Childhood sex abuse that still haunts me

Sunday October 30th 2005

QI'VE just finished reading some of the letters you get from people who are in need of a shoulder to cry on, or, in some cases, a guardian angel to save them.

It's only as I read them that I realised how alone I feel. I thought I was over my past, but it still taunts me sometimes. As I write, I feel more and more nervous.

I'm 43, married to a man some years my senior, and we have one child who is nearly 10. I was in a long-term relationship while in my 20s, but it was a bad situation. It no longer bothers me, as I made the right decision to get out. My problem goes way beyond that.

When I was a child, there was always someone who wanted a piece of me. You know, the grown-ups with evil filthy minds. I mostly managed to dodge them, getting away with just being touched. But one day, there I was and there he was, in a car, very early in the morning. I was barely 12 years old. He had a knife in the dashboard of the car and was crying and said that he wanted to kill himself and kill me. He had brought me to that place before, but had only made me touch him.

I lived with my aunt - this man worked for her, and used to drive my three cousins and me to school every day. But I was always left until last, as I was in a different school. Sometimes, I would pretend not to hear my aunt call me for school because I knew what waited for me.

But there we were in the car, in the middle of nowhere, and he started to cry again. I started to cry too, and prayed I wouldn't upset him. I didn't want to die. I held his face and told him I would let him do it. The fear inside me was unbearable. I can't remember if I was more afraid of the knife, even though he didn't take it out of the dashboard, or of what he wanted to do.

Then he was on top of me, I screamed with pain and started to shake. It was over quickly, I was bleeding and got out of the car. Everything was going through my mind. What if someone saw us? What would people say? I just wanted to get away, and after a few minutes he drove us away. He told me to say nothing. I told him I wouldn't, because I was scared he'd get me sooner or later. After all, he was in the house all the time.

I really thought I'd worked through it, but now it seems I haven't. I realise I still feel the need to face him again. I know I'm strong enough, and would like to tell him how his behaviour affected my adult life. I also wonder if he might have done it to someone else. I know he has a grown-up family and sometimes I feel he should be punished. But who would believe me when so much time has passed?

Some days, I just tell myself to cop on, get over it, and think there are undoubtedly worse things that could have happened to me. But it's there all the time, niggling at me. I don't want to feel it anymore. What can I do? There's more, of course. It was part of my childhood. In fact, I didn't have a childhood. It started when I was about five or six years old, but then it was just this old horrible man who used to make me touch him while no one was looking.

Please help me get rid of this past once and for all. Sometimes I feel that ending my life would take all the pain away, but I'm too much of a coward to do it. Still, it's always on my mind.

AYOU do know that you have to go and see a rape counsellor, or some professional who will help you distance yourself emotionally from what happened you when you were just a child, don't you?

Of course, we never forget. Never entirely, anyway. Many block out memories, but that's not forgetting, that's pushing away pain which is too terrible to contemplate.

I disagree with those who think that such blocking off is always wrong. It works for some people. In fact, it may be their only way of coping, and I respect that. In other words, I don't believe that it's always a good idea to go back looking for past trauma. But there is always a cost attached to such repression of bad memories. People pay a price in terms of their happiness, or ability to love, or the harshness with which they approach the world, or whatever.

You, however, haven't blocked it all out. You remember. And as I've just said, your aim can't be to completely forget. What proper therapy does is allow us distance ourselves from the helpless child we were. It allows us to explore our anger, our sense of helplessness, our disgust, our fear that we were somehow also guilty - although, of course, we weren't. You weren't.

When you told this man he could go ahead and have sex with you, that wasn't consent. Nor was it any kind of seduction. It was survival instinct, pure and simple. You read the situation as best you couldin terms of staying alive. In such situations, the victim's read on the situation is always right. You did the right thing. It was the only thing you could do, under thecircumstances. And of course what makes this man's behaviour particularly despicableis the fact that he wrappedhis threat up in tears, inan appeal to something any child could understand, or identify with, namely helplessness. He manipulated you most appallingly.

Your problem, of course, is much more deep-seated. Whatever the specific circumstances of your childhood may have been, what's important is that there was no onethere looking out for you.You were not protected. At some emotional level, you were abandoned.

Yes, I know that almost 40 years ago children weren't informed about sexual abuse, and they didn't feel free to speak. But even allowing for that, I've the strong impression that you felt exposed to the evils of the world, had no one standing between you and harm, that you were, indeed, left exposed, vulnerable.

Dreadful things can, and do, happen. But I believe that the real damage lies in how we perceive them, how we read the situation, how we interpret the circumstances. The real damage done to you was the fact that you felt "everyone wanted a piece of you", as you so clearly put it, and no adult stepped up to fight them off, on your behalf.

Emotionally, you felt thrown to the wolves. And in a very real sense, you were thrown to the wolves, even if that was unintentional. That leaves you - as it would have anyone with such childhood experiences - feeling angry and outraged but also helpless and rather worthless.

I don't believe you need to show your strength by confronting this man. What you need is to use your strength to work through your anger and despair with someone who will help you handle it all. Which is why I believe you should seek out that therapist, or rape counsellor, tomorrow. Take care of yourself.

? Irish Independent