Ok now I am going to tell you a little bite about me. As I said earlier my name is April. I was taken from my mother at the age of 5 by my father. He took me to the lady that he was having an affair with Leasa. By the time I was 7 I was cooking and doing almost all the house work. By the time I was 9 I was raising both my brothers Robert now 14 and Joey now 12 and I was doing all the house work and the cooking. Leasa never helped do any thing all she did was sit on her but and yell and order me around. By this time Leasa had started physical abusing me and my two brothers. By the time I was 10 I was very depressed and was suicidal. I wanted to kill my self because I believed that I was worthless and there was no use in living if I could not please any one. I did not believe that I had a purpose in living. I tried in so many ways for 6 years. By the time I was 14 my dad had started sexually abusing me. It went on for 2 and ½ years before I finally told. They put him in jail the same day that I told.  At this time my dad and Leasa got married. After that they had a baby girl named Leigha. Now I was raising three kids and my self and doing all the house work and cooking. When I was 16 I ran away from home for four days to try to figure out how I could get me and my brothers out of the situation with Leasa. When I returned to school (I still had not found an answer to my problem) Leasa picked me up and took me to the police. I told them why I had ran away from home to the detective that helped me with the situation with my dad. She told me that she would talk to my CPS case worker to figure out a solution. After we left there Leasa took me to a mental hospital  were they asked me what I wanted to do and I said I wanted to stay. I stayed not only to help me with my depression, my suicidal thoughts and attempts, but also with my anorexia, to be a better sister and to think about how to deal with the situation with Leasa. My CPS case worker and the detective came to see me and I told them everything that Leasa had done to us. I was In the hospital for 2 weeks during that time I did not see my brothers but once when my CPS case worker brought them. When I got out I was taken to my case worker who took me and Joey to a shelter where we stayed for three days then our Grandmother (my dads mom) picked up Robert then came and got me and Joey. That week that she came and got us I had to go to trial for my dad. He got 5 years in prison and 10 years probation and he is to have no contact with me. At the trial I finally got to see my real mother, she was not anything like what Leasa and my dad had been telling me. All the things that they told me were all lies. They had kept me and my brothers from her. When my grandma talked to my dad at the trial he told her not to let my mother have us but I went the next day with her back home. My brothers came down about 3 weeks later and they were (while they where with our grandma) having contact with Leasa when they were not supposed to. Now I am living where I can be a kid and have fun where I don’t have to worry about being hurt. I am much happier now. I am getting lots of help to get over all that I have been through.  I do not know where my half sister leigha is at.  I have trial coming up some time this year for Leasa.  I have some physical trama from her and I don't know if I will ever completly heal physicaly, mentaly and emotionaly from all the abuse I went through.  But I do live a better life now, I believe that even though I went through what I did, that I am now a better and stronger person than I was before.