Ever since “coming out of the closet” for Hillary Clinton, I’ve been mostly mum on this blog about politics out of respect and love I have for my dear family and friends who support Mr. Trump. Although I still love you all dearly, my silence ends today. Why?

You see, I’m a victim of sexual abuse, not just once but four times over. The first time happened when I was a little girl on a school bus. The bus driver’s hands were all over me, and then he stuck my entire hand in his mouth. He kept me behind everyone else when the bus went to the bus barn and then wouldn’t let me get off the bus unless I kissed him on the mouth. The whole time he kept talking about how tiny and beautiful I was. I was six, people. SIX YEARS OLD.

The second time it happened I was fifteen or sixteen when a boy thought it would be funny to poke his pencil right between my legs. It wasn’t funny then and it certainly isn’t funny now, but now his nasty laughter sounds a lot like the laughter I heard on the Trump/Bush video.

The third time it happened was on a date when a guy tried to stick his tongue down my throat while mauling me in the same way Mr. Trump said he does to women he finds beautiful. This guy acted surprised when I became angry and offended — like Trump, he believed I would let him do anything.

“Love him or hate him, Donald Trump is a man who is certain about what he wants and sets out to get it, no holds barred,” Trump said about himself one time. “Women find his power almost as much of a turn-on as his money.”

Here’s a clue, Mr. Trump. No woman I know is “turned on” by unsolicited mauling, no matter how powerful or rich they are.

The fourth time it happened was in a work environment. My boss at the time made suggestive comments to me and touched me inappropriately. In that case, I reported his actions to his supervisors and learned that my complaint was the last straw in a long string of complaints against his behavior  — he was reassigned, and I never had to see him again. End of story, I thought.

But if Mr. Trump is elected President, I will see that supervisor’s face every time I see Trump’s. I will see the school bus driver’s face. The leering teenager’s face. The creepy guy’s face. The macho “boys will be boys” persona of Trump is the same one used by all four of my assaulters. I’m finding it difficult to separate the man he was in that video from the man he claims to be today. And I’m not alone. Millions of women have stepped forward to tell their stories, and they are heartbreaking. Many of them ended in rape, and hearing Mr. Trump speak in those videos dredged up all the horror, all over again.

Having said all that, I do believe in redemption. I believe that a person who encounters Jesus walks away changed and humbled, and with that repentant heart comes repentant behavior. A man who once treated women as sex objects sincerely apologizes and then changes his behavior.

Dismissing that behavior as a distraction and then comparing it to someone else’s behavior smacks of justification. The line of thinking goes: Bill Clinton did it, too, and worse than me! And with a cigar! But dismissing and justifying your behavior by pointing to someone else’s nullifies the point of an apology, which lies in taking personal responsibility. That means owning up to your mistake without pointing out the mistakes others have made. The way Mr. Trump “apologized” is the same way my first grade students defiantly said, “But he pushed me, first!”

I feel sorry for those Americans who really wanted to nominate an outsider who would be immune to political corruption. They thought Mr. Trump was the answer. His great wealth meant he didn’t have to take corporate donations and therefore would not be ‘bought’ by anyone. His refusal to comply with political correctness was a breath of fresh air to people tired of children being thrown out of school for turning their pop-tarts into the shape of guns. His business acumen seemed tailor-made to turn around a country that gets deeper into debt every second of every day.

But what they got instead was a reality-TV star with an inflated sense of entitlement and a warped sense of himself:

“All of the women on ‘The Apprentice’ flirted with me — consciously or unconsciously. That’s to be expected.” — How To Get Rich, 2004

How does a person unconsciously flirt? The next statement is even more telling — Donald Trump actually EXPECTS all women to flirt with him. That’s why he is comfortable kissing and mauling women he finds beautiful. He has no idea that they don’t find him as attractive.

If Mr. Trump becomes our next President, how will he “turn off” this tendency in his interactions with foreign leaders and diplomats? What if he finds a female leader or diplomat beautiful? Will he then go after her and assume she is unconsciously flirting with him because he is rich and the most powerful man in the world? Or what about another country’s leader’s wife? The wedding ring on a woman’s finger appears to mean nothing to Mr. Trump.

Mr. Trump is not the candidate evangelicals thought they were getting when they voted for him in the primaries because the things he values are the opposite of what Jesus values. In addition to the vile words caught on tape, a look at Mr. Trump’s penthouse shows that he values himself with golden doors and ceilings, whereas Jesus taught us that the first must be last, we must lose our lives to save them, and loving God and each other should be our primary goal. Mr. Trump’s language towards women stands as an exact example of what NOT to do as a Christian, according to the Apostle Paul, as he said in his letter to the Philippians:

³ Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. ⁴ Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too.

⁵ You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had.

⁶ Though he was God,^[a]
    he did not think of equality with God
    as something to cling to.
⁷ Instead, he gave up his divine privileges^[b];
    he took the humble position of a slave^[c]
    and was born as a human being.
When he appeared in human form,^[d]
8     he humbled himself in obedience to God
    and died a criminal’s death on a cross.

Jesus knelt down and washed the dirty, stinky feet of his students — as an example to us of how to live a life of self sacrifice. But from Mr. Trump we get this piece of advice:

The point is that you can’t be too greedy. -Donald Trump

Presumably, money isn’t the only thing Mr. Trump gets greedy about. If you are greedy, you aren’t loving others as yourself. Instead, you are putting yourself above other people. Trump’s vulgar language demonstrated just how far he positions himself above women.

If you find his language offensive but are willing to set it aside for your party values, I urge you to take another look at what those values are and weigh them against his. Pray about it, and then vote your conscience and where the Holy Spirit leads. As for me, now more than ever I am determined to vote for Hillary Clinton. I cannot support a Playboy in Chief.