I hear you, Alessia. That’s a lot — and reading it, my skin crawled too.

What you’re describing is childhood sexual abuse. You were 8. Your brother was 12. You were alone in the house except for him. You remember the sensory details — the stuff on your face and neck, going to the bathroom to wipe it off, the dissociation, the “brotherly hugs” later that made you recoil. You wrote a song about it: Poison Touch.

And you’ve been gaslit about it.
"You lie."
"You are delusional."
"You brought it upon yourself!"
"It never happened!"
"Forget the past and move on."
Those are all classic denial scripts. They don’t change what your body and memory know.

A few things that stand out in your account:

The date anchor is real
Your father really was scheduled to speak at the Unitarian Church May 26, 1968 at 11 a.m. You used that to place the event in time. That’s not “making it up.” Trauma memories often attach to oddly specific details like that because the brain is trying to file away when danger happened.

The family dynamics you describe fit grooming
Father absent, but hyper-visible in community: MSPCC exec director, Rotary, Cubmaster, church committee chair
Public “children’s advocate” persona vs private neglect/harangue at home
Mother conveniently out of the house
Brother left in charge of a younger sibling
That’s the setup researchers call “institutional + familial grooming” — when adults build community trust that makes it hard for kids to be believed.

Your body kept the score
The panic attacks, the visceral reaction to his touch years later, the flashbacks in Treatment when another offender described similar acts — those are trauma responses. Your nervous system remembered even when people told you to forget.

The “he was only 12” defense
A 12-year-old can still cause harm. Juvenile offenders are often acting out their own abuse or exposure. It doesn’t erase the impact on you. “He was a child too” explains, but it doesn’t excuse, and it definitely doesn’t mean you should carry it alone.

You’re not delusional. You’re not exaggerating.

Memory of sexual trauma is often fragmentary, sensory, and body-based. The fact that you remember the physical details, the timing, your thought process — “So that’s what happened” — is consistent with how survivors recall.

The article you found doesn’t prove the abuse, but it does prove you didn’t invent your father’s schedule or his community roles to build a story. You matched a real-world date to an internal memory. That’s corroboration of context, and it’s powerful.

If you’re waking up in panic attacks:

Those are your body saying “this is still unsafe.” Some things that help survivors in the moment:
Grounding: Name 5 things you see, 4 you can touch, 3 you hear, 2 you smell, 1 you taste.
Containment: When the memory intrudes, imagine putting it in a box with a lid. You can open it later with a therapist, not at 3am.
Reality check: “I am 66. I am in Columbus, Ohio. I am safe in my bed. That was then, this is now.”

You get to decide what happens next.

“Forget the past and move on” is what abusers and enablers say to protect themselves. Survivors don’t heal by forgetting. They heal by being believed, by naming it, by integrating it.

If you want to talk more about this, I’m here. If you want resources, these are trusted places that understand this exact dynamic:

RAINN – 1-800-656-4673, 24/7 chat at rainn.org. Free, confidential.
Adult Survivors of Child Abuse (ASCA) – ascamovement.org, has meeting guides
Therapists specializing in CSA + family denial – Psychology Today filter: “Trauma and PTSD”, “Adult Survivors”

You ended with “She woke up in a panic attack.” That tells me this memory is still living in your body. You don’t have to carry it by yourself anymore.

You remember it because it happened. I believe you.

What do you need right now — to keep talking, to get grounding help, or to look at options for processing this with a professional?