We are Children

But first;

What is child sexual abuse?

Child sexual abuse are acts – physical, verbal or emotional; that use the child as an object of sexual gratification by an adult. The child is most often forced, tricked, pressured or manipulated. Sexual abuse of children can include

1. Touching and fondling private parts
2. Sexual kissing
3. Penetration; penile/ digital or object penetration of the vagina/ mouth/ anus
4. Exposing the child to sexual activity or pornographic material
5. Making lewd comments about the child’s body
6. Having children perform in a sexual fashion
7. Spying or peeping on a child in their bedrooms or bathrooms.

“You are special so you get to sit on the cycle’, he said as his hands went inside her panties. “These roses are only for you”, he said as he kissed and caressed her. But she didn’t want to feel special like that.

“Boy … You wanted this. You wanted me to sleep near you. It was you who held me close and embraced me.” Each word hit me like a hammer-jack.

It’s been ten years since the time he touched me. But I can still feel his cold, clammy hands on my neck, over my breasts and between my legs.

He pushed me on the cot, turned me around and then raped me. He continued to rape me for 11 more years.

I was his favourite girl and we had secret games. He asked me to remove my underwear and would then use his fingers. He said I would get extra mints if I did not cry. He said he would not allow my friends and me to play on the terrace if I complained to anyone.

I did not even know that I was violated.

How could I have been so stupid…

I lost all self respect for myself for allowing it to happen.

I felt like a worthless piece of garbage. Would God forgive me for the filth I held within my heart?

I knew of the person who had abused her. She told me with a straight face and I just went to sleep in an hour after the conversation, having nothing to say to her. I was numb. The next morning, I spent 4 hours just staring at the rising sun, feeling a mixture of anger, sadness, helplessness… I hated the idea that I knew something was wrong with her situation during the time of her abuse but I didn’t have the power to do anything about it then.

Obviously I was taking part in something wrong. But since he was so wonderful and good, it was clearly me who was wrong. Bad. Dirty.

I consented, as much as a child of fifteen can consent with a man of forty one. I didn’t kick, or scream, or protest once. Each time he asked I said yes. And I was willing because I was so grateful to him for the attention, so anxious for praise, so awed by his superiority and so desperate to please. But now, ten years later, I can see the value of a legal age of consent.

I wetted my bed every night till I was 12 years old. I kept sticks under my pillow to hit the ghost when he came near me and did those things to me. I still do not like people who point their fingers at me.

My problem was not that I faced pain during the abuse. It was that I felt nothing. I would lie like a log of wood. I was absolutely nihilistic.

All my childhood I lived a dual life when I was being abused and the life when I wasn’t. It dictated my very being. It was years of continuous abuse, pain, breach with not a single soul to reach out to.

I was carrying this huge burden, this enormous secret that sometimes felt like a comfort – this good man loves me, cares for me – and at other times it felt like a horrible mark, a disfiguration that I was sure everybody could see on me… if they looked closely enough.

And as an adult, she never let her children alone with a man, not even their father.

In the battle of self discovery, I confessed about my sexual abuse to a friend. Instead of keeping my confidence, he spread the news around. Soon, the walls of the college and the toilet signboards had my name. They didn’t see it as sexual abuse. For them it was fun gay sex. I became a symbol of ridicule.

The first two friends I told, two years after it ended were wonderful at first – horrified but supportive and fiercely protective of me in a way I certainly didn’t think I deserved then. But subsequently they reacted as normal teenagers would – asking me about making out, sexual contact, about pleasure, about how to please a man. I tried to answer but I really hadn’t learned to associate it with joy or pleasure at all.

It has always been difficult to see such wonderful people, live the consequences of ‘physical hurt’ and ‘guilt’ in their day to day lives, when it was caused by a situation out of their hands.

Most often than not people choose to ignore problems in the hope that a problem unacknowledged cannot exist little realising that the problem manifests itself in other areas of life.

I spent the next three years angry and trying to convince her that she was not wrong. She never agreed with me. She never had an answer when I asked her how it could ever be her fault when she was so young when it happened. We debated it from every point in my head… but still, it was never his fault.

My eyes were red and bloodshot and I ground my teeth and said ‘No’. A loud and clear no.

He picked up the ladle from the table and hit his father hard on the knuckles, screaming “Don’t touch her!”

• Seven years since I felt the need to take six showers a day.
• Six years for the guilt to almost completely die out.
• Five years for the nightmares to stop.
• Four years since I swung back and forth between shame at myself and anger at him.
• Two years since I cried every night.
• Ten years since it happened and now I’m almost completely free.
• It’s been getting better through the entire time… sometimes gradually and sometimes in one big leap of healing.

I have always wondered what I can do to be supportive. So today, I write to you.

Sharing my story helped in my healing and me treating myself better.

I think that all that my friends really wanted was somebody to listen to them without the judging and being able to sound themselves out. They didn’t need empathy or sympathy or my anger or sadness; they just reached out because they were ready to. Their secret has not changed the way I look at them or interact with them. It’s just a dimension I am conscious about that has affected their lives.

I have made a conscious decision to talk about child sexual abuse because ignorance about sexual abuse did not help me. The person who wrote ignorance is bliss had the dictum working for him. I cannot be him.