dirty family secrets

Bernadette thinks every family has a dirty secret like hers - sometimes even worse secrets – and she wants the term pedophilia to be changed because it does not convey exactly what pedophiles are.

"Most people love children - but pedophiles don't love children in the same way that Anglophiles love England and Francophiles love France," says Bernadette.

"Pedophiles abuse children like my cousin Michael abused me,” explains Bernadette. “They are adults who abuse their position of power to destroy innocence for their own perverted sexual gratification."

"Michael joined the army shortly after abusing me and I didn't see him again until his wedding day five years later - when he was 24 and I was 11 - and he completely ignored me."

"Mom was close to her sisters and I hated it when she dragged me to visit the aunt I didn't like," says Bernadette. "I'm sure my aunt thought I had forgotten what her son did to me - that at the age of six I couldn't possibly remember what had happened - but I remembered everything. It's not something you can forget."

"As soon as I left home at 18 I drifted away from my family and made my own friends."
"The best thing about being grown up is that you don't have to visit aunts and cousins you hate," says Bernadette.

"I suppose in a way I am avoiding my mom and everyone else in the family because of what happened to me when I was six years old," explains Bernadette, "but it's mostly because I just don't need a family any more."

"I get annoyed when mom telephones and asks me to visit," says Bernadette. "I'd rather not have close ties with her because she always wants to talk about her sisters and my cousins."

"I'm not interested in them," explains Bernadette, "and I don't care about them any more than they ever cared about me."

"Neither my cousin nor my aunt ever said 'sorry' to me," says Bernadette. "I suppose they thought a 6 year old girl wasn't a human being deserving of respect."

Read more by Bernadette on this subject:

predatory cousins

dirty old men