After six years of being too scared to say a word, Stacia Weeks
finally said
”
I’m fed up.
”
She was fed up with her eating disorder, sick of overdosing on
painkillers and tired of cutting into her arm to release the pain
that accumulated after years of sexual abuse. Although her former
stepfather, Kevin Bonilla, will be behind bars for the next 28
years for sexually abusing her from the time she was 10 until she
gathered the courage to speak out at 16, Weeks, now 20, has a long
road to recovery ahead of her.
After six years of being too scared to say a word, Stacia Weeks finally said “I’m fed up.”
She was fed up with her eating disorder, sick of overdosing on painkillers and tired of cutting into her arm to release the pain that accumulated after years of sexual abuse. Although her former stepfather, Kevin Bonilla, will be behind bars for the next 28 years for sexually abusing her from the time she was 10 until she gathered the courage to speak out at 16, Weeks, now 20, has a long road to recovery ahead of her.
Weeks was 3 when her parents divorced and she moved in with her grandparents. She rarely saw her father after the divorce and was excited when her mother remarried and bought a home with her new husband that wasn’t too far from where she lived with her grandparents. She lacked a father figure for years and felt her world coming back together when her mother settled down again, she said.
Her sense of security was shortlived. Not long after her mother married Bonilla, he started touching her in ways that confused the 10-year-old. The first time it happened, Weeks was at her cousin’s house. She remembered sliding between the cartoon sheets in her cousin’s vacant bed. When a neighbor’s barking dog frightened her, she asked her mother to keep her company until she fell asleep. Instead, Bonilla volunteered. From that moment, her life veered sharply off course.
“That’s pretty much when everything started,” she said. Since then, Weeks’ life has run a roller coaster trajectory, with far too many rock bottoms. She has been in and out of institutions and dreads the overwhelming feeling of flashing back to a time in her life she’d rather forget. She tried to sidestep her stepfather’s advances, layering absurd amounts of clothes on her body and pretending to sleep when he came into her room at night. Her tactics never worked.
“I’d wear tons of clothes and he’d take them off,” she said. “When I took a bath, he’d have to use the bathroom all of a sudden.”
When her mother asked her if Bonilla touched her, Weeks told her “no Mom, that’s dumb,” she said. “I didn’t want to ruin my mom’s marriage.”
Bonilla told Weeks he’d kill himself if she told.
“I was confused,” Weeks said. “I thought maybe that’s what fathers do when you’re younger.”
Community Solutions, a local nonprofit human services agency, sees victims like Weeks come through their doors looking for guidance and an open ear, said Emma Lucas, assistant program director for the Solutions to Violence program. She said that each individual case is unique but many are characterized by the sense of confusion and powerlessness Weeks remembered.
“We’re ready to walk with the victim,” Lucas said. At the center, victims are referred to as survivors. “With sexual violence, it’s about power and control. The survivor’s power and control has been taken away already and we don’t want to do that again.”
When the topic of sexual abuse came up in her religion class at Notre Dame High School in Salinas, Weeks write about “a friend” who was being sexually abused.
“I was hoping she (Weeks’ teacher) would figure out it was me,” she said. At that point, Weeks was visiting the school counselor on a regular basis, trying to find the courage to tell her secret. She was also cutting her arms regularly. She remembered watching a television show about a girl who cut herself to feel better. In the show, the girl used a compass. The first time Weeks cut herself, she did the same.
“I was addicted to cutting. I would cut 16 times. It’s my lucky number.” Her left forearm is criss-crossed with scars. “I just kept going. If there was no room, I’d wait and cut it again. It was a mess. But it made me feel better.”
“This is dumb,” she finally said. “Why am I hurting myself?”
Her 16th birthday was the last time he bothered her. She stopped hinting about her problem and finally came out with it. During confession at St. Mary Church, she told her priest everything. Within a month, Bonilla was in police custody.
“It’s getting better day by day,” Weeks said. She’s studying child development at Gavilan College and teaches religious education at St. Mary’s.
“She is so good with kids,” Weeks’ mother, Barbara Biafore said. “Kids gravitate to her. She’s in her second semester at Gavilan and she’s doing great.”
Pride for her daughter shone in Biafore’s eyes. Although Weeks lived with her grandparents until she was 16 and visited her mother on the weekends, the two moved in together after Bonilla’s arrest for the first time since Weeks was 3. In their living room, mother and daughter bantered back and forth for a few minutes when Biafore came home from work.
“I’m her favorite,” Weeks said.
“You’re my favorite daughter,” Biafore clarified. Weeks also has an older brother who is away at college.
Weeks’ mother, her priest, her therapist and Detective Wes Stanford keep her steady, she said. Her support network is strong and she leans on them in times of need. Stanford was the detective who handled Weeks’ case and got her the help she needed.
“Even after the fact, the counseling and the support system never goes away,” Stanford said. “A lot of people out there live through this and the best thing they can do is get help. They need to use the resources that are available to them.”
Like Stanford, Weeks hopes to work as a sex crimes detective.
“It’s great to be heard,” she said, “and help other girls get their voice heard.” By talking about her experiences, Weeks is freed from the secrets she had to keep as a child, she said.
“I always thought it was just me,” she said. “I felt like I was the only one this ever happened to. This problem affects more than just me.”
“For people that do come forward there is a very strong support mechanism in place,” Stanford said. “If they want to go through with prosecution, all the way up to the DA’s office, there’s a very professional, supportive network.”
“It’s one of the crimes that crosses all boundaries,” he added. “It happens to far more people than we think.”
According to the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, 7 percent of girls grades five through eight and 12 percent of girls grades nine through 12 say they’ve been sexually abused; 93 percent of juvenile sexual assault victims know their attacker.
When Weeks confronted her attacker four years ago, he told her “you do what you have to do, and I’ll do what I have to do,” she said. After helping put him behind bars, she’s doing what she has to do to heal.
“What helps me is to help other people,” she said. Now that people know her story, friends and strangers have approached her with similar experiences. “You’re not alone,” she tells them. “It’s not your fault.”
