The Incident

By Nicole Marie Hilton, December 27, 2019

DID/SRA victims often begin to recover their lost traumatic memories around the age of 30. It can be very painful, but it can also be the beginning of healing. This is how it began for me.

            In 2016 I was 27 years old, and had experienced my fair share of suicide attempts, body maimings, mental hospital visits, failed relationships, dropping out of college, jail stays, and even homelessness. With all that, one thing had been a constant torment in my life—the amnesia and dissociation of memory which plagued my existence.

            I’d taken a good long look at my life and thought, why? WHY, GOD? Why on earth has all this happened to me? Even when I have literally been trying my best?

I wasn’t a stupid girl. I was, in fact, smart and an avid seeker of truth. I had been the first to recognize and admit (even since second grade) that I had severe mental illness. I had read the freaking DSM in 6^th grade, for heaven’s sake! I begged for help in every way I knew how, but my parents could never have guessed at the source of my trauma, and neither could I.

            Then, one day while I was muddling through the muck of my life, I realized something. I was in denial. And I’d been in denial for long enough!

            I had been in denial about the most important thing a child of God could ever know: that there was a God in Heaven, and that He loved me.

            I wrestled with myself for months. I had had miraculous things happen to me which demonstrated God’s love and concern for me before, but those memories seemed distant and hazy. They seemed to have happened to somebody else because of the dissociation in my mind. And so, the struggle with believing God could love me continued.

            Certain thoughts continually circled through my head:

“If my life is a big question mark, isn’t there—in actuality—an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving Being up there, somewhere in the heavens, who can answer my question? Because He truly LOVES me? While the suffering of my life seems to prove otherwise, what if that is a lie from Satan? And, if something HAS happened to me—if something has triggered this whole mess—God will know what it is! And since He is no respecter of persons…that means He could actually answer my prayers and reveal it unto me! Joseph Smith read in James 1:5 that, ‘if any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not, and it shall be given to him.’ …If Joseph Smith could walk into a grove of trees and receive an answer to his question, then why not me?“

            I finally decided. I decided that I believed God, and that I believed in His promises. And that it didn’t matter how long it took, or to what depths of suffering and fasting and praying and piousness I had to go to—I would hound the God of the Universe until He gave me an answer. The answer I had been seeking for almost my entire life… The answer to the question: what started the chain reaction of suffering my entire life had become? What happened to me in second grade?

            It took six months.

            Six. Long. Months.

            Oh, I was persistent. I knew—I knew deep down inside of me, that I was going to make it to this answer, come hell or high water. I was going to squeaky-wheel-it-up until God would have no other choice but to answer me in some way. It was the one thing I wanted more than anything else in my life, and I wanted it deep down in my bones.

            It was during one of those prayers where the skin on your knees goes numb, that I felt something shift. Something in the spiritual atmosphere around me adjusted, and I stood up from that prayer knowing my answer would come soon.

            It did that night. I went to bed, and as soon as I was asleep, I entered into a dream that startled me to no end.

            It wasn’t a dream…it was a memory.

            I was standing behind my old elementary school—Bloomington Hills Elementary! It seemed as though I was physically there, facing the building. Children were a hundred yards behind me with the teachers, playing on the playground. I could hear their laughter drifting lazily in the desert air.

            All the details were so familiar to me—there was that crack in the cement I’d forgotten about! And the pockmarked and patterned red walling which wrapped around the building was there—as well as that tree to my left!

            And…wait—who was this? But, could it be? There was a little girl wearing a red hoodie pulled over her knees in front of me on the ground, and she was scooting forward, pretending she was a Gnome of some sort. She was giggling to herself, and I could recognize that laugh anywhere. The little girl was me.

            I watched myself scoot to the left, towards the corner of the building. I followed, curious. I thought, where are the teachers? Haven’t they noticed that I’ve left all the other children?

            I saw myself get closer and closer to the corner of the building. Then, a dark foreboding descended upon the whole scene. I wanted to run to myself, to stop myself from going any further…but my legs wouldn’t move.

            I started to open my mouth, but no sound came out.

            I saw myself go around the corner.

            Evil—pure, unadulterated evil—the weight of ten worlds descended upon me. I felt a part of myself falling into a black void as I was being dragged into the form of the little girl–and it was all happening–the memory was about to collapse in upon me and destroy me–and his hands…those hands–

            I shut my eyes tight, screaming silently GET ME OUT OF HERE! and I felt my legs give out from under me. I collapsed on the ground, wishing for an escape—any escape.

            Then, I bolted upright in my bed, gulping in breaths of air desperately, hungrily, wishing to have never, ever felt what I had just felt…

            And God said, clearly, “My Daughter…this is why.”

            Through the years I’ve gathered what I could from other sources. I retrieved another memory from the day after the Incident, where I was taking off my clothes, and I looked down and saw bruises all over my body. One on my arm and one on my rib cage were in the form of hand prints. I would dissociate from seeing those bruises, I would cover them up, and not be able to tell my mother about them.

            I retrieved another piece of the memory, where it was excruciating to go to the bathroom for weeks after the Incident. But each time I left the bathroom—as with my bruising—I would dissociate from the memory and not be able to tell my parents about it.

            After Heavenly Father allowed me to review this memory, one-by-one, He sent me five independent sources–spiritual people who have the gift of being able to “see” into the past. Each of these individuals, without any prompting from me, saw this event and others, as well. Each of them expressed horror and at first were hesitant to describe what they had seen in spirit. Some of them to this day will not tell me the details of what they saw about this and other incidents that happened to me. Each witness confirmed that this incident was a pattern which recurred several different times during my early childhood. A few of them added that they saw a darkness around these events that went beyond a standard assault, and they felt they were not random attacks. Not one of these sources knew one another or were given any clues by me that something had happened to me as a child, and this did not involve hypnotherapy.

            Heavenly Father answered my prayers and allowed me to put together a picture of what happened after I rounded that corner. A young man, sent on a specific errand from the dark side, was told exactly who to attack, when, and where. He had brown hair. He grabbed me, forced my pants down, and raped me. He may have done other things to me. I then ran to a tree. The teachers found me, sobbing and hysterical, underneath that tree, and I couldn’t tell them what happened.

Dissociative disorders usually develop as a reaction to trauma and help keep difficult memories at bay.

The Mayo Clinic – Dissociative Disorders

            My mother remembers being called to my school, because I had been found under a tree crying hysterically. I had no idea what had happened to me—neither did my mother or anyone at the school. Because I couldn’t tell them what happened, no one thought to check my body for physical trauma.

            But the emotional and mental trauma were now there. The very next day in school, during class I started laughing maniacally. When told to be quiet, I literally couldn’t. My teacher escorted me to the principal’s office—but halfway there, I began crying and screaming uncontrollably. My mother was called, again, but I was still unable to give them any clues of what was wrong. From that day forward—although just three days prior I had been a completely normal, happy, healthy little girl—I suddenly exhibited every sign of Childhood Bipolar Disorder. This was eventually my official diagnosis.

People with dissociative disorders escape reality in ways that are involuntary and unhealthy and cause problems with functioning in everyday life.

The Mayo Clinic – Dissociative Disorders

            Another sign of childhood rape was that my period and puberty started at a very early age.

Early pubertal timing in girls is one of the most frequently replicated antecedents of adolescent emotional distress.

Linking Childhood Maltreatment with Girls’ Internalizing Symptoms: Early Puberty as a Tipping Point, Jane Mendle, National Institutes of Health

While sexual abuse has negative effects for victims no matter their age, experiencing sexual abuse during childhood may be particularly damaging. The immense stress of sexual assault likely plays a strong role in the onset of puberty, and experiencing such high stress during a pivotal period of growth may have long-lasting effects, according to the study.

Julia Haskins, The Nation’s Health June 2017, 47 (4) E16

            My dissociation was assured, and the programming the dark side had done to me in the spiritual realms was cemented by physical reinforcement. After that day, I started to believe everything my tormentors had ever told me.