Help Anita Heal After Childhood of Sexual Violence & Trauma

This is a photo of me a year before my father started raping me. He raped me from then on, nearly every day. Rapes and beatings continued throughout my youth, until I escaped to a women’s shelter. Even then, my father kept searching for me and threatening me by phone and internet until the day the police took him away.

My father was sentenced to 341 years in prison about ten years ago in Las Vegas, Nevada. My mother and step-mother were both sentenced to life in prison. You can find the horrible details by searching online for Christopher Sena in Las Vegas.

When all my parents were finally arrested for my rapes and their other crimes, I was a legal-age adult, and was allowed to serve as guardian and caretaker for my 16-year-old brother, which kept him out of foster care. For those years I worked at Walmart and had some financial help from a cousin. I took care of an apartment and my brother, encouraging and helping him through his high school graduation, while earning my Associates degree in Art in pursuit of my dream of becoming an animatronic engineer.

Then, several years ago, I moved out to Los Angeles to escape bad memories and continue to chase my dream. Since coming to L.A. with some help from an uncle, I have earned a Certificate in Computer Aided Drafting and Design while working first at Walmart and then as an Amazon delivery driver. I have been on the Dean’s List every semester at a university where I am earning my Bachelor’s degree in Animation. I hope to complete this degree and go on with education in Animatronic Engineering.

I can tell you from first-hand experience that with time, hope, lots of physical and mental effort, cherished dreams of the future, and a bit of help from caring people along the way, people like me can build a new life. But even caring people can only do so much, and now I am asking if you will please help me too.

The settlement money I received from when I was run over on my bicycle a few years ago is all gone. I can no longer afford to stay in school and live near Hollywood. My dream may end now, unless I can find funding to continue my quest.

I write to you today to ask you to consider becoming another caring person who helps me along the way, by donating to my GoFundMe. Your support will help me stay in L.A., where my future jobs are, allow me to focus on my education, and help me continue to heal.

I am not comfortable writing this note to you. I am uncomfortable asking for any help. I do not want people to feel sorry for me. But people who actually love me – my uncle and my cousin – are telling me I should tell you my story and let you decide if you would like to help me. They think you will. I can only hope and pray.

During my childhood, I was fortunate to have brief escapes from reality through my own art, as well as from video games, TV, and movies – especially fantasy and science fiction. I believe those happy escapes helped keep me willing to live. Now I am trying to follow my lifelong dream of working in the creative arts to produce the kinds of entertainment for other people – children and adults – that enabled me to survive my childhood.

Thank you for learning my story and for anything you can do to help me continue my education, while I confront and slowly heal from a childhood of torture.

Sincerely,

Anita Sena

(my legal name is now changed to something else to protect me)