Timothy Kline: Thoughts and Reflections

I am a survivor of child abuse and molestation

I could never have imagined that within a year or two of my declaring that I had accepted Jesus as my savior in the warm, gently lilting waters of Jordan Lake at the tender age of 7, that I would have forever taken from me my childhood. I would never have imagined that it would only be a year or so after I had publicly and proudly declared that I loved God and wanted to live for Him that I would have my innocence stripped away, replaced by a mantle of shame, self-loathing, and deep-seated pain.

Now, some 33 years hence, I can talk about it. But it wasn’t always that way. It was a long, difficult, often errant path to this point, actually. I kept the incident my shameful secret, and at times I was convinced that I had deserved it; that I was a wicked, wayward child and therefore had no reason to complain or question the matter.

It cast a pall on my life and a dark shadow across my intimate relationships as I grew into maturity. It skewed my perception of love and normalcy, although there would be additional factors that would exasperate the situation still more.

I am, as you may have surmised, a survivor of child molestation.

Because of a child’s limited vocabulary (thus their lack of a means by which to express the heinous act) and their lack of capacity to process such a brutal, insidious crime against them, only another survivor can possibly relate to the level of shame, self-loathing, and disgust that results from molestation. However, the very nature of sexual abuse is such that it becomes a very private secret. A violation of cataclysmic proportions has occurred, against nature itself, and yet the child is left with the conviction that they either deserved it, or they are flawed to such an extent that there is little to no redeeming quality to be found, no matter how hard one looks.

For example, much of my younger life was filled with responses to my express hunger to grow in knowledge and learn all that I could. I applied myself vigorously to school and to reading from a very early age. In some ways you might say that I was precocious–although I don’t think I would go that far in describing myself. The response from the adults that surrounded me, however, were, “You’re the one that’s going to make something of himself some day,” and other similar commendations. I never believed it for a minute. For me, it always came back to “If you knew this about me, you wouldn’t be saying that. You’d be disgusted and never look at me the same again.”

And Oh how I wanted people to like me, to approve of me. Because I sure didn’t like me.

For survivors of child sexual abuse and molestation, it’s an incomprehensible feeling of one’s own filthiness and abhorrence. We feel it within ourselves and are absolutely convinced that everyone else can see it when they look at us. We sense that they’re patronizing us with their commendations and appraisals and pats on the head and back in some pathetic attempt to help us to cover over the pervasive sense of filth that oozes from our very core.

Some become so scarred and damaged by the experience that they become victims of sexual abuse and molestation. Others manage to somehow muddle their way through the trauma and go on to have functional lives. They are the survivors.

But although they are survivors, they are no less traumatized than the ones who become victims of such an insidious violation. Lasting happiness may forever elude them. Relationships become difficult. Trust becomes near impossible. They manage to find a way to function in the real world, nonetheless and in spite of the perpetual turmoil that goes on within them. But an inner sense of peace, while constantly sought, always remains painstakingly elusive.

I can recount the details, even to this day. I remember the threats made as I protested. I remember experiencing the onset of terror in a very real and tangible way, and then subsequently sodomized on several occasions. It became, or so I was told by my rapist, the price I had to pay if I wanted to continue to be able to visit with my grownup friend Bill. Because if anyone found out, they’d never let me come over there again. And I cherished that friendship too much. I cared for that father-figure of a man too much. On some of the occasions, Randy threatened to even kill Bill, and if that happened, it would be my fault. Of course, I still felt a tremendous sense of guilt for what had happened to the neighborhood bully that terrible night, and so I bought into the threat.

It’s ironic, though. I say this, because my mother was so suspicious of Bill and worried over my being around him too much. It wasn’t until many years later that I found out that word had gotten around that Bill was a homosexual. She had been worried that he might or did try something with me, she finally confided when I was an adult. My response was simple and concise: “No, mom. Bill never did anything to me. Never even intimated such a thing. Randy, on the other hand, raped me over the course of several months.” She was aghast.

Much later, I learned that Bill had died as lonely as he had been when I knew him during my early years. Randy, on the other hand, had been arrested several times for selling narcotics and drunk driving. Some part of me for a very long time wished that he had died like that neighborhood bully had died. Violently and with finality. I never felt guilty about that wishful thinking.

I was molested again years later, by another male who had succeeded in winning his way to my heart and managing to become a father figure to me at a time when I so sorely needed a father. But it would be the last time that someone would ever get away with imposing their perverted lust on me. I was older and more hardened by the ongoing duresses in my home life, and thus better equipped to put up a fight and get away with at least some of my dignity intact.

But it convinced me more than ever that I could not trust anyone. To allow myself to become a friend to someone was to leave myself exposed to hurt and potential exploitation. In an attempt to make sense of the futility of my existence, I turned to drugs and alcohol.

I was the perfect candidate for drug and alcohol abuse, actually. As I mentioned earlier, my mother had taken a turn for the worse following the initial separation from my father and subsequent divorce. She was a single mother trying to raise three rambunctious boys who were very much lacking the direction and discipline of a father. Following her attempted suicide, she took to bouts of anger and frustration. Much of it was exhausted on us boys as she resorted to physical abuse and oral berations. It continued to intensify for years, reaching extraordinary yet horrific levels by the time I had reached my teen years. It was always so unexpected, yet expected. She’d be having what she termed a “bad day” and one of us would be the “last straw” at which point the beatings would begin, along with a string of hatefilled epithets about our worthlessness and being just like our father, etc.

Even that, like the attempt to rape me by another molestor, came to an abrupt end, when I was sixteen years old.

We were living in Ionia at the time. It was the beginning of my rebellious period, which was set into motion by the sudden, unexpected surprise one day as I was coming home from the bus stop. We were living in Hastings at the time. We’d moved there from Lake Odessa, and we had a small yellow cabin up on a hill overlooking Algonquin Lake. We’d lived there since my 4th grade in school, and I had made one good friend and also established quite the reputation for both my absolute rage (unleashed one day on the playground upon a fellow classmate named Troy, whom I to this day am absolutely convinced that I was on the verge of killing in response to boyish teasing or bullying or some other forgotten motivation). I had a few other fights after that, usually instigated by a bully named Tony, but over time the fights diminished, henceforth committed to the annals of childhood I imagine.

In any event, and before I digress further, I was convinced that I would graduate with my friend Mark, and we’d go on to college and live happily ever after with our other school pals, etc etc etc. Such are the dreams and aspirations of a child in denial, I suppose.

It was my ninth grade year of school. I was a freshman in Hastings High School, daunted by the enormity of the school and the lofty expectations of the faculty and curriculum.

It was only a few weeks into the start of that school year when I got home that afternoon and was told that we were moving. Where, I asked? Why?

To Ionia, I was told by my mother. And the why was not for me to worry about. Just get in the car because we had to go.

She had managed to have everything packed up and moved out while we were gone to school that day. There had been no warning, no hint, that it had been in the works. I was, to say the least, absolutely floored by the sudden revelation. I never even had the opportunity to say goodbye to my friend Mark, or anyone for that matter. It was as if, in the minds of everyone who had ever known me, I had vanished from the face of the world.

I didn’t take the upheaval of my life very well, either. I became despondent and rebellious. I hated everything about Ionia. It had been a huge source of misery for me, and here I was right back there again. Well, I decided, I’m going to make her regret it.

I started skipping school, for one. I would, instead, go down to the city library and essentially hang out in the upper floor pretending to research papers. I did that the majority of the time, actually. The rest of the time, I’d sneak home and hide out in my room.

My resistance was not met with well by my mother, of course. Her frustration escalated and the abuse became more and more volatile in nature until one day the following summer she had managed to corner me in my room with a board flailing in the air and landing on me a few times as I wailed and tried to run away from her in terror.

It was then that something welled up within me, and I turned on her like a frightened, cornered beast. I shoved her down hard on my bed, climbed atop her, pinning her down fiercely, and roared at her: “Don’t. Ever. Try. To. Hit. Me. Again.” I felt the rage pouring from my very core, and I’m sure I looked like a wild beast, but I didn’t care. I wanted to make it suddenly and unequivocally clear that IF she ever tried to hurt me again, she would be sorry. Very sorry.

Miraculously, she never did try to hit me again. Not with her hand, not with a belt or a paddle, not with a steel flyswatter, not with a switch or a board. She never laid a hand on me after that day–even though to this day she swears up and down that I tried to kill her. I know that I didn’t, although I’m sure I could have–if I had been so inclined. I just wanted to make it clear that I would not be her target any longer, and I did not want there to be any mistake about my determination to ensure that it never happen again.

It was like something went off inside me. I snapped, I admit. And who wouldn’t, after enduring years of parental physical, emotional and mental abuse–not to mention the molestations I had endured. Human beings have their limit. I had reached mine.

Somewhere amidst it all, I drew away from God as well. My initial joy and love for spirituality and God and Jesus and worship was stolen from me through the events following my baptism. The abuse, the rapes, the upheavals and uncertainties had all managed to erode me. My soul. That part of ourselves that can’t normally be hindered or meddled with. I had my childhood stolen from me by the time I was 8 years old, and I spent the next 8 years after that trying to make sense of my perception of a twisted, dangerous world.

I had thought that I wanted to serve God because He was loving, gracious and kind. Yet He didn’t do anything to protect me, either. What sort of God allows that? I didn’t know and I wasn’t so sure that I cared any more. What mattered was survival, and the only person that I could depend on for that was me.

[End of Part 3]