A Silenced Voice Finds Its Sound

Our Special Guest is Tanisha Bankston. Tanisha recently spoke to her Mom and found out that she had been raped at the age of 5 or 6. She thinks it was around 5 because that's when her mind shut off. Tanisha failed kindergarten because her mom didn’t send her to school. DHS took her brothers, sister, and her away from their mom. Tanisha's aunt adopted her baby brother and her. Her other siblings were adopted by other family members. The man who raped Tanisha at the age of 5 or 6 was never locked up. Her mom said they said they didn’t have enough evidence. Tanisha had to relearn how to walk. She remembers looking out of a window with a gown on being a little girl. She told her mom what happened. She wasn’t believed by some of her family members or the hospital. She went into a shell and never came out. She lost her inner voice at the age of 6. The abuse didn’t stop there. At the ages of  10, 11, 13 and 14 she was repeatedly raped by various men. Those men were grown and none of them were ever locked up. Some were friends of family members while others were members of the neighborhood she lived in. She was told not to tell so she didn’t. When she did tell she wasn’t believed. She had a baby at 14. The father of that child is her cousins husband. Even after DNA proved he was the father, nothing was done to hold him accountable. When she was 14 her youngest son's dad began to have sex with her , she ended up in a 9 year domestically violent relationship. She escaped at the age of 23. She found her inner voice last year at the age of 32 when she spoke up and spoke out. She got a lot of backlash from some of her family members. She is on her healing journey.