Of course I felt/feel tremendous guilt...could I, had I spoken out earlier, saved these two precious kids from something they'll never forget?
White Rain, I'm so sorry you went through that.
I was raped when I was 12 years old by a school counsellor. Like you, I didn't tell anyone for many years and I am sure he had more victims.
Pedophiles look for vulnerable children who are easy to intimidate. In my case, my mother had just been diagnosed with cancer, was terribly ill and I believed him when he told me that if I said anything, the shock would kill my mother.
In your case, you were four years old. You had no framework for how the world works, what is right, what is wrong and what the consequences of various actions could be. Why do four year old kids dash out in front of moving cars? Because they are literally incapable of predicting that they could be seriously hurt or die. You can teach a four year old to parrot "I could be hurt if I ran out in front of a car" but that doesn't mean they really understand it any more than a parrot would understand. They are just saying what the adult wants to hear--that's what children do.
Twelve year old kids might not run in front of a moving car but they're still largely unable to predict the consequences of their actions. The part of the brain that deals with predicting the future and regulating behaviour is still developing and won't really work completely until the early 20s.
You did what you did because you were trying to cope with the world as you knew it. I did what I did because I was trying to cope with the world as I knew it. Neither of us should feel guilty because we did not make the same decisions an adult would make. We weren't adults, we did not know how to deal with what was happening to us.
The only people who have reason to feel guilty are the perpetrators themselves.
The first step towards recovery for me was deciding that I was not going to let that man determine the rest of my life. To use a cliche, the best revenge is living well.
