Stimson

Description

Jill Stimson’s memories of childhood sexual abuse by her father. “In times of intimacy with her husband [beginning in the late 1960s], Stimson began having disturbing flashbacks”—both vague and horrifying. For years, she struggled with low self-esteem and other problems, but she never identified the source of the flashbacks. “It wasn’t until 1982 that Stimson learned what happened.” Her mother, moved by the knowledge that her ex-husband was occasionally babysitting Stimson’s daughter, told her, in hopes of protecting the granddaughter, that “when you were a little girl your father molested you.” The mother had seen physical evidence at the time, had confronted the father, and had even consulted a lawyer (Shannon).