- 2 days ago
- #trauma
- #survivalstory
Our guest Christina Vitagliano bravely opens up about the traumatic secrets of her childhood. Growing up under the shadow of her stepdad's CSA, Christina faced unimaginable challenges, including lying in court to shield her family. In this emotional interview, she reveals the difficult decisions she made and the toll it took on her mental health and relationships. Watch as she shares her journey of resilience, healing, and the power of speaking out.
#trauma #survivalstory
Thank you for watching Unfiltered Stories! We offer a platform for our guests to speak openly about their life stories and journeys, shedding light on the challenges they faced and the resilience they've shown.
Our mission is to raise awareness about survivors by delving into their stories, exploring the impact of their experiences, and how they've managed to heal and rebuild their lives.
By sharing these stories, we aim to break the silence surrounding those challenging memories and create a compassionate environment.
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#trauma #survivalstory
Thank you for watching Unfiltered Stories! We offer a platform for our guests to speak openly about their life stories and journeys, shedding light on the challenges they faced and the resilience they've shown.
Our mission is to raise awareness about survivors by delving into their stories, exploring the impact of their experiences, and how they've managed to heal and rebuild their lives.
By sharing these stories, we aim to break the silence surrounding those challenging memories and create a compassionate environment.
🌅 FOLLOW US 🌅
Facebook ➮ https://tinyurl.com/UnfilteredFB
Tiktok ➮ https://tinyurl.com/UnfilteredTT
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NewsTranscript
00:00I was doing something because I was told to do something, and I was lying.
00:04They stole my identity, along with everything else.
00:07I was like four. My life has changed.
00:10He never spoke to me in all that time, but continued to visit my room.
00:25When I was about four years old, my mom married my stepdad.
00:30And my first real recollection of my life being different or something was off
00:37was when I was sitting and my mom and dad decided that they would legally adopt me
00:42so that I would then have his last name.
00:44When they married, he had three little boys.
00:47So when they got together and got married, I instantly had three brothers all about the same age as me.
00:52I remember sitting in the courtroom, getting prepped by my parents
00:56and then the attorney about what the judge was going to ask me
01:02and how to answer these questions and to make sure that I was a good girl.
01:06And when you're four years old or a child, I mean, I think instinctively,
01:11all you want to do is make your parents happy.
01:15You're just innocent.
01:16You don't know anything else than those are the people that are there for you.
01:20You know, you do what you're told.
01:21But I remember that was the first time in my life where I felt I was doing something
01:26because I was told to do something and I was lying.
01:35Well, the biggest question that I can recall from the judge was does your daddy ever hurt you?
01:43I don't know what the right answer is.
01:46All I know is that something happens to me at night.
01:48He comes into my room.
01:49He's touching me.
01:50This has never happened before.
01:52And what happens, you're terrified as a child because your other option in life is
01:59they take you away from your mom and dad.
02:01So I sat there and said, no, he never touches me.
02:05And it's the first time that I felt that I lied.
02:08And I remember sitting there thinking my life has changed.
02:13I remember when we left our house that day, I was all dressed up.
02:17And I remember thinking, this is what I get.
02:19This is like Easter.
02:21So you feel different.
02:22You feel special, you know, like something big is happening.
02:25And then it was just me in the car with my mom and dad and an attorney.
02:30He was a big man.
02:32He smoked a pipe.
02:33It smelled.
02:34And then we walked into this big old building that was a courthouse.
02:38The beginning of that was sitting in the room with my mom and dad and an attorney
02:42going over questions and how I should answer them.
02:45So what's the sense of even sitting there and getting questions asked you when all you're
02:49doing is being coached?
02:51Well, my life started like that.
02:53So that was the official adoption.
02:55So at the end of that, I was then adopted with everybody had the same last name.
03:01I became instead of Christina D'Alfonso, which was my birth name, I became Christina Amelia
03:07French.
03:07And that was my name from then on out.
03:14They stole my identity along with everything else.
03:17And to him, that was a score.
03:19You know, I look back now and I'm like, he knew all of these weird little things as you
03:25grow older and you get smarter and more aware of things end up in a pile of how much you
03:31can dislike a person.
03:32And it makes you angry.
03:33When they got married and we all lived together.
03:38So my dad had three little boys and we moved in with him.
03:42So it was his home that we moved into.
03:44So I have a little twin bed and I'm in this room off the kitchen at night.
03:48And the first time that he came into my room, I was sleeping.
03:52But I remember waking up and not knowing what it was.
03:56Didn't know it was him either.
03:57I thought it was a monster.
03:58And my first instinct was keep covered, keep your eyes closed and it'll go away because
04:04you just hope monsters go away.
04:06He never said anything to me.
04:08He didn't wake me up.
04:09He didn't speak to me.
04:10It was really confusing because you don't know if it's a monster.
04:14And I would get up the next morning and everybody was normal.
04:17There was, it didn't happen.
04:19So it didn't take me long not to like him.
04:21And it didn't take me long to realize that my mom did.
04:26I have these like vague, you know, memories of her crying.
04:30And my brothers, the three boys, my older brother was not a good person.
04:35He did a lot of mean things and he created a lot of, a lot of trouble in the family.
04:40And I thought, geez, I don't want to be the person that's making my mom and dad fight.
04:44They already have enough going on.
04:46The abuse happened and continued until I left the house at 18 years old.
04:49So my life continued and that was never spoken of.
04:54He never spoke to me in all that time, but continued to visit my room and I continued
04:59to shut up.
05:00And what I think what happens is I look back now and I'm like, why would I do that?
05:05But if you start at four years old and that becomes a normal thing in your life and you
05:09learn to disassociate what's happening, it just doesn't happen.
05:12The most important thing to me is when you get into school and you realize that all of
05:17these people are happy and having fun, all you want to be is normal.
05:21And then the fear of being taken away is greater because you become more aware of what being
05:27taken away means.
05:29And the security that I did have and that I liked was at school, my friends, my teachers.
05:35That was the life that I was happy and comfortable in.
05:38And then I would go home for a little while, be that person that they all wanted me to be
05:44so that I could wake up the next morning and be with people I want to be with.
05:47Which is the exact opposite of what most people live.
05:51But what happened was, and I told you my older brother's not a good guy, but he was my father's
05:57pride and joy.
05:57Just perpetual, just a bad, bad person.
06:00But I was in junior high.
06:03We lived in Arizona at the time.
06:05And I remember waking up one night and I was hearing voices.
06:08I thought, well, this is weird and different.
06:11And I was probably 12 years old, 13 years old.
06:14And I thought, why do I hear voices?
06:16What's going on?
06:17And it was his voice.
06:18But there was somebody else in the room and it was my brother.
06:21And he brought my brother in.
06:22And I thought, oh, this is, I'm not going to make it through this.
06:26I'm not going to survive this.
06:27But I got mad.
06:28It's a weird thing.
06:29I got, you get angry and determined.
06:32You kind of say, you are not going to win.
06:35You're not.
06:35And it became this weird battle.
06:37Like, I am going to be stronger than you.
06:39I don't even know why it became that.
06:40But, and the both of you, not even close up.
06:43I'm going to survive you.
06:44So I blacked out.
06:46I don't remember the rest of what happened that night.
06:49Because the next scene that I remember of me was in the bathroom, just in the shower crying.
06:56But I had, like, these marks in my, from holding my covers so tight, I had just, like, cuts in
07:02my hand from my own fingernails.
07:04I had bruises on my legs.
07:05Don't even know how or why.
07:07And the next morning, you get up and everything in the family is normal.
07:10That, like, that was the peak of me going from, or the beginning of my change of, all right, I
07:17was this quiet, quiet kid, dealing with this, being normal, to, I'm going to stay quiet.
07:23I'm not going to say anything.
07:24But now I want revenge.
07:25Which is a weird thing.
07:26You know, you just, and you're older.
07:27At 12 years old, I also have a menstrual cycle.
07:31Terrifying to me.
07:32So there's this constant battle.
07:33I didn't sleep.
07:34Constant battle at night of deal with it, put up with it.
07:38Don't ever let anything that bad happen.
07:40Because to me, that would be the worst thing.
07:42You're not normal anymore.
07:43Everybody knows what's happening.
07:45The world's most embarrassing thing.
07:46Never got that far, though.
07:48I think I consider him a coward.
07:51A very, very weak, weak person.
07:53For doing what he did.
07:55But still, like, hiding it all.
07:58And then getting his son to hide it, too.
08:00And that particular instance of the two of them didn't happen a lot.
08:07It was mostly, you know, him.
08:09Just the same thing over and over.
08:11But I just became very determined to never let him win and break me.
08:15And what's worse is that you become smarter and aware of what relationships are like.
08:21And it occurs to you that your mom probably knows.
08:24She probably knows because if this is happening this often and she sees, like, you can't hide the animosity.
08:31Oh, I couldn't.
08:31Not as much.
08:32Like, I tried and I tried and I tried and I just hated him.
08:35And I wouldn't let him, like, during the day, if he wanted to hug you and be nice to you,
08:38no.
08:39And not only did I not let him hug me, to this day, I just don't like people hugging me.
08:43You know, don't touch me unless I want to touch me.
08:45I grew to dislike her as much as I disliked him because she was allowing that to happen.
08:51And I remember the first time when I was older and I had moved out of the house and I
08:56had a boyfriend and we were living together.
08:57And I remember waking up in the middle of the night and he had gotten up to go to the
09:02bathroom or do something.
09:03But maybe he had been gone a longer time than normal.
09:06And I woke up and he was missing from the bed and I got worried.
09:09And it wasn't anything else because that's your partner and he's missing.
09:13And it seemed like a long time.
09:15So the first thing I want to do is get up and make sure he's okay.
09:18And I thought to myself, 14 years of my life, and my mom never wondered where he was.
09:23And I got mad, even madder at her, almost madder at her than him for never protecting me and choosing
09:29him over me.
09:31And I remember thinking, I just want to be an adult.
09:33I want to make my own choices, my own decisions.
09:36I didn't care what I was, I wanted to be an adult.
09:38High school is when you start to become a real adult in high school.
09:42You have boyfriends and things like that.
09:43My high school teachers, I'm still in contact with some of them today.
09:47I wouldn't have survived without them.
09:48I had a boyfriend in 10th grade, 11th grade that I had for like maybe, you know, a year or
09:53so.
09:54And I remember sitting in the car with him one night and he asked me, he said, your father doesn't
09:59do anything to you, does he?
10:01And that was the first time, like somebody said something like that to me, like my friends.
10:05And I freaked out because I was like, no one is ever going to know that that happens.
10:10And I lied to him.
10:11I said, no, why?
10:12Why would you ever think that?
10:12He goes, I don't know.
10:13And that was the end of it.
10:14Because no guy is going to get into that more if you say no either.
10:18It terrified me that anybody would ever know that that happened at the time.
10:2212 years of high school, I had been in 14 different schools.
10:25We never had friends long enough to have friends, which was by myself all the time.
10:29Even though I always had friends wherever we were, but then, you know, a year later, they're gone.
10:34We lived in Foster, Rhode Island, which is this little tiny town out in the middle of nowhere.
10:39But that's the longest we had ever lived anywhere.
10:41And that's my high school, my junior high school years.
10:43So I consider that like, that's my home.
10:46That's the only place we ever lived more than long enough to have a home.
10:49So some of those kids, and because of social media, we have the interaction today, which is awesome.
10:53But in my junior year of high school, and we were about to lose, our house is up for sale
10:59again.
11:00We had to sell the house because they weren't paying the mortgage.
11:07I remember it was on Good Friday, and this part is in the book.
11:10And I remember laying on the sofa and my dad coming in and saying, we're all going out to dinner.
11:14It's Good Friday.
11:15And I was just not in a good mood.
11:17I didn't want to talk to him.
11:19I was a teenager.
11:20And I said, I don't want to go.
11:22He said, you're going.
11:23No choice.
11:24Get up off this couch and blah, blah, blah.
11:25And I was like, oh, Christ.
11:26So we all went to dinner.
11:29And we came on the way home.
11:30I remember coming around the corner and all you saw fire trucks and all kinds of craziness going on.
11:35And I remember pulling up and our house was on fire.
11:38So we lost everything.
11:42When I was maybe about, maybe nine or ten years old, one of my cousins for Christmas gave me a
11:47diary.
11:48And it was a typical little white diary with a gold key and the whole thing.
11:52And I started writing.
11:52And I didn't write in detail.
11:55I just wrote, you know, he was here last night.
11:58I survived another night.
11:59I'm going to continue to be normal.
12:01It was all very vague because I couldn't even admit that stuff.
12:05But I kept that diary.
12:06And the night the house burned down, because it was a very small town, it was a volunteer fire department.
12:11But my first boyfriend was on the volunteer fire department.
12:14I remember seeing my high school boyfriend go in the house and they're trying to put out the fire.
12:19And I thought, what if somebody finds my diary?
12:22I don't want anybody knowing.
12:23So all this is going on and I'm terrified that somebody's going to find out my secret.
12:27At the end of it all being done, and I remember being able to get in, I opened the drawer
12:31to go get my diary and it was missing.
12:33And day after day went on and on and nobody ever said anything.
12:36He seemed fine.
12:37I never said, hey, did you get my diary?
12:39I just let things go.
12:40I moved out the day I turned 18.
12:43And I moved in with my boyfriend, who at the time was, oh my gosh, probably 20 something years older
12:48than me.
12:49I had a job when I was young.
12:50I think I had my first job at 12, like part time, you know.
12:54But when I graduated high school, I also had a full time job.
12:57My dad was the kind of guy that said, you know, go to work.
13:00You want clothes, you buy your own clothes.
13:02You want to do this?
13:02Because he would just take as much as he could from you.
13:06His job was always, he put, he installed carpet and tiled, like kind of like side job kind of guy.
13:11But always looking for, how can I make a quick buck without working that hard or doing, even though he
13:17did work very hard actually.
13:18But how do I take a shortcut?
13:20How do I make $100, you know, instead of $50?
13:23And I always said, don't be like that, don't be like that, don't be like that.
13:27And I became a very self-sufficient person.
13:31I'm a workaholic, I never did, never smoked, didn't even drink until I was about 25.
13:38My fear was losing control.
13:39Like I can maintain this life and I can do it as me.
13:43I was terrified that what happened if I can home.
13:51Years later, I learned that, and I'm going to make the shorter version of that, my dad took my diary.
13:56I didn't care if I was happy or not.
13:57Until I married my husband, I had never told anybody.
14:01I was at work one day and he worked at the place that I did.
14:06He bugged me for months, wanted to go out with me once.
14:08And I took a break, wasn't dating anybody, was just working, that's all I wanted to do.
14:13And I remember he sat down next to me one day and he said, who hurt you?
14:16And I was about 30 years old and I, for whatever reason, was finally ready to talk about it.
14:23So I remember going, we went out, went to my house and he said, let's talk about this.
14:28I think four bottles later, we talked for like, I don't know, what, eight, eight hours.
14:33Sharing it with somebody was great and it felt actually really good in a weird way.
14:37So I remember him saying to me, wow, when did you lose your virginity?
14:40And I remember saying, I was like four, you know, and he just looked at me like this shock on
14:46his face.
14:47And I went, I'm kidding, I'm kidding.
14:49But in reality, he said, no, you're not kidding.
14:52I said, no, I'm not.
14:53That's welcome to my life.
14:55That's what you're dealing with.
14:56It was important to him for me to go to a therapist.
14:58So I did.
14:59What I got out of therapy was a little bit of closure on the subject.
15:05But my stepdad had passed away.
15:07The day he dies is a significant day in my life.
15:10But my mom is still alive.
15:12And what came out of therapy was more anger for her.
15:14Because you learn, as you're talking to somebody else, you're learning.
15:17She knew, she knew, she knew.
15:19But after I talked to my husband about it, I shared it with her.
15:22And the first words out of her mouth were, oh my God, do you think it happened to your little
15:28brother too?
15:28It was never to instinctively protect me or feel bad or anything like that.
15:34I haven't spoken to her in over a decade.
15:36And it's probably the healthiest thing I ever did in my life.
15:39I learned, probably from therapy, that my health is more important than anything if I want to be able to
15:45maintain a regular life.
15:46As I became okay with talking about it, and I started writing, for me, I was okay sharing this if
15:56one person read it and said, I got something out of it.
15:59I think the older you get, and it's weird, the angrier you get about it.
16:04Because you keep learning and learning and learning about yourself and how it affected you.
16:10And what could have been done to prevent it.
16:12And it makes you angry.
16:14And therapy is pretty valuable because that person is the one person you can talk to that won't share that
16:20with anybody.
16:20Getting it out of your system is very healthy.
16:22Even if your therapist isn't good, it almost doesn't matter because you speaking those words and just getting it out
16:31is just such a, like, you're just shaking some of it off.
16:34It's bad, you know, it just feels good.
16:35And it teaches you.
16:36At the time, I lived next door to them.
16:39And it was in Providence, Rhode Island, the houses are like these little three-decker houses, and they're very close.
16:44And I remember hearing an ambulance, a noise pull up on the street.
16:49And then I got, my phone started ringing, and my mother's crying.
16:53Oh, your father had a heart attack.
16:54Your father had a heart attack.
16:55So, I went to the hospital.
16:57We went through that whole process of he's gone.
17:00My brothers are all there.
17:01It's everything.
17:01And I remember that going back home that night, I laid down, and I fell asleep.
17:08And I fell asleep and slept for the first time in my entire life.
17:12And I remember waking up going, holy, that's what sleep feels like.
17:16And because he was gone, and it was one of the most freeing feelings in my entire life.
17:22And I now sleep better than I've slept in my entire life.
17:26After I wrote the book, which is about 20-something years ago now, when I got the first draft done,
17:33this was going back to, my gosh, 2000.
17:36I read around 2000.
17:38Back then, that was before Amazon, before self-publishing was really popular.
17:41So, you had to go to a traditional publishing house.
17:44The first draft was about 680 pages.
17:46This book is about 370 or something like that.
17:49So, the first thing you have to do is have it edited, professionally edited.
17:53And we do not come from money.
17:54Patrick and myself, we don't come from any money at all.
17:56And my first quote on the book was about $5,000 to have it edited.
18:01I'm like, I can't do this.
18:02Everything we make is how we pay our bills, how we eat from day to day.
18:06So, I thought, well, what if I can create a business where I can make some money,
18:12I can raise the $5,000 to have the book edited,
18:15and I'm not a workaholic, so I can kind of maintain both.
18:19So, I stopped what I was doing.
18:21We lived in an old mill in a loft, and Patrick's Sound Company,
18:24all his equipment was stored in one of the rooms there.
18:27So, I decided that I was going to build an indoor mini golf course,
18:32and me and my friend could run it, and I could raise the $5,000 to get the book
18:37and still have a regular job and not have it consume all of my life.
18:40And I remember my husband saying, you want to do what?
18:43I said, I think I want to do mini golf indoors.
18:45We lived in New England.
18:46He's like, why would anybody go to that?
18:48You're outside most of the year.
18:50I said, well, what if I take everything that I've done in my life,
18:53I worked in a nightclub business and retail and regular stuff, management.
18:57I said, what if I put all those bits and pieces together?
19:00We make, I build it with money that I can make tendon bar.
19:05My friend said, I'll give you a bartending job in this little tiny town,
19:07and you can raise money to make your monsters and props that way.
19:10I said, I'm going to make monsters.
19:11He said, why?
19:12I said, because that's all I can make.
19:13I'm not a sculptor, so a monster is whatever comes out of your head.
19:16So, that was my reasoning for that,
19:18and I was using paper mache and things I found in the mill and weird stuff.
19:21So, I actually built the first Monster Mini Golf out of crap.
19:25We opened, and I called it Monster Mini Golf.
19:27So, we opened the first Monster Mini Golf in May of 2004,
19:32so that I could raise $5,000 to edit my book.
19:35My book sat on my desk for almost 18 years.
19:39I picked it up a few times over the course of those 18 years until COVID hit.
19:43But by the time COVID hit, I had franchised the business.
19:46We learned it was nationwide.
19:47We had like 30-something locations,
19:50and I was a workaholic.
19:51That's all I did was work,
19:52and this whole little business consumed my life.
19:55COVID hit.
19:56I decided it's time to publish the book
19:58because first time everybody's sitting down in a long time.
20:00So, I did that.
20:01I was now much older,
20:03almost 19 years into owning Monster Mini Golf.
20:07When we came out of COVID,
20:08we came out of COVID strong.
20:09We were good with our franchisees.
20:11Our business, for whatever reason,
20:12was very social distance friendly.
20:15Family entertainment was just,
20:16people just were thriving,
20:18just wanted, they wanted family entertainment.
20:20And we started getting approached by big companies
20:22that wanted to buy us.
20:25And I said, well, maybe it's time to retire.
20:27And we ended up selling our company
20:29to our top four franchisees.
20:31So, they now own our company,
20:32and we consult with them.
20:34We sit in the back.
20:35So, we retired last year,
20:36and I published my book in 2021.
20:39We still own a few locations here in Las Vegas.
20:42That's where my home is.
20:43We have some co-brands with Rock Group Kiss
20:46and Twilight Zone.
20:47That's a whole different part of my life now.
20:48We are financially comfortable,
20:50which was probably my only goal in life way back when.
20:53But now I learned to enjoy things.
20:56And you learn to build your support system
20:59with people around you that are positive influences.
21:03And that took me a very long time.
21:04And the negative ones you don't need in your life,
21:07even if you think they're supposed to be there,
21:09whether they're family or whatever,
21:10that takes a lot of strength to do.
21:14So, the title of my book,
21:15which we've come full circle,
21:16is Every Nine Minutes.
21:18And I titled it Every Nine Minutes
21:20because literally every nine minutes in the USA,
21:25there is a case of child abuse reported.
21:28And I say reported and use that as a very strong word
21:31because I think the majority of us never reported.
21:34So, if something is happening every nine minutes
21:36and the majority isn't being reported,
21:39that's an issue.
21:40I also want to say that for some reason,
21:42and I give credit to this generation
21:43because this is a generation that's out there
21:45speaking up about everything.
21:47Whether they should or they shouldn't.
21:48They are out there yelling about everything,
21:50but not this.
21:51Because they're still afraid of this.
21:53We have celebrities that have spoken up about it
21:55and props to them.
21:56But I think what happens is the average person,
22:00even though when they hear a celebrity talk about it,
22:02it is bringing awareness
22:03and nobody should ever stop talking about it.
22:05I think that the average person looks at them and says,
22:08yeah, but they're not me.
22:09Their life is different.
22:10They have so much more.
22:12I'm afraid to say something.
22:13I don't know how to make it work.
22:14I'm not a celebrity.
22:16I'm just an average person
22:17that's learned how to not let it own me.
22:20It's not gone.
22:21She doesn't own me anymore.
22:22So I think it's also important
22:25that more of us speak about that than can
22:29because so many of us
22:30will never be able to speak up about it.
22:31So people reach out all the time.
22:33Most of the people who share their stories,
22:35holy cow, my story is nothing
22:37compared to some of the stuff
22:38that's happening out there.
22:39It's really terrifying.
22:41But just to be able to share with each other
22:43is also therapy.
22:44Thank you for having me.
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