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“I know that there’s something higher for me and my life keeps getting better and better.”

Nicole is strongly connected to her Peruvian heritage and is dedicated to her faith community. She is also a survivor of child sexual abuse.

She experienced grooming and sexual abuse by an older cousin when she was 10 years old. He told her that what was happening was a game. When she took a sex education class in high school, she realized that what had happened to her was sexual assault.

She didn’t tell anyone about what happened, but when she started experiencing panic attacks regularly, she knew she had to get help.

When Nicole was 15, she decided to tell her mom, but was worried about her reaction and that she might get in trouble.

“She was shocked and was skeptical at first. She called my aunt, the mother of the cousin who assaulted me, and asked her if what I said was true. My cousin confessed to the abuse, and only then did my mom believe me.”

Nicole wanted to report the assault but her mom said that it would break her aunt’s heart to see her son go to prison for what he did.

“My mom was protecting my aunt, not me.”

In addition to the panic attacks, Nicole experienced PTSD, anxiety, and depression after the abuse.

“Even hearing the name of the person who abused me would trigger me. The anxiety attacks were the worst part of it all. It would be a pounding in my chest and sharp needles going through my body. I would just lay in bed feeling paralyzed until it went away.”

When she told a friend about the abuse, the friend told Nicole to seek out new sexual experiences to try to forget about the abuse, which influenced Nicole to go through a period of promiscuity in her 20s.

“It was an outlet for me. I was trying to find someone who could heal me. When my cousin raped me, he took away the meaning of sex.”