Counselling yesterday was tough going.  We talked a lot through -

• about my difficulties/reluctant to talk about the abuse
• the feelings I have towards my grandad and my perception of him
• the way my family reacted to my two disclosures of abuse
• about how I'm still protecting him
• about whether or not I should have spoke out about the abuse in the first place
• about the nightmares
• about how I still don't feel safe from him
• about some aspects of the trial
• about the grooming process I went through
• about the "little girl" part of me is still stuck - the Court Case did nothing for her

It's amazing some of the links that Emily's making - I mean we have spoke about the reasons I struggle to talk about the abuse.  I had said that when I spoke to my parents about what was going on with the boy at school, everything changed rapidly.  Although, thinking about it now, maybe my family had no choice to react the way they did as the first person I told was a teacher at school - so, by the time my parents found out, wheels were already in motion.  Anyway, with Chris (the boy at school) I told them he was touching me inappropriately under the tables at school and they fought to  have him expelled and moved schools as the school's initial plan of keeping us in separate classes so I didn't have to see him failed.  They fought to protect me from him.  However, 6 months later when I told them about my grandad, and told them it was "worse than the kid at school", all hell broke loose.  Looking back now, the emphasis was on protection was put on him rather than me.  They spoke of jail and police and breaking up the family if I told anyone what happened to me.  I was told not to say anything at school because it would then be "out of their hands".  Everyone was very upset, but no-one mentioned him being the cause of the upset and chaos, or that he should have done it - I made the mess by speaking out, and I felt that if I said anything I would upset people more, potentially break up the family and get my grandad sent to jail.  I remember feeling very worried that I'd upset my grandad, so the best way to calm everyone down was to promise not to talk about it again, and I wrote my grandad a letter promising things, and telling him that I knew he didn't mean it, that I knew he didn't mean to hurt me, and that I still loved him.  Promises like I would never talk about it again, I wouldn't talk to the police, I didn't want him to go to jail and I remember apologising for speaking out and causing all this mess.  Nothing was really dealt with.  I know now that they did confront him and he admitted to abusing me but as I refused to tell them what he'd actually done to me, he never admitted to anything in particular.  Things quickly returned to normal - the only different being that I didn't have to go over to his house with the family, and I was allowed to stay in my room when he came over.  Now, I realise that this meant I was the one being excluded, not him.  My life had to absorb all the changes, whereas normality stayed for him.

Considering all of this, it's no wonder I'm still so reluctant to speak out.  It's been drummed into me that if I do, it'll spell trouble for me, my grandad and the rest of the family.  It also means breaking the promises I made to him.  (Of course, the "little" part of me is petrified because I have spoken to the police, and he is going to jail.)

Looking at how I feel about him/my perception of him - this all gets a bit complicated.  Emily thinks I still look at him as I did when I was being abused - I love him, I want to protect him and want to believe that he can't have known what he was doing, or meant to hurt me.  I can't process yet that although I know I was abused, if I look at his face in my mind, I don't want to think that he was the one who hurt me.  The court case had made me think that he did mean it, and he knew what he was doing, which is hard.  I want to believe that he was being nice to me as he wanted to have a nice relationship with me - but really, there was nothing innocent about it - he was grooming me.  He took advantage of a vulnerable child, and of the fact I had a new step-family and wanted to be liked/loved by them.  I keep trying to think about the manipulative side of the relationship to move my opinion of  him, and ease the guilt I feel for reporting him to the police, but it's hard.  Part of me really wants to believe I was special to him for the right reasons.  It's so hard to think about him in a negative light.  I think though, I need to get to the point of being upset and angry with him to show I'm reacting properly to what happened.  If I'm talking to a friend who's been abused, I can get really angry towards their abuser, but I can't feel that way about my grandad.