The Big Reveal — When a 5th Grader Goes to the Authorities

Two weeks before L spoke out against her grandfather, her school put on an assembly about body awareness.

L remembers a lady saying, “This is your body, and if this is happening to you, tell us.” A girl who attended school with L just had her babysitter turn in a man who had sexually assaulted her. The school decided to take some preventative measures. “So I started thinking,” L said, “and this was the first time I had really realized that this wasn’t what everyone else my age is going through.”And then the following weekend was when her grandfather got really aggressive with her (read her post on that day here). So she told her friend, the same friend who was also a victim of L’s grandfather’s sexual abuse, that she wanted to say something. So when she told her school social worker, “I have to talk to you,” she was escorted into the social worker’s tiny office—a space roughly the same size as the wooden table L and I were seated at in Starbuck’s for our interview, she said. A space that was dark. A space that was secluded away in her’s school basement. A space that became a place forever ingrained in her memory as the setting for her first life-changing moment.“I told her, ‘My grandpa touches me and I don’t think he’s supposed to.’ And she was like ‘What do you mean?’ And that’s when I started telling her and it avalanched from there.”The call from the school would be the first time L’s parents would find out. Her world—and theirs—was turned upside down.

“I told her, ‘My grandpa touches me and I don’t think he’s supposed to.’ And she was like ‘What do you mean?’"

“My poor parents,” L began,” because they had no idea and my mom wanted to know why I didn’t tell her. Honestly, it was because I was scared that no one was going to believe me. I thought they were going to think I was doing it for the attention or because I didn’t get something I wanted, because my grandpa spoiled me. He bought me everything.”Her parents did everything in their power to make sure L was ok—or ok as she could be considering the trauma she had endured. So meeting after meeting when L had to retell her story to social workers and police officers and others in the court system, he parents decided it would be best for the family to spend some time away with her other set of grandparents in Missouri. Her Pop (her mom’s father) sat her down when she arrived and asked L, “Did you think I was going to do that to you someday?”When she replied, “Yes” that she didn’t know any different, L said she could feel his heart break—even at the tender age of 10 it was apparent to her. But to L, sexually abusing a young girl wasn’t “something a bad guy did. It was something every guy did.” In her mind, it seemed like only a matter of time before other males in her life started treating her the same way.

Sexually abusing a young girl wasn’t “something a bad guy did. It was something every guy did.”

Eventually, it was time to come home, and her grandfather went to jail but was released on bail. He wasn’t supposed to be around anyone under 18, but L’s aunt still brought her daughters to see him. Her family—outside of her parents—refused to acknowledge the reality of L’s story. Even after his funeral, her grandma made it clear she didn’t think he did it, or at the very least didn't want to believe he did. But, to this day, L doesn’t harbor any negativity toward her (I can’t even imagine. L’s seriously one strong woman). Her dad wasn’t so quick to forgive. He tried killing his father. He loaded his truck with a shotgun with the intentions of confronting his father. But he never pulled the trigger. “My dad was crushed,” L began. “I’ll never forget when I apologized to him [for not saying anything to him when it was happening], and he said, ‘Some day when you have kids, you'll understand. You create a new family that's yours and you are my family now.’ And that really hit me.” She paused and took a breath. “That really hit me hard just to know and to think that in my mind that he would’ve ever doubted me or that he wouldn’t believe me for some reason. When he said that, I knew everything was ok.”