FanStory.com - The Fear Circleby Lea Tonin1

That first coffee of the morning is the nectar of the gods I swear! The first cup in the wee hours in a quiet house. Sometimes that's just what the doctor ordered. I woke up thinking about some of the questions people have asked.
One of the main ones was why we did not go to the police. I will try to explain the mentality and circumstances of the time.
I have two family members, an uncle and a grandmother higher up in social services. They had enough power to divert the placement of children and to change, make or manipulate an outcome of a social service investigation and/or manipulate or change the documentation.
On two separate occasions, we had reached out to social services, at the time called Zenith1234, once our school did as well. Each of these times was interrupted and intercepted by my grandmother and as a favour to her, they redirected us to her home.
My mother directed us to lie to social services by using guilt. She said to us," If you tell them what he does, who's going to pay the bills?"
My grandmother was mostly concerned with her reputation. It was a very public job and she attended public ceremonies and banquets in her honor. She entertained politicians from parliament in her home. Grand meals and conversations she was privy to.
She and the family fled Europe to come to Canada to create a new life and a new reputation. She was quite "popular" before they all came to Canada. She had nine children most of which do not belong to my grandfather and refused to tell her children (my aunts & uncles) the truth. She wanted nothing of her past to tarnish what was currently going on.
She was also quite a prominent member of her church.
She did not want that to be tarnished either. She would have the Deacon over for dinner. She maintained a certain image so any whisper of us in a public complaint to social services would not be good for her, for the abuser or for certain family members who work in the public eye. What we would say could potentially ruin the careers and the families of the people with those careers. Anything we said would potentially blow the whole persona apart.
For this reason, she diverted any incidences of abuse ultimately diverting an investigation into herself.
This was the one major way my stepfather was able to continue to abuse us.
The fear circle was born. We or another would call social services. They in turn were alerted and/or started a file of abuse. Our case kept getting diverted back to my grandmother. In the background, my mother was calling my grandmother and saying.
"They did it again. They called social services now they want to put them in care." My grandmother would make one phone call and we were diverted to her home. She keeps us for a while and sends us back. We get abused again we complain another file is started. My grandmother diverts it and we're back to her house. And round and round it goes with no exit in sight.
At the time I was a child. I didn't understand the logistics of the thing or what the adults
were doing. It was all unknown to us.
But I did understand fear and pain, and I did understand and see the cycle we kept going through.
For me, not knowing any of this at 16 years old, that each time we reached out, it failed time and time again. It was okay to treat children the way they did. That's the message I received.
Calling any one of these people in authority would eventually bring us back here. Every time it happened meant coming back again and we would ride that bucking pony all the way through.
In my mother's mind, she had to protect her source of income which was our stepfather, paying the bills. He let her do whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted. She was happy as a clam and wanted nothing to disturb that.
She knew she could call my grandmother and my grandmother would
take care of the matter to their satisfaction. Never to ours.
That's the reason my mother made us lie to social services. That's the reason for the interventions, to prevent my stepfather from getting arrested. He would go to jail and then my goodness, who would pay the bills? It was all a nice neat package designed with their best interest in mind. They decided that their lives were more important than ours.
I asked my mother once what the deal was when we were at our grandmother's, and she said to me.
"Your grandmother stole you girls from me and decided not to bring you back."
What a load of horse hockey!
Knowing what I know now, of course, it would've been a lot different as a child had I known then.
All I knew was, that wherever we turned the door was closed and the other thing we knew was to call the authorities and it got worse.
There's only one way to get out, and that is to get ourselves out.
That was our fear circle. From the abuser to the phone call from the mother. From mother to grandmother. Back to the abuser, to the phone call from the mother, to the grandmother and back to the abuser. Round and round it went.
When I think back to all the times we could have lost our lives. How many times we came close to abduction and how many times were molested by different people growing up? After all the times our stepfather laid his hands on us, one wrong punch could have killed us.
When you're a child a grown man's fist looks like a mountain. It wasn't a matter of courage to protect ourselves and to get out.
It was a matter of do I wanted to live or not.
That's all it was...as simple as that.
I hope that these words help those who have questions and understand what comes.
I have to go back to her now... That 16-year-old girl is in pain. Bruises like a checkerboard on her backside and cut hands.
I have to give her something she needs.
A boost to her will to live and the courage to flee...