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I was born and raised in Dorchester, a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts. We lived in a neighborhood that consisted of row upon row of, middle class, two family homes. My grandmother and grandfather owned and occupied the second floor of our home. My grandfather had come from Messina, Sicily when he was ten with his father and never saw his mother or his sisters again. My grandfather was raised in a man's world and worked in heavy construction, another man's world. As a result my grandfather did not know a lot about and how to interact with woman. My father had the same crippling handicap because his family had come from Forgia, Italy (a small town outside of Rome) and after they were here a few years my grandmother, his mother, abandoned her family for another man. As a result, my father was raised by his older sister, Mary, and he like my grandfather, gravitated to a man's world and grew and matured being ignorant of the woman, that is, their wants, needs, and desires. Unknown to me I was to pay a heavy price for my grandfather's and my father's ignorance.

I was the second child of five but being the first grandson in an Italian home my grandfather showered me with such Love and affection that even today, thinking about him brings tears to my eyes. For example, when my grandfather would arrive home from work I would run upstairs and when I would enter their apartment he would put a large smile on his face, reach out and tussle my hair, and said to me, "There is my little man". My father worked two jobs the first fifteen years of my life so I hardly saw or related with him. My grandfather became my world.

I was the apple of my grandfather's eye and my mother was determined to make apple sauce. I understand today that my mother needed something that she didn't get from my grandfather, my grandmother or my father and when she saw me getting what she didn't get but desperately wanted, well, she acted out "If I cannot get it then I certainly will not let you get what I want". If my mother could hold it then I was beat with it. I was beat with knotted ropes; leather belts; and wire coat hangers. My mother breed fear in the five of us and as a result we never trusted each other, why? Because my brother or any of my sisters could turn me in, this would lead to a beating, so we became five very private and isolated children living in the same house. The physical abuse is the least of it because my mother would say things to me like, "You are never going to amount

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