My Deepest Betrayal

Content Advisory: This piece contains raw, detailed accounts of childhood trauma, sexual abuse, and criminal legal proceedings. It is shared with the intent of transformation, but the content is heavy. Please prioritize your emotional well-being before choosing to read further.

Approximate Read Time: 15-18 min, maybe longer due to content

I truly believed I had found my best friend, and my prince charming in my second husband. Having been estranged from my family most of my life, my heart was filled with joy to have a family that welcomed me with such open arms, and were so loving towards me. 

After a few years of having been in the family, at Christmas, I stood in front of my mother in law, father in law, and sister in law, husband and children and read them a letter from my heart, telling them how truly blessed I felt to have them all in my life, how more than anything in the world, all I ever wanted was a family that loved me. They told me I was the nicest person they had ever met, and they loved me like a daughter. I truly believed I had everything in the world. Looking back with the knowledge I have now, my story is very different.

I had always had a huge heart for children, at one point, I wanted to have 5 of my own.  I had been providing daycare and foster care for many years. I really wanted to be able to give foster children a soft place to land, since I had been living on my own since I was 15 years old. I had a personal history of all forms of abuse, and I was very grateful for a family that helped me when I was a teenager, and this was my way of giving back.

It filled my soul with joy when one of the social workers told me that they considered my home to be the best foster home in the county. I was very taken back and surprised by this, not realizing that I was doing anything special. There was a waiting list to get a daycare of foster care children into my home.

Apparently, above and beyond my organization and cleanliness, I actually treated the children as if they were my own. All the children in my home went on vacation with me, and gifts and resources were shared evenly. I could not have fathomed bringing children into my home and treating them any other way.

This seemingly storybook family life ended with police involvement, criminal charges  and families being torn apart in multiple directions, and in ways that could never be repaired. 

The following story happened almost 20 years ago…

I was tucking my 5-year-old son into bed, and like most young children, he didn't want to have to go to sleep, so he started talking to me about anything that he thought might hold my attention and keep me there longer. He started telling me stories about other kids in the house, and he told me a story of one of the children tickling his butthole with a feather. The child that he accused of this had absolutely nothing to do with what happened as far as I know to this day.

Having been through childhood sexual abuse myself, and taking a small amount of child development and child psychology courses and lots of reading and self-study, I knew that there was an issue that had to be addressed in our home. 

I was very careful not to show a reaction to what he was telling me. I started to very carefully question my son.  What he was telling me happened with the feather didn't really make much sense at all, but what I did know is that my child had been exposed to something sexual. As I continued to question him, I was able to narrow down what really happened. Many more details came out after that night, but his ability to describe the differences between his weeny and another person's weeny, told me what I needed to know.

I thanked my son for answering all my questions, I told him that I loved him,  and I tucked him in as usual and left the room. 

I went directly to my other son and started to question him. I was more direct. He was older. I still can’t wrap my head around why he denied everything that night, but the following morning when I told him about everyone being removed from our home overnight, he broke down into tears and told me that it had happened to him also.

That night, the police were called, and the accused was removed from the home. We never saw him again, not even to this day. 

The worst fear and nightmare of my life had just become my reality. 

I was very diligent about protecting my children. I read all the books and did everything that the “professionals” recommended. I provided in-home child care to make sure that I was always with them, and for socializing purposes as well. 

We had conversations on a regular basis about appropriate and inappropriate touching, and how no matter what anyone else ever told them they could always come to me and be safe, no matter if they were threatened to be hurt, or if they were threatening to hurt people they loved or they said that their parents would be ashamed, that none of what they were going to tell them was true, that they could always come to me.

I used to go on the government website tracking convicted pedophiles, to see if there was any around my home, I would talk to my children about anyone I found and let them know to stay away from these people. 

I also had an open door policy. The kids of course, could go into the bathrooms and change and take care of their hygiene, but in the bedrooms and other rooms in the house, the doors always had to remain open.

I believe I had four foster children living in my home the night my life blew up. That same night, all of the foster children were removed from our care, as well as overnight children in daycare with me, my licenses were suspended and there was legal paperwork that was required to be posted and remain on our front door for quite some time. I felt a lot like I was wearing a Scarlet Letter.

I am not a violent person. I don’t approve of fighting in any manor, not even sport. With that being said, I am also a realist. I have dealt with many bullies. I believe in fighting back if backed into a corner and I do believe in standing up for myself. I have had to do it many times. I have stood up for others many times as well.

There was truly nothing in my mind that could have been any worse. Having been through child abuse myself, this was my hugest fear in life for my children. Many times, I had said out loud that if anyone ever touched my children, that I would literally take a gun and shoot them in the head. 

I was now being faced with this decision. I truly believed what I had said in the past. If the accused had been my husband, neither of us would be alive today, and he was fully aware of this at the time.

I was not prepared for what I had learned. The accused, and eventually convicted, was my 14 year old step son with learning disabilities. Shoot him in the head? I can’t shoot a child.

I could not wrap my head around this. Of course, so much happened between that night and the moment that I am going to tell you about now. I thought the worst was behind us.

The moment I'm going to tell you about now, is the biggest and deepest betrayal of my life, and it was the direct cause of my children, myself, and many other people being harmed. This is why I speak out today, and why I always have been so outspoken about stopping the cycles of abuse.

The family that I had married into, that had accepted me with such open loving arms, were also collectively and intentionally hiding secrets and creating a reality to keep me there. Many years later, the movie, The Truman Show came out. I watched it, it was cute and entertaining and I related to it in a very disturbing way. I definitely did not fully appreciate how light hearted the humor around the movie was.

A few days after my son had disclosed that there was abuse going on in the home, I had called one of the family members and was discussing the situation with her. Her response to me was shocking.

On the other end of the phone,  after I told her that my children had been victims of sexual abuse, she said “Well, what did you expect?”

I was taken back by her judgment and lack of compassion. This was not something I could articulate at the moment, because I was incredibly broken, not only from what had gone on in my life previously but the current situation as well.

Instead of getting defensive, I approached her with curiosity, asked her what she was talking about, since she had been bringing her child to me for child care for quite some time.

She proceeded to disclose to me that there was sexual abuse in the family, and my current husband knew all about it.

Time stood still in a way that I had never experienced and have never experienced since,  as I tried to wrap my head around the fact that this had all been intentionally kept hidden from me.

 I was in a type of trance. I felt like a soldier on a mission. I was watching from a distance.

I told her I had to go and hung up the phone. There were no pleasantries at that point. I was on a mission with the information she had just given me. 

I made a second phone call to my husband's sister, somebody who I considered myself to be close with. I considered her a friend.  I asked for her to confirm the information that I was given by the other family member, since it included her directly. She verified that what I had been told was true, she was not only aware, but a victim. This was a cycle in the family that was being denied and hidden.

I can't even describe the anger that arose inside me knowing that another woman had kept this information from me. She took my right as a mother to make choices for me and my children.  I called her out on this, I told her that this is how I saw things, and that I was deeply hurt and deeply angry that she took my decision from me. 

Her response was exactly the same as all the women in my family after having been sexually abused by the same person, “I didn't think he would do it to anybody else. I thought it was just me.”

This never made any sense to me in my own family, and now I'm hearing the exact same thing from this new family I am in. WHAT THE FUCK?

Once again, “I have to go”, and I got off the phone, no pleasantries. I beelined to my husband, I swear I grew wings and my feet weren’t even touching the floor as I tracked him down. 

He was outside talking with a neighbor. I stood at a distance, and told him that I needed to speak with him, he looked over at me and said he would be in shortly, but both he and the neighbor could see the look on my face and my reaction back to him verbally was “no, I need to speak with you now.” I don’t think the neighbor could get away fast enough. This was fairly out of character for me to be so demanding. The woman writing this today is very different from the woman in this story.

He left his conversation with the neighbor and slowly approached me. I stood my ground, squarely centered, as my eyes pierced his soul asking him why he didn't disclose the families sexual abuse history to me, even after I had specifically disclosed about my past and asked about his family.

I watched the blood run from his face in a way I've never seen in another human being. He went white just like in a cartoon. I don’t recall what he said at that moment. There are no words, there is no excuse for what he did.

That was the moment that I realized that everyone in my world, that I trusted, that I loved and I cared about, had been lying to me, trapping me, taking my choices away, and creating a reality that they wanted me to live in. I literally thought I was going to go crazy at that moment. I almost broke out into hysterical laughter, but I couldn’t feel anything anymore.  Nothing in life is real. I can't trust anyone, I can't even trust myself, because all these people fooled me. Every single one of them, they were all lying to me, and I didn't see it.

At that moment, I saw a line on the ground in my mind. It was solid, like the divider line in the middle of the road, and several inches wide. What was on the other side of that line was unknown, but it felt like if I crossed the line, I would be going from the hell of my reality into a peaceful escape. I was very tempted. At that very moment, my toes were being seduced by the edge of the line. I was tickling the edge of the line with my toes,  wanting just a taste, to decide if I wanted to take that step. It just felt so easy. Just one step and this all goes away. 

A voice inside my head said “don't do it, if you cross that line, you will never come back from it,” I do believe that was the truth. I believe that was the moment I chose not to give up.

I walked away from that line, for my children, because I knew they were going to need me more than ever now.

I don’t recall the time frame, I was in survival mode. I wasn’t really functioning. I could hardly get out of bed on many days.  

Time went by.  I was broken and trapped. The family even told me that they did all of it out of love because they didn’t want me to leave, and they knew that I would have. 

There was lots of police involvement and paperwork, lots of interviews and counseling. The perpetrator was tried, convicted and prosecuted. The courts asked me what I wanted to see happen to the child that had hurt the two souls that I loved and cared about more than any others in the world.

How do I decide the fate of that child? I wanted to hate him. I REALLY REALLY wanted to hate him, but I know that a child only does this because of learned behavior. He was a victim as well.

My letter to the court said that there is no punishment that will repair that damage that has been done. There is nothing that will make all this ok. Families were blown apart, people's lives were permanently changed. There is no justice in this situation. What’s done is done.

Truly,

Margot X. Sterling

Author | Speaker | Transformation Expert

Conflict Resolution | Resilience Strategist

Mastering the X-Point: Where shadow meets strength.