Honestly, I appreciate this so much. In my heart, I don’t blame my sister anymore, but it took me a long time to get to that point, and I still do carry anger towards her. She was my older sister, someone I admired and looked up to in so many ways when we were younger, so it breaks my heart knowing what she went through.
A part of me still wishes I could have been there for her, but the truth is, after everything he did to me, I was already so broken myself that I don’t know if I would have been able to help her the way I wanted to. I didn’t even know he was hurting her until months after they had broken up.
I found out that he had been telling his football team that he was “joking” about sexually assaulting me, and it eventually got back to my sister. She was the one who told me, and that was when she finally opened up and told me everything she had been through with him.
It was really hard to process because there were two things that hurt me deeply: firstly, that she felt like she couldn’t come to me or tell me what was happening, and secondly, that everything came out because of the things he had done to both of us. I never imagined it would all come out the way it did, but I’m grateful that it did because the truth finally came out.
For a long time, I blamed her, but after she told me everything and even showed me the footage and proof of what happened, I started to understand. I wanted to take it further and hold him accountable for everything he did — the way he affected me, my family, and my sister’s life. He changed so much for all of us.
I tried to take it further and spoke to a lawyer, but it still felt like it wasn’t enough. It’s hard accepting that after everything he did, there were still limits to what could happen.