My mother let him rape me — then stayed married to my dad My father raped me, and my mom didn't leave. It took years to find the power to forgive

“Daddy said we needed to take more pictures for my photo shoot in your bedroom last week and then he got on top of me,” I told my mother on the bus ride home from the mall, breaking into tears. I was 13.

She hugged me and wanted to know why I’d waited seven days to say anything. I only mentioned the incident to my mom because my best friend’s sister, Ava, said I should. Ava reminded me that I had only

graduated eighth grade, and although I felt I was grown up, I wasn’t. My mother didn’t say anything else on the 20-minute trip to our house. I thought now that she had learned the truth, she’d make my father leave.

At home he denied that he’d raped me, asking my mother how she could believe such a thing. Then, an hour later, he confessed the truth. She cried. When my father asked me to forgive him, I said, “I will try, Daddy.” He eventually told me he was sorry, but his apology was too late. Our two-bedroom house in northwest Pasadena had become too small, with only a pink and burgundy bathroom separating us. It was summertime. My mother had long hours at the phone company, often working overtime in the evenings and on Saturdays. My father was home a lot. He wasn’t able to hold a steady job due to his sickle cell anemia.

I’d spent my elementary school years in hospital waiting rooms. The nurses gave me ice and crackers to pass the time. But no amount of distractions could stop the tubes in my father’s nose and arms from frightening me. I thought my mother took care of my dad because she felt sorry for him. I hoped she had at least loved him in the beginning when she was a 26-year-old divorcee and he was a 29-year-old aspiring photographer who was working as a driving instructor.

My father wanted a son but was told if they tried again that baby would inherit his disease. I could never be the boy my father wanted. I was a girly girl who loved Barbies, Hello Kitty and Smurfette. As surprising as this might sound, I wasn’t entirely shocked by the rape. He’d never gone out of his way to hide the Playboy magazines and pornography videos he collected. He flirted with every woman he saw, and his flirtations never seemed harmless. I never trusted him.

He accused me of being spoiled and ungrateful. I was often asked if my father was my stepfather because of the horrible way that he spoke to me. I wished it was true, that he was not my blood relation. That might have explained the hate I felt. Yet he was my biological father. We even looked alike. Both of us were slim with long legs and strong cheekbones. It amazed me even then how much an adult male and a little girl could resemble one another. I couldn’t look in a mirror without seeing my father. It was such a relief when someone told me that I was beautiful or that I looked like my mother. She was attractive, smart and had a great sense of humor. She had thick, curly beauty salon hair and wore colorful size 12 dresses that cinched at the waist. My mom was a natural entertainer. At work she was often called first to perform with her immediate disclaimer, “I can’t sing but I can dance.” Colleagues said she reminded them of a taller Chaka Khan. I admired my mother’s confidence. I liked to think I inherited her best qualities. Yet when my father raped me, as every counselor I saw later called it–prior to that I’d been saying molested–I just assumed that my mother would throw him out of our house. But she didn’t.

A black psychiatrist who worked with my father recommended that we stay together as a family. He said it was important because we were one of the few remaining African-American families in our neighborhood, one of the few families where the father remained in the home. Our communities were in jeopardy, many of the black men in jail or in rehab. Some local men of color were around but they were struggling with unemployment, which left them feeling inadequate and open to public scrutiny. If my father were to leave, the damage to our family could be irreversible, according to this therapist. I also think our church influenced my mother in her decision to let him stay. She was a born-again Christian and I thought I was too. There were so many pretty women at our church without husbands. Most of my friends’ parents were divorced. I didn’t want my mother to be alone. My faith led me to more questions, which were never answered. I not only blamed my mother; I also held God responsible. When the therapist saw my resistance to his rationale, he quickly suggested that my parents take me on a family trip anywhere I chose. I picked Six Flags Magic Mountain. I had already decided any doctor who thought my father should remain with us was no one I could trust. But I was a kid who wanted to go to an amusement park.