How Brothers Shouldn’t Touch Sisters
Content warning: Sibling sexual assault. Victims’ real names are shared with consent.
I’ve written this article so many times in my head. Washing dishes, getting ready for bed, or writing something else altogether I’ll be multitasking by drafting different versions of this piece in my mind. Turning over sentences and words, trying to figure out how I can articulate what happened to me as a child without causing much of a ripple. Although I know there will definitely be ripples when this is published.
Before I jump right in, I need to back up. Way up. I want to give you a brief little snippet of four children. They were happy, energetic, and playful siblings. Typical kids, am I right? But something shifted when one of those kids, a young girl no older than seven years old, was inappropriately touched by her brother. This boy was her senior by several years — eight, to be exact. He was fifteen when he took advantage of her naivete and trusting nature. I’ll spare you the details. But this little girl held those details in her mind for nearly two decades before finally confronting her brother about the pain he had caused. Despite getting that closure and moving forward, she chose not to speak to her brother anymore. For all she cared, he wasn’t her family anymore. Because brothers aren’t supposed to touch sisters like that. And she wasn’t going to let him have any more power over her.
Dark, right? This story is 100% true, sadly. And it’s not even my own. This twisted tale took place between my father and his youngest sister, Michelle. The reason I’m even divulging this is because it may very well tie into my own story. Such behavior could be linked to a genetic trait. Something that makes biologically related men more likely to engage in criminal activity. But maybe what happened in my family isn’t genetic. Maybe there was something else at play that caused two different male relations to hurt their own sisters.
So now I want to go into my own story. I must warn you, dear reader, because I’m not going to protect my abuser anymore. I’m not going to soften the sharp edges of my story. I won’t censor the details. I’m not hiding from my past because I strongly believe that there are multitudes of women out there who still remain silent about their past abuse and trauma. And I think that it’s important to talk about. That’s why I chose to do this. I’m not saying it’s not hard, because it could be one of the most difficult things you do in your whole life. Writing this story itself took me three months before I even began one sentence. But just because it’s hard, doesn’t mean you should give up.
It was in the summer of 2002. I was sitting in a computer chair next to my eldest brother, Trevvor. He was fourteen at the time. I was watching him play computer games. I was wearing a pink skirt with lighter pink lace trim and a white t-shirt. I was nine. My mother was parking the car and taking out groceries when she saw us through the window. She wasn’t positive what she was seeing, convinced she was just at a bad angle. Because what she thought she saw was her son’s hand up her daughter’s skirt.
My mum swiftly made her way to where we were. I remember her face clearly because it confused me. Her words came out so calmly, but her face didn’t match her words. It was all bunched up like she was about to cry. “Laurrel,” she said. “Could you please come help me with something real quick?”
Years later, my mother relayed to me exactly how she felt when she found us. She had been trying desperately to stay calm so she wouldn’t make matters worse. She didn’t want to freak us out. Although every atom in her body was begging her to run in there screaming “What the hell?” All she wanted was to get Trevvor away from me; to get me away from Trevvor. “It was so strange a moment,” she recalled when discussing the event with me in October 2017. “A horrible moment. You were just two kids…”
She went upstairs to find my dad. He didn’t believe her and wondered what she was talking about. Mum was a mess and dad was indifferent. He just wanted to get it all over with and reluctantly approached his son. “Trevvor, say you’re sorry and that it was wrong.”
But my mum knew there had to be something else done about it. This wasn’t one of those “oops, my bad” moments that just needed a quick apology. It wasn’t spilled food or a torn tablecloth. More people had to be involved, my mother knew that much. Dad, on the other hand, fought her about it every step of the way. He refused to be involved in any part of the process. My mum went with Trevvor alone to the police station to have him reported as a juvenile. She took me to the doctor for an examination. My mother was the one who found us both therapists. She was the one who decided to tell her friends in order to create a support system.
I, however, seemed fine. I was distraught at first because I saw how distraught my mum was. But I couldn’t fathom why she was so upset. Trevvor was just playing a game with me, that’s all. A quiet game that he didn’t like me talking about. A game he liked to play whenever we built forts together or when he visited my bunk bed during our parents’ Date Night or any time he was supposed to babysit his three younger siblings while our parents left to socialize and run errands. It was a funny sort of game, though. I still can’t recall exactly how long we played it. And for a long time I tried desperately to remember why it began, how it began. Why he chose to indulge his curiosity and budding sexual appetite by convincing me he had a new game for us to play. The game of me taking my clothes off and my brother exploring my skin, because he asked. The game of me putting on training bras and inviting him into the bathroom with me to look, because he asked. The game of him lying on top of me in my bunk bed fully clothed while I had to wear nothing at all, because he asked. The game of me kicking my youngest brother out of a handmade fort, because Trevvor wanted me all to himself. I was a loud child, a friendly little thing. And, as are most children, I was completely trusting of people I was meant to trust. Like my brother. So I let him do all of these things to me. He would never undress himself, not even a little bit. Not even one zipper. It was only ever me. But my body was his playground. His hands roved my prepubescent crevices and corners. Me giggling, because it tickled. Him telling me to be quiet, or to get under a blanket because he could hear someone coming. It’s too fucking easy to tell a child that something is a game. Because they love games. They understand that games come in many different shapes and sizes. They know that plenty of things could be games. Hiding is a game. Matching things is a game. Puzzles and “I spy” and “where’s Waldo” are games. So why couldn’t taking your clothes off for your brother be a game?
Needless to say, it was a fucked up game. It was a game I don’t want anyone else to ever play again. My own father played this sort of game with his sister once, long before my brother’s young mind ever conjured the same thing up for himself to play. It was sick then and it’s sick now. It makes your insides crawl, your teeth grit, and your eyes heat up.
The game could have continued for days, weeks, months. But I don’t know. Perhaps the only person on this planet who does know is my brother. I say “perhaps” because even he could have forgotten, although he was nearly five years older than me at the time and I can remember quite a good bit of it. But I don’t know because I don’t want to ask him. I don’t want to talk to him. He does not deserve to have a sister anymore, because he threw that privilege away the day he decided to use me to sate his sexual curiosity. I know he knew it was wrong because he would shush me if I got too loud during his game. When I would come out of my room holding a training bra for him to see, he would hurriedly usher me back from whence I came. He was a child, yes, but a child who knew that what he was doing was wrong.
For those of you who think I should go easy on him because he was “just a kid”, first of all, I don’t like you. Second of all, that’s where this second part comes in. That’s right. There’s more. Trevvor decided he wasn’t quite finished.
I went to therapy for years after the incident. First there was Mary Green of Children and Youth. She was kind, patient, and gracious. I remember running up the two flights of stairs to her office, which was more of a play room than anything. It was outfitted with a small TV, a little sandbox, shelves of toys, and boxes of games. She would always say “You don’t need to talk about it.” So I didn’t. Why would I need to talk about a game?
I’m sure that at some point, someone sat me down (probably my mum) and told me that what Trevvor did was horrific and inappropriate and should have never, ever, ever happened to me. I’m sure that someone told me it was sick and wrong. But I was very young and I don’t remember having that talk. I just remember nice people letting me play with toys that weren’t mine and telling me I didn’t have to talk if I didn’t want to. For many years after the incident, I believed myself unharmed. But I also didn’t talk about it. I thought I had escaped trauma scratch-free. But I also wouldn’t talk about it. Only when I started talking about it did I realise that something was really, really wrong.
But it was years before I talked about it. Because even though I had supposedly survived from the trauma unscathed, I still felt ashamed and guilty about the incident. There was never any reason to share my truth. And after high school, I moved in with Trevvor to retreat from the small town we grew up in. Because we were mature adults who had moved past the unfortunate incident from years ago. Almost five years my senior, he already had a wife, house, and steady job. A kid was on the way. And yet all of these things that painted a picture of being a perfect adult couldn’t couldn’t mask the shameless child within.
His wife would oftentimes visit her family whenever Trevvor was particularly slammed with accounting work. She didn’t enjoy him coming home at odd hours and waking back up super early to do it all over again. She preferred the peaceful familiarity of her childhood home a couple hours’ drive away. Even when she was home, she wasn’t attached at the hip to Trevvor. Not really. She would be upstairs, he and I would be in the kitchen. I’d give him a hug to welcome him home from work and just like that it happened. So subtly, so quickly, it couldn’t have counted as anything. But I counted it. Because his hand was on my ass. And it had no business being anywhere near there. It wasn’t the last time that happened, though it was the first. I kept giving him opportunities to be a proper brother and he turned them inside out. Once he was going downstairs and I followed him since I needed to use the computer down there. I decided to jump on for a piggyback ride, and just like that, his hands were planted firmly on my ass. Maybe he was just trying to adjust me so I wouldn’t fall, but I was an adult. And that’s not how he should’ve behaved, given our past. It made me squirm a little each time I gave him an inch and he took a mile. And these incidents were so, so small that I was positive if I ever tried to tell his wife or even my mother about them, they’d just raise their eyebrows and think I made it up. And if anyone tried to talk to Trevvor about it? He’d deny it. 100%. So I didn’t tell his wife. And I never confronted Trevvor. We weren’t kids anymore. He was grown with a college degree and a new family. I was trying desperately to become a normal adult but the shadows from my past kept tripping me up. I began wondering if it wasn’t the small town’s fault that I had turned out this way. For the first time in my life, I began growing angry at my brother for hurting me all those years ago. The last couple years I’ve chosen to take a step back from my relationship with Trevvor. I’m missing out on my nephew and niece’s lives because I decided to cut their father out of my life, but this is how I know to be safe. This is the healthiest road for me to take right now.
My mother has been a real trooper to fill me in on missing details, like where my first therapist worked and how she chose to address the situation initially. I’m thankful that she’s supported me as I’ve worked through my emotions about this. I never used to talk about it, but now I want to tell people about it left and right. Talking about my brother. About the others. About my therapy, the diagnoses I’ve had, and how I’ve chosen to deal with toxic people. Every time I talk about it, it hurts a little less. And that’s all I’ve ever wanted: to hurt less. I used to cry every time I brought up my past abuse, but now I can tell a friend my story without shedding a single tear. It’s not that I’ve grown numb to the fact that my brother sexually molested me as a child or any of the other stuff, I promise you it’s because I’m getting stronger. Even saddled with depression outbreaks, insomnia, anxiety, and seizures, I am getting stronger. I’ve wanted to publish this story since the whole #MeToo movement began, and now I have. Everyone deserves to tell their story. I swear you’re not alone. Especially with sibling sexual abuse. You should not be ashamed. You should not feel guilty. What happened was not your fault. And I believe that, one day, you’ll be so strong you won’t even recognise yourself.
Laurrel Allison is an American writer traveling around the world. Follow Laurrel on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to see what she’s doing and where she is.
