I need help deciding what to do.!

Well first of all does anyone else in your family know this ever happened to you?

First step is to be honest and don’t worry about protecting anyone. It can be a long road to getting your head on straight with all this, but you can make it shorter by dealing with it now. Right now. The longer you carry this mess around, the more messed up your mind can become. Not one thing about your abuse was your fault……………Nothing!!! You were a child. Please talk to anyone in a position to help you, for example: the police, a councelor, a preacher(If your religious) anyone who will actually care about what you are dealing with. Feel no guilt about helping yourself with this and do it now is my advice.

Yes, my parents and brothers and sister. But my grandmother makes me feel terrible. She told me I should have kept my mouth shut and lived with it like any women would have done. She hates me so much that I feel I owe her to clear my cousins name.

If you are telling the truth about what happened, don’t let anyone make you lie and say that it’s not true. I can understand that you feel down about the way your grandmother is treating you, but you owe absolutely nothing to her OR your cousin. What he did was a choice that HE made. That’s not something that you should have to pay for simply because your grandmother is angry. What you need to do is stand up for yourself and try to get help for what happened to you. You deserve to have help and to learn healthy and safe coping skills for when you’re feeling upset. This will help you immensely in the long run, and it will help your daughter to have a more healthy life with you as well.

I am sorry that your grandmother is that way. She is trying to avoid conflict; BUT that avoidance only leads to a lifetime of pain for you. Whether or not you file charges against the cousin, you badly need to seek counselling to help you understand and handle the intense feelings that the abuse caused. These confused feelings may even badly affect your ability to give your daughter the best possible life. DO NOT deny the abuse to please your grandmother. Please seek therapy to help you. You do not have to even identify the abuser, but if you don’t get help you - and eventually your daughter - may continue to suffer.
(If you are in school, seek help through the guidance counsellor or health clinic. They can absolutely get you help, often for free.)

Your grandmother was raised in a very different time. She was raised to keep her mouth shut when things like that happen, but that is a different time. Today you must be honest about what happened. If you don’t, you could be putting other women or young girls at risk of being abused by your cousin. How would you feel if you let your cousin go free and he abused another girl? You need to tell the truth no matter what your grandmother says.