When I was a little girl, about 8 years old, the father of one of my friends cornered me at her house and gave me a long nasty kiss. My friend consistently bragged about her father being on the high council of the Mormon church.

When I was 12 and at another friend’s home on Christmas morning, her father trapped me in their kitchen and groped me.

As a young, newly married woman in the working world, sexual harassment was constant and unrelenting. You learned not to go in the break room alone, or the stock room alone and to stay farther than arm’s length away from any male in the vicinity.

Because I worked around a lot of attorneys, I came to think of them as the worst of the worst. I did have one very strange request from one of them. He suggested that since he was married and a good Mormon, that he would just like to go somewhere up the canyon with me and make out, but not “go all the way.” I laughed in his face.

I have two daughters. They had a paternal grandfather who always wanted a kiss, on the mouth naturally. I told them every time we went there to stand behind me and I would protect them from this and I did. My mother-in-law once asked me why they wouldn’t give grandpa a kiss, and I told her it was disgusting and they were never going to do it.

I knew how disgusting it was because he managed to surprise me on my wedding day.

Mothers, I implore you teach your daughters and your sons early on how to protect themselves from these predators. I never told my parents what happened to me, because my dad had a temper and I was afraid he would have beaten those guys to a pulp and ended up in prison.

To this day, my stomach turns just thinking about it and I am an old woman now.