Stolen Beauty: Healing the Scars of Child Abuse

By A.L. Madden

At a young age, author A. L. Madden was exposed to the kind of inconceivable treatment no one, let alone a defenseless child, should endure. A brutal stepfather with a murky and painful history of his own found himself in an environment in which he continued the cycle of trauma, committing unspeakable acts of sexual and emotional abuse against Madden and her siblings.

Meanwhile, her struggling, overworked mother didnt see the pain and damage being inflicted on her children. Madden felt ashamed, hurt, angry, and, most of all, unable to talkto anyoneabout what was happening. She felt as though it was her fault. The only route to dealing with the anguish was to submerge herself in a distrustful, insecure, depressed state. As have many survivors of abuse, Madden felt abandoned, unable to see who she really was, unable to hold on to any glimmer of hope.

Only through a long soul-searching process that involved a combination of therapy, study, prayer, and the eventual strong faith in the power of her own inner strength and spiritthe innocence and beauty she had once possessed as a childwas Madden fi nally able to reach a place of understanding and peace. Stolen Beauty tells a poignant story for anyone who seeks guidance through his or her own recovery from abuse or for anyone who works to help survivors and abusers alike.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jun 2, 2017
• ISBN: 9781532019685

A.L. Madden

A. L. Madden is the mother of three children. She is a travel writer for one of the top travel management companies in the world. She became a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) in 2009 and volunteers in her spare time. Madden is an accomplished chef and former caterer. She completed a cookbook for college students called, Look Dude, I Can Cook! published in July 2007.

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Copyright © 2017 A. L. Madden.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-2033-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-1968-5 (e)

iUniverse rev. date: 06/02/2017

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

References

For my father, James, whose love, compassion, and generosity still inspire me today

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank everyone who encouraged me and believed in me during the birth of this book. It’s been a long process, and my gratitude and love come from the deepest place in my heart.

My sisters, who through the process of our lives have remained kindred spirits and have continually shared their love.

My brother, Mark, who was my angel in disguise.

My daughter, Megan, the little angel in my life whose love, inner beauty, and unique ability to see things on a soul level at a very early age have been an inspiration to me since the day she was born.

My son Mark, whose kindness toward others has shown me that love and oneness really do exist.

My son Scott, whose humor and wisdom have never ceased to entertain and profoundly surprise me.

My mother, who taught me that survival is inherent.

My friend Carmen, my soul sister, whose extraordinary love and encouragement have kept me on track.

My friends Jake, Mel, and Rhonda, whose encouragement throughout the process of writing this book has been very much appreciated.

My gurus Apolonia and John at the Center for Inner Knowing in Atlanta, who moved me toward my true self.

My love, Gary, for showing me the depth in which love can be experienced.

Lastly, every precious child in the world and especially those who have been abused—this book is for you. May you learn that your beauty belongs to you and that no one can ever steal it away. You are the heart and the soul of the world. God bless each and every one of you.

Introduction

Dear Ed,

I am writing you this letter to let you know that I am sorry you had to spend the last nine years of your life in prison. However, I hope you were able to use your time wisely in reflection so that you understand that what you did to me, my sisters, and the other small children you abused was wrong. I hope you have received help and if not that you will seek it now, through therapy (if it will help you) and hopefully through God.

You stole the innocence of my childhood and replaced it with something ugly and perverted. I don’t know what your own childhood was like. I can only speculate. I knew your mother for a very brief time and experienced her venomous nature and mistreatment, so I can only imagine what living with her as an only child must have been like. I did not know your father well, as he was in his last dying days when he came to stay with us, but he seemed to be a kinder soul. However, you made a choice to continue the cycle of abuse. Possibly you blamed your mother or father, and because of that you were able to justify your own actions of abusing others. I can only believe that you were blinded by your anger and resentment and the pain of your own neglect or abuse.

Therefore, I can forgive you. I will pray that you have learned from your lesson in this life. I will pray that you are able to let go of the pain and anger inflicted upon you in childhood and move from harming others to healing yourself.

I will pray that you find peace within yourself so that you might come to love yourself instead of seeking out your distorted view of love and controlling it through abusing innocent children.

Most of all, I pray that you can find the strength to ask God to forgive you and that you can somehow forgive yourself.

This is the letter I wrote to my stepfather, who made a choice thirty-four years ago to abuse me and my sisters when we were children. Taking advantage of Florida’s twenty-year statute of limitations, my sisters and I filed charges as adults and saw him convicted. He was sentenced to nine years in the Florida state penitentiary for his crimes against us.

My stepfather chose to abuse. He paid a high price for those choices. We all make choices in this life, and it’s those decisions that determine our paths, sometimes through pain and sometimes through love. It doesn’t matter how well we convince ourselves that our actions are right; if they hurt other people in the end, we eventually feel the pain. Maybe this is the law of karma. Until we bring our choices to a conscious level and make love our goal, we will always feel the burden of karmic debt.

In some ways I think the root cause of all suffering and all negative actions of human beings is a chain reaction of generational trauma. And it’s a cycle that needs to be broken. It’s the law of karma in action.

This book is a picture in words, told from an adult perspective, of the abuse I experienced. My purpose in writing is to explain how I was able to deal with the pain, shame, and anger of that experience. I use the word experience because it’s important to understand that the experience of child abuse does not make us who we are. It is only that—an experience; a bad one, no doubt, but the experience itself doesn’t make us bad people. If I were to use the word victim to describe my experience, it might lead you to believe that I was blaming someone, so I hesitate to use the word. I believe there comes a time when we have to move from blame to forgiveness in order to get on with the process of healing and loving ourselves.

After traveling a long soul-searching road, I came to recognize that life teaches us many lessons and that each person’s lessons are unique. All of us have paths in life to achieve our very best. If we can learn to accept, to forgive, and to live in the present by turning each bad experience into something beneficial rather than an adversity, then we will grow. The way I look at it, I had two choices. I could use my experience of abuse to bring positive awareness to others, or I could continue living in the past, dwelling on my pain, nurturing it to justify my own actions of inflicting pain on myself and others, and validating my feelings of unworthiness. I spent some time on the latter path. I am now on the path of using my experience to promote positive growth.

I am sharing the unraveling of that process and how I found a way to heal myself. I tell my story from the point of view of the child I was, as well as the adult I am now as a result of my experience. I offer advice that I pray will give insight to my readers or others who also have had the experience of abuse.

Chapter 1

As children, we are innocent and unassuming. We are in constant awe and wonder of our surroundings, where even the smallest things become magical. I remember one hot Midwest summer day when I was about five years old. I was intrigued by watching an ant carry a leaf twice its size, with strength and determination that still fascinates me today. I also remember the delicate feel of a ladybug’s dance circling my palm. I watched her tiny wings spread, preparing for flight, and then, suddenly, she changed her mind. I wondered if she liked me as much as I liked her. At night, when looking up at the midnight sky, I believed the twinkling stars were holes in heaven where God could peek through and beam his light on the good people of the world. As a child, I believed in God, but I also feared him. I believed that only good people were privy to his light.

At that young age my thoughts were still fanciful. As an adult, a hard reality hit me, and I came to understand that some children never reach an age where they are able to experience nature’s small wonders or contemplate a higher source. And I thought, How tragic. For no child should have to live a life of stolen innocence, a life of stolen beauty. No child should have to live with fear on a daily basis; no child should have to feel shame, humiliation, or guilt for something over which he or she had no control. It became maddening to me that as adults we weren’t fulfilling our basic duty to protect all children—not just our own children but every child. It’s my belief that it’s up to us to ensure that all of their experiences are based on love. We need to help them learn self-respect and give them a sense of dignity and pride. I believe it’s also our duty to give them the freedom to experience all that life and nature has to offer. This is not a choice between can or can’t. As adults, we have the power to provide a safe, stable, and loving future for our children. When we say we can’t do that, we create lasting effects that will follow an abused child into adulthood.

Many adults who have survived abuse are able to cope in society at a normal level by burying the abuse deep within them. I did this for a very long time. I was very good at putting on an outer appearance that I was a normal person with no skeletons. When people asked about my childhood, I’d lie and say it was great. All the while those skeletons danced in my head, laughing at the power they had over me.

I’d witnessed others who were able to cope by undergoing therapy that kept them functioning on a fairly normal level. More often than not, however, I would see those who were unable to cope, perhaps because the extent of the abuse was just too much to bear. Their abuse caused them to shut down, mentally or emotionally. I came to realize how prevalent abuse was in our society.

Some children survive and grow up and continue the cycle by abusing their own children and sometimes even murdering them. Did you know that, according to childhelp.org, about 80 percent of child maltreatment fatalities involve at least one parent as the perpetrator? There are also abusers who look outside the family and turn their anger toward others. Whatever the case, when a person abuses another person, it inevitably leads to harming oneself because hurting another person damages one’s own psyche. I had to remember this when it came to forgiving my stepfather. I had to remember that he was once an innocent, creative, and lovable child. Perhaps he would have grown up to be all those things if someone had rescued him.

That’s why it’s critical to take action when we hear a child’s cry for help; if that cry goes unattended, it will have lifelong effects. And blaming and ridiculing the adult abusers will not help them alter their behavior. Perhaps when they were children, they were returned to their abusers. Perhaps they were put into foster homes, where they may have received further abuse or neglect. When they grew up and continued the cycle, perhaps they were put in jail without treatment or were ignored because they were deemed social misfits.

According to statistics from the American Society of Positive Care for Children (ASPCC), 14 percent of men and 36 percent of women in prison in the United States were abused as children. And according to childhelp.org, a report of child abuse is made every ten seconds. The United States has one of the worst records among nations; on average, four to seven children die every day from child abuse.

On any given day, you can turn on the news or read in the paper about the latest child abuse case. What is truly sad is that the stories we read and hear about are usually in the news because the child has been tortured, beaten, raped, neglected, or murdered by his or her parents or guardians. And, according to the ASPCC, sadly almost 70 percent of these children are under the age of four. The child has spent his or her entire young life in an atmosphere of horror, but until the tragedy happens, no one had a clue—or at least say they didn’t. No one came to the child’s rescue. As we read or hear about these tragedies, we look at each other and shake our heads. We ask ourselves, How could anyone do such a thing to a child? But as we look to abusers for answers, we don’t like what they have to say. Usually, they are pointing the finger at someone else or blaming a society that ignored them when their own childhood pleas for help went unanswered.

It’s easier to blame abusers than to try to figure out a way to help them. We may ask questions, especially if we hear that the local Department of Children and Family Services already had reports filed on the child in question, but as soon as we turn off the TV or put the newspaper down, it’s out of minds. With so many cases addressed in the news today, it’s clear we have a problem that’s not going away. Some of the most horrific stories in the news are hard to forget. Like the story of four-year-old Mekhi Boone who was pronounced dead on March 5, 2013, at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri. He was beaten to death by his father and suffered multiple injuries, including internal bleeding and bleeding on the brain. He had bruises on almost every inch of his body. The medical doctor on staff who treated Mekhi said of the fifteen thousand victims of child abuse that he’s observed, this was the worst he’d ever seen for a child that age.

And there’s the story of nine-year-old Jarrod Tutko Jr. from Houston, Texas, who, when found dead in his parents’ home, had been so severely neglected he only weighed 16.9 pounds. His sister, who was near death when police found her, was in a similar state of malnutrition and maltreatment.

I remember my stomach turning as I read these stories and my intense feeling of anger at the parents. How could anyone be so evil as to commit these kinds of horrific acts against his or her children?

While it is necessary to punish abusers, it is also necessary to try to rehabilitate them and break the cycle. The statistics for convicted physical abusers are difficult to find because the Justice Department lumps physical child abuse into the violent crime category and does not disseminate the data.

Sex offenders constitute a large and increasing population of prison inmates. Most are eventually released into the community without any kind of rehabilitation. That’s because many prisons aren’t equipped with enough counselors, nor are they funded to offer the right kind of rehabilitation programs. That means that once an abuser is free, he or she is very likely to continue down the same old path of abuse.

After many years of blaming and punishing myself and asking myself why abuse had to happen to me, I finally found some answers. I began reading books and talking about my experience. It also helped me tremendously to open myself to my inner spirit, which is something all of us can do. It was through wonderful authors like Marianne Williamson, Neale Donald Walsch, Caroline Myss, and Iyanla Vanzant that I was able to find a sense of peace within myself. I was reminded that the heart is linked to the essence of who we are, which I believe is directly connected to God. These are my personal beliefs, and not everyone will agree with me, but for anyone who does believe there is a higher source at work in our lives, we must look to that source and not let fear or anger stop us. Many different names have been given to this higher source—God, Buddha, Allah, or Goddess. I choose God because that is the name I feel most comfortable with. Whatever we call the higher source, however, there is one common element that I believe binds us all together: love.

It’s also important to become aware of what right and wrong feel like. Before we make a choice or take an action, we must ask ourselves several questions:

• Will what I am about to do bring happiness or pain to myself or others?

• Am I being impeccable with my word?

• Have I handled an unpleasant situation with grace and compassion?

• Can I see without judgment?

• Can I listen with an open heart?

The higher source at work in our lives can help us answer yes to all of these questions. All we have to do is ask.

Like me, many survivors of abuse have a difficult time believing there is anyone who can help them. We feel abandoned. We have lost our faith that there is a God who is there to help us. We have no sense of guidance. We have lost the ability to see who we are.

I say to abused children and adults, It’s never too late to start believing again. It’s never too late to recover the faith you’ve lost. It’s never too late to rediscover who you truly are. The source of all that is awaits each of us. He has never left us. He never will. He only wants what we want for ourselves—happiness.

If we can embrace the wonder of human life and live with the purpose of bringing happiness to others, we will be amazed at how quickly happiness returns to us. A good place to start is with our precious children. But this is a difficult task because inside we are all children, struggling to gain our hearts’ desires, and in our struggles we adults sometimes overlook our sons’ and daughters’ desires. Sometimes we fail to recognize their most basic needs.

Child abuse doesn’t have to end tragically. There are ways to overcome the past. This may be a dream to those who have grown into adulthood bearing the burden of their pain, shame, and neglect, but it’s time to make their dreams a reality and help them to realize that they are worthy of love and—more important—that they are loved. It’s time for us to take our children back into protective arms and nurture their souls. I offer advice in this book on how we can try to achieve this.

Some believe that each person’s destiny is mapped out long before we are born, and it’s up to us to find out, through love and giving, what that destiny is. Once we discover it, the universe will conspire to guide us. I find this an interesting philosophy. Regardless of whether it’s true, it may be easier for some to believe we will