#childhood-sexual-abuse

#childhood-sexual-abuse

Though she accomplished much else, Molly Parkin has died, at the age of 93 after suffering from Alzheimer's, as an acknowledged artist, which is what she had really wanted from life. She had passed through fashion, journalism, writing fiction and nonfiction, notoriety and foulmouthed fame, on television and off, plus more than 50 dwelling places, two husbands, and encounters with men beyond enumeration. But art paintings super-aware of emotion in a landscape was her first and last love, and her serious talent.

Her voice trembled in a way that tightened the air around us, as if the memory itself were still present in the room. She stared at the floor while describing how he threatened her into silence and how she froze, hoping someone would come, even though she already knew no one would. The next morning, she told her mother because she believed love meant protection, but instead her mother slapped her and accused her of lying.

Amy Griffin is the founder of G9 Ventures, an investment firm that has backed a slew of cool, woman-centric brands and startups including Goop, Spanx, and Bumble. She's a mother of four; the devoted wife of a strapping blond billionaire ex-hedgefunder; and a fixture in the Instagram tributes of the rich and famous ( Reese, Gwyneth, Mariska: they all sing Griffin's praises).

Prior to that, I had little awareness of my appearance, other than being constantly mistaken for a boy due to the extremely short hair cuts imposed on me by my mother. To cope with the cruelty of classmates, I dogmatically played up a tomboy persona. Then my best friend's father began regularly putting his hand down my pants. This coincided with more childhood cruelty: an anonymous list circulating in my sixth-grade class that divided the girls into "pretty" or "smart."

Kids will believe you when you say things like 'If anybody ever touches your private parts I will make sure something bad happens to them.' This is a big problem because kids are most often sexually abused by people they know and love, like family members.