PROLOGUE

Call me “Incested.”

I earned that name. I struggled long and hard to be able to say those words.

I cannot speak for husbands, children, sisters, brothers, cousins, wives, ancestors, friends, or any of the hundreds involved; I speak only for myself. I tell this from my vantage point, my version of vision, my fractured reality.

"She's lying. She's always been crazy and angry. What in hell is she trying to do?"

To that I say - this is my story. I earned it. I will call myself “Incested.”

CHAPTER ONE

August 15, 1992

This story begins, strangely enough, with a wedding.

As is often the case with incest, it had gone on for years, but the unraveling began when my family gathered for my younger sister's marriage. Even before the bride began to plan the nuptials, family members muttered, mumbled, and tried to think happier thoughts. We knew it needed to come out. I liked to call it the "constipated memory syndrome.”

Three months before the wedding, my brother David had decided to have his daughter christened. He suggested, since we might all be in the same city, we could gather to discuss incest. The time had come. Furtive and terrified, we freaked - we couldn't do this now- we had a wedding to plan, besides, what would the groom's mother think?

On the previous Christmas, the avalanche had already started. When my brother Robin dropped by for a visit, we had this strained conversation.

"Well, Shannon finally left home. He was still doing it to her. Did you know?"

"I'm not surprised. He did it to me for a long time."

"He did it to you? How come you never told me?"

"You never asked. I hoped he had stopped. We are so dumb."

"Who else?"

"Who knows?"

"What happens now? What can we do?"

"It's gonna be shitty, no matter what."

And then I felt a sinking feeling, like flunking a test, blowing an interview, only one hundred thousand times worse.

"Let's wait and see. Maybe it will work out. Maybe we won't have to do anything."

But we had come to a ledge, whether we wanted to or not.

And then ... we stepped off the cliff. Notice I say "We." I am mindful of pronouns, in writing and in speaking. Some of my siblings shared the same thoughts, fears, inklings of disaster. I wasn't on that precipice by myself.

First, some relevant numbers: my family of origin consisted of ten children, five sons and five daughters. I am sixth in birth order. We were raised in poverty, in a rural setting, in a small bush community called West Hawk Lake. My birth mother died of brain cancer at forty-eight, two years after her last child, Tom, was born. I was fourteen. My father remarried just as I turned eighteen, in my final year of high school. After a few years, my stepmother, Joan, adopted a daughter, Shannon, fours years old.

The arrivals of my brothers and sisters spanned about twenty-five years, in intervals of roughly every two years. Most managed to get educated, get married, and get children. Some managed all three, to greater or lesser success. At the time of the wedding, I was married, with two kids.

In the months prior to the wedding, my siblings silently transmitted the following message - the ceremony must be dealt with, before the incest bomb could be defused.

Not surprisingly, our family excelled at weddings. This would be our seventh. Wendy, the youngest daughter of our birth mother, deserved to have it done up right.

I gave the toast to the bride.

"Once upon a time, there was a girl with straight blonde hair, big blue eyes, and wrap-around grin. Her mother had so many children she didn't know what to do ...Whoops! Wrong story! Anyway, this girl seemed so old and so wise that everyone called her "Little Old Lady." When she was around six years old, her mother got sick and died, just before Christmas. The little girl became even older and wiser."

And so it went, on and on and on.

We raised our glasses, flung jackets on chairs, posed for photos, danced the polka - so boisterous and photogenic. For the moment, we could overlook the old man clutching and fondling the bridesmaids.

Wendy and her new husband Bill drove off into the darkness. Thankfully, they were far enough down the road and across the prairie, before the detonation. After the honeymoon ended, they returned to a changed family, smoldering, grieving, wounded; no semblance of the happy, bright wedding crowd remained.

CHAPTER TWO

While Wendy and Bill headed west, my second oldest sister, Belle, lingered in West Hawk Lake. She had arrived with lots of baggage, physical and other kinds. For four days, she asked questions, revealing glimpses of her own story. She pressed books about "survivors" into reluctant hands. Belle bothered people. She bothered our oldest sister, Jean, once too often.

Jean chose to enlighten Belle. But she did not talk about improprieties done to her, or any of our sisters. She told Belle about the sexual activity between Belle's adult daughter, Rena, and Belle's husband, Terry. He had been molesting her for years.

While Rena attended college, she worked as a seasonal employee for the local Parks Branch and lived in the big family home with our stepmother Joan and our father Jock. During those summers, she disclosed Terry’s sexual assaults to Joan and Jean. Both chose to keep quiet about these disclosures.

The day after the wedding, I returned home with my husband and children so I was not there when Jean told Belle about Terry abusing Rena. Belle called me later to tell me how she had lost control of every bodily function - screaming, puking, weeping, passing out, shaking, screaming some more.

Somehow, she managed to get to David's house in Winnipeg. David, one of the younger brothers, had hosted the christening in the spring. Belle spent three days with him and his wife, Sandra, vomiting and weeping, sedated at times.

In spite of her anguish, Belle phoned her husband.

***The Unravelling: Incest and the Destruction of a Family***
By Donna Besel (Published by University of Regina Press)

About The Unravelling: Incest and the Destruction of a Family:

It’s the antithesis of why a wedding should be memorable. In 1992, at a sister’s nuptials, Donna Besel’s family members discovered that their father, Jock Tod, had molested their youngest sister. After this disclosure, the other five sisters admitted their father had assaulted them when they were younger and had been doing so for years. Despite there being enough evidence to charge their father, the lengthy prosecution rocked Besel's family and deeply divided their small rural community.

The Unravelling is a brave, riveting telling of the destruction caused by sexual assault, and the physical, psychological, emotional, financial, and legal tolls survivors often shoulder.

Donna Besel offers an honest portrayal of the years-long police process from disclosure to prosecution that offers readers greater insight into the challenges victims face and the remarkable strength and resilience required to obtain some measure of justice.

About Donna Besel:

Donna Besel loves writing of all kinds, and does presentations for schools, libraries, universities, conferences, and retreats. Her work has gained recognition from CBC Literary Awards (three times), won national contests, and appeared in literary journals, magazines, and anthologies. Both of her books, a short story collection and a memoir, have been bestsellers.