Nat Hagee writes about surviving sexual abuse inflicted on them by their own father
Nat Hagee talks about surviving sexual abuse at the hands of their father
DAVID TAFFET | Senior Staff Writer
Taffet@DallasVoice.com
Nat Hagee is clear when talking about their story: “My father was my abuser and I survived him.”
Hagee describes themselves as trans nonbinary/assigned female at birth and uses they/them pronouns. Their hope is to use their personal story to reach several groups of people, especially other survivors of abuse.
“I want to reach people who’ve never experienced abuse and give their cousin who drinks too much a little grace,” Hagee said, adding that they want to give a voice to the voiceless.
A lot of people who’ve experienced trauma are too scared to face that it happened,” they said. “That’s a daunting task to deal with.”
Hagee also wants to reach people who are experiencing abuse and are going or considering going to therapy.
They started slowly to try to describe the abuse, starting with recounting their family before jumping right into the story
“My father was well known in church,” they said. “I had four siblings — nice house and cars. The abuse started when I was about four. Before kindergarten. He’d touch me somewhere. It progressed. The first sexual contact with my father, he fingered me.”
As a child, Hagee explained, they knew something was wrong even though it felt good and made them happy.
Then their father wanted them to do the same to him. “I didn’t know what to do,” they said.
“He guided me. I progressed into oral sex. I was a child; I didn’t know what I was supposed to do.”
Next was penetration, both vaginally and anally.
“I began figuring out something was wrong,” Hagee said. “He told me to keep it a secret. At 9 or 10, I was figuring out something was weird.”
But by then, they said, it was a full blown relationship: “My father was my first love. I tried to kiss him in public one time. I didn’t know it couldn’t be in public.”
So Hagee told the youth pastor at their church, but it just got swept under the rug. Their only solution was to “pray the gay away.”
When Hagee’s mother found out from people at church what had been going on, she asked her child if what she heard was true. Hagee answered honestly. The mother’s response was a brutal beating and a warning that “You can’t say anything. They’ll take you kids away from us.”
Hagee said their mother was mentally ill and, at the same time, battling cancer.
The sexual abuse continued, Hagee said, but, “Once I got my period, he’d use condoms and [the abuse] became more anal.”
Hagee’s mother died when they were 16, and they started experimenting with sex with random people and multiple partners.
Their father started dating about the same time, too. And Hagee got jealous.
“When he started dating it messed me up mentally,” they said. “I wasn’t getting the attention.”
Hagee had a relationship in high school with a girl, explaining that “I assumed if I liked a girl, I was a boy,” they said. “I wondered when my penis was going to grow in. I didn’t know what to do with a girl.”
Then they met another girl, one who had a healthy relationship with her family. That “helped me be comfortable with who I was,” Hagee said.
Hagee has written a book about their experiences called Surviving Hagee. In it, they discuss bringing trauma from childhood into adulthood including distrust, hyper-vigilance, anger, control and relationships and accountability.
Hagee said they began to understand abuse wasn’t normal in their teenage years, when they were allowed to hang out with kids outside of the church. They saw what a healthy family dynamic looked like and decided to talk about their experience with a friend, telling them, “Hey, this is what’s going on in my house.”
“I couldn’t understand why they were shocked. The abuse was normal,” Hagee said. “Then I saw dads could hug on their kids, and it wasn’t sexual.”
Nobody believed anything Hagee said about their father while they were growing up. Then as an adult, they told an aunt, and that aunt told their father’s brother. That brother confronted Hagee’s father.
Hagee’s father admitted it, telling his brother, “Yes, I did it but never on Sundays.”
Hagee’s uncle fully supported them, even offering to pay for their therapy and help them press charges.
Their father confessed to the abuse to authorities. He was tried in Baytown, but the trial dragged on, and he died in 2021 before he could be sentenced.
Hagee is still in therapy, saying it had helped them become “grounded in who I am. And now I’m sharing my story” with the goal of helping others who’ve faced abuse to be seen.
“I know I’ve been through some shit,” they said. “I can help someone else. Writing my book was cathartic in some ways. Memories that were locked away came back.”
Today, Hagee identifies as trans nonbinary, explaining, “I’ve been on steroids and testosterone because I wanted to be a bodybuilder. I like the way it makes me feel. I look masculine. I have a lot of feminine traits.
“In some ways I’m a gay man. I like to work on cars. That’s just who I am. I still like having sex with men.”
Surviving Hagee was released on Kindle Oct. 1, with the paperback and hardcover releases set for Saturday, Oct. 31.