Contributed By Kristi Bice (2nd Place Winner in a Quill House of Ink Contest)

When I was a very young girl, the two women I looked up to and admired the most were my mother and my maternal grandmother. In both of them I saw the woman I wanted to be when I grew up. They seemed to embody everything I thought a good woman should be.

In my eyes, they were heroes who could do no wrong. As we all know, the reality of our heroes rarely lives up to the idealized image we hold for them. I would come to understand this in the most heartbreaking way.

At the tender age of nine and a half, my stepfather began to sexually abuse me. I didn’t tell anyone at first, and when I said he was behaving inappropriately, it got brushed off by everyone except my dad and the school counselor. I endured the abuse in silence until I was 13.

I Realized the Women I Loved Were The Women I Will Never Be

I told a friend, and she told the school counselor. Then I found myself in a room with the counselor and my two closest friends. In that room, the truth finally poured out of me. I had no idea what would happen next or how my young life was about to implode. I only knew I wanted the abuse to stop. I believed my mother would make my stepfather leave, and I would finally be free.

I was sent home that day to gather a few things and go stay with my uncle down the street. My grandmother was home, and she had been informed of what was happening. I expected her to comfort me, but the first question she asked me was not “Are you okay?” or “What can I do to help?”

The question she asked me was “Was there full penetration?”  Those words are forever burned in my mind and etched on my soul. That was the moment I realized she was no hero.

 After a few days at my uncle’s house, I was told I had to go to a foster home. I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t allowed to go home, and no one would tell me. There was no contact from my mother.

Doubt Began to Creep In

No calls; no visits; only a silence so deafening it almost drove me mad. I had no idea why the woman who had always been my rock and my confidant was suddenly nowhere to be found.

On the second morning after being placed in foster care, I would get the answer. I was on the playground that morning before class started when I noticed my mother’s car in the parking lot. She called me over, and I came running. I hadn’t seen or heard from her in five days. I asked her why I couldn’t come home and why I hadn’t heard from her.

She told me she had heard CPS was going to come and take my baby sister away. I assumed she had kicked my stepfather out of the house because of what he did to me. I couldn’t understand why CPS would take the baby if he was gone. This is when she told me he was still there, and they were going to leave the state with the baby later that day.

To say I was shocked is the understatement of the century. This was the woman who had loved me, cared for me, and kept me safe my entire life. This was the woman I knew would always be there for me. Then she said I could come with them and make this whole thing just go away.

In that moment, I knew my own mother didn’t believe me, and my life would become so much worse if I left with them. I told her no and walked away. Even as I walked away, I still didn’t believe she would actually leave. What mother abandons their own child when they need her the most? No child should ever have to think about that. Later that day, I was informed my mother and stepfather had left town.

I Tasted The Bitterness of Betrayal for the First Time

There I was, a 13-year-old girl left to navigate the aftermath of speaking up without the one person I thought would be my greatest champion. I made the decision to press charges against my stepfather and pursue a criminal case against him. For two years, I waited for them to be located so we could proceed with my case.

During that time, I was told by the District Attorney that my mother had been sending letters and making calls to him. In those letters and calls, she told him I was a slut, a tramp, and that I dressed like a whore. None of that was true. When I was 15, they were found in Oregon, and he was extradited to Montana.

As I prepared for trial, I was told my mother planned to testify against me. For unknown reasons, he admitted to everything he had done a few days before the trial was scheduled to begin.  He was sentenced to a maximum of 25 years in prison with no parole for 15 years. He ended up being released after 12 and a half years.

I tried for many years to have a relationship with my mother. I gave her too many opportunities to take responsibility for her choices, but she never did. It was always someone else’s fault. I asked her how she could abandon her own child, defend the man who abused me, and say such horrific things about me.

The answers I got were, “I did the best I could with the information I had.” And “I knew you were strong enough to get through it.” Those are not the words I would have imagined the woman I had admired so much ever saying to me.

The little girl I was before all this absolutely believed there was so much to learn from these two women. She did. It just wasn’t in the way she expected. Because of their betrayal, I learned how to be a better mother and a better woman. They taught me the kind of woman I could never be.