Florida woman recalls how she was raped at 8 by deacon, became mother at 9 and was forced to marry rapist at 11
A Florida woman has recalled the worst days of her life when she was raped as a child and became pregnant at the age of nine. Sherry Johnson was only eight years old when her church deacon sexually assaulted her while she was alone at home. Her parents and sisters were at church. The accused was 18 at the time.
"All you had to do was walk down the steps from the church and you'd walk into our kitchen. And that's where he raped me. I woke up with him on top of me. Many times,” Johnson told The Sun. After the rape, Johnson was not sure whom to confide to, so she turned to her mother whom she trusted the most. "I didn't understand what really took place. I did tell my mother. I had no idea what words to really use. The only thing that came to mind is, I remember, I said, 'Mom, the deacon messed with me',” she said.
But her confession fell on deaf ears as her mother refused to believe her. Instead, the mother said: "'No he did not. He don't do that kind of stuff'. I said, 'Mom, he did’. And she told me, 'that's not true'. My mom, for some reason, she seemed to blame me for what happened.” That was not enough. Johnson had to suffer public humiliation as well because her mother spread false rumors about her to the entire church congregation. "She told other people that I was fast. She would get up in that church and tell all the members 'don't believe my daughter'. I was a sacrifice to cover up what he did,” she added.
Johnson told the outlet that she even considered running away from her home at the age of nine, but had no idea where to go. To make her situation worse, more tragic news was discovered. She was pregnant with her rapist’s child. Her mother then forced her to keep quiet and asked her not to reveal the name of the deacon. When social workers became involved, Johnson was sent away from her home with him. She was even raped by the man on the way from Tampa to Miami while she was seven months pregnant.
Johnson gave birth to her first child at a hospital thousands of miles away from her home. Her mother did not even visit her to see her daughter or newborn granddaughter. Talking about the experience of becoming a mother at such a young age, Johnson said that it was horrible. It was devastating. “It was a situation in my life that I didn’t know exactly what to do — I was still a child myself.”
And when Johnson turned 11, she was forced to marry the church leader. The duo exchanged the vows in the same church she had attended all her life. “I found a little bit of security in the marriage because my mother told me to do it — so I thought there must have been something OK with it’,” she said. However, after their local county refused to give them a marriage certificate because of Johnson’s age, her mother went to another county to get one. "The state of Florida failed me. The school knew. The hospital knew. The doctors knew. The courts knew. Nobody protected me — not one person. Not one,” she stated.
By the time Johnson turned 16, she was the mother of six kids. Her husband had already been sent to jail for not paying child support but when she tried to file for divorce, she failed because she was not 18. However, later a solicitor helped her to free herself from the deacon. Johnson also got herself a high school diploma and had three more children. She stated that she is always honest with her children and they know what happened to their mother when she was a kid.
Johnson said: “I am a mother of nine children. I am a grandmother of 34 grandchildren. I'm a great-grandmother of three children, with one on the way. And I'm grateful for that. It was hard but I endure. The most grateful thing that I say is happening for me right now is to be able to talk about what happened in my past.”
Johnson and Florida State Senator Lauren Book, also a child abuse survivor, is working on a new legislation that would ban marriage for children under the age of 18. "When the bill passes, I want the community to know this has happened. I just want ideas. This is all so new to me. I consider myself a voice for the voiceless," she added.