#childhood-sexual-abuse

#childhood-sexual-abuse

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.