Help Comes When You Seek It
“Laura White,” mother of five, has a shocking story to tell. It is a tale of incest, sodomy, and child abuse. When she first came to Penthouse, Laura was primarily concerned with getting the seriousness and importance of her message across to the widest audience possible in order to encourage families in similar situations to realize that they’re not alone and that help is available. To assist her, we enlisted the aid of writer Lucy Freeman, author of the best-selling Fight Against Fears (Crossroad) and its sequel. The Beloved Prison (St. Martin’s). Freeman was more than happy to help Laura bring her story to light. “She is a courageous woman,” she says, “and I have the great respect for her. While most parents would try to hide the tragedy such as this, Laura has, for the sake of her children, come forth with the details of this heinous crime. I have helped Laura tell her account to Penthouse as I, too, hope this will encourage others not to feel ashamed of their circumstances but to seek help so they may free themselves from their trauma.” In the pages to follow, Laura White reveals a story most people would rather keep a family secret.
This story is painful for me to tell, but I think it is far more important to expose those who sexually abuse children than to expose ministers who have had sex with grown women. I am going public with the details of the incestuous sexual attacks on my son and daughter so that other parents will understand the vital need to seek therapy for a child to whom this happens.
No matter how much parents dread revealing such a crime in the family, the child will remain the victim if they do not get help for him. The child suffers even more deeply if parents do not act immediately to help him face and overcome his terror and pain. I implore with all my heart that parents not sweep the knowledge of such abuse under the carpet and pretend it does not exist but face how deeply it damages the innocent child.
I also want to get across to parents the potential for sexual abuse that exists even in what we call a normal family. The potential is always there. Otherwise, why would the taboo against incest be our strongest one?
When abuse occurs, signs appear in the child. If parents can be made more aware of the signs to look for, they will be able to prevent further abuse at the hands of another parent, grandparent, brother or sister, aunt or uncle, babysitter or teacher.
Unfortunately, parents of molested children are usually ashamed of the sexual act; just as they are ashamed of seeking a counselor, who would then have to report the sexual abuse. However, the greater horror is to do nothing. Inaction only increases the child’s suffering. My earnest plea comes out of the agony my family and I have suffered. I am proud my son could tell the truth. Acknowledging incest takes courage both for parents and for the child, who shares no responsibility for the crime that has been committed against him. I hope my son’s honesty will help other families face the truth, terrifying though it may be.
I have changed all the names in this article so that my children cannot be identified.
We live about three hours from a big city. My husband, Tom White, is a hard worker. He is a tall, slim man who speaks softly. He was a widower with a five-year-old son, Adam, when we got married. Adam was a quiet, good looking boy. He was three months older than Carrie, my youngest child from a previous marriage. I also have two older daughters, Theresa and Lisa.
I soon accepted the fact that Adam spent much of his time with his grandparents on his mother’s side. But as the months passed, I began to feel uneasy about this because Frieda and Edward, who lived not far from us, acted as if they were Adam’s parents and he belonged to them. When I legally adopted Adam several years ago, Frieda went wild. When told that if Tom died, I would be given custody of Adam, she ranted emphatically, “Not her! I couldn’t stand that!”
There were times I’d tell Tom that I wanted Adam to be with our family instead of going to his grandparents’ house. Tom would always say okay, but as soon as Frieda called, he’d relent. I told Tom that I should have some say in what went on in my son’s life. Tom would remind me, “Remember, Laura, Adam’s real mother died, and he is all his grandparents have.”
Rather than argue, I let Frieda, a short, thin, heavily made-up woman, come to our house and take Adam. Once they took him on vacation for two weeks without even asking his father’s permission. I could not get used to how much she did for Adam and how many gifts he received at the expense of my other children. My mother treated all her grandchildren equally, never buying for one without buying for all.
As time passed, Adam, now nine years old, seemed to be spending more and more time away from us. He was usually gone from Friday night until Monday evening. We never saw him over school vacations. He would leave the house the day school ended and wouldn’t return until the night before he was due back. Then he would race through the house as though the devil were after him.
Suddenly, Adam’s behavior started to undergo changes. He told me one day in defiance, “I don’t have to listen to you because you aren’t my real mother.”
“Who told you that?” I asked.
He said, “Grandma.” Then he went on. “She says she loves me more than you do. She took me into my real mother’s bedroom and showed me wedding pictures of my mother and my dad and said, ’If you don’t listen to Laura, you can come live with us and have anything you want.’”
I told Tom what Frieda had said, and he called her up. He bawled her out and she apologized. I often thought Frieda had some kind of control over my husband, because no matter what she’d say, Tom would agree. It seemed as if I were there only to babysit for Adam when Frieda had something else to do. Only then would she let him stay at our home. I’d had to deal with a lot of strange situations in my life, but I’d never before let anyone assume control over my children. I resented Frieda controlling Adam’s every thought.
One day in late May, my aunt phoned and asked me to come to her house right away. She sounded so upset that I abandoned my housework and drove right over. She asked me to have a seat at the dining-room table while she made some tea.
As we sipped the tea, she explained, “My sister-in-law [who lives near Adam’s grandparents] called and said Adam’s grandfather was sexually molesting some of the young boys on the street where he lives.” She added, “I wanted to warn you so you could ask Adam and make sure his grandfather isn’t touching him.”
All I could manage to say was a stunned, “That isn’t possible. Edward is a nice man, and he loves Adam too much to hurt him.”
As soon as Adam came home from school that day, I asked, “Has anyone ever touched you in a bad way?”
He quickly said, “No, Mom.” But by the odd look in his usually candid eyes, I knew he wasn’t telling the whole truth. Then he admitted, “One of the boys on Grandpa’s street bothered me.”
I called the police immediately. When they arrived, Adam told them the same story. I asked, “Adam, how could this boy have touched you if you were always with your grandma and grandpa?”
Adam said, “They let me go play in the gully with the other kids or fish at the creek.”
After the police left, I called Frieda and told her what Adam had said. “Is it true?” I asked.
She replied angrily, “He’s making it all up! He’s never left our yard except to ride his bike up and down the street.”
But I was sure that Adam was telling the truth, because he knew how to get to the creek from his grandparents’ house. If he had never been to the creek, he could not have described the roads that led there. I explained this to Tom, and he told Adam that he could go to his grandparents’ only every other weekend from now on.
I had a sixth sense telling me that something was very wrong in my son’s life. I called our family doctor, who has been a good friend, and described what we had learned. I asked him to recommend someone I could send Adam to for therapy, because he had spoken of sexual abuse by another boy. The doctor, who is a father, sympathized and gave me the name of someone at the local mental health clinic who he said would find a counselor.
When Tom came home from work, I told him what I had done. Tom insisted that his son was not going to any counselor. I said quietly, “Therapy will help Adam.” Tom then confessed, “I’m afraid the state will take our son away if they find out he’s been sexually abused by another boy.” But I took Adam to a counselor anyway, and Tom agreed to abide by my decision.
Around this time, I decided to go for a checkup because I felt tired all the time. To my surprise, I found out I was two months pregnant. The doctor advised me to take it easy and not worry so much about Adam. I continued driving him to the therapist’s office once a week. One day the therapist told me, “There’s a lot Adam is not yet able to speak of.” This statement certainly proved prophetic.
One night as I washed dishes in my large kitchen, the phone rang. Tom took the call in the living room. I heard him say, “How are you, Frieda?” Edward and Frieda had taken a trip that week to visit family.
Then I heard Tom say, “I’m terribly sorry about Edward. Is there anything we can do?” He was quiet a moment, then said, “We’re here to help when you get back.”
He hung up, walked into the kitchen, and, his face taut, told me, “Edward’s dead. He died of a sudden heart attack. Frieda’s shipping his body back. She wants us to help with funeral arrangements.” Edward was only 55 but had had a heart condition.
Tom’s honest brown eyes were sad, and I knew he felt sorry for his first wife’s mother, who was now alone in the world except for her mother and her beloved grandson. I suddenly became aware that Adam had been sitting quietly in the living room and would have overheard the news of his grandfather’s death.
Now he entered the kitchen, and I looked at him worriedly. I expected to see an expression of sadness, perhaps tears. But instead, a slow smile took over his face, as if a heavy load had been lifted from his small back. What a strange thing for Adam to do, I thought. The pleased look appeared again when, two days later, we all joined Frieda at the funeral home to make arrangements for the service. Adam ran excitedly around the mortuary, as if a wedding, not a funeral, were planned.
One week after the funeral service, after the children had finished supper and my daughters had gone upstairs to start their homework for the new school year, I sat down in a chair opposite Adam in the living room. Tom was still at work. Adam looked at me quizzically, as if to ask, “What’s up?”
During the past year I had been worried about his physical and psychological health. He constantly wet the bed at night, unusual for a boy of nine, and had complained of severe pain in his neck and groin. Our family doctor sent him to the local hospital for a thorough checkup, and tests showed that he suffered from an inflammation of the lymph nodes in his groin. Doctors operated to remove the node. And as if this weren’t enough cause for concern, my daughter Carrie started complaining that Adam would steal into her room at night and demand that she engages in sexual acts with him. I told Tom of Carrie’s accusation, but he refused to believe Adam could make such obscene proposals. Carrie came down with shingles and began failing several classes. I knew that something was troubling these two intelligent children.
I decided to get right to the point with Adam. He seemed to feel more at ease with me these days, thanks to the help of the counselor. I said, “Adam, it seems funny you haven’t shed one tear about your grandfather. Instead, you seem happy. And yet you were always so very close to him. I don’t understand.”
His blue eyes opened wide, and he smiled as though at long last he had decided to make a confession and trusted me enough to tell the truth. Maybe he finally accepts me as his mother, I thought.
As if confiding a loathsome secret, he said, “I don’t have to worry anymore about being axed, now that Grandpa is dead.”
“What did you say?” I could not believe my ears. Edward threatening to ax his beloved grandson? Unthinkable.
“I couldn’t tell you before, Mommy.” His voice pleaded with me to understand. “Not while he was alive. I was too scared he would kill me.”
He then leaned toward me as though his grandfather were still alive and might overhear. There was terror in his eyes.
“Tell me what, Adam?” I wanted to make sure I understood exactly what he was going to say.
“Grandpa Edward said he’d get me with his ax if I told anyone. He kept that ax right in front of the fireplace, where I could see it most of the time.”
“But why would he want to kill you, Adam?” I was mystified. “He loved you more than anyone else.”
Then words flowed out of Adam’s little mouth that I never, in my wildest nightmares, thought I would hear. I knew that on his weekend visits, Adam and his grandfather slept in separate beds in the same room, but I was not prepared for what Adam now related.
He told me that ever since he was three and a half, every single weekend he had spent at his grandparents’ home, after the lights were turned off, his grandfather would rise from his bed across the room, walk over to Adam’s, and pull back the covers. He would then take off Adam’s underwear and molest him sexually. As he did so, his grandfather would reassure him, “Grandpa loves you, Adam.”
“That’s why sometimes it hurt so bad I could hardly walk the next few days,” Adam explained.
I was horrified at the revelation of Edward’s cruelty to his only grandchild. If Edward had not died, I would have killed him myself, I thought. His destructive, sordid acts meant emotional enslavement for Adam for the rest of his life. Edward had taken away from Adam the joy of sexual innocence, necessary to a child’s developing sense of self. For Adam, it must have been like living under a guillotine, thinking the blade would fall and cut off his head if he dared tell me or his father of the sexual attacks he endured weekend after weekend.
What terror Adam must have felt, I thought, mixed, as he grew older, with the excitement of sexual arousal — long before nature intended it — an excitement that must have added to the guilt from knowing that what his grandfather was doing had been forbidden from time immemorial. My eyes filled with tears as I wondered how a grandparent could so savage a child’s psychological and sexual life week after week, making what should be one of life’s greatest adult joys a perversion.
“Thank you for telling me the truth,” I said quietly to Adam. “I understand why you were frightened before. I’m proud of you for telling me now.”
“My counselor knows, and he said I should tell you,” Adam admitted. Then he went on, as though about to lift a heavy burden from his conscience. “There’s more, Mom.”
I sighed and said, “Tell me everything.” My two older daughters and I believe in the motto, “God only gives you as much pain as he thinks you can handle.”
Adam said, “Grandpa told me he had sex with my mother when she was a child.”
I stared at him in renewed horror. Then I asked, “Do you want to tell your father all this? Or shall I? He has to know. We can’t keep the truth from him.”
An agonized expression took over Adam’s face. “You tell him, Mommy,” he pleaded. “Please, I can’t.”
I stood up, walked over to him, gently lifted him to his feet, and held him close. No words were needed. He had been strong enough to trust me, and now, knowing the truth, I understood and trusted him.
Later that night, I told Tom of Adam’s disclosure. He, too, was horrified. He just kept saying over and over again, “I can’t believe it!”
“You have to, Tom,” I said, “and somehow we have to help Adam undo the damage done by his grandfather’s cruelty.”
“I’m glad you took Adam to the counselor,” Tom admitted. “Without his help, we might never have known.”
It was a time of further disclosure. Two months later, as the November winds swept the trees of leaves, Carrie suffered what we thought were acute nightmares from which she awoke screaming, as if someone were attacking her. She continued to fail in her classes. She also put on weight, saying, “Maybe if I’m fat, nobody will want to touch me.”
One evening, after hearing Carrie scream, I rushed upstairs and into her room to see her shaking on her bed. I calmed her down and brushed her dark hair away from her pleading blue eyes. “What were you dreaming, Carrie?” I asked.
“It wasn’t a dream,” she said, burying her head in the pillow.
“What’s wrong?” I said quietly. Carrie raised her head. “You think I make up stories. But now that Adam has told the truth about Grandpa, you have to believe the truth about Adam.”
’’And what is the truth?” I kept my voice low. Adam slept in the adjoining room, and undoubtedly Carrie’s scream had woken him, too.
“Ever since you and Tom got married, Adam has been after me sexually at night.”
“Molesting you?” Once again, I felt horrified by a child’s confession.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m scared to death of him. I know it’s wrong, so now I scream when he comes into the room. He keeps saying his grandfather told him to do it to me and then let him know how much I liked it.”
Nothing could shock me after Adam’s revelations. I could not blame him, knowing the agony he had endured for six long years, the threat of death hanging over his head if he revealed the source of his deepest fear and shame and, in some respects, pleasure — forbidden pleasure. The truth was grim, but I knew it was far better to deal with it than ignore it. I believed Carrie because she had never lied to me.
Both Adam and Carrie would have to escape the cycle of terror Edward had started by his constant molestation of his small grandson. Adam’s waves of anguish and desire had, in turn, swept into our home. I had to admit that while I felt the deepest sympathy for Adam, I was also furious.
I tucked Carrie in, kissed her good night, and promised, ’’Adam will not come into your room at night again, Carrie. You have my word.”
I walked downstairs to the bedroom I shared with Tom. He was awake and asked, ’’Anything wrong?”
“It will keep till tomorrow,” I said softly. I did not want to disturb him further at the moment. The knowledge of Adam’s overtures toward Carrie would upset him deeply and keep him from needed sleep.
I told Tom the next evening. Then we took Adam to his room, where we could talk. Carrie’s room was filled with Cabbage Patch and Barbie dolls, as well as a dollhouse my mother bought her the time, she gave Adam a large radio-cassette player-recorder. Adam’s room, which overlooks the spacious backyard, held robots and creatures from outer space.
Tom and I sat on the bed while Adam perched on a chair. He knew something serious was in the air. Not wasting a moment, Tom asked “Adam. Have you been annoying Carrie sexually since Laura and I got married?”
I understood how a little boy, molested every weekend by his grandfather starting at the age of three and a half, might be sexually aroused when his father remarried. He might seek to repeat with a girl his age the same motions his father was going through with his new bride. We later learned that in the dark of night, Adam also approached Theresa, now 15, and Lisa, 14, but they had successfully repulsed their younger, adopted brother’s advances.
Adam looked his father in the eye. “It’s true, Dad,” he admitted. “I was too scared to talk to you or mom. It meant telling what Grandpa Edward did to me.” Then he added, almost proudly, “He taught me everything I know about sex.”
Tom looked stricken, and I realized how difficult it was for him to believe what he was hearing these tragic days. He shook his head in bewilderment and said, “I didn’t believe Carrie at first. I have to apologize to her. I thought she had made it up.”
The next day I called the family doctor and explained that now Carrie needed help. He found her a counselor and I started to drive her weekly to see him. She and Adam had to give up their sessions for a few weeks when I gave birth to a beautiful girl, we named Katey. As a result of their therapy, both Adam and Carrie seemed happier, and they enjoyed playing with Katey.
Tom and I were also meeting with the children’s counselors. They helped us to better understand our feelings about the trauma our two children had suffered so that we could help them face their fear and anger. We are in therapy to this very day, as are Carrie and Adam. Adam’s counselor explained everything to Tom and me that after the discovery of the infection in Adam’s lymph nodes, “He was trying to tell you that something hurt physically and psychologically. He knew was his grandfather was doing was wrong and was indirectly asking you for help. He did not date tell you. He was afraid of being killed if he spoke of the sexual violation by his grandfather.”
Slowly, very slowly, as is the case when suffering runs this deep, both Adam and Carrie began to understand the pain they had endured. Therapy helped Adam realize that what had happened to him was not his fault. Adam had felt very guilty, as all children do, about the incestuous attacks on him. Part of the nature of childhood is that every child believes everything that happens to him, good or bad, can be attributed to something he had done. Children think they are little gods who direct both their own fate and that of others. But Adam began to see that it was not his fault, that Edward had stolen from his only grandchild the right to take pleasure in his body when the natural time arrived to him to enjoy it with a young woman.
I trusted Adam’s counselor to help him eventually accept the violation of his body so that he could regain faith in himself as a boy and, later, as a man. Adam would have to get back into the slower psychic rhythm of the natural development of his sexual drive, which had been interrupted by a lecherous relative.
As it turned out, two emotionally disturbed, lecherous relatives.
Through the deepening trust in the counselor, Adam was able to implicate another person. A person I had never suspected. Though I did not like her, I would not have believed that she, too, was harming Adam.
He was still spending weekends with Frieda, who now lived alone. She would drink scotch straight from the bottle in front of the children, thought Tom and I asked her not to. She kept indignantly denying that her husband had sexually assaulted his grandson. She would declare over and over, “I don’t know why, but the boy is lying.” One day she pointed her finger at Adam and said angrily, “You know your grandfather would never do such a thing to you,” accusingly adding, “You better never say I touched you, buddy boy.”
Adam’s face was impassive. He did not say a word.
I said quietly, “Stop threatening Adam, Frieda. He’s been through enough.”
Her voice suddenly turned sad. She said, “I can live without my husband, Laura. But I can’t live without Adam. I love him too much. He’s all I have now.”
Not long after this conversation, Adam confided to his counselor that Frieda had taken part in his sexual molestation. He said that she was still using him to gain sexual release. She continued to buy him costly gifts as bribes to keep up the sexual relationship with her but not reveal it. Adam told the counselor that she hurt him physically, and he wanted to stop the molestation.
Even as I was stunned by this newest horror, I wondered if this was the first time that both a grandmother and grandfather had been involved in incestuous attacks on a grandchild. Grandfathers had been reported as a source of incest with children, but as far as I knew, never a grandmother, too.
Adam’s counselor reported Frieda’s regular abuse of Adam to the Child Abuse Hotline in our state, which in turn brought charges against her that led to a grand-jury investigation. She was accused of “sodomy in the second degree,” breaking a state law by committing incest with her grandson. A grand-jury hearing was held. Prior to the hearing, a judge ordered Frieda “to stay away from grandson Adam White” on penalty of going to jail.
After listening to testimony from Adam, Carrie, Tom, Adam’s counselor, and myself, the grand jury ruled that there was “insufficient evidence” to indict Frieda. I felt furious, especially because not one word appeared in the newspapers, as though there were a conspiracy to cover up the hearing. I thought that perhaps the idea of a grandmother, especially a supposedly respectable local resident, sexually abusing her grandson was inconceivable to the jurors. Frieda still lives in the same house but does not see any member of our family and is forbidden to contact Adam.
At the hearing, Adam clung to me and begged, “Don’t let Grandma get me. She told me never to tell on her, and I did.” He shook violently as I reassured him, “She’ll never hurt you again, Adam.”
Thus, ended Adam’s destructive weekend life with his grandmother and grandfather. Studies show that incest is passed on from generation to generation, so perhaps Frieda and Edward had been molested by their parents or grandparents. But I can never forgive them. Though civilized nations look with horror on incestuous attacks upon children, reports of incest in this country are growing. Only 7,000 cases were recorded for 1972, as compared to 100,000 in 1985. Perhaps more people are admitting the crime, wanting help for their children and themselves.
One unfortunate result of the grand-jury investigation was that both Adam and Carrie lost much of their faith in the law as a result of Frieda’s going free. They can’t understand how justice so obviously miscarried.
A few friends wonder why I still take Carrie and Adam, who will soon be 14, to see their counselors every week. My friends don’t understand that it takes a long time to recover from the trauma they suffered. Most of the time they seem like average children, but every now and then the past gets in the way of reason. I say to them, “Even though your body may tell you one thing, your mind has to be strong enough to overcome any sexual urge you may have from time to time.”
Through the counselors, Tom and I accept that this may be Adam’s plight for a while, that he needs more help before he can fully come to terms with the crimes committed against him for such a long period of time. Carrie understands her brother’s pain and forgives him. She says of her experience with her counselor: “When I first met him, I was scared. But after a few times, I started to trust him. I was able to tell him how I felt. I even told him that I wanted to kill Adam’s grandmother — that I had visions of shooting her. At least I want her to know the pain we all went through because of her and her husband.”
She adds, “Edward escaped punishment. He got out of it easy by dropping dead of a heart attack. But I still don’t understand the way the grand jury voted, because all the proof was there about what Frieda did to Adam.”
The counselors also work with Tom and me as we struggle to help our children understand this ordeal. If parents do not help their children, who will? My two older daughters sympathize with Adam and Carrie; they have also been my two best friends throughout this time of trouble. When it would go through my mind that I couldn’t take any more, they’d say, “Come on, Mom. Think how Adam and Carrie would feel if they didn’t have a mother who could handle so much.” Theresa says, “Things are better now that all of the awful truth has been told. Carrie’s anger is going away, and Adam seems more open about what he feels and thinks.”
My mother has always been at my side to support, love, and help me in any way she can. She has been a friend to whom I can tell anything, no matter how awful the situation. She’s given me faith in the love I feel for my children.
Children have to know that they are loved and trusted. It’s up to parents to raise children the best way they know how and teach them both the good and the bad that can exist in all of us. The counselors have also helped Tom and me build trust among the children, such as by helping Carrie understand that Adam should not be blamed for his advances toward her.
At least Adam and Carrie faced the tragic truth when they were young, so they have both the time and the growing awareness to recover from past injuries. They have already come a long way. I am dedicated not only to helping my own family, but also to helping other families cope with similar crises. When you live through a tormenting experience, you want to help those who seem afraid to ask for help when it happens to them.
Three years ago, I heard that a boy in the community had been sexually molested by a brother. I went to see his mother and suggested that she take both boys to a therapist. She kept saying, “Oh, they’ll be fine — they don’t need help.” A year later I learned that the younger boy was sexually molesting his sister.
I do not give up easily and tried once more. I told the mother, “Therapy is a ’must’ for the abused child, or he will suffer all his life and cause suffering to other children.” I hope she listens this time. The entire family will only suffer greater pain if the one who abuses and the one who is abused do not get understanding aid at once.
I am appalled by the fact that not one cent is available from many state welfare systems to provide counseling for sexually abused children, though a child whose family is on welfare may go to a counselor several times a week if he is emotionally disturbed. This situation is not fair, and I hope state laws will change and help the innocent child who is a victim of sexual abuse at the hands of relatives or others. State-aid authorities should look into such discrimination.
Paying for counseling in my family has cost Tom and me all our savings. Nonetheless, we feel that it is well worth the expense. I am grateful to the pastor of my church, who telephones regularly to make sure the children are well. I feel lucky because Tom is an understanding, devoted husband who has helped us through this ordeal. And I cannot praise enough the spirit shown by Adam and Carrie, the ones who suffered and are determined not to let it affect the rest of their lives. Between his counselor and the champions in his home, Adam has come a long way in overcoming the burden placed on him by his selfish, warped grandparents. It has been a rough road for him and all of us, but our home is finally calm again.
