Shawn Hornbeck / Ben Ownsby

Everything you said rings true. My mother was a victim of molestation in the 70s by her uncle. Only my grandmother believed her. My grandma felt guilty cause she was a single mom and her brother was the only one who could watch her kids. Then when she found out what happened, she threatened her brother and family and protected her kids. We still don't talk to most of our family cause everyone accused my mother of being a liar and saying that he never did anything to her. My great-uncle has been convicted of molesting over 30 kids (some who actually killed themselves) and has been in and out of prison and parole and is a very scary person who even attempted to harm my sisters and I. He was called innocent and was protected by others in the 70s and 80s. It wasn't until the 90s that he started getting convicted of child molestation. They're about to release him from prison soon and it's really irritating my mom. She's still affected by the abuse. She has bad self esteem, depression, and never truly smiles.

It's sad what these kids have to go through and it's sad that it took forever for these issues to actually be addressed to the world and made known. My mother and uncle escaped from being kidnapped because they had to go through traumatic events in order to know what to watch out for while many of these victims don't have the knowledge and thus are easily baited into these horrible situations.

Even now-a-days, kids are still not being taught to watch out. My sisters and I were raised to be careful, but we had friends whose parents told them it doesn't happen as often now that it's been made public.