Have you ever "not been believed"?

Parent Cafe
1

I don’t know what to title this thread, but my question springs off the whole Assault thread/Kavanaugh discussion. While my story is not one of assault, but one of discrimination, it also ends with my not being believed and being vilified by those who were responsible for addressing the actions of the accused. (Or at the least, they “claimed” not to believe it.) The feelings of frustration and helplessness I felt then are revived with every new incident where the purported victim is vilified, often without much of a hearing out.

So, fellow CC forumites - have you been in a situation, an important situation, where you were the one being dismissed and vilified rather than the one judging the truth of someone else’s statements?

2

When I was 15, a friend of my parents, tried to molest me. I used to babysit for his kids. He was a respected doc at the local hospital. He even tried when my Mom and his family were in his house! I put a stop to it and never said anything except to my best friend. When I finally told my mom 3 years later, she thought I had just misinterpreted it. I got furious with her. Gee, no Mom, I didn’t misinterprete it when he pushed me up against the wall and started kissing my neck.

I totally understand why young girls keep secrets, especially when an actually rape or physical abuse didn’t take place.

She never told my dad, nor confronted him other than to give him dirty looks and cut them off socially. He must have figured I finally told and she knew as they moved to another state a year after that.

3

My parents had a family friend who routinely tried to feel me up. My mom told me I was being ridiculous, did nothing about it, and told me I wasn’t being rude when I stopped wanting to be hugged and kissed in greeting.

4

Yes. A family member molested me; my mother didn’t believe me.

5

Ugh, even worse when it’s your own parents who don’t seem or want to believe you. That must have been true in so many of these priest abuse cases.

6

When I was 5, I had a mean babysitter and she wrongly accused me of stealing 20 dollars from her purse. My mom believed her and I got the spanking of a lifetime. I was so sad and bewildered. I will never forget it.

7

My parents believed me when I told them that a relative had molested me. I am very grateful to them for doing so. It was a difficult situation for my mom. She didn’t cut off contact with the relative but did impose boundaries and the behavior didn’t occur again. It turned out he had done similar things to other young women.

When I was an adult, a member of my then-husband’s family treated me poorly, in front of my husband and children, and then denied he had engaged in the behavior. I felt angry and I felt reduced.

8

Yes. As I’ve told on here many times, I was sexually assaulted as a young teen by the commissioner of my softball league. It wasn’t just my word. There was physical evidence.

But his pillar of the community status led to me and my family being driven out of the community rather than him facing justice.

I’ve had my parents on my side through everything (the above and much more). I truly can’t imagine not having the support of our parents. Sending hugs to all of you who have gone through that (((hugs)))

9

My BIL was inappropriate with me when I was 13. It took me years to tell my mother, and she totally discounted it and didn’t want me to talk about it again. Fast forward to this month … my sister finally divorced him after 42 years. I told my mother last week, “I tried to tell you he was an ***hole.”

10

Yup. My 4th grade teacher thought I cheated on a reading test because I scored on the 12th grade level. He hauled me to the principle’s office. She, to be fair, took a neutral stance. But I had to spend the rest of the year in his classroom under his thumb, and he made my life miserable. Did a jig many years later when I heard he died.

11

I can’t think of a time when I haven’t been believed, it’s pretty inconceivable to me. However, I am very low drama, don’t exaggerate and rarely complain, and I think my family realized early on that if I said something, it was the truth and I was probably minimizing it.

I also determined pretty early on that I needed to take care of myself (my family is mildly insane), so I was fortunate enough to be able get out of any situation that could have turned bad. The ones that were dicey, I held myself responsible for not avoiding or getting out of them quickly enough.

12

My son was accused of cheating on–of all things-- a kindergarten entrance exam! He was being tested for “early admission” because his birthday was 2.5 weeks after the cutoff. I was unaware of the early cutoff since we’d just moved to that state. I didn’t even know there was a test, let alone what was on the test. “Well, SOMEONE must have coached him,” the counselor said, “because no five-year-old uses the word ‘vehicle.’” She was so smug and sarcastic. I was baffled. On the way home I asked my kid how the word “vehicle” came up. He was shown a picture with a car, truck, motorcycle, tractor etc. and asked what they had in common. A typical answer might be “things that go” or “things with wheels.” My kid said they were “vehicles.” I asked where he learned that word. He said his preschool class had taken a field trip to the city garage, and they saw all the big vehicles there.

13

Wow. Reading the thread you can see exactly why so many people don’t expect anyone to believe them in these situations and so don’t even bother to report stuff.

The people who I can depend on have always believed me when I’ve told them something.

14

The stories here break my heart and make me angry at the same time.

Thankfully I was not sexually assaulted, but when I was beginning a career my competency was questioned all the time.
“Are you sure” that number is correct? Yes, I was sure, I checked it, It was as if a young woman could not possibly be right.

15

I know what you mean, @FallGirl. It is particularly awful when people aren’t believing traumatic stories from young kids. And if your parent won’t believe you, who will?

16

My 3 year old accused her older sister (8 yr old) of heating her. I was very mad at the 8 yr old, even though she kept on denying it. It wasn’t until she said to me, “Mommy, do you really think I would hit her?” that really got me thinking. D1 at the age had lied to me from time to time, so I assumed she was also lying about not hitting her sister, but in my heart I knew she would never hurt her sister. I then turned around to look at D2 to see her putting her head down. I am glad I chose to believe D1.
I’ve had been accused of doing something at work that I didn’t do. It was hard to prove because of he said/she said. Even though at end my employer believed I didn’t do what I was accused of, but the damage was done. I couldn’t continue to work for them. In my case, I wish there was more of investigation done.

17

One of my kids was accused of lying about her dad having cancer. Oy vey.

18

My freshman year, one of my college professors, who was a priest, accused me of cheating on an essay test. He said my answers were too similar to one of my classmates, yet she was not accused of cheating, only me! She was a friend, and for the test, we had been given a study guide with several political issues. We had to choose a side of the issue and defend it. A few of us from the class had gotten together to sort of debate both sides of each issue prior to the test, so in discussing the issue, we apparently both had similar arguments/reasons when writing our essays IN CLASS (so not like we wrote papers outside of class and turned in). I was furious b/c I never missed class, was a frequent participater while she constantly skipped class. However, she had a very Irish first and last name (he was Irish) so when she was in class, he was not shy in showing favoritism. In the end, I won the case b/c he had no proof but I did not get the grade I deserved on that test. Then, at the end of the semester, I ended up in the hospital with a virus and missed three of my exams, tho I took the first two while very sick and then basically collapsed. He accused me of lying about being sick so I could make up the exam. Um, I lived FOUR HOURS away from school and had to come back to campus a month later to take that exam and one other, the other one was a writing class so the professor just gave me the essay questions and let me send them to him. Why would I have purposely put myself in that situation? Funny thing is, despite the priest being a jerk, I loved that class which led me to choose political science as my major!

In terms of sexual harassment, etc., I was fortunate to be in a situation where I was believed. I was working for a bar association for a committee of powerful, well respected lawyers from various law firms, prosecutors, etc. Occasionally, we had joint meetings with lawyers from another bar association. We had a few women on our committee, but the other bar association was made up of a bunch of older, white men. At one of our joint meetings, a female attorney was being discussed and these men kept referring to her as a girl and saying some other disrespectful, irrelevant things about her that they would never have said about any of the male lawyers that were discussed. During the meeting, one of our female attorneys totally called them out and put them in their place. Later when I left the meeting, I was caught in the elevator with all three of these men (I was young, attractive and alone with them). They made started making some inappropriate, uncomfortable comments to me in the elevator. I sort of brushed them off, thankful for the car service waiting for me outside to take me home, a perk for this meeting which was held at their association far from my office. Due to the nature of my committee’s relationship with this other committee, in the moment, I did not feel comfortable in my subordinate role, to tell them off. The next day, I happened to be on the phone with the female lawyer who had called them out the night before. I told her how much I respected her for speaking out, etc. I then told her what happened to me in the elevator. She convinced me to go to my boss, a middle aged white male, and tell him. He was horrified but believed me and immediately placed a call to the ringleader. The couple times I had to deal with them after that, they left me alone. but I have never forgotten how relieved I was that I was believed and defended, and that their behavior would not be tolerated by our committee. That was 25 years ago - sad to see we have not come a long way.

19

I meant “hitting” not “heating.” :slight_smile:

20

My husband has been fired three times for not being able to get along with his church leadership. The last time he was ordered by our denomination authorities to undergo a psychological evaluation.

I was offered a chance to speak with counselors at the facility but declined. At the time (six years ago) I was afraid that if I was honest about the way he rages at me and throws massive tantrums (ex turning off the main circuit breaker to the house when I asked why a fan was on in a room we never use) it would prevent him from regaining his pastoral authorization.

He used my refusal to speak and blamed everything in his life on me. HIS evaluation speaks more about me than him, and all of it lies. The psychologist even “helped him in a video consult to tell the denomination authorities that he was a victim of spousal abuse by his wife”). In reality I hit him once on the shoulder to get his attention when he wrested the lawnmower away from me and his cardiologist doesn’t want him mowing. Psychologist also stated in her report that I am bipolar (diagnosed apparently by my husband; my counselor says I am not).

Flash forward six years: I was sharing this story at breakfast on a clergy retreat and the pastor across from me asked if this had been at—— facility and was the psychologist’s name —? He then said he had worked at that clinic and she has a reputation of being easily misled by narcissists and totally bumbling diagnoses of narcissistic people. Husband had actually bragged to me that she had discounted a few of his test results while speaking with him because he had charmed her.

Last time I ever compromised myself to defend him.