A Short Testimony
My name is Darlene. My father is a serial rapist.
In 1966, Claire was a 16 year old girl. She was invited to the movies by a new boy at school. He was charming and her parents gave permission. On the way home, it began to rain. He suggested a shortcut. He raped her in the sand pits, between the theater and her home.
She was too embarrassed to say a word. She didn’t tell anyone. When she found herself pregnant, she went to her mom, but still didn’t fully give up the details. In her mind, she says, we were in it together. Social pressure required she marry the boy. They lived in a very small community. She thought he would treat her decently. He had apologized, but he was violent and his family was cold and heartless.
He raped her for almost two years before she told anyone. When she found herself pregnant again, Claire told her mother that if she didn’t get her out of there, she would kill herself. They had been living in a shed on his family’s property.
I found out the details at a pretty young age. My mom had come from a disfunctional home and she had a lot of problems. We moved every year, even when she was later married to her second husband.
Mine was a tumultuous childhood. My sister and I spent weekends with our father’s family. He was allowed to use us for his own gratification with permission from his family. They warned us to be silent. The threats were very scary. My mother was oblivious.
We were abused for years, but we both, my sister and I, are glad to be alive. We are glad that neither of us were killed by abortion, grateful that our mother chose life for us.
In my teens, I ran away, was kidnapped, trafficked, sold, raped, beat up, on drugs and alcohol. I wandered the streets, lost and fatherless, by choice because my father was a rapist. The whole city seemed to know of his brutality.
It wasn’t until I was pregnant that I had any desire to change. My baby’s father was a married, organized crime boss. I was his house pet, just one of the girls he’d purchased from a pimp. He threatened that if I didn’t have an abortion, he would kill me. I believed him. In fact I knew without a doubt that he would. I made an appointment in his presence.
That night, I had a dream of the procedure in living color. It was accurate and devastating. I managed to fake the abortion. I mean to say, the evening after the appointment was to have been, I pretended that I had gone through with it. He had insisted I go out to dinner with him. I was terrified that he would find out, but I had to risk it. I told him that now that I had done this, I would move away and he let me go. He was convinced.
I began to heal and realized that my life mattered. A person conceived in rape is a person. Our lives are not worth less than someone who was born out of a loving relationship. I have five children and two grandchildren. My children have businesses, jobs, ministry. They are all productive citizens. I have served my community in many ways on a variety of occasions over the years. I have been a practicing nurse for 25 years.
The idea that society believes a woman pregnant by assault ought to have an abortion is totally repugnant to me. Rapists, like my father, are not subject to the death penalty. Yet, people would have me or another child killed for his offense. This is not logical.
Subjecting a mother to abortion is similarly abhorrent. The baby growing inside of her is her baby. It is not the rapists baby, it’s hers. To pull that child out, limb from limb kills her baby. I see it as another assault. She has been assaulted. Her dignity and autonomy has been violated by a rapist. When she finds that she has become pregnant, then assaulted again and her maternity stolen by an abortionist. To add the trauma of abortion to the trauma of rape only compounds the pain. Pregnancy is temporary. A woman who offers her child up for adoption can sigh and say she did the right thing in a bad situation.