| Marie's Testimonial
A Sexual Incest, Sexual Assaut & Rape Survivor's Story I met Anne Bissell through her website sexualabusesurvivors.com. I wanted Anne to know that she had really helpful information on her site to help survivors and that I recommended a friend of mine to her site. I called Anne and shared with her a bit about my own abuse. I shared with her some of my interests. I expressed to her the desire I have in helping other survivors. I told Anne that I had created a website of my own and that I had published a book called "A Voice That Has Spoken From Within" so that it may help others know they are not alone. She shared with me about her own book "Memoirs of a Sex Industry Survivor." We then exchanged our books. Anne shared with me her desire to combine two of her sites together to create The Silver Braid. With Anne sharing this information with me I expressed my interest in working with her on building the Silver Braid Network. Anne and I share a lot of common interest on helping survivors of all forms of sexual abuse. I started gathering information from Anne and began working on building the Silver Braid websites. I then created a bulletin board so that survivors could come and share their experiences and know they are not alone, so that they could also gather more information on the benefits of the Silver Braid Organization. I have put helpful links on both bulletin boards. Some of these sites have been very beneficial in my own recovery. I check both of the bulletin boards daily, several times a day so that I can respond to those in need of someone to listen to their hurts and pains. The Silver Braid outreach is very important. It has already been helpful to many. One comes to mind now that I have been lending an attentive ear to listen. She is a victim who needs not to be failed by our system. She has already had to have 3 abortions from being raped by her father. This person needs to not be failed by our system repeatedly like she has. This is why the Silver Braid Network is very important, because we do understand the hurts and pains. All acts of violence are intolerable. Why is it that when a little girl is molested she is told it was her fault Or to "GET OVER IT"? She is already hurt, betrayed and heart broken that this happened to her by someone she trusted, someone that was supposed to protect her. Now she is being abused in a different way by being told and made to feel it was her fault. Why is it when another child sexually abuses another child people say "they were just being promiscuous". This brings another incident to my mind. My niece's 3 year old little girl was having sexual acts preformed on her by a 4 year old boy. My niece caught them. She confronted the little boy and he began to cry. His 8 year old brother said he would tell even though he would get into trouble. He said he and his little brother witnessed men doing those things to their mommy. This was reported to the department of family and children services. Nothing was done. That is a shame. And society wonders why so much abuse and violence is going on. Take a look. When it is occurring in your own family you are turning your head to it. What do you think you should do about it? We have to be the one's to stop this madness from occurring in our own families first. Just look at it. See it. That is where it all begins, in our own families or by someone the family knows. Take a minute here and think. How did the child know about doing those sexual acts? Think now, Maybe it is because they were abuse themselves by an adult, made to watch porn or were made to watch an adult do these things to another adult. I was made to look at porn while my older brother raped me. Society today wonders why there are suicides among teens; it is because they are not getting to the root of the problem. If you did a survey you would find that most have been sexually abuse by a member of the family and that it has been swept under the table. Do you wonder about prostitution? Again if you did a survey you would find that most of the teen girls ran away from a sexually abusive family where one or more members were abusing them. This is not their fault. But yet society is quick to judge them. We need to get to the root of this problem. You ask what the root of the problem is. It is that society turns their head to incest, domestic violence, etc. They say this is not happening in my family. Look again! Doing the online outreach has already been a very helpful and positive experience for several survivors in joining the Silver Braid Network. There is not a day that goes by that someone don't reach out for help. It is very important that we establish groups in every county and every city in each state. There are not enough support groups for survivors, therefore they are left not knowing what to do and hurting from their experiences. Some end up killing themselves due to the fact they don't know who to turn to or where to turn. The Silver Braid is going to help in this matter. That is why this organization is very important because of the work it does in providing support for all that have been and that are still being sexually exploited. We believe that sharing our truths brings healing to our souls. If we speak our truths we will let those that think they are alone know we care and that they are not alone. It will also show them there is help for them and they can have a health, happy life. Let's take each others hand and unite this circle, this braid and strengthen the Silver Braid Network and help bring healing to all those that need our help. My name is Marie Waldrep. I was born in Atlanta, Georgia in the 1960's. I am a survivor of incest, childhood sexual assault, domestic violence and rape. I am the youngest of 6. My mother had 2 miscarriages. One was so early they didn't know if it was a boy or girl but the second miscarriage was a boy. He would have been about 3 years older than me. I have 3 sisters and 2 brothers. I lived with both parents. My dad was a carpenter and my mom was a homemaker. She would sale Avon sometimes. My mom was the piano player at the churches we attended. My mother raised me up in church and my dad would drink alcohol and get drunk some of the time. I remember one time (it was a Saturday night) he got drunk and started beating my mother. Clearly this was Domestic Violence but at that time me being so young I had no clue what it was called. I know I hated my dad drinking. My mother came in my room and asked me if it was all right that she stayed in there because for some reason your dad wants to beat on me, well it didn't take him long to figure out where she was and he came in my room (my room had no door) and he had a hot cup of coffee in his hand and he backed my mother up against my bed and slapped the heck out of her and spilled hot coffee on me. My adrenalin started flowing heavy. I jumped up after he hit my mother and shoved him as hard as I could into my stereo. He fell over the top of it cracking the lid to the record player. It took him a while to get up. I then ran to get my brother Paul up to help. I was yelling for him to please get up, I need your help. He was a very sound sleeper and very hard to wake up. I had to shake him and yell at him to get up. I said I need your help please get up; dad is drunk and beating on mom. Help me. Then I went back to protect my mother from being hit again. My dad by this time had got up and came in the hallway and when I got back to the hallway he slapped the crap out of my face. My mother was trying to quietly get us to get a few things together so we could leave in the car but my dad knew she wanted to leave in the car and he went out to the car and pulled some plugs and things off of it so my mom couldn't drive it. The next day was Sunday and mom got us up for church. I didn't want to go because I was still upset and ashamed for what had happened and had only had a few hours sleep, but mom made us get ready and go anyway. I felt like the whole church could see through me and that they knew what had happened. I hate feeling that shame and embarrassment. My first memory of being sexually assaulted I was five years old. We were in the living room watching T.V. it was kind of cold and my oldest brother Darriel asked me if I wanted to get under the blanket with him to watch T.V., so I did and as soon as I was under the blanket with him he put his hand in my panties and started fondling me. He was hurting me. Why did he do it? I really didn't know what to think about him doing that. He was my older brother. I trusted him. He betrayed my trust. He hurt me. I did not want him to do those things to me but he would always tell me it was OK for him to do that. It didn't feel OK. It did not feel good to me, it hurt and I did not like him doing that. I wasn't under the blanket to long until my mother started yelling at me to get up and she spanked my butt. He did this several times and my mom would spank me. Was it my fault? To me this showed Darriel that he could do stuff like that and get away with it, which he did. Darriel could do anything he wanted to do and my family would stick their head in the sand and excuse his behavior on his drug addictions. That was no EXCUSE for what he did to me. NO EXCUSE!!!! How could he do that to me? I was his baby sister, so small and trusting. He would say things to me like do you want me to cut you with my knife or slap the hell out of you. He was a sick pervert. He made me look at porn magazines before he raped me. I was his baby sister. He was 15 years older than me. Why did he do it? It has taken many, many years to get to the point I am right now. I felt I could not trust any one. My secret was going to the grave with me, but I couldn't take it any longer. I felt I was slowly dieing inside and no one could see it but me because there wasn't anything physically wrong with me on the outside, they could not see how much I was dieing on the inside. I had to admit I needed help and that I couldn't handle this on my own any longer. I had isolated myself from the outside world. I felt like if I stepped outside I was putting myself in danger. I was scared that someone was waiting around the corner and if I walked past they would grab me and hurt me. I became very depressed and didn't realize that, that was what was wrong with me. I had lost all feelings. I was just here and didn't really understand why. I couldn't understand what was wrong with me. I was in pain and didn't understand why. I would take pain medication to help relieve the pain. I would eat to help relieve the pain. I would hit myself in the stomach to help relieve the pain. I would cut so I could feel physical pain on the outside of my body so I wouldn't hurt inside. I would burn as well to feel pain on the outside to ease the pain on the inside. I gained 155 pounds. I felt I was singled out. I felt as if I had a huge sign on my back that said just take a piece of me everyone else has. I hated being that way. I felt so out of place. I felt in a daze. I was ashamed of myself. I felt dirty, disgusting, ugly, and no good. I was left wondering what my purpose was for being here in this world. I felt like a walking empty vessel, just taking up space. With all I went through I felt I didn't deserve anyone being nice to me and if they were nice sometimes I would cry because I felt I didn't deserve it. I was scared of asking for help that I needed, wondering if I would be believed. I wanted to wake up out of that nightmare I was in. I wanted to know how I could escape the abuse I was going through. It seemed everywhere I turned I was being abused. I was told one time that is what girls were made for. Was it really? I didn't want that. Darriel was only one of my perpetrators. He was the one who started my many years of cycled sexual abuse. When I reached the age of eleven that is when it really got worse. I can't remember who came first my cousin Hal or Darriel both were mean and disgusting pedophiles. Darriel raped me twice in this year. The first time he raped me Paul and I had just got home from school and he came to me and ask me to come to his room, he had something special to show me...ahhh something special and me being trusting I went to see what he wanted and then he locked his door and then he asked me if I had any hair on my private. That sent a shockwave through my body. I was so scared. I said I don't know. I wanted out of that room but I was locked in and there was no way out for me. He said can I see, I said NO! I said NO! He didn't care that I had said NO. He didn't listen to me. My voice was too small. I was too little to be heard. I said NO! He didn't care that I was his baby sister. He didn't care.....he didn't care. Darriel then pushed me down on his bed. I said "what are you doing?" Darriel said I want to see I said No again. He didn't care... NO means NO! I remember what I was wearing; I wasn't allowed to wear pants so I had on a green skirt and a yellow t-shirt with black trim on the neck and sleeves and a big red smiley face on the front of it. I kept telling him NO but it didn't matter to him. He had one thing on his mind and he was going to do it. He said I want to feel of it. I said NO! He said this want take but a minute and he pulled my panties off and unzipped his pants, pulled his penis out, got on top of me and shoved it in me as hard as he could. There was so much pain. Tears started rolling from my eyes. He didn't care. He would put his whole mouth over mine kissing me. I could not breathe; he was to strong for me to push him off of me. I felt like I was dieing. He was killing my soul, ripping my heart out. I was so lifeless and numb. I was hurting and in pain. Why was this happening to me? Why? I was his baby sister, someone he was supposed to protect. Tears were rolling out of my eyes, my small body trembling, shaking with fear, hurting and in pain. I was so scared. He didn't care. He wanted to kiss me. I was turning my face side to side. I told him I could not breathe please get off of me. He said you will be ok. He stayed on top of me for about 35-45 minutes. It felt like and eternity. I could not do anything. I was helpless. I felt like I was dieing slowly. I felt so weak. I felt ashamed this had happened to me. I felt so dirty. I felt guilty that I couldn't make him leave me alone and not do that to me. He stole my innocence. He wounded my soul deeply. I lost my spirit. Why had this happened to me? Why? Paul started looking for me and Darriel told me to go out the back door and tell him that I had been outside. He threatened me to keep me from telling on him. He told me if I told anyone that I would get into trouble and get took away from mama and daddy and that they would lock me up. He said they will lock me up to. I believed him and was really scared to say anything in fear that I would get taken away from mama and daddy. The second time he raped me I had just got home from school and I was by myself. He told me he had to show me something and I was so stupid to trust him after the first time he tricked me, but I went to his room to see what he wanted to show me and again he locked his door and I got scared. He then pulled out a hardcore pornographic magazine and made me look at the pictures in it. Then he pushed me down on his bed. He said he wanted me to be like the girls in that magazine. I said I don't want to. He pushed me back and slid my panties off. I was so scared. I knew what he was going to do and didn't have any way out of it. If I screamed no one would here because no one was at home. I said no and he said it will only last a second. He went inside me once and it hurt so bad I began to cry, he didn't care, then he pulled out and put spit on his penis and then he went back in. There was tremendous pain. I was so scared. I was trying to push him off of me but I couldn't. I was too weak. I was crying. I couldn't breathe. He was smothering me. I told him he was hurting me, to please get off of me and he told me don't say anything this is only going to take a second. When he got through he got up and wiped his penis off on a towel and told me to get up and go clean myself up. He had busted me open and I was so scared when I went to the bathroom and found out I was bleeding uncontrollably. I thought I was going to die. All I could think was I am going to bleed to death and how could I get the bleeding to stop. I stayed in the bathroom seemed like hours. It took along time to get the bleeding to stop. When Darriel was through he walked out the door and got in the car with Sandra and left with her. I have been expected to overlook Sandra and Darriel in the past based largely on it being what the 'Good Lord' wants us to do. There has been so much craziness going on in the family. Drugs, Alcohol, incest, child molestation, bestiality, prison sentences, child abuse, domestic violence, stealing, rape, pimping and prostitution, hurt, decit and lies. What does brother and sister mean? In my case there was no brother and sister. All they did was took from us and cause pain. Darriel had been doing very disgusting things to me. He did it to the chickens we had. My dad kept finding dead chickens and couldn't figure out why, and then my mother started noticing blood and feathers in his underwear when she was washing clothes. My question to this is why the heck they didn't ever do anything to him. They had to know that he was sick in the head to be screwing the chickens and killing them. Why didn't they put him in a hospital for help or make him move out on his own, or do something to him for those awful acts? What makes me so angry is that he never moved out on his own. To this day he lived with my dad until dad died December 21, 2005. What is wrong with family? They just turn their head and bury it in a deep sea of denial. I just don't get it. Why? You can see he is a very, very sick person. When I was fourteen (just turned 14) this guy Glen who went to our church, who was seven years older than me asked my mother one day if he could bring me and my brother Paul home from church. (I just remembered he was a preacher about 2 years ago now. Oh, that is really sick). She said ok. Glen wanted to know if Paul and I could start riding with him to church. It seemed ok and I thought it was cool to ride with someone other than my mother. Glen then wanted to know if we could start going out which seemed ok because Paul was always with us. He then started picking us up from school. I thought this was great, not having to ride the bus home, and whatever I wanted he would get it for me. I had no clue he was grooming me and I would have to pay a price for that. He is the one who got Paul and I started smoking cigarettes. I thought I was doing something big smoking. I thought I looked really cool lighting up a cigarette and smoking it as I rode out of the parking lot of school. He would take us to his house to play pool and take us to play arcade games, all the fun stuff teenagers like to do. I didn't have a problem going out with him because it gave me a way to get away from Darriel (my brother 15 years older than me) and the mental, physical and emotional abuse from him. I was a very vulnerable target for him. I trusted him. He was supposed to be a Christian. Glen started off really slow. Getting me comfortable going to his house, playing pool at his house, then he started horsing around, tickling me and goosing me and he threw me on his bed once and I jumped up quickly and said what are you doing. Then he wanted to go a step farther and started kissing me with very passionate kisses. It was like he then got obsessed with me because he had to come and see me everyday. He would take my hand and place it on his private while we were riding home at night. He had my mother fooled as to what kind of person he was. My mother would invite him to go with us when we would take trips out of town. So I never really got away from him. He would fondle me every chance he got me alone with him and one day he sodomized me in the same room that my older brother Darriel raped me. I carried that burden around with me for 20 years, never telling anyone what he had done to me. I felt as if in some way it was my fault. It has been 3 years now since I started dealing with my abuse issues and 2 years since remembering that Glen was a preacher. After Glen sodomized me he didn't have anything else to do with me. I remember him telling in front of my friend Malinda that I was a slut and whore. Yeah, a girl who just turned 14, a whore he bought by buying gifts, food and playing arcade games. Malinda told Glen to keep his mouth shut or she was going to slap the heck out of him. A couple of days later he went to Malinda's house and asked her mom and dad could he take her out and they told him no way because of the age difference. I am thankful for that because he would have done the same thing to her. When I first had my memory that Glen was a preacher I didn't want to believe it. I told myself you must be crazy, but this bugged me very bad so I called a few other people that knew Glen to confirm my memory and they told me, yes, he was a preacher. I do remember now seeing him get up and preach several times. This is really sick. I am definitely confused about a lot of things. I would like to know why a man claiming to be a man of God would do something like that to a young girl. I was still a child and didn't have a full understanding of what was happening to me and why it was happening. I did feel a lot of guilt and shame for the things that he did to me and I carried that burden around with me for 20 years. I struggled with self-injury issues (cutting, burning, pulling hair out, etc.) when the pain in my heart from all the abuse was overwhelming to me. It gave me a release by feeling the pain on the outside. I know that was the wrong coping mechanism to use. Sexual abuse of any form has a very profound effect on a person's life. It is hard for most to cope with it in a healthy manner. Some turn to drugs, alcohol and many other things to try and cope with the trauma they have endured. My wish is that maybe my story will help someone who needs the encouragement to start in their own healing. Your very survival is a testimony to your ability to give yourself permission to protect and take care of yourself and heal. Healing is not going to be easy but, you can heal. We just have to keep taking those little steps, one step at a time, one day at a time and pray for God to help us through each day. I hope by sharing my experiences it will be of help to those struggling with similar experiences and know that God is our great physician and can heal our deepest wounds. I met Anne Bissell through her website www.sexualabusesurvivors.com I called and talked with Anne for a while and expressed to her that I was interested in working with her on building the Silver Braid Network. Me being a survivor of incest and sexual assault I have a desire to help others start on their healing journey. Anne and I share a lot of common interest on helping survivors of all forms of sexual abuse. I helped create a bulletin board so that survivors could come and share their experiences and know that they are not alone, so that they could also gather more information on the benefits of the Silver Braid Organization. There have been several people contact me about materials to start a Silver Braid Support group in there area. This is very important work. I have invited a lot of survivors of all forms of sexual abuse to our bulletin boards to share, learn and grow from each other telling their stories. Anne and I exchanged our books and we are working together and networking the Silver Braid Survivors of Sexual Exploitation website so that we can bring together healing to all those who are seeking help from sexual exploitation and abuse of all forms. This has already been a very helpful and positive experience for several survivors in joining the Silver Braid Network. Doing online outreach is very important as well as having groups established in every county, in each state. There are not enough support groups for survivors, therefore they are left not knowing what to do and hurting from their experiences. Some end up killing themselves due to the fact they don't know who to turn to or where to turn. The Silver Braid is going to help in this matter. That is why this organization is very important because of the work it does in providing support for all that have been and that are still being sexually exploited. We believe that sharing our truths brings healing to our souls. If we speak our truths we will let those that think they are alone know we care and that they are not alone. It will also show them there is help for them and they can have a health, happy life. Let's take each others hand and unite this circle, this braid and strengthen the Silver Braid Network and help bring healing to all those that need our help. To Read More about Marie Waldrep click here |
| One of Atlanta's nicknames, The Phoenix City |
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| The Silver Braid Survivors of Sexual Exploitation Network Metro Atlanta Area |
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