In this powerful interview, Hollie Adams bravely shares her story of CSA, revealing the devastating impact of victim blaming from her own mother. Her journey highlights the complexities of trauma and mental health awareness, while shedding light on the painful reality of betrayal trauma from those meant to protect us. Watch as Holly shares her path toward healing and finding strength despite her past.
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By sharing these stories, we aim to break the silence surrounding those challenging memories and create a compassionate environment.
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#unfilteredstories #survivingtrauma #healingjourney
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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NewsTranscript
00:00When I was 13 years old I went over to his house and he molested me for the
00:05first time. When I left I told my mom, she said, what did you think was gonna
00:09happen? Look at what you're wearing.
00:15My name is Holly Adams. I am a mother, a wife, and a survivor of abuse.
00:30Before I went to college, right after I graduated high school, I had just turned 17
00:34years old. I worked at a department store. I was manipulated by a co-worker who was
00:41significantly older than me by about 10 years.
00:49He would not listen to my consent. When I would say no and try to kind of brush him
00:56off and want him to go away, he would just keep hanging around. And he would follow
00:59me to the locker rooms in the back and would push me up against the lockers and
01:05forcefully kiss me or do things that I didn't consent to. Eventually he started
01:10following me out on every single break I had and sexually assault me in my car.
01:15This was only a couple years after the abuse ended so I was still really
01:21traumatized. I had still not even started to process the sexual abuse and I was
01:28still in the stage of my healing where I had not acknowledged that I, I had not
01:36figured out my self-worth yet. My thought process at the time, honestly, was in order
01:42to survive the situation, I just need to let it happen because that's safer than
01:46causing a problem. It perpetuated the self-blame and the shame because I felt like I was doing
01:52it to myself all over again, just like I felt like when I was a kid. One night I went
01:58out
01:58with him and ended up in an apartment and he said to me and I didn't say anything about
02:05it for a while because it took me a while to process that I was. Because this was a significantly
02:13more violent situation than the sexual abuse. The sexual abuse was all about him trying to make me
02:21feel good and like show me how to have. It was grooming. This was grooming. It was just aggressive.
02:31He knew I didn't want to do it. I knew I didn't want to do it. I knew I couldn't
02:34leave. He had a gun.
02:36I wasn't threatened with the gun directly but I was aware that there was a gun in the house. He
02:40drove me
02:40there. I didn't have a way out. I was in a different city than I lived in so I needed
02:44him to take me
02:45home. So I knew that for me to be able to get home, I have to just get through this.
02:49When I realized
02:50that I was going to be, I tried to do other things because I thought that that would prevent him
02:58from
02:59trying to like me because I didn't want that to happen. I never reported that because it always felt
03:06like I put myself in that situation. I understand survivors on both ends who want to report it and
03:12who don't want to report it. So I have never encouraged that as the best option all the time.
03:18Because while it can be the best option, sometimes that's not what is going to be best for your healing.
03:27One of my first memories is of seeing my mom passed out on the floor when I was around eight
03:34years old.
03:35She had bipolar disorder and she also was drinking. She passed out because she was mixing the
03:43with the bipolar medication and I thought that she was dead. So I called my grandma and she showed up
03:49and found out she was okay. But speed up a couple years later, I was about 12 years old and
03:56she started
03:56dating a guy who drank a lot and he really encouraged that drinking with her. And she developed a drinking
04:05problem. Their relationship turned really violent and that was my first experience seeing domestic
04:11violence. They kind of fought back and forth, but I remember her having black eyes of broken bones and
04:20she was always lying about what the reason was. But because of the domestic violence, she started drinking
04:25really hard. And this was my first experience with violence and also with because I saw her by him.
04:33And one of my memories is actually of her calling my name to help her. I didn't really know what
04:40to do.
04:40I was only 12 years old. So I called my dad. My dad came and he helped. But this went
04:46on for about a year.
04:47Like a lot of domestic violence survivors, she was like in it and she didn't really want out. So she
04:54would like want the help in the moment, but she wasn't really ready to leave. Me and my sister were
04:59kind of going through that with her. After my mom stopped seeing that guy, she started talking to
05:06our neighbor. Our neighbor was a guy that had tattoos all over him, never had a shirt on. He was
05:14kind of
05:14just like the neighborhood single guy. My mom was also single and was really attracted to him. She
05:21had a problem at this point and also had addiction. So she was just super into him. She would bring
05:28him
05:28over all the time and it kind of became like we would just all hang out together. It didn't take
05:33long
05:33before he started flirting with me in front of my mom. We would all be like hanging out in the
05:39kitchen
05:39together and they would be drinking and he would make gestures at me. At the time, me and my mom
05:47shared a phone and they would text back and forth. But eventually over time, he started texting me
05:54instead of her. And the conversations changed from just really innocent to asking me about what I had
06:03done with boys up until that point. And then when I was 13 years old, the neighbor sent me a
06:09naked
06:10picture of himself. Then he asked me to send him one. I kind of freaked out because I knew that
06:14that
06:15was gross and not okay. When I told my mom about the picture that he sent, she said that, oh,
06:22that was
06:22for me. And he tried to say that it was for her, but he was talking to me. He started
06:27telling me what he
06:27wanted to do to me. And at 13, I kind of played into it. It made me feel like I
06:33was getting attention.
06:34I was bullied in school at this point and my parents were divorced. I didn't have a lot of
06:39positive attention. So him complimenting me and being nice to me felt really good. And so I didn't
06:46notice it as anything wrong. When I started noticing that something was really wrong was when it got super
06:53and he was starting to say, I want to do this to you. At first, it kind of just seemed
06:58like a game.
06:59Like I didn't think that anything was really going to happen. I was 13 and he was like 30.
07:04I told my mom about it and she just said, he's just, that's just how he is. Like don't dress
07:09with
07:09short shorts or low cut shorts around him because that's just how he is. And then when I was 13
07:15years
07:15old, I went over to his house and he molested me for the first time. When I left, I told
07:21my mom,
07:22she said, what did you think was going to happen? Look at what you're wearing. And for the next two
07:27years, she continued to have him. She continued to invite him over knowing what was going on.
07:33He kept trying to advance with me all the way up until I was 15 years old was the last
07:38time that I
07:39remember him sexually assaulting me. And he came over to my house and he tried to come into my room.
07:46My mom would get at nighttime and talk to him and invite him over. And then she would go to
07:52her
07:52room and fall asleep and be totally passed out. And then he would come over. And then it was just
07:57us. One of the times I was 14 and he came over in the middle of the night and I
08:03heard someone in
08:04the kitchen and I walked out of my bedroom and he was in the kitchen right outside my bedroom door.
08:10And I was like, oh, I'll go get my mom. And he said, no, I'm here for you. And I
08:15freaked out and
08:16I ran to my mom's room and I heard him leave the back door. And I told her what happened.
08:21She said,
08:22I'm going to go ask him. And so she walked over to his house and asked him if it happened.
08:26And when
08:26she came back, she said, he said, you're lying. So when I was 15, the last time that it happened,
08:33he came to my room and I made a big ruckus. So it got kind of loud and he ran
08:39out and I ran
08:40downstairs, told my mom. She didn't believe me for the next like two years. She kept talking to him.
08:45She made me promise not to tell my dad. I remember being 16 years old and I was getting dropped
08:52off to
08:53go to my dad's house and she locked the car doors and she said, you have to promise you're not
08:58going
08:58to tell him because he's going to overreact. I promise that I wouldn't tell my dad. She thought
09:03that I was doing it on purpose. I remember her saying, why do you think everybody likes you?
09:09Not everybody likes you. When I told her about what he was doing, because for two years, I was telling
09:14her like, he is weird. He told me that he was only talking to my mom because he wanted to
09:19have me.
09:20He basically used her because he knew that she was and really out of it. I remember us putting our
09:27makeup on together before he was going to come over because she knew that he was into me. She
09:32used that. I was the... I have a little sister who's five years younger than me and my sister was
09:38not
09:39really around very much because she would always go hang out with her friends and her way of coping
09:44was to just like avoid, be gone. But I was like my mom's little best friend. I was there during
09:50everything. She would have my sister leave and then we would get ready together, do our makeup,
09:54get dressed really cute. She would invite him over. We would all hang out for like an hour and then
09:59they would go to her bedroom and then they would have. And she kind of acted like it didn't happen
10:04sometimes when I would bring it up. But then other times when it was like right in front of her
10:09face,
10:09she would just blame me. I was trying to steal her boyfriend. It was really confusing because I didn't
10:16know that it was wrong. I just thought that I was doing something wrong. I would go to school and
10:22tell my
10:22friends like this guy never wears clothes and he always exposes himself to me. I remember telling
10:28my grandma and she was like really like old school Catholic. She told me I needed to go to confession.
10:34She acted like I did something wrong. When I was 15, I told my school counselor. She didn't report it.
10:40I don't think I really knew that there was anything wrong with what was going on until he started trying
10:45to do it to my sister. When she was 10, he called her. My response was to get help for
10:52her. I took her
10:54and we went over to my neighbor's house and I told the neighbor what was happening. And I didn't mention
10:59what he had done to me. I just said what he was doing to her. And she told us to
11:04stay away from him,
11:05basically. But that was it. All these people knew, but nobody did anything. So when I was 16, I moved
11:10away. It wasn't until that I told my dad what had happened and he cried when I told him. He
11:16basically
11:16said to me, well, do you want me to handle it or are you going to handle it? And I
11:21said,
11:21I don't want you to do anything because that's not going to make anything better. And he said, okay,
11:25well, I'm going to help you find someone to go report it to then. Is that what you want to
11:29do?
11:29And it took me a couple of days, but I decided that I wanted to pursue reporting it.
11:38Right after I reported it, I went to my mom's house and I let her know that I reported it.
11:45She got super mad. She's like, it happens, but you keep it in the family. You're not supposed
11:50to tell anyone. She grabbed my arm and she tried to make me go over to his house and tell
11:54him that
11:55I reported him. I like yanked away and I said, I'm not going with you. And she went over to
11:59his house,
12:00told him that I reported him. A few months later, he was actually arrested and he was
12:05held on a million dollar bond and he got out. The process of the investigation took an entire year.
12:13And then the trial was one week long. My mom testified against me in trial. It was really
12:19traumatizing. The trial itself was almost just as traumatizing as what had happened because I had
12:25this entire like room of people blaming me. When I was younger, one of the things that he would tell
12:32me was that I can't tell anyone because he'll make everyone think that I'm. That's what he said.
12:38Ultimately they won and I, he was found not guilty on all accounts. They totally victim blamed me the
12:45whole time. One month after the trial and he was found not guilty, I received a restraining order.
12:52And so I was back in court this time, me against him. And he was trying to claim that I
13:00was stalking
13:01him. I couldn't afford a lawyer. So I represented myself, but the lawyer he had representing him was
13:07the same one that represented him in trial. So this was the same lawyer that victim blamed me
13:12a month before. The first judge said, are you sure you don't want a lawyer? And I said, no,
13:18I'm good. I can do this. It's important to me that I represent myself. I got to put my sexual
13:24abuser
13:25on the stand and ask him questions. And these questions were things that did pertain to the
13:32sexual abuse because he was trying to say that I was stalking him. And I was saying, no, I wasn't
13:36stalking you. You were abusing me. He totally like got angry. I flustered him and he told on himself.
13:45A couple of weeks later in the mail, I got a letter saying that the restraining order was not granted
13:52and that the judge actually believed me. I felt like I took all my power back. He went from being
13:57this
13:58monster in my head that could do anything to me to being this scared guy that wasn't in control of
14:06anything. And everything changed in that moment. After the trial ended, I moved to Florida and
14:13started a new life. I started a organization called the Youth Butterfly Project. While we cannot control
14:22what bad people in this world do, I'm passionate about making sure that kids always know that they
14:28have value and that nobody should ever do anything to cause them harm. Now I am married and just recently
14:36had a baby. My message for survivors would be to never stop talking about it.
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