Robert Noel Contributor, MDI
Because of my dad, I am “Me Too.”
In truth, he was my stepdad, but my mom forced me to call him “dad.” He married my mom when I was around four years old. He fucked me for a few years from about five to eight years old. Even though the sexual assaults stopped after about three years, the verbal and physical assaults remained in effect. Sometimes I would wake up with a sore ass and back and sometimes a sore throat from him jamming his cock down my throat.
My dad would sexually assault me while I was asleep. Sex to me was always violent, and always about the loss of power. I was scared into confidentiality when he was finished because he threatened to kill me if I spoke to anyone about it. Dad would gloat when he took me to Catholic Church or CCD. He said that no matter how hard I prayed or to whom, he was still going to have sex with me. He said that I was his to do with as I pleased and that includes getting rid of me with adoption if need be. He said “God” won’t stop him from continuing what I’m doing to me.
He was right in no matter what I did I was powerless to stop him and “God” never struck him down.
He was 27 when he started sexually abusing me, and he was 30 when he finished raping me. His toxic effect on me as a small child had me block out the memories for over thirty years. When my memory returned in July 2009, I promptly changed my last name and took back a name from my mom’s side of the family.
Robert Gutierrez became Robert Noel.
I now live with PTSD because of the abuse that my dad did to me. I see psychiatrists, psychologists, and I take medication to help me sleep at night.
In 2010, I sent him a detailed letter filled with the poison of all my memories of his sexual abuses. Then a year later in 2011 I walked into his work to surprise him just to have a brief completion talk with him. He asked me why I wanted to talk to him since he had read the previous letter. I told him, “Because that letter was true and you know it.” He couldn’t look me in the eye and was so nervous that he was literally shaking. I bluntly told him that he was the worst person that I ever had to be with in my life and his sexual abuse of me has had long lasting consequences in all of my relationships.
As I shook his hand my last sentence to him was “Even old Nazis still get prosecuted.” He suddenly started stuttering and his mouth hung open from shock. I had never seen my dad afraid of me.
Never.
Until this day.