Little Jen

I was a shy child. I always felt awkward and an outcast. I was fat, Native American, Mexican, Buddhist, only child, had a messy house and artsy fartsy parents from California who decided to move to the east coast and give birth to Jennifer Margaux Chaine on January 12, 1977 in Hampton, VA - the nice southern Christian military town.

I loved to color. I loved my cats. I loved to laugh and go to the park to feed popcorn to the ducks and go to Buckroe Beach to play in the dance and bounce in the ocean.

When people looked at me, I wondered if they could see the secrets I was hiding. I felt grown up and I had a big responsibility to hide the acts of adults and pretend that everything was fine on the surface. Could they see I was extremely lonely and felt dirty and thought that people only wanted me for sex? Did they know our house had roaches, my father beat my mom, my mom would leave the house and I would throw temple tantrums and scream and cry to go with her? Did they know my parents would forget to pick me up from school and I often had to find something to eat on my own?

My memory begins at age 4. From the age of 4 years old I was raped and molested by 8 people including my father, uncle, neighborhood teenage sons, my female babysitter, friends of my parents that would get drunk at house parties, and a man just released from jail at a friend's house. I never knew what it meant to be a virgin. I felt that body betrayed me and the only way to be loved or get attention was by sex. By the time I was 14 and put into foster care when my father arrested, I had already given my body to several of the neighborhood boys and men. I did not know what it meant to have a boyfriend or date. I only knew sex. I did not know how to say no when boys would approach me in the middle of the night at friends' houses and hanging out.