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Did it ever happen to you as a teenager that you met people and their parents seemed cooler than yours?

Used to happen to me so often as a teen, but in reality though, most families have their shit going on beneath the surface.

The stuff that her dad did screwed her up so much. I know it doesn’t have that effect on everyone and many come out stronger, but she was (and probably still is) a mess.

I was a teenager and found all the stories of her sexual escapades grown up and interesting. Thought she was just wayward, ‘streetwise’.

When people - especially youngsters - act in this way, there is always a backstory.

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This is so sad. The reader really feels the horror of the situation.

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I can’t ‘like’, Julie, but what a powerful piece. We see with a child’s eyes at the time and cruel hindsight reveals what we misunderstood at the time. The depravity of those individuals is incomprehensible, and the complicity of the silence of others equally so. When I worked with homeless teens, a young woman explained why she used heroin. She was so candid. Abused and impregnated at least twice by her father, the babies being removed by Social Services, he pimped her out to fund his habit. She found the only escape from her existence in that dark place. So many people have their story...

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author

As a teenage girl, coming across a girl who was known as the ‘easy’ one, I found her intriguing, interesting but for quite a while never really considered why she was like that.

My first inklings there was something not right was when she told me he took her brother to Amsterdam for his birthday to sleep with a prostitute. I thought ‘that’s not right’. It was spoken about so openly, too.

The more women I speak to, I realise there are very few who get to my age without either some kind of abuse having taken place as a child, them being raped as an adult or had some kind of violence happen to them at the hands of a man. It’s extremely disturbing.

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founding

Breaks my heart. The silent complicity of other adults. The omissions are betrayals as much as the acts.

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author

I know a few people who have sadly been in similar positions to this and from what they relay, this seems to hurt the most because the ‘better’ adult is usually where the expectation lay and when they failed to intervene, the hope died.

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I had a friend, we walked to the station together but went to different schools, me to the comp she to a convent one, she had a dad like this poor soul. Last I saw her (well over 25 years ago) she had two children but I know the ramifications of what her dad did to her (and her mum's silence) effected so much about her life. :(

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author

I think often the silence or failure to intervene of the other parent can seem worse than the abuse itself.

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My friend told me she banged her hand repeatedly on her bedroom floor (while her dad was abusing her) with her mother downstairs and her mum did nothing 😢. Her mum was an alcoholic too I think, I would imagine in an attempt to escape this reality.

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I know

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author

Xx

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Harrowing 😣

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No words, children are supposed to be allowed to be children...🤬😢

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February 23, 2023Edited
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Yes and it happens way too often, sadly

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February 22, 2023
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Oh yeah. It was awful. I called childline as I was worried for the foster kids and they didn’t do anything. Then she told a therapist who because there were foster kids had to tell the police and they came round unexpectedly and she panicked and denied it all.

Thankfully the fucker had a massive heart attack when we were about 20.

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February 22, 2023
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author

Yeah I don’t think I knew all

that when I was 15 though but of course you’re right.

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