Cho was sexually molested by a family friend from age five to 12. “I had a very long-term relationship with this abuser, which is a horrible thing to say. I didn’t even understand it was abuse, because I was too young to know,” she says. “I endured it so many times, especially because I was alone a lot.” At 14, she was raped by another acquaintance. “I was raped continuously through my teenage years, and I didn’t know how to stop it. It was also an era where young girls were being sexualized. For me, I think I had been sexually abused so much in my life that it was hard for me to let go of anger, forgive or understand what happened.”

Cho attended Lowell High School in San Francisco. She was expelled because she often skipped class and got bad grades in ninth and tenth grades. She then transferred to J Eugene McAteer High School, but dropped out at the beginning of her senior year. She left because of the intense bullying, which she suffered at both schools. She had speech issues and social phobias and felt it easier to talk to adults. She thinks that is why she was probably abused so much. She sought out older company because she didn’t want to be around children who made fun of her. Her one regret is that she feels she never got the education she should have. “When I was raped in high school, it was the first time I had sex that was penetrative, so it was different and weird. I told someone that I was raped, and the kids at school found out and said, ‘You are so ugly and fat that the only way anybody would have sex with you is if they were crazy and raped you. So don’t act like you are hot and somebody wanted to **** you,'" she recalls. "'It’s because you are disgusting, and you deserve to be raped.'” After that experience, Cho’s English teacher encouraged her to write things down in a journal and gave her the voice that she didn’t have. Sadly he was later killed. “The same kids who told me I got raped because I was disgusting also told me that he was murdered because he was a f*ggot,” she says. “That’s why I ended up leaving school. I didn’t want to be around people that were so cruel.”

Cho sometimes searches for these bullies on Facebook. She thinks it would be funny to abuse-shame them, but she hasn’t found many on there. “I hope these people are dead,” she says. “But if not, I can’t find where they are. But I have to watch myself because I don’t want to be a bully. It’s just funny to think about. There was this one girl, she was horrible, and she filled my sleeping bag at camp with tons of dog sh*t. She has kids that are the age we were then. I wonder if she lies in bed and thinks of me and feels bad. I wonder if her girls bully or get bullied. Maybe she is terrified that will happen to her kid?”

Cho admits that her abuser is still alive and her family knows about it. She says that sexual molestation is an excusable offense in her traditional Korean family’s eyes, which she thinks is insane. Her family believes that people shouldn’t make a fuss about things that have happened to them in the past. “They don’t really want to talk about it, because that would make it real somehow. I think Asian cultures often is in denial about such things. Like, if they don’t talk about it, it doesn’t exist. So it makes me unwelcome in some ways,” she says. “But all I have is ownership of my own suffering. I can take that and explain it in a way that helps resolve it. But I often think, ‘How do I have sanity? How do I bring justice?’ I kind of save myself through it.”

I love her

Originally posted by Josh I loved her in Drop Dead Diva.

She is such a strong and brave woman.

Wow, that's so damaging to a person's psyche.

Why are people such assholes?

From my experience, that seems to be the norm when it comes to extremely sensitive situations within families.

Thanks for posting and to Margaret for sharing.