My uncle sexually molested me when I was four. It got to the point that I used to hide when he came over. My parents didn't find out and I "forgot" about it until I was about 12. I was learning about sex and realized that was what my uncle did to me. At the time of the abuse I just knew it was wrong and shameful and I did not tell. I am not sure if he threatened me in any way.

When I was 15 my cousin, who was a year younger than me, slipped and indicated that it had happened to her, too. She swore me to silence. I never told my mom, because I did not want to hurt her and my grandma. The family would have been destroyed. I thought it was just something I could keep inside myself and live with and have no major problems. Wrong.

Grandma died a couple of years ago and I was going through a whole lot of bad luck, marital problems, loss of a child. I ended up in serious conseling and when discussing it with my mother, she tried to blame all my problems on events in my recent life. I just blurted out about the sexual abuse. She said, "Who!?" and I told her it was her brother. She then told me that he had also sexually molested their younger sister, my aunt who is 2.5 years older than me. He did it for a long, long time and she came out with her story right after grandma died.

My cousin eventually must have told her mother, because my mom and my aunt who was abused told her about her daughter and she already knew.

My uncle now has no one of his five siblings who speaks to him at all. Well, he only has two sisters left alive and they say he is dead to them. We assume that he had a continuing habit of molesting little girls, daughters of his live-in girlfriends. The breakups were always wierd and he had to give them a lot of money and property - didn't make sense. Now it does. I feel guilty that those little girls must have suffered because I did not speak up. It didn't occur to me that he would have kept doing it. I also think he must have been abused as a child (a male cousin reported sexual abuse by an older male relative and my uncle could have been a young victim) and it is hard to blame someone who was once innocent. I think he is a tortured person and it is sad that he has lost his family. I also think he is a creep.

Mostly I try not to think about this.