Violated Child

This (anonymous) courageous survivor's voice was found on Tzedek-Tzedek blogspot. It has been edited for this web site, but it is still quite graphic and could be triggering or upsetting:

Surviving and Healing

I was seven.  My sister was eight.

We went to the Yeshiva for shacharis with Tatty.  Zaidy liked it when we came.

After davening Zaidy took us into his office.  He put his hands under my clothes.

. . .I looked at him shocked.

“Don't look at me,” he said.  “Look at the sefarim.”

I looked at the glass doors, behind them rows of meshnayos and shas, some of the books
too heavy to lift.

I made my mind leave the Rosh Yeshiva's office. . .


If I would have looked into his eyes, would he have seen my terror, my pain?

Would I have seen any shame or guilt in his?

But I was taught to listen and so I looked at the sefarim, not at my grandfather.

After he was done he asked us, “Do I need to get married again?”

Then he told us that he loved one of us more than the other. I knew it was my sister he loved more.

My sister says that she doesn't remember any of this. She is so lucky.


*************

I am an adult now.

I take the younger part of me, my inner child, by the hand and bring her back to the Yeshiva, into the office full of sefarim, back onto the holy territory where she was violated.

She is not scared, because I'm with her. She is enraged.

My grandfather sits on the rocking chair that he kept there.  There is a sefer Torah wrapped in a talis on the shelf behind him.

She opens one of the glass doors and takes out a tome of Shas.  She staggers under its weight.

She is not scared.  She knows I will protect her, and that he can't hurt her anymore.

She uses the book to smash all of the glass in all of the shelves.  She rips, snatches, out the sefarim and throws them at my grandfather and onto the floor. She is furious.  She opens the holy books and rips out the pages, crumples them up and throws them, stamps on them, and stuffs them into his open shocked mouth.

I let her do this.  She needs to do this. . .

. . . Then she takes a broken piece of glass and uses it like a knife to cut off the finger that hurt her. . . He starts to rise.  I warn him with my eyes. You touch her and you’re finished.  He sits back down.
She pulls down the sefer Torah from on top of the shelf behind him. She unwraps it and pulls it open.  Using a piece of broken glass as a knife she cuts a long piece;  Long as an adult scarf.

Holding Parshas Vayehrah she climbs up onto his chair, wraps the Torah around his neck and squeezes it as tightly as she can..


I let her do this.  She needs to do this.

Zaidy's face turns blue, scared eyes popping out on top of the words, “Sodom.”. . .He stops breathing to Parshas Vayerah.

He stops breathing, strangled by the Torah, and the child, who he violated together in his office.


She looks at me.

“Are you done?”

Almost.

She goes over to his shtender and pushes it over.  It falls onto his face. . .

We survey the damage in silence.  We take. . .the broken glass, the torn sefarim, the wounded Torah, the dead Rosh Yeshiva.

We are satisfied.  I take her hand and we leave together...