It all really started when I was about five years old. My father had been in the bathroom starting a bath for me when he'd called me in. Having the five-year-old curiosity most children have I ran into the bathroom and he told me to undress for a bath. As I did so I felt my father's long, hard gaze on me, and I couldn't help but be embarrassed.

I climbed into the tub and giggled as the bubbles rose from the foamy moisture around me and shone like a rainbow after a long, hard storm. That was when my father first touched me. It wasn't areally big difference from how he usually touched me, but this time it seemed as if he let his hands linger on my private parts longer than neccessary. I swear I felt the tip of his finger begin to try and enter me when the phone rang and my father sprung up as if someone had barged through the door and caught him in the act. He walked quickly out of the room and left me to ponder what had just happened.

Then, when I was about seven the abuse began. It wasn't sexual abuse, or mental abuse, but physical abuse. It would begin with a couple of hard spankings, some shoves here and there, and maybe even a slap to the face when he was really mad at me.

The frequency of the abuse began to increase after I turned eight, both sexual and physical. He would touch me with more confidence and he would hit me as if there was no shame in it for him. I was young and I began to wonder why my father hated me so much to the point of this...this torture.

One night, the night before my ninth birthday, I was playing with the kitten my father had gotten me and apparently I threw it's toy too far and it ran for it. I thought it was a game and I began to chase it, but I tripped over one of my shoes I had left on the floor and I reached out for anything that could break my fall.

The thing I grabbed was a lamp, and, you guessed it, it fell to the floor and shattered into a million different pieces. That huge sound brought my father in and in that moment you could just see the smoke coming from his ears. He charged over to me and grabbed me up by the neck of my t-shirt and brought my face directly in front of his.

"You little bitch! Do you know that you just broke you're MOTHER'S vase?" He shouted at me, shaking me visciously.

He screamed so loud I thought my ear-drums would break, but I was pulled from my daze by a sharp, searing pain in my right arm. I glanced down and I could see the blood dripping to the floor and that was the only thing I needed to see to make me start screaming.

My father dropped the piece of glass and set me down, running to the kitchen to grab and towel and made a homemade tourniquet around the wound.

"Oh, Mary Anne, I'm so sorrry. I don't know what came over me. Come on, honey, stop crying, we're going to the emergency room," He scooped me up and we rushed out into the car. The only thing he said on the way to the emergency room was a warning.

"Remember, Mary Anne, if they ask how you got that cut, tell them you fell on a pile of glass. You wouldn't want to snitch on daddy, would you?" I shook my head no and that was that.

My name is Mary Anne Spier, I'm thirteen-years-old, and this is my story.