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in our house for years - the brainwashing was absolute. They had complete control; I was in my twenties and not allowed to go outside without permission. We were not allowed to talk to anyone. If no-one knows what's going on, no-one can report it.

If you never know anything else, pretty horrific things can seem normal - you have no frame of reference to tell you different. Eventually, however, I realized all I ever thought about was suicide. The realization that the only option for escape involved killing myself woke me up to the fact that something was seriously wrong. It never occurred to me that I could just leave.

I finally 'ran away from home' the November when I was 23. Someone close to me finally figured out that something was wrong when a young woman was so scared of her parents she panicked at the thought of being one minute late getting home from an errand. A wonderful man and his wife drew me out enough that I finally broke down and talked - something I had never dared to do. We had always been told we would go to hell if we defied our parents. I may have been in my twenties, but emotionally and socially I had the maturity of a six year old.

Suffice it to say the next few months were not easy. Social services got involved, followed by the sex-crimes division of the local PD and the top polygraph expert in our part of the country. Various psychologists and therapists filled out the roster, and my littlest sibs were yanked to foster care. My sister next to me followed me into exile, and our younger brother filed for emancipation. We thought everything was going to be OK. We had effectively 'divorced' our parents.

It all fell apart in June. The judge we were supposed to appear before dismissed our case, and we never got our chance to be heard. In Texas you practically have to have videotape of molestation to get parental rights terminated, and the social workers hadn't been able to get the little ones to talk. In fact, that disturbed them, that they couldn't get any response at all from the kids - aged 10, 5, 3, and 1. They thought the youngest two were mute for days. Despite that, and the many CPS workers and therapists lined up to testify on our behalf, the kids were sent home and I never saw them again.

The last thing I remember was holding my baby sister (she was three), and looking in the face of my ten year old brother. His lip was trembling, but he was trying so hard to be brave.

"I guess I'll have to protect the little kids, now, since you'll

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