stepfamily issues

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

Labels: child abuse, dirty secrets, families, family secrets, pedophiles

When the Josef Fritzl story hit the headlines Bernadette shuddered with disgust at what that monster had done to his daughter, Elisabeth, and she thanked her lucky stars that her own encounter with a dirty old man was with a cousin, not her father, and that it only involved one instance of inappropriate sexual contact rather than 24 years of incarceration in a cellar being raped repeatedly.

"It only happened once when I was about six years old," says Bernadette, "and I remember the incident well because I was staying with my uncle and aunt while mom was in hospital having my baby brother."

"My cousin Michael was 19 - thirteen years older than me - so he wasn't a kid like me."

"My aunt made up a bed for me in the living room and Michael and I watched television until late."

"He explained all the shows to me and made me laugh," says Bernadette, "and I didn't mind him kissing me goodnight - I thought that was a nice thing for him to do as I was missing mom badly."

"I stayed there for a week and while my uncle and aunt were at work during the day Michael looked after me."

"He didn't have a regular job - he was a footballer - and he took me to his football practice some days, then we’d walk along the beach, but most times we’d just stay home watching television."

"One day he called me into his bedroom and asked whether I'd like to play doctors and nurses," says Bernadette.

"It wasn't exactly doctors and nurses because we didn't have a third person to be the patient so he let me be the doctor and I had fun bandaging his foot."

"Then he took a turn at being the doctor and said that I had a tummy ache he needed to look at," relates Bernadette, “and that’s when the inappropriate sexual contact happened.”

Read more by Bernadette on this subject:

predatory cousins

dirty family secrets