SA and the church

Does anyone else feel similar looking back? I am just utterly heartbroken and angry thinking about the failure the people around me were growing up.

My father (a pastor) and my mother sexually abused me as a teen girl in some really weird, confusing and fucked ways. Since there was no penetration I didn’t think it was sex, or sexual abuse. A lot of their behavior felt very normalized, and my parents established themselves very clearly as holy authority to not be questioned which bleed into times when I stood up for myself while being abused.

Looking back, our whole “church” community was sexual abusers and groomers. A woman we went to church with was arrested for molesting her adopted son. More than I can count the number of men who were disgusting to me as a kid — touching me all the time suddenly when i turned a teenager, looking at me weird, making comments with sexual undertones. The youth pastor was always hanging out with us, texting us, flirting with us, talking with us about sex. crossing clear boundaries from adult/child he shouldnt have. The male “volunteers” would always flirt with the high school girls - they would snapchat us all the time. One of them !!! Who was like 30 even “dated” my friend who was a high schooler.

And the guy band members… oh we fawned over them in high school. They loved that. They would send us (minors!!) explicit photos over snapchat. It was everywhere! And my parents knew, and they didnt do anything because they were a part of it…

I can’t think of hardly any positive role models or aspect of being involved in church looking back. Looking back at my life there were clear signs I was being sexually assaulted. But instead it was I was too “difficult” or I was just struggling with getting along with my parents.