad. So I had 2–3 treatment sessions per week from about 14 until 18. After 18 the remainder of the trust went straight to me. I was able to maintain a minimum of weekly therapy, and most living expenses, with the remainder of the trust through about 25.

I became pregnant 3 times during the abuse, which I didn't know at the time. One of the abusers was a medical doctor, who performed all 3 of my forced abortions.

Also because of the abuse, I contracted both gonorrhea and chlamydia, and it was untreated for a long time. I developed pelvic inflammatory disease (PID), and when I had a full gynecological workup after the disclosure, I was told that the degree of scarring in my tubes indicated that I was probably infertile (tubal factor infertility, TFI, due to untreated PID). Even if I could conceive (unlikely) in the future, any zygote would likely not make it to my uterus (i.e., ectopic pregnancy). Because of the risks of natural pregnancy for me, I had tubal ligation at 18.

I'm grateful that I've been able to manage and compartmentalization my trauma, and I don't suffer from PTSD or anxiety for the most part anymore. However, I was described as being typical of hypersexual disorder and vivacious histrionic personality disorder, and was diagnosed and treated for hypomanic-type bipolar personality disorder. Starting shortly after the police involvement, I began acting out, usually in sexually aggressive ways. Shortly after step-father's sentencing, my mom told me, and I will never forget this as long as I live, that "none of this would have happened if you kept your slut legs closed". I decided then and there to get back at her, showing her what a 'slut' could do. Bluntly, I seduced her next two boyfriends, the 2nd one I had sex with before she ever did. Both times, I made sure to get caught by her with them, pissing her off. I also got us kicked out of two different fundamentalist churches by sleeping with a youth leader in one and a pastor in the other. This was all before I turned 15.

I became very sexually active, and often used sex to get what I wanted. I 'paid' for my fake ID at 16 with sex. I often traded sex with boys at school for things I wanted on my Amazon wishlist. I was unconcerned with how my sex was affecting others. I brought boys (and men) home fox sex during or after school, and was unconcerned with being caught by my mom. I had to change high school my sophomore year because of being caught too many times having sex at school or school events.

I'm 28 as I write this. I have had psychologists and psychiatrists and therapists and counselors help me deal with my CSA, trauma, and my sex life since I was 14. With their help, I have accepted and know that none of the abuse was my fault, and that I was manipulated by not only my step-father, but also to a degree by the poor choices and neglect of my mom leaving me with him. I can talk fairly openly and freely about the abuse now, without much anxiety or stress. But I still struggle with guilt about how I became used to it, even accepted it as normal. There were times when if he was late in coming to my room or taking me to the basement, I'd go find him first. My therapists have told me that I developed a from of trauma bond, where I was attached to the abuse and the abuser even though it doesn't make sense. It is not uncommon amongst long-term rape victims and victims of CSA, where our brains and mental chemistry develop a sort of acceptance to the abuse, sort of normalizing it, and we prefer the abuse over abandonment. It's remembering those instances where I still struggle with shame and self-blame.

After seeing several psychiatrists and psychologists that were sex-negative or at least sexual-norm-reinforcing, and accepting that was the norm or right for me, I figured out how to find therapists that worked well for me. My last 2 therapists have both been sex-positive, and have helped me come to understand that not all of my sexual history is entirely maladaptive. With these new outlooks, they have helped me shed some of my former diagnoses as unconstructive labels, and have weaned me off most of my meds, reducing both the number and dosages of my medications. With frequent monitoring and reflection, I have reduced my hypomanic periods and their affects, and suffer much less from depressive episodes.