November 07, (THEWILL) – Child sexual abuse is an all-too-common facet of our society but the tragedy is that the perpetrators are protected by the silence forced by our African culture. Many women in private conversations would admit to having experienced some form of attempted or actual sexual abuse as children but in most cases it went unreported. The perpetrators are usually trusted people like fathers, uncles, older cousins, neighbours and even in some cases, domestic employees like drivers, gardeners or stewards.
The traumatizing effect of sexual abuse on a child can last a lifetime. A study by psychologists suggests that adults who had to go through sexual abuse in their childhood show symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), anxiety and depression. Oftentimes the symptoms manifest much later in life after the victim has kept the secret buried for several years. In this two-part story, Kristal shares her experience of sexual and physical abuse from her early years through to her teenage and highlights the impact of her childhood trauma on her present life.
Note: The real names have been changed to protect the identities of the people in the story.
Kristal’s Story
Kristal sat on the front porch and watched the other children make their way to the village school. She was six years old but hadn’t started formal school yet. Uncle Donald called out to her “It’s time for ‘school’, bring your books let’s begin”. She went back inside and picked up her books and pencil and sat beside Donald as he started taking her through her daily lessons which she really enjoyed. Donald was a good teacher and he spent considerable time making sure she got her tenses right and produced neat and well written work. Donald watched Kristal as she counted on her fingers working through the calculations, he had set for her. He was very fond of his niece who had been pretty much abandoned by her parents and had taken it upon himself to home school her.
Kristal’s mother was his younger sister, Mercy who had fallen in love with a young man, Callistus whom she met while she was still in school. Her parents lived in Obulu-uku, a town not far from their village, Ubulubu in Delta state which the family regularly visited. It was on one of those visits to the village that Mercy and Callistus met and formed a relationship. Callistus had promised to marry Mercy and even went to her parents to ask for her hand in marriage. Her parents, who had buried six out of their twelve children, were not keen on her getting married at all. They had only one surviving son and planned that Mercy being their first daughter would stay home and bear more children for the family. This was an accepted village custom. Callistus had another girlfriend in a neighbouring village who he was more disposed to marrying so he did not spend much time trying to convince Mercy’s parents to allow him to marry their daughter. Within a couple of months, he married his belle and Mercy was left with a pregnancy that her parents wanted more than she did.
Devastated by Callistus’ betrayal and facing the possibility of raising a child alone which in 1969 was a huge challenge, Mercy went to the local midwife and asked her to prepare concoctions that would flush out the pregnancy. But her mother, Nwanonaku was a few steps ahead of her. Having got wind of Mercy’s plan, she visited the same midwife who was in fact a friend of hers, and asked her to give Mercy medication that would strengthen the baby in her womb and not kill it. And so it was that Kristal came to be. Three months after she was born, twenty-year old Mercy left for Lagos to continue her education and find work in the city. She hardly came home much after that and Kristal grew up with her grandparents and her mother’s siblings including Uncle Donald who had appointed himself her teacher. Once she had completed the work Donald had set out for her for the day, Kristal was free to go out and play with the other little children in the village. Sometimes she accompanied Nwanonaku to the farm and helped her to plant and harvest crops like corn, cassava, yam, ogbonno, ugu, water leaves and several others.
Two years later, Kristal was deemed old enough to start her formal education and was taken to the local school to get registered. The lessons Uncle Donald had given her turned out to be a disadvantage in a way because she had completed all the class work for Primary 1 and 2 but was too young to join Primary 3. So, she went back home again to continue with the home-schooling rather than waste time in the lower classes doing work she had already mastered.
However, being at home during the day when most people were working and other children were in school had its own drawbacks. One day Kristal was sitting with Nwanonaku when a teenage cousin, Ifeanyi came to ask for ogbonno. Her grandmother sold her crops fresh from the farm to many of their neighbours and relatives living nearby. They would often send any idle children or grandchildren found loitering or available to collect their purchases. Thus Ifeanyi, who on this fated day was for some reason neither in school nor working, was sent by his mother to collect ogbonno from Nwanonaku. Ifeanyi greeted Nwanonaku respectfully and stated his mission. She was busy shelling egusi (pumpkin seeds) and reluctant to leave her chores to visit the farm so instead she sent eight-year-old Kristal in the company of Ifeanyi whose role was to protect her from any lurking danger. Ironically, unknown to Nwanonaku, the real danger lay closer to home.
Kristal loved these errands. It gave her a certain level of freedom to wander away from the homestead. Skipping all the way and humming to herself, Kristal made her way to the farm, plucked the required quantity of ogbonno and turned round to head back home but Ifeanyi had other ideas. With no warning at all, he wrestled her to the ground which was quite easy as he was almost twice her size. Kristal was a relatively small child for her age. She had very picky eating habits and was often sick so she had not grown as fast or as big as other children her age. Also, the gaps in her social development due to the lack of a formal education had left her unaware of some of the dangers she could encounter with the opposite sex. She did not have the benefit of sharing tales in the school playground which for most children, served as a preliminary course in sex education. As such she certainly didn’t see this attack coming. She had heard rumours about this particular cousin and knew he had attacked another girl in the village earlier but she did not know or understand the circumstances. Her introduction to the subject was thus a rather crude and violent one.
She fought him though, as hard as she could, but her small arms were not enough to stop a muscular teenage boy. Eventually she grew tired and stopped fighting. He lay on top of her and tried unsuccessfully to gain entry and finally frustrated, he began to deride her “You mean you have not done this before, what a waste of my time. You are useless”. He went on and on, irritated and disgusted as he picked himself up and made his way back to the house.
Kristal was shaken and totally traumatised but on reaching home she could not tell anyone what she had experienced. Her relationship with her grandmother whilst cordial was somewhat distant. There was none of the warmth often associated with the relationship of a mother and daughter since Nwanonaku was the only real mother she knew, or even of a grandmother and granddaughter relationship. Nwanonaku had ensured that Kristal was not aborted because she wanted more children but she actually wanted male children and not another daughter. Moreover, Kristal was Mercy’s daughter and Nwanonaku already had a strained relationship with Mercy as a result of what she considered Mercy’s difficult and stubborn nature. In her opinion which was shared by her daughters, Kristal’s aunts, her grand-daughter was exhibiting the same signs of stubbornness as her mother. They all took steps therefore to nip these signs in the bud but rather than weed out the ‘stubbornness’, it simply created a distance between Kristal and her grandmother and a subdued resentment for her aunts. Consequently, this traumatic experience which she struggled to understand, could not be shared with anyone as she felt she would ultimately be blamed one way or another for the incident. She suffered in silence after what turned out to be the first of several similar incidents throughout her childhood and teenage years.
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