Christina Bledsoe's Story


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I guess if you're talking "about" something, then you should probably start at the beginning so that is what I'll do.

I was born Christina Maria Norton on December 26, 1978 to Randy and Carolyn Norton in Northridge, California. My mother was 30 and my father was 21. I was the third child born to my mother. She had a daughter at 15, named Angela and a son named Michael at 25. I was to be my fathers first daughter. Three years later my sister Tina was born. I believe my mother was a nurse at one time, and my father was a marine . Unfortunately, my parents were addicted to alcohol and couldn't take care of us. I remember I must of been, maybe, three or four, I'm not sure what happened with my parents, but I rode to a temporary foster home in the middle of the night in a police car (mind you I was a child so it could of been a CPS car). I remember the lady of the house was very nice, but really old. She quietly walked me around and whispered all the children's names. It seems there were three or four others. Anyways, it turned out I would be leaving in a police car yet again, as the old lady had died in the night. I went back and forth from my parents to foster homes. It seems not long after that I ended up with my Aunt*Matty. Boy, if only I could slug the guy who made that decision. My life is living proof of what is allowed to happen to a child when Child Protective Services are "supposed" to be involved. My life would go from bad to worse, much, much worse.

Aunt Matty always said we've been with her since I was 16 months, but I don't think that's true. I remember going to court, I was very young, but it seems I was about four. My sister, Tina and I, lived in a one bedroom apartment in Northridge, California with Aunt Matty. Tina and I had the room which contained a bed and closet, and Aunt Matty slept on the couch. She was rarely ever home, so I suppose she didn't mind if she had to sleep on the couch every once in awhile. She worked in a bar somewhere in town. I think she may have been a bar whore. It's hard for me to imagine how CPS missed that one. I remember she was always there very early in the morning. She would wake me up at 5 a.m. to make me work, manual work at her discretion. Any other time, we were usually in the care of my cousin *Gabriel. Gabriel was a young man, probably early twenties, who was ALWAYS drinking alcohol. One night after my sister and I had gone to bed, Gabriel's friend came into the room and jumped up next to me. All I remember is that he was Hispanic with red sweat pants on and reeked of alcohol. As he pulled my pajama pants down and started touching me he said that he wasn't going to hurt me. I don't remember anything after that, so I'm not exactly sure what happened. Gabriel seemed to gain great pleasure in hurting and scaring children. He used to lock me in the kitchen at night in the dark. He would feed me spoons of hot sauce if he thought I wasn't acting right (which according to him I never was) and make me eat soap. He found it hilarious to have his friends over and have a "pissing contest" on my head and then go and lift me up by my feet and put my head in the toilet and flush it. He would love to hang me from the second story window and pretend he was going to drop me. He LOVED to hit me so hard that I fell, talk about laughter. He came home late sometimes really drunk. He would say " I'm going to ask Aunt Matty how you've behaved today, if the reports not good, you know what to expect". I did know what to expect, a beating and that is what I received. I always wondered if she really said I was bad or if Gabriel even asked and just made that up. Trying to pretend you were asleep didn't work, he'd just rip you right out of bed, he was allowed to molest me whenever he felt like it and he did. My aunt also left me with her son-in-law who would make me stand in the corner for hours at a time. I was not aloud to move AT ALL or I would be beat. After awhile I learned to stay very still because my legs were tired of getting hit so once he realized that he would leave you alone standing in the corner for hours and then sneak up on you and whack me in the back of the knees with a wooden spoon. I was beat severely many times by this man who did it for the sole purpose of entertaining himself. He was a chef so as weird as it sounds he beat me with kitchen utensils, i.e. spatulas, spoons, rollers, etc. That was what he liked to hit me with, Pat, what didn't she hit me with.....belt, chairs, books, dishes, one time she hit me upside the head with a goody brush for me "having a tangle" and broke it, this angered her so she picked up a high heel and smacked me with it to where my head was bleeding from the heel in my head, not to deep but enough to make it bleed and really hurt. I about 5 which is a guesstimate, a small girl my same age was visiting us for whatever reason. All I remember is that her and I were sitting by the fireplace at night time when her night gown caught on fire. I was running around screaming for someone to help and I ran downstairs after not being able to find anyone in our apartment and my aunt was smoking out of a pipe with what I presume was the girls mother. They were totally out of it and I ran back upstairs and the girl was just engrossed with fire. I remember being horrified and I don't remember anything else. I do know that she died.

When I was 9 a man and a woman were driving in a jeep around this highway, they were traveling too fast and crashed head on into a tree that I happened to be standing about 15 feet away from. I saw the woman’s head crush into the dashboard ripping her hair right out of her head and the radio antenna went straight through her neck literally. She was in shock and trying to scream but really it was gurgles. It was horrific and I will never forget it. She died 9 days later.

I don't know how old I was (about 9 or 10) but one of the boys in the trailer park where we lived caught this ditch near our house on fire, I got beat for that with a 4x4 to where I literally couldn't sit down because of the welts on my behind for a week all on the basis "that I was running around with a bad crowd and she was going to teach me a lesson" even though I didn't have anything to do with it. All the kids ran off and no one would say who did it - the funny thing to me is, I didn't even do anything and I was the only child that was reprimanded.

Aunt Matty went through several men, until she settled on one man named Sal. I'm not sure what Sal was all about, but I know they smoked marijuana together and we went from living in an apartment to living in a van. We lived in a van for what seems like several years. When I was nine we moved into a trailer park in Palmdale, California. Sal, Aunt Matty, Tina and I were a family or at least that's what we posed to be. Everyone knew that she only hung onto us for the money. I believe she received $600.00 a piece for Tina and I. Rent was only $300.00. I would find out later that Aunt Matty had gone from smoking marijuana to smoking meth, better known on the street as speed. It always amazed me how I knew all this and my sister Tina was so unaware. I tried telling her once that Aunt Matty was a druggie, but she started yelling "No, she isn't I'm going to tell!". I quickly had to tell her I was just kidding. It was always Aunt Matty and Tina against me. Since all of her money was spent on meth she never had any money for school activities, clothes, or even food. I starved most of my childhood. Tina didn't. Tina wasn't embarrassed to let people know she was hungry, I on the other hand would die of starvation before anyone would know it.

Up until I was eleven, we had not seen nor heard from my mother (or my father). One day Aunt Matty was at the gas station and had run into my mother. The next day her and her boyfriend *Will came over and we had dinner. From there on Tina and I went to my mothers house two weekends a month. I was so happy, that I now had a mother, however, it wasn’t at all what I had hoped it would be. My mother still heavily drank and was very negative and depressed. So was *Will. I only knew my mother for about 6-12 months and then she died when I was twelve. I won't talk about this as it's very upsetting to my sister Angela and I hate to see her cry. I went to my first funeral which sadly was on her birthday, April Fools Day :( No one told my school, and I didn't tell any of my friends, I felt very embarrassed. I also felt defeated, because now that I didn't have a mother, who knew where my father was, I was stuck with Aunt Matty. The one who didn't care at all, but sadly was in control. I was constantly threatened not to say anything about what went on in the house. There was hardly a time when there was less than ten people in our home, everyone sitting around waiting to take a hit off the pipe.

When I was thirteen we met a man named *Donald. Donald lived at the back of the trailer park we lived in. I can't imagine any other reason that he would always be at our house unless he too was into drugs. I later found out that Aunt Matty and Sal were actually drug dealers. Aunt Matty ripped people off. Aunt Matty always demanded I go over to Donald's house to clean. He would pay me $100.00, which Aunt Matty always took, and molested me too. Over and over again for probably a year. I wanted to tell but Donald always got this mean look on his face and some voice that wasn't his and said "if you tell anyone about this, we'll both be in trouble, do you want that?". When that stopped working and I thought I had the nerve to tell he said "You tell anyone and I will cut your sister up and put her in a bag!". There was no way that was going to lay on my conscience so it was our little secret. Finally, one day Donald died. It was the end of that for now. Then somehow my aunt acquired a friend named Karen. Now this was the oddest citation to me. She did seem like a genuinely nice person they key was it was only when people were around. When no one was around she would smack me upside the head and call me a little bitch, where was my mother and yell at me about how I was a burden on society and how I leached off my aunt who wasn't even really responsible for me. She would pinch me, kick me, throw things at me. I always felt terrified to be around her because I never knew what form of abuse she would use on me to entertain herself. She was extremely mentally abusive as well as physically abusive. I told my aunt several times and she dismissed it calling me a liar even telling me I pinched myself. One day I was in Karen's care and we were sitting outside, she was going on and on about how she couldn't believe two drunks could spawn kids and then just pawn them off on other people. I specifically remember her saying "children, children are supposed to be a blessing, I don't what the hell happened in your situation, you're just one big hindrance". I found it rather amusing that she could say that as she sucks off the pipe that has the methamphetamines that my money bought, the money that was supposed to be for me. In the midst of her telling me this her 15 year old son and his friends 24 year old brother came crashing through the front door the friends brother had a butcher knife, I remember it was a big one, and he viciously slashed Michael right across the waist cutting him wide open like he just slit a fish. Michael was terrified and he tried to run away, the only place to go was a over a fence with barb wire, he of course in his panic went flying up and tried to go over the fence when he did he had been cut so badly that his top and bottom parts of his body fell separately over each side of the fence. Karen went crazy and had to be institutionalized, she never really talked after that, meaning she never said anything that made any sense. I don't know exactly how I processed it, I think its locked away somewhere in the back of my mind. What I just said is all I remember. It was the most horrible thing I have ever seen in my entire life. As much as I hated Karen, and trust me, she was evil, she earned my hate, she didn't deserve that to happen to her son and I don't know what either one of us did to deserve having to personally witness it.

All of fourteen was a terrible year, Aunt Matty could never get me to school and the school was threatening to arrest her if I missed one more day. I missed the very next day. I was so scared of what would happen I just decided if she couldn't drive me to school I would just walk and that is what I did for months, six miles there and six back. Finally, we met a man named *Chito. I'm not sure where Aunt Matty met him but he ended up moving in. I think he had a good drug connection. One night I was asleep on the floor and I woke up to find his hands in my pants. I acted like I was asleep and when he was done I immediately told Aunt Matty. She said she was going to handle it and kick him out. The next day he was at the table eating pancakes that she had made. This was probably the day that I began to really hate her. Chito took me to school, everyday. Nothing was said or done about the incident. As every other bad thing that had happened, it was simply, overlooked. I was viciously raped by a Hispanic man by the railroad tracks who had a knife to my throat, he had slammed my head into a rock and I laid there for 2 days before I woke up, when I got home I was smacked upside the head and put to work moving cement blocks.

When I was fifteen, I met the love of my life whom I would end up marrying, Thomas Lyons. He was eighteen so we had to sneak around to see each other. One day Sal found out about it and broke Tommy's leg, nose, and shot at him. Tommy still came back. We would hide in the fields out back of the trailer park (at this point we had moved into a 2 bedroom house down the street but we played with all the kids at the trailer park) he would meet me after school. Whatever it took to see each other, that's what we did. Tommy was the only person that I felt really would protect me no matter what. When I was sixteen, I had done something wrong yet again, and Aunt Matty hit me in the head with a frying pan. I had had enough. The next morning, she was passed out as she was out of speed and Sal was in jail. I loaded as much of my stuff as possible into Tommy's truck and we ran away together. We lived at friends house, and camped a lot in the summer time. We eventually bought our own home when I was eighteen. I was also pregnant with our first child. I'm not sure what happened, but Tommy freaked out when he found out I was pregnant. Behind my back he was using drugs again. Our house slowly became a place where a bunch of nasty druggies wanted to hang out and some actually moved in per Tommy. This became a problem and I voiced it. Tommy didn't like this and eventually had me move in with his mother in Lancaster. His reasoning was in case there was a complication I would only be five minutes from the hospital instead of fifty-five. I thought this was so sweet of him, but later I found out it was really only because he had a sixteen year old girlfriend (he was 21 at the time) and was actually sleeping with another girl there that he had let move in too. I never knew about the girl until later. That was all so horrible I'd rather just not talk about it. I ended up having our son, alone, as Tommy was passed out somewhere. He managed to show up after Austin was born. When our son was two weeks old, Tommy announced to me that this wasn't going to work. It was the shock of my life, if you can believe that. He told me this in the garage. After he went back in, I sat stunned for a few minutes. When I went back in the house, Tommy was in the chair and the girlfriend was sitting in his lap with a pair of shorts and bra on. I wanted to attack her like some wild animal and would have, had I not just had a C-Section. They bad mouthed me and left. After that I went back to what I had known, the trailer park. Tommy had not paid our house payment unknown to me for months (he was the type of man that believed he should work and I should stay home even if he wasn't making enough) so we lost our house. I had just bought a new car too. He drove that up to Desert Hot Springs with my son, without my knowledge ( I had been sick that day and he was supposed to of gone to his grandpa's to work) and blew the engine in my car. I found a way up there, but my mother in law had already come to pick up the baby. My ride couldn't stand Tommy and left me there, with Tommy and the girlfriend in Desert Hot Springs! We were both stuck there for two weeks, no one would come to get us. Tommy and the girlfriend were fighting so Tommy and I hitchhiked back to Palmdale. On the way, Tommy said something to me, which no one will ever be able to top. Supposedly, the girlfriend had been pregnant and lost the baby, which I just don't believe she was ever pregnant, I think she said it to get Tommy up to Desert Hot Springs where she lived. We were arguing about her and how could he do this to me when he says to me, his wife, who just had his son 5 weeks ago, "I just lost a baby, I think you need to be a little more considerate".

Um, HELLO! what???

As I am writing this he is in prison, where he has been for the last several years. He is now 33 years old and is still in the same frame of mind as he was then. It's still the rest of the worlds fault that he is in this position. He has never apologized to me for what he has done to me. I haven't even covered a 1/4 of it in this writing, he hurt me ways I could of never imagined. I await my apology because I deserve one.

There is SO much that I have not covered because it would take to long or is simply too upsetting to talk about, feel free to ask if you have any questions. I did end up talking with my father when I was 19. We talked several times on the phone and had even made plans to meet. Unfortunately, he was hit by a truck and killed before I could meet him.

As I said there is TONS of horrible things I left out, but this is an idea. I am affected in a hundred ways on a daily basis that no one even knows of except me.



Feel free to contact me with any questions.
--
Christina Bledsoe
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