She worked nights and I begged her to take me with her so I could avoid being hurt. She took me sometimes, but most of the time, I was at home, alone with him and vulnerable. He would tell me to take a bath and show up in the bathroom in his robe, and the sickening feeling was indescribable.

I kept praying for a long, long, time—to a suffering child, it seemed like an eternity, but I knew God sometimes tested people’s faith. God also punished people, so I tried to remember if I had done something bad that I deserved to be punished for, but I couldn’t think of anything. Nobody had ever done anything bad enough to deserve what was happening to me.

The only time I ever talked the monster out of hurting me was the night before Christmas Eve, and I said, “Please, no. Santa will see.” Many times he promised me he wouldn’t hurt me anymore, and I thought, maybe, that God had finally answered my prayers. But the monster always did it again, and I finally decided that God wasn’t going to help. What kind of God wouldn’t help someone like me?

After a whole lot of suffering and misery, I finally figured it out: There was no God. Everybody had made a terrible mistake.

Once I decided it was up to me, I told another family member what was happening and hoped that if she called the police fast, the monster wouldn’t have time to kill my mom. She called the police, and when they arrested him, he had illegal guns in his truck, and a collection of girls’ panties (they were trophies from his other victims, I learned later).

I had two grown brothers from my mom’s first marriage, and someone in my family said the monster would be lucky if they didn’t kill him. I was disappointed when they didn’t.

As it turned out, he was a bigamist who had a wife in another state, so his marriage to my mom wasn’t legal. The police took custody of me that day and brought in a lady—probably a child psychologist—who interviewed me before they gave me back to my mom. When she got me back, Mom told me I was lucky they didn’t take me away for good, and she wanted to know why I didn’t tell her about the abuse instead of telling the other family member. I didn’t have an answer for her.

The monster was violent and abusive toward her, too, but I could tell she loved him. To this day, I haven’t forgiven her for her poor judgment and I doubt I ever will.

We lived in a small town, and everybody knew what had happened. I didn’t care because I was too young to be ashamed, and it wasn't happening anymore. I was delivered from hell, as far as I was concerned. I was blissfully happy because the monster was in jail, and my family told me they would never let him out again.

There was a trial, and I had to recount the whole story, everything that had happened, so they could record it on tape for the judge. By that time, I was six years old, but they still had to teach me the proper words for private parts so my testimony would be legal. My mom and I were both sent to court-ordered counseling. I was never told how long he would be in prison, but for years afterward, we got an annual letter from the parole board, asking if we thought he should stay in prison. The answer was always yes.

He sent cards and letters and even a decorated T-shirt, and my mother stupidly gave these things to me. I wish she had thrown them in the trash. I think she still loved him for a long time, but she eventually married a terrific man, a friend of the family, who turned out to be a shitty husband, but he was a great father to me. He once told me he didn’t believe a word I’d said about the abuse, and that telling stories like that could ruin a man’s life. He was afraid I would tell lies about him, so he didn’t touch me at all—not a hug, not a pat on the head—and that suited me just fine. I didn’t want anybody to touch me.

Now I am a grown woman, happily married to a wonderful man who has helped me overcome my past, with kids of my own. My mother is not part of our lives. I still have occasional flashbacks of the abuse, and I doubt I will ever get completely past it, but that misery has the capacity to consume my life. I have plenty of good memories that I choose to think about instead.

I cannot understand how people think it’s a good idea to teach a helpless child that God, whose existence is entirely unproven, has the capacity to help them or save them from actual harm. I had no doubt that God was real and that he would help, and because I had faith, I suffered for a lot longer than I would have if I'd have known I was on my own. I wasted so much pain and suffering on faith. Children who have cancer and other terrible circumstances are no doubt praying, just as I did, for help that will never come. It is extraordinarily cruel to teach children to have faith, when it is possible to teach them instead to rely on themselves and on real things.

My children’s grandparents are vaguely religious, and my mother-in-law in particular is talking about taking my kids to church, but I won’t ever let that happen. Religious people don’t realize that some people have very good reasons for hating religion. Some religious people might be interested in helping me find God again, and to them, I would say, “Fuck off. You’ve done enough damage already.”