It had always been like that. She had never been exposed to anything else. The violence- the father grabbing a handful of the mother’s hair and slamming her head against the door that lead down to the basement. Screaming, swearing and death threats were an almost a daily occurrence. There was a hole in the door that lead down to the basement as testament to that. He treated her like an infant her entire life. She was his little delusional escape to build a reputation for himself as a good person. An emotional sucky toy that received the same amount of life skills education as the dog he had adopted from the pound when she was maybe five. The dog that became the only thing she understood as a friend with how often she was left alone with it. To escape from the abuse, or to escape parenting responsibility, the mother would always leave and converse with people her father would put down and call names. Sometimes she would bring those people over, or make her meet those people when the father was away. Some would comment on how they could watch her change from the street, even if she did it in a corner of her room, if they stood at the right angle to her bedroom window. The father would always keep her from interacting with anyone outside of his small control circle of his co-workers, the uncle, and other family that would defend him, and not understand how much he enjoyed sadistically lying, abusing and tormenting her. The mother did it to her in her own ways too. She remembered always being dehydrated and skinny. No one had taught her the most basic self-care. She had gone to the bathroom on the floor where the dog had when she was young, and didn’t understand that despite being intelligent, had some feral survival tendencies she fell into from those early forms of abuse. She did not understand them to be abuse and, later in life, caught herself falling into what would medically be considered early stage starvation. Her body was so used to being left dehydrated and malnourished in early stages of development that she didn’t have appropriate reactions to it when she was not feeling well. It happened ‘naturally’ for her. The father and the uncle always lied to her. The mother and the mother's family always did too. She was a pawn to them, to keep themselves looking more reputable from the outside if they took the time to interact with her- pretend to care. Their lies became worse over the years and they continued to treat her like an idiot. The gaslighting and bullying never stopped. If she dare spoke out against anything there was always belligerent protest for speaking the truth that no one wanted to hear. They didn’t want to hear it because it meant that they could have been criminally responsible for doing nothing about it, or not telling her to tell the police what was going on. The abuse everyone wanted to hide. This taught her that words were deeply meaningless. She used to listen to her mother scream for the abuse to stop while her father would hit and rape her in the next room. The father taught her very young to be compliant when a male approached you for sex or you would be beaten and demeaned until you submitted to rape. No one ever taught her what she was around so young was rape. No one taught her that men who she would tell people were boyfriends were just pimps and traffickers wanting to make money off of her. No one taught her that what the father did under her name could be considered tax fraud or that she had to document the stuff he did under or through her name. This was part of the abuse system to keep her a pawn child. To keep her from succeeding, and making it easy to track her for exploitation. She was never taught that what the uncle and his young wife said to her when she was not yet a preteen was normalizing sexual talk and teaching her to prepare herself to be sexually appealing without clothes on. No one taught her that she was being groomed by the very people who should have protected her. It took her much later in life to realize that the family was so irreligious because people she could have met in religious places may have noticed the signs of abuse. No one taught her that second cousins and such were probably not related to her, and got near her family as ties to traffickers who had interest in her because she was born from an attractive yet vulnerable mother. No one ever told her any of these things. Everyone lied to her or omitted enough bits of genuine truth because they wanted to keep her in their abuse ring connections. No one told her the things the father would talk about were actually grooming verbatim he was passing on to her on behalf of a ‘buyer’ family based out of [redacted]. For their bastard son who was an abuser who preyed on vulnerable women with his connections and wealthy parents, then would brag about how many ‘protections' he had on him when one of those women he preyed on finally stood up to his legally prescribed, ‘safe’ abuse of women. He was an abuser, just like her family was. Lied and omitted information, and got involved in things that were none of his business, nor that of his families. She poured herself into almost any work or education she had but it was never enough, because she never had anywhere safe, healthy and stable to live. She never had any real friendships, as the father even attacked her in public once when she tried to talk to a friend in a field at a public event. He grabbed her hair and yanked her back to him like a dog or slave wandering off. She tried running away a few times but was never told of the existence of children’s shelters, foster homes, or that she could have told someone about the abuse at home and been removed from the family. The family did everything they could to hide what was going on and made sure everyone knew the mother was ‘crazy’ when she called Child Services regarding the child being abused. The mother eventually became an abuser too in her complete neglect of the child. She was not really a child, but a pawn to be exploited between everyone, so they could make themselves look good on the outside without ever actually doing anything meaningful, like backing her up to tell the police, a medical professional or teacher that she was being abused, so she could be removed from the situation. No one cared about her. It took her a long time to realize that. And that no one ever told the truth to her because protecting their complicity was more important. Words became meaningless. It took her a long time to realize her life was a meaningless lie meant to protect rotten people who only care about how they could use her to protect themselves and their petty infighting. It took her a long time to realize that the only people she needed protection from were those families and those they associated with. This is what happens when you are tormented for most of your life by rotten people who take their lies so far that there is no reason to ever forgive them. Where the lies are so far that that little ‘pet’ that they lied to couldn’t say anything without knowing if it was true or not, because she had never been told the truth or taught anything that mattered by those families. They only exploited and profited off of her, while going to extreme lengths to keep her in their abuse system. Like faking a death and funeral to interfere with a chance she had to get a certification that could have lead to a government job. Anything to interfere with any potential success she could have had outside of them, that was not part of their grooming and trafficking system. Anything to keep her in their gaslighting and abuse. Can’t have the product getting away. The father made her go to meals with or to the movies with him, and arranged in advanced for “nice men” who were much, much older than her who had interest in buying or selling her (in varying degrees of exploitation) to view or meet with her there. He enjoyed the sadistic game of selling the daughter. He got his narcissism supply off of her, and enjoyed being the long term abuser and controller of her so much that stepping in to directly traffick her eventually was something he took on with an egotistical degree that would shock many. People ‘didn’t blame' or actually defended him. After the daughter had been removed from the abusive family ties properly, she looked back and understood why people like the father, the uncle and the uncle’s young wife could have been considered valid targets for hitmen. It took her time to adjust to this. She was a child that was raised in, as best as I can track back, a third generation removed Children of God/The Family International cult practices and had been tortured by her ‘family’ her entire life.