Seeing the blue line on my pregnancy test in 2003 was ecstasy. I adored being pregnant. It's easy to romanticize motherhood when it's all about the belly and the booties. But since having my first daughter, and then a second beautiful girl, the images have come back. They're murky, like something in a dark watercolour painting. For at least a moment or two every day, I see the backyard on Queen Street. I remember what happened when I was 10. I once talked to a counsellor about it. "It sounds like it's playing over and over in your head," she said. "Like a movie."
Today I watch my children making Play-Doh hamburgers and dancing to "The Doodlebops" and I ache to protect them. They are saturated in joy, sparkles and pink. They know nothing about evil or people who would seek to hurt them. I tell them, only half believing it, that monsters aren't real.
Roy doesn't deserve a place in my consciousness. I resent him every time he hijacks my thoughts. It doesn't help that he lives near Moncton, N.B., now, less than two hours from my house in Saint John, N.B. Like so many other predators, he served too short a sentence and started a life in a new community. The people on his street probably think he's just another nice, old, churchgoing man. It makes me sick.
Keeping her daughters safe
He can't hurt me again. He will never get close to my children. But there are people like him everywhere, with their puppies, their fake smiles and their twisted minds. They're in churches and malls. They're on the Internet.
So, as my eldest daughter turns five, I am facing facts. I don't want to talk to my kids about the potential for abuse, but I must. (See "Six Ways to Protect Your Kids," on the next page). I am doing my research, learning from experts and finding out what I need to do to keep my children safe. With all that I have been through, with all that I know, I have no excuse for letting them down.
The confused girl in the backyard is now the warrior mother, always watching for the next guise of the boogeyman.
For more information, visit Little Warriors. This Canadian site lists books that help parents and kids talk about sexual abuse, and offers the Stewards of Children training program for parents and teachers across the country.
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