I was born into a Baptist preacher family, so I literally grew up with a man, that wasn't just my dad, but he was also my pastor. So this man for me was the closest thing to God that I knew, that I trusted, and he actually wanted to be perceived as that. He didn't just make me think that, he made a whole entire congregation of people fall for that, and it worked. What we learned at church, and what I experienced at home, were two different things. Those worlds collided, one day, and my life changed forever. I had noticed that my parents had been fighting a little bit, and my dad would slam the door, which was totally out of character for him and my mom would go visit her parents in Jacksonville, Florida, and we lived in Atlanta. Those visits became more and more frequent, and one of those visits, it was my turn as the oldest (I have four siblings), and each time that my mom would leave, we would literally take turns sleeping in the big bed with Dad. And this had been happening for a long time. It was nothing new, but on this particular night, something very new happened and at the moment, I could not have even described to you. See, I was only 11 years old. My dad was not just the pastor of our church, we had a church school and the kids in my church went and so he was the superintendent of that school as well. And that is where we were educated, and where we were taught things that we were allowed to know. Well, those were not environments where anything regarding sex or anything sexual was ever, ever said. My Dad controlled all of that. So, we were not even allowed to learn about our own bodies, health class was not as it is today. And so the things that were happening that night where my dad crossed the line and changed my life forever. Those things I could not have even explained to someone. I remember saying, "You never get spankings, so you must be perfect" and I remember him laughing and saying, "Well, I get my spankings from God, they're not literal spankings but my discipline comes from the Lord." So he knew that God was watching what he did. But all I knew was that I never saw him say he was wrong, admit he was wrong, and so nothing that he ever did in my head was wrong. What was happening felt very wrong. So I felt like it must be me. Something's wrong with me. And my dad was a master manipulator. He controlled everything around him. And I was no exception. He used my fear of him and my desperate longing to belong to this family that was all I knew, to control me and to keep me quiet because he told me if I told anybody about what was happening, that my mom would leave, and that our family would break up. Well, that was all I needed to hear. My family meant everything to me. This continued and continued, and got more frequent. And one day, my dad sat us down and told us that we were moving to Texas. He was starting a church, and my mom was going to go to Florida, again, and she would be with us in Texas in a couple of weeks. Well, that's not exactly what happened. He said he resigned the church. In January, we took off two days later, never to return. And on the way to Texas, I found out what was really going on.
