I am 36 and I work as a legal secretary and I live in San Francisco with my husband. I came across your website when I was looking in the net thesaurus under "molest" and then I saw the word "survivor" and here I am. I also saw your organization listed in the resource pages of Courage to Heal. I figure this is the second time I've seen your name, so it must be time to contact you and tell my story.

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This is a very abbreviated version: When I was 17 I was molested by my high school band director in the state of Washington. It was the week before graduation and under the guise of taking me to a bookstore, he drove me home, where he molested me. This was my first intimate contact with anyone, ever. My first kiss, everything. I said, "No, please don't!" about a hundred times and he said, "But you're responding -- you're a natural!" Feeling trapped, I split off and became a rag doll for his perversions. This happened again two more times that summer and I knew if I told my parents they'd blame me, so I kept it secret. Besides, soon I would leave for college and then I'd be free.

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It wasn't until my second marriage broke up in 1994 that I realized I had problems and needed therapy. I'd never forgotten my being molested, but I had no idea that that was the cause of my depression and relationship problems. In fact I told my therapist, "I was molested by my band director but we don't need to talk about that because it was so long ago." HA! Anyway, since then I contacted the school district and started the investigative process when he died -- fifteen years almost to the day after he molested me. So the investigation was closed.

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This year I re-opened the story and I've been working on resolving and closing all these open chapters for healing. Just two weeks ago I wrote to my high school and told my story and I got a call back from them apologizing to me and reassuring me that they now had sexual abuse/harassment education in place. They told me that 7 months ago another victim of his called to report the abuse -- so although I felt bad that he'd hurt someone else (probably many more, too, unfortunately) I felt validated.

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"Mr. T" was so well-liked by so many people in the community. He enjoyed a reputation as one of the best band directors in the state. People loved him. He came across as being very friendly, kind, funny, polite, and supportive, but I now see it was all phony. He used both his reputation and his powerful position as a cover for his perversions. I look forward to finding his grave one day so I can spit on it.