What's the purpose of this post? I honestly don't know. I'm taking advantage of the anonymity to talk about things that aren't usually said out loud... but I should.

I have a daughter and as she grows up, I am increasingly overcome with fear, the terror that she will experience situations that many women have gone through, including family members, good friends, and myself.

I constantly tell her that her voice matters, that she can count on me for anything, and that I'll always be there for her. I tell her she can say no, that she shouldn't be afraid to say what she feels and thinks, that it's okay to set boundaries. I emphasize this whenever I can because I don't want her to forget it.

Now that I am an adult and I review several situations from my adolescence, I see that they were wrong and that I never asked for help, we never asked for help.

Pedophiles don't look like we imagine. They're out there, closer than you think.

• My best friend from childhood, who was 13 or 14 at the time, "fell in love" with her aunt's boyfriend. I don't know how it happened, but I know they talked a lot on the phone, and he started asking her for intimate photos. When she refused, he would get angry with her and stop talking to her. My friend would cry and beg, and eventually, she would give in. Yes, he also convinced her to go to a hotel and have sex. He was about 20 years older than her. She manipulated her and told her she couldn't tell anyone, and even did everything she could to break the bond my friend had with her aunt.
• At school, I had a classmate who boasted about having an older boyfriend, a man in his forties. They started a relationship when she was 13, he got her pregnant at 16, and when her body and mind were no longer those of a teenager, he left her. That man was her godfather.
• At my school I learned of 2 cases of 2 different teachers who had relationships with some students.
• When I was about 10 years old, there was a man who worked near my mother's business. He told me he was going to marry me when I grew up. I write this with deep disgust and rage. I never told my parents; I was just a child. At the time, I didn't understand the gravity of his words, nor the weight and intentions behind what he said. My daughter is 9 years old now, and I hope she never encounters a piece of trash like this in her life. I hope she tells me anything anyone says to her so I can act immediately. Years later, that man I'm talking about got his 11 year old stepdaughter pregnant. Yes, that child was 11 years old. She had the baby, no clinic would perform an abortion, and worst of all, the girl's mother did nothing about it and continued living with that man.
• When I was about 16 or 17, I went on a trip to another state with my gymnastics team. Our coach tried to sexually assault my teammate. He came into our room, supposedly to talk, lay down on the same bed where we were, and started touching and fondling her. We were both frozen, in shock, but after several minutes, my teammate reacted, grabbed my hand, and pulled me away from the room. He stormed out, upset that he hadn't gotten what he wanted, went back to his room, and we went back to ours. When we got back to our city, no one said anything.
• In Venezuela, boys are enrolled in baseball programs with the hope that they'll make it to the major leagues and secure a better future. Girls are enrolled in modeling programs with the same goal; there was a time when it seemed like that was every woman's aspiration. When I was 14, a man tricked me into auditioning for an agency. The agency didn't exist; it was just him and his hands on me. I didn't scream, I didn't say a word, but I was able to run, run like I'd never run before in my life. I was lucky, because I know it could have been worse.
• Riding the bus is like walking into a den of perverts. I saw a man grope a classmate and then snatch her cell phone; we were in our school uniforms. Another time, I was with my little sister, who was about eight years old, and a man tried to touch her legs under her skirt. I immediately pulled her away to stop him, but I didn't say anything or raise my voice. I also remember a man from the bus stop gesturing to me as if he were masturbating. Yes, I was no older than 15 in all three of those incidents.
• In college, I took a class that was very similar to group therapy. In one of the sessions, we had to talk anonymously about something that hurt us. At the end of the exercise, if we wanted, we could reveal our problem. Two classmates had been sexually abused as children. I immediately remembered the statistic that says one in five girls will suffer abuse. It was so horrifying and so accurate that in a classroom of ten women, two of them were part of that statistic.
• My mother, my stepmother, and a friend's mother were all sexually abused as children.

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) estimated the global age-standardized prevalence at 18.9% for women, which mathematically translates to practically 1 in 5. The study also shows that for 67.3% of female victims, the first abuse occurred before the age of 18.

https://www.healthdata.org/research-analysis/library/prevalence-sexual-violence-against-children-and-age-first-exposure-global

These are just the few cases I remember, the few cases I know of, and I am sure that every woman carries with her a history of abuse to a greater or lesser degree than others, and that many have never spoken about it.

It was difficult for me to choose a specific area for this. ~Education , to remind us that we must teach our children to recognize the signs of abuse. ~relationships , to strengthen the bond with our children so they trust us to tell us about their problems and so we can support them. ~HealthAndFitness : a reminder that it's okay to seek professional help for mental health issues if you don't want to talk about it with someone else.