For years, Terri Rimmer suffered a double dose of abuse: sexual abuse from her father and physical abuse from her mother.

Unfortunately, it went unnoticed in the middle class neighborhood where Rimmer’s family lived.

“We looked good from the outside,” Rimmer said. “We were middle class. Nobody noticed anything because everything looked good from the outside.” At 15, Rimmer entered foster care after she broke down and shared her secret with her older sister, Cindy, who entered foster care years earlier for the same reasons.

Fortunately, Cindy had a quality foster placement with two teachers who took her into their home and encouraged her in life.

But for Rimmer, finding her place in foster homes was difficult because of her lack of trust in others and self-confidence in herself.

Unlike her sister, foster care was a drastically different experience for Rimmer who bounced through four different foster homes before emancipating from the system. Even though some of the foster placements felt like home, Rimmer was never comfortable in the families and never maintained a close connection with any of them.

“My grades suffered, I went through a depression and I didn’t trust anyone,” Rimmer said.

Being in foster care felt like a punishment for telling the truth about the abuse she’d experienced throughout her life. The shadows of her past continued to haunt her and follow her to each placement.

“I felt like I was being punished for his actions,” Rimmer said. “At the time, I still worshiped him.” After leaving foster care, Rimmer moved back to her mother’s home for the summer, despite continually feeling rejected by her mom. But her sister, Cindy, encouraged Rimmer to improve her life by going to college, inspiring Rimmer to strive for more.

With therapy and Cindy’s encouragement, Rimmer began to see the positives in her life And uncover some of the painful memories from her childhood.

“She (Cindy) was just there for me,” Rimmer said. “She encouraged me. Even when my mom wasn’t around she was there.” Rimmer strongly believes that if it hadn’t been for her sister’s support she would be in jail or even dead. Today, the two remain close despite the distance from Fort Worth, Texas, where Rimmer calls home and Florida, where Cindy lives.

Despite all that Rimmer has overcome, she is still haunted by her past. She still has nightmares about the abuse she endured and struggles through therapy to help her deal with those experiences. At one point she was married, but has since divorced and finds it difficult to keep strong connections.

“I tend to have a hard time trusting people,” Rimmer said. “I have a tendency to be cynical.” Challenges in dealing with her past also led her to relinquish her daughter to adoption about eight years ago.

“I just wasn’t confident in my abilities to parent her,” Rimmer said. “I wanted her to have a better life.” Today she enjoys a semi-open adoption with her 7-year-old daughter and is slowly putting her life together. She enjoys a lucrative research and writing career. She has written an e-book about her experience as a birth mother, which can be found at booklocker.com under the family heading “MacKenzie’s Hope.” She wants other foster children to learn from her experience and not be trapped by abusive situations they have suffered in their lives.

“I would encourage them to go to college and tell them the abuse isn’t their fault,” Rimmer said