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Jennifer was a child. A child with a deep, dark secret.
She was 11 or 12 the first time it happened. The man was someone she knew well. A parental figure she thought she could trust. She tried to forget about it.
She was 13 when he violated her so badly that she knew she would never forget.
She held the secret inside, not sure what to do.
One night she was at her cousin, Amy’s, house for a sleepover with Amy and another friend. Amy and her friend were a couple of years older than Jennifer.
They stayed up late, talking and giggling and doing all the things teenage girls like to do during a sleepover.
But at some point the conversation took a turn. The friend confessed that she had been sexually abused as a young girl.
It was too much for Jennifer. All of the hidden anger and pain inside erupted. She began to cry. And then, she told them her story.
Her life, as she knew it, was about to come to an abrupt end.
Her aunt and uncle — Amy’s parents — got involved. They, along with Jennifer, went to the police.
But instead of the accused offender being removed from the young girl’s life, Jennifer was reported — by a family member — to be a troublemaker and was hauled away and booked into a juvenile facility. She lived at the facility five weeks. “I was treated like a criminal,” she said.
Another aunt and uncle — not Amy’s parents — picked her up at the detention facility and took Jennifer to live with them in another city some 40 miles from her childhood home.
By the time she was 14, she had lost her home and her loved ones, including her younger sisters that she had cared for as if they were her own, and she was living with relatives in a strange town and attending a new school.

kpcnews.com

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