You Stole from Me My Childhood

By Laura Lee March

I am the victim of child sexual abuse. It started at the age of four and continued until I was old enough to run. I ran, and ran, and ran until I couldn't run anymore. As hard as I tried to explain my situation with my Dad, I was accused of making it up or just exaggerating. This pushed me farther and farther into the darkness. I lived in the darkness for the first 30 years of my life. Then I finally grasped the hand of God. He led me out of the darkness and into the light. The last 40 years of my life I have held on to his loving grace. Now, I have let go of God at times and fallen back into the darkness of sin, but God has never let go of me. He gently pulls me back out into the light and shows me his goodness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 24, 2023
• ISBN: 9798886168006

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You Stole from Me My Childhood

Laura Lee March

ISBN 979-8-88616-799-3 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88616-800-6 (digital)

Copyright © 2022 by Laura Lee March

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

To Mr. and Mrs. Paul Miller

I Was Afraid to Let You Love Me

You Stole from Me My Childhood

Preface

Peace through Christ

Continued Health Issues

I Pray

The Little Girl Screamed

I Don't Need to See a Miracle

Where Were You, Mother?

Introduction

Childhood Memories

The Golden Rule

Not Today

The Start of the Sexual Abuse: My Early Years

Incest

Judgment

Brother Edwin Davis

I Rest in His Promise

My Sister in Christ

Branches in the Wind

My Brother's Death

I Am Shame

The Victim

Running Away

Christ, My Friend

Stranger, I Am Sorry

My Life Story Continues When I Go to Heaven

Remind Me

She Is Righteous

A True Friend, I Really Miss

Power of the Tongue

God's Mercy

My Marriages

Woman Leaves Male Drivers in Her Dust

Before Christ

Dennis

A Lonely Place

The Day Christ Said Goodbye

Days before Adopting My Daughters

Trying to Get Help through Counselors When We First Got Kecia

Adopting the Girls

Looking for Me

Broken

The Crisis Center

Young Ladies Who Resided at the Family Crisis Center in Shreveport, Louisiana

Run Little Girl

Safe in Your Hands

Sweet and Sassy

Dear Grandma

For Our Society Today, Only God Has the Answers

To Ashely

Ashley's Death and Trial

Ashley's Death and the Trial

How I Was Treated Another Time in the Mental Ward

Trial of Ashley's Husband

The Voice of Abuse

Empty Hands

My Sweet Ashley

My Savior Will Always Be There

Glory

My Thoughts and Opinions The Pandemic

Our Society Today Only God has the Answers

Never

My Last Days: Conclusion

Pandora's Box

For Lisa Steinberg

Bloodstained Cross

Freedom

How Many Times Must I Fail?

A New Ending, a New Beginning

The Last Days

My Father

There's Two of Me

I Could Write a Lot More

I Am Not a Child Anymore

A few of the many jobs I had throughout my life

Individual Behavioral Notes

Prayer List of Girls at the Crisis Center

Mrs. Ashley Scott

Mrs. Scott

Dancing with Angels

Vigil to Mrs. Scott

Lost Loved One

Laura Lee March

Laura Lee, March 4

Donna Lowry

Closing Time

Judging Others

About the Author

To Mr. and Mrs. Paul Miller

My first pastor, Brother Edwin Davis. I once again tried to commit suicide. He helped save my life and soul. Forever grateful. After I fell from grace He never judged me. He was an honest and godly man. I will always love him for his kindness. He counseled me every time I asked. Thank you, Jesus.

Dewayne, I still miss you so very much. He was thirteen years old. This is the only picture I have of him.

My paternal grandparents came to Ellis Island. They worked hard and loved the USA.

Me in the good ol' days. Check out the hair.

Me at the beach.

Me and Sweet and Sassy.

Sweet and Sassy and Georgia.

Every woman needs a glamor shot.

The day of Randy and my wedding.

Friday the 13th, 1994

My gown was really beige. We went fishing on our honeymoon. It was great.

Randy and Georgia

Ashley and my husband of twenty-seven years. They even look alike.

My pink room and my favorite cape.

Ashley's grave site

Ashley's prom

Lessons on how to train a man for his college days.

Ashley's new bicycle—happy, happy, happy.

Christmas for Ashley

Ashley Farrah. The spool Kecia said Ashley pushed on herself. She was three years old. It weighed between a hundred to two hundred pounds. No one else was around. We were inside the house.

Ashley's castle

Ashley the birthday girl and her boyfriend. Note her hands.

Ashley teaching Grandma something?

Ashley and Grandma

A cook one day, a hairdresser the next.

Time to dance

Ashley and Grandma.

Grandma's blanket I made for her. I used one stitch because I didn't know any other; it was reversible.

Kecia, whom I haven't seen for twenty-five years.

Ashley loved all animals.

Ashley and Lori, BFFs.

Ashley being coy again.

Ashley with her fishing hat, shark, and lobster.

Working at the Boys & Girls Club. I was an assistant to the manager Earnest, a very good man. All the children loved him.

Myself at a school crossing at Ashley's school. I was able to walk her home every day during grade school.

My rainy-day apparel

Grandma's last days.

Ashley and Grandma, happy day.

Ashley helping Grandma cook.

Ashley and Grandma.

I Was Afraid to Let You Love Me

(To my stepmother, Helen)

I was afraid to let you love me, to know you really cared.

Too scared to even dream of it, I

never ever dared.

For if I did, then fate would come, and wipe it all away.

That's the way it always was, I

knew love couldn't stay.

So many years I wasted, and the

many nights I'd cry. Running from the shadows, afraid to even try.

While looking for that lasting love, the kind I never knew.

The closer than I seemed to get, The more I ran from you.

But now I see things differently because your love has shown. That you will always be with me, Wherever I may go.

You've proven so many ways and times, your love for me is true. By giving me a mother's love, With all you say and do.

Laura Lee March

May 12, 1989

You Stole from Me My Childhood

You stole from me my childhood, my innocence and youth.

You distorted my reality and

made a lie the truth.

You crept into my bed, like a theft within the night.

And then you took a wrong and tried to make it right.

You told me that you loved me, and then you made me cry. You told me it was my fault, and made me want to die.

You told me I was crazy, and

that I'd never ever change.

Then talked me into keeping, the secret and the blame.

You tore me into pieces, my body and my soul.

And hid then in a secret place,

where no one else could go.

Laura Lee March

March 17, 1978

Preface

As I enter my later years of life, I realize that the reason I have been able to get to this point is because of the love and saving grace of Jesus Christ. It was not until I was lying in yet another hospital bed after another failed suicide attempt that I finally allowed God to enter my heart. An old country preacher talked and prayed with me and introduced the fruits of the Spirit to me. It was not easy—nothing ever is if it's worth it—but it would be my lifelong dream if I could help just one more person besides myself. The changes took place after I left the hospital, and to this day, it is nothing less than a true miracle. Come with me as I take you through my life and see for yourself that perhaps you or someone you know is also living with the scars of sexual abuse. Now I have never written a book, but I have written some poems. And throughout the book, I will be placing some of the poems that I have written to emphasize feelings hard to put down on paper. For you see, my sexual abuse started when I was a small child at the hands of my own father.

My story is like a river meandering through our country, a lot like the mighty Mississippi. As the river runs, we can't predict the twist and turns that will take us places that we don't want to go. I have had to be strong when fear engulfs me because I was living in hell by myself, burdened by so many labels of mental illness and hopelessness that would devour my soul of all things good—a place so dark and evil with no doors or windows to escape such confusion, loneliness, helplessness, fear, self-hatred, and no hope of any future.

Having never known my mother, I grew up without the love and nurturing of a normal childhood. My brother and I were wards of the state and bounced around the social system until we were old enough to run. Even though I have had some terrible experience over the years, I can look back, and I am glad I was not successful with my attempts at taking my own life.

I have come to know true love and have met some wonderful people on my journey. One such person is my husband, Randy. He and I have now been married for almost thirty years. Together we have re-lived my life numerous times; he has shared all the happiness hardship, loss, and pain that I have. So please understand that my intent in writing this book is the hope of helping others who are living with the pains of sexual abuse.

It was hard for me to believe in any person, to hope to find someone who would help me and my brother. I honestly believe in that, especially where men were concerned. Oh yes, I had been married several times, and unfortunately, most all of them were fools. Not as big of a fool as I was. I had no idea how to socialize, not only with men but with women also. I had no one. I was married very young just to get away from my dad, who was a pedophile. We never saw my mother or heard anything about her. My dad only talked about her when no one was around. He always said she was a whore, and at four years old that was not a good time for me to learn about this. I didn't know what a whore was, and it took me many, many years to even know what that meant. But many years later, I did find out what that was. It was the only thing he said about her. He told me every negative thing she had done in her life, and he put me in his life as a substitute for her. I didn't even look like her. My brother did. I look more like my dad, and I hated that because I learned to hate him with the hate so huge it could move a great mountain to fill up the sky.

He treated myself and my brother with such evil contempt that he didn't even know how to smile. He was so evil and so angry that he would break wooden chairs across our backs. He drank whiskey constantly, and he told people I ran away because I wanted attention. Not so; he treated my brother and I like dogs. He never changed. He remarried later in his life and was equally mean to his new wife. He was the devil incarnate. She had never been married, and all her family was deceased. She was such a lady. We met when I was pulling two of my motorcycles behind my car in a U-Haul. I stopped by my grandfather's, and he told me that my dad had remarried. I called them to see if I could come visit. They gave me a time. When I walked to the door, I heard my stepmother say, You better answer that door. It's your daughter. And all I could think of was, I am going to like this lady, and I did more than that. I loved her. When she died, she left money for the sexual assault center in town. It was the nicest thing anyone ever did for me. I never told her what he did to me and my brother. I knew she would figure it out. I miss her.

Peace through Christ

Sometimes, Dear Lord, I want to run

throw up my hands and shout I'm done.

It seems that life's so hard to bear at times it hurts too much to care.

I'm hanging from a single thread,

with feelings of despair and dread.

I've seen my dreams go racing by, as though I fail at all I try.

So weary now, too sad to cry, just reaching for an answer why.

I'm clinging to your love for me, and for a time, it's all I see.

But then I feel a gentle tug that brings me back to those I love.

By tender smiles, a caring hug, that small, soft voice from up above.

And once again you've filled my need,

I pray that I am never freed.

From that thread that holds me to your peace through Christ, eternal true.

Laura Lee March

January 4, 1984

I have been asked by Brother Paul Miller and his lovely wife to write the story of my life.

Brother Paul is the editor of the Calvary Messenger. Brother Paul is one of the pastors at the Cedar Crest Amish Mennonite church in Hutchison, Kansas. Mr. and Mrs. Miller are in the golden years of their