Living With the Scars of Sexual Abuse : Molestation: ‘Once I made that decision not to tell, I was stuck with it. If I hadn’t been guilty of something before, now I was surely guilty of lying--one more reason not : to talk.’

My parents made an agonizing decision more than 25 years ago that I am grateful for today. They chose not to file charges when their 8-year-old daughter was molested, because they thought it was an isolated incident and didn’t want to put her through the added trauma of testifying in court.

They brought in a police-officer friend to talk with the next-door neighbor, who had put his hand under my sister’s blouse, and my father threatened to tear him apart if he ever came near any of his children again. And the case was closed.

It wasn’t until we were grown that my parents learned that the same neighbor had sexually molested me and my younger sister repeatedly for about a year before he approached the one who blew the whistle immediately. I was about 7, and my little sister was 6 when our big sister ran screaming to Mom and Dad.

Yes, we were all questioned that day, but two of us denied that we had ever been touched. We didn’t even tell each other. But it was the happiest day of our lives, because we both knew that he wouldn’t dare approach us again.

God knows how many other children that man molested in our neighborhood and elsewhere, before and after our ordeal. He continued to live next door until I was 17, and justice wasn’t served until he died about 10 years later.

I wish I had spoken out so that other children might have been protected, but I also feel enormous relief that I never had to go through the repeated interrogations that a trial would have made necessary.

I will never know for sure why my younger sister and I were not able to tell anyone about our molester--or even to confide in each other--until we were adults and it was too late to act. Or why our elder sister squealed the first time he came near her.

I think he made an unusual error in judgment when he fondled her, because he had already demonstrated an uncanny ability to identify victims whom he could trust to stay silent.

At age 7, winning the approval of adults through cooperation and obedience was important to my self-image. So once this cunning neighbor--a trusted family friend who was welcome in our home--succeeded in getting me to promise not to tell “our secret,” he had me. When he summoned me to the ham radio shack next to his garage with a nod of his head, I didn’t feel I had a choice. I went.

By the time he got around to my elder sister, he had involved me in a conspiracy that made me feel I had done something wrong, even though I was terrified of him and did everything in my power to avoid him. So when my parents asked me if I had been molested, I was protecting myself as well as him by saying “no.” My younger sister was doing the same.

Once I made that decision not to tell, I was stuck with it. If I hadn’t been guilty of something before, now I was surely guilty of lying--one more reason not to talk. So I carried my secret into adulthood, and I’ve often wondered if that was worse than having it blown apart in a courtroom where the guilt I was already feeling might have been magnified by questions that made me feel like I was the one on trial.

Left to my own devices, I found self-preservation in my resolve to never forget what my neighbor had done to me. I tried never to meet his eyes as I was growing up. His presence next door kept me on the alert, but I felt safe because I was sure he thought I’d forgotten, and I knew I never would. He would never catch me off guard.

That defense served me well because it prevented me from submerging details that might have come back to haunt me subconsciously. My younger sister has had a tougher time coming to terms with what happened because her defense was to forget. She has had to reach deeper to free herself from the molester’s grasp.

But both of us are lucky; we have been blessed with the resources to heal our own emotional scars--and to get professional help when we felt the need. I’m sure others in our situation might be suffering as much from silence as those whose cases have gone to trial.

And I’m sure it would have been healthy for me if I had been able to accuse my molester and help put him in jail, rather than remain in the passive role of the victim.

But if my case had gone to court, I doubt that I could have produced the evidence needed to convict him. As I contemplate the McMartin Pre-School case, I don’t think that I, at age 7, could have explained the details with someone pointing a camera at me without the help of my questioners. And my need for approval at that time was so intense--and my sense of guilt so strong--that I would have been as susceptible to their influence as I was to my molester’s.

We still know very little about how to handle molestation cases in the courts. I hope we are learning that we must approach them with greater caution and sensitivity so that molesters can be punished without victimizing the victims.