When I was 13, my mother and I moved to Campton, a small town in Wolfe County, Kentucky. Hickville. I was enrolled in middle school, and there I met Heather; beautiful, fun, smart, creative, and my instant best friend. We were inseparable. I soon found out my new best friend had some problems, like anorexia. I didn't know what it stemmed from at the time. I do now.

We would spend the night at each other's houses frequently, on school nights. But when the weekend came, and most kids were spending the night at each other's houses, Heather wasn't allowed to have friends spend the night, and she wasn't allowed to spend the night at someone else's house either. I should have suspected something was up right then, but I was a clueless pre-teen who hadn't been informed of the things that can happen in families, especially in a small town.

You see, Heather's father was a truck driver, and he was only home on weekends. The family's excuse was that they wanted to spend time together as a family while he was home, and that was understandable, but I still thought it was weird that she could never have friends spend the night. I did come over a couple times when her father was home, just during the day, and I saw him with her. It seemed like a happy, healthy father and daughter relationship. But while he was tickling her, and they were rolling around on the floor, Heather's brother looked at me with a sick, almost perverted look on his face. Still, I though it was normal and her brother was just weird.

One night when Heather's father was home, I stayed until dark before my mother came to pick me up. She came inside to visit with the mother of the family, and Heather grabbed my hand and pulled me outside into the dark with her. We descended the steps to her old trailer, and stood in the mud where the road met the woods. We could see the moon, and she suggested we pray to the moon, that I could stay and spend the night. We did, but it didn't work. Soon my mother came out to take me away. Heather was still holding onto my hand. She didn't want me to leave her. Still, I had no idea why. I was stupid.

Heather suggested that we run away one day, and we made out the plans and everything. We were going to run into the woods, so no one could find us, and then hitch hike to the city, where we could be free. We never did it, but she brought it up a lot. Soon, she began being hospitalized for anemia, due to anorexia. She had to have her stomach pumped a couple times too. She was also sent to a mental hospital for attempts at suicide. I still didn't know why.

Heather and I lost contact for a while. When I saw her again, she was looking much better, and she had gained some weight. She looked normal now. Of course she was still weird and still had no tolerance for pain [she pierced her own eyebrow with a safety pin without flinching on this particular day]. She told me finally that she was staying in foster care for a time, because her father had been raping her every weekend since she was 12, or younger. I don't remember, but we lost touch again after that, and when I saw her next, she was married, and she had a daughter. I still don't know who the father of her daughter was. We connected again that day, just like before, but after that, though we planned to keep in contact, we lost touch again, and this time it's been 6 years. I've given up hope on trying to find her again. Maybe she doesn't want to be found, especially by her sick father, and possibly her brother.

I looked for Heather's father on the Kentucky sexual offenders registry, and he was nowhere to be found. And neither was her brother. Heather had never mentioned her father being arrested for what he did to her. She was removed from the home, that's all. But if he wasn't punished for his sick crimes, that's just messed up. And if he could do that to his own daughter, why would he hesitate to do it to someone else? Monsters like that should be locked up for life, with no parole, and sentenced the death penalty, just like they sentenced their victims to a life of inner death, rotting away from the inside, nothing left to live for. These idiots do not deserve to live, much less to be walking around free, ready to strike again.

Heather is the main reason I became a child abuse awareness advocate. I have seen first hand what it can do to a person.