I was four or five when I was taken into the backyard of neighbors and sexually abused.

The daughter offered me koolaid and said I could swing on their swingset. I was told to take off my clothes and swing naked with my legs apart. When I said "no" I was threatened with hitting. I was not physically modest at this age and I thought they were just pulling a very bad prank on me. I felt angry at first. There were several people there in the backyard, I think one adult man, several high school boys, a few young boys and me.  My little neighborhood friend, Johnny, was in the swing next to me. (He was a year younger than me and had a mild disability. He could only play outside if he was with me. His mother and my mother made me the little caregiver and we played together a lot. I felt very motherly and protective of him.) When I was swinging I turned my head to the right and I saw Johnny, naked, crying hysterically, I realized that this was something more than just a prank. I felt horrible because I was supposed to take care of Johnny and protect him. I can't state strongly enough how much despair I felt when I saw Johnny being hurt and I could not help him. This is where my memory fails...I have remembered this event up until this point all my life. What I did not remember was how much Johnny was suffering or how much this horrified me.

I don't have any memory about how I got out of the swing, maybe I fell, but I do have flashes of what happened afterward.  I was screaming wildly and thrashing my arms and legs...hands were on my mouth to stifle me...voices shouting that I was bad...I should shut up...hands around my throat....pressure, horrible pressure in my head....I was trying so hard to hold on....I didn't know that I was struggling against strangulation...just trying hard to fight the pressure in my head...a sense of doom....

This is when I shot out into dark space...falling fast....stars all around but far away...I was falling through endless space...head over heels...on and on...very horrible.

(At this point I want to say that I know that terrible things were happening to me during this NDE. I was being raped by more than one man or older boy and made to do sexual acts with other children while others watched. I have an unnerving memory of the smell of the sweat of one other little neighbor boy. I don't remember what we did. I have flashes of memory but I don't chase these memories...I try to avoid them.)

Then I saw Jesus...I didn't know anything ABOUT Jesus but I knew this WAS Jesus...He communicated to me that I didn't have to keep falling, I could fly. He communicated that I could move my arms in a certain way and fly. I did it and I flew up to him. He iwas standing on a sort of platform outside of a place, a 'something'. I am not sure if it was a solid, earth-like place or a vehicle of some type or maybe even a floating 'space island'. (I hesitate to say 'spaceship' because my experience was not related to UFO's or any other similar phenomenon. It was definitely Jesus who met me. He was definitely an alien (i.e. not living on planet earth) but in no other way associated with popular ideas about aliens. However, it could have been a space craft of some type that Jesus invited me to enter. Or maybe the moon...?)

He ushered me inside a place like an entryway and shut the door. We moved into a large room that was filled with people who were very merry and enjoying each other's company. There was a joy in the gathering that was new to me but seemed like it was "just the way it should be" or something I knew existed but had never experienced until that moment. We didn't stay in that room but moved through and into a long hall or corridor. I could see that this corridor was very long and disappeared into the distance. The architecture was on a grand scale but I don't remember many details. There were doors on each side of the corridor. Each door led to a store of knowledge and the pure essence of one particular type of earthly thing, like plants and growing things or gemstones and minerals. He took me into some of these rooms and showed me amazing things that still echo in my memory. He told me that it was the essence, not the manifestation, that was the reality of each thing. This was true of people, too. I think I learned a lot about plants and growing things and also stones and minerals. I still remember some things and I have used this knowledge all my life although I didn't remember where I acquired the knowledge. I knew that mullein was healing to skin, I knew that I coud chew peppermint that grew by the creek to make my tummy feel better, I knew the particular plant called 'Indian Soap Plant' that could be used to wash hands, etc.

All this seems very interesting now...but at the time I remembered what happened next much more fully. After our time visiting these various rooms Jesus took me back to the main room. He showed me the large group of people there. I was fully aware that each person was cherished and regarded as priceless by Jesus, just as they were. They were not the great and famous people of the earth but simple, everyday people. The most important thing that I understood was that each person there, wheather child or adult, loved, valued and cherished every other person there as much as Jesus did. Each person was fully known and valued BECAUSE THEY WERE THE ONLY ONE. Each person was celebrated for what they were. Jesus pointed to a little boy...the boy wiggled his ears...then the whole jolly company erupted into cheers and clapped their hands as if he had just run a 2-minute mile! This was to show me where the true value lay...it was in the person, not in his accomplishments.

I was included and completely enveloped in this mutual cherishing and respect. I remember that it felt very good to my little heart. I knew that it was the 'right' way for people to relate to each other but I had never seen it in practice before. We stayed like this, in the large room with the joyful people, for quite a long time. It seemed much longer than the time we spent looking at the other 'rooms.' It was as if the spirit of value, respect and cherishing that was in that big room was filling me up. 

Then Jesus communicated to me about how wonderful this all was. Something like, "This is pretty great, isn't it?" I answered in the affirmative with much enthusiasm. Then he pointed down (to the earth) and showed me rows of school desks which were normally filled with little boys. He reminded me how sad these boys were because they couldn't do well in school. This related to something that happened to me in school where I did very well on something but was scolded for 'making those boys feel stupid.' This was very unfair because, after all, we were told to do our best and I did my best. But I obvioulsly took my teacher's scolding very seriously......

...because after he showed me the rows of desks, Jesus asked me if I wanted to stay with him or return to earth so I could tell those boys the truth about how important they really were, even if they could never do well in school. I didn't even have to think... I said, YES! I would return and tell the boys of their value!

I don't remember exactly what happened after that. The next thing I do remember is that I was standing in the kitchen of the neighbor's house. Their mother had come home. She said to me, "WHY DID YOU DO IT?" in a very mean and serious voice. I said because Margaret said she would hit me if I didn't. I thought she was talking about taking my clothes off and swinging. When I said this she got very quiet and there was a scared look on her face. She told me to go into the bathroom and put my clothes on. I remember that the bathroom was very filthy and smelled horribly, a smell I had never smelled before. When I came out my mother was there. I told her that they said I was bad. She said I was not bad and that nothing that had happened was my fault. I believed her completely, so completely that I have never felt guilt over anything that happened that day. We went home. We never spoke about what happened except once at the doctor.

A day or so later I asked if I could play with Johnny. My mother said not today. I asked again the next day. She said Johnny had moved. I never saw or heard of him again. I was very upset by this because I very badly wanted to tell Johnny about my time with Jesus and how important Johnny was, and how cherished! 

Another incident was that my mother took me to the doctor soon after this event and he examined me and the subject of the abuse surfaced briefly.  We didn't sppeak about what had been done to me but about the 'mission' I had been given.  On the way home I talked about how much I wanted to teach my friends about thier value and how much they were cherished. My mother said she thought I would make a great teacher. I felt so relieved that I would go back to school as a teacher instead of a student. I really had thoughts like, all the stuff we are learning at school is not as important as what I have to teach. I really thought, for that one moment, that I was going to be allowed to share my experience with my classmates. I thought everyone realized what had happened and wanted to know what I had learned on my trip to 'heaven.' 

Then my mother laughed kindly and said I had to finish school before I could be a teacher. This was bad news because I actually thought we were on the way to the school where I would begin my teaching that very day.... but I rallied and asked how long I would have to go to school. She said 12 years to finish High school. I thought it was a LONG time, but I could make it. Then she said four more years of college after that and maybe a year at teacher's school. I just sat in the car and felt desolate because my imagination couldn't get me that far. I felt, in my little 5-year-old heart, that I had failed my mission. I wanted to do my mission, but they wouldn't let me.

I know now that my mother was not aware of my NDE. I'm not sure how a bunch of kids can be sexually abused in someone's backyard and no one knows about it. Or maybe they kept it a secret because it was so horrible and potentially shaming. I obviously didn't know how to say what had happened to me.

There is much more to say because I continued to be abused by my cousin who was there that afternoon. He stayed with my family sometimes because he got into trouble in his home town. Somehow he learned the choke hold and used it on me so I woudn't cry out when he raped me. I think I eventually co-operated with this maneuver because it was much easier than resisting. I think he waited until I was asleep and then made me pass completely out. I can hardly believe that I died and came back to life many times but I have thought that this ability to leave my body was given to me so I wouldn't be 'present' when i was being assaulted. I had other experiences of flying and doing important, eternal things with Jesus and other spiritual beings. I remember once that I was coming back down to earth and I could easily control my movement. I came flying down in a large spiral and I can remember passing through the tall ponderosa pines near my home and landing by a peach tree in our back medow. Then I ran inside and got in my bed and woke up the next morning as usual.

All these memories began to surface just before this cousin died in the Autumn of 2019. I did not remember what he had done to me until after he died. He was a man who was arrested for stealing cars in 26 states...this is no joke...he tortured animals and showed pornographic movies to his young children. He was always in trouble with the police. These are all things that other people have told me. It fits in with what he did to me.

I do have questions...am I the same person who went up there? Am I even human anymore? I am so different from everybody around me...