Abuse: Shouting through the silence

Two years ago, I started writing my thoughts on the abuse of boys on a blog that I eventually turned into the ShoutTheSilence! website.

It all started six years before the blog, when a close friend confided in me that he had been sexually abused by a relative when he was nine years old. He was suicidal then and I was traumatised and worried that he might take his own life. It took me a long time to get over his story.

Thank God for family and friends who did what they could to walk with him through that time. One day, more than a year later, I told myself to get over my tears and do something about this, especially because as the mother of a boy, I did not want this to happen to my child if it was within my power to prevent it.

So I met with my friend and we spoke at length. At the end of our conversation, he said, "You are a mother. You have friends who are mothers. Tell them not to trust anybody with their children."

But for six years, I did nothing.

One evening, my friend and a few others of us went out. At some point, we started talking and he started venting. He said I was a pretend friend who did not care about him or what he was going through.

I was shocked and angry at myself for thinking I had given him the space he needed when all along to him, mine was a demonstration of distant love because I had never told him that regardless of what had happened, I still cared, loved and accepted him. I just assumed he knew – somehow.

Then one late night the words of this poem came to me as I drove home. I wrote it to express his story and many others like his. In these words is the pain of a child abused and lost in the silence of a society that scarcely realises that boys are children who are just as vulnerable to abuse as girls are.

"You messed up his life! I do this is for you. You hurt him! You hurt him! You devil!" I screamed as I drove down the highway at 140kph...

"And now we have to live with the agony of watching him suffer the torture of the never-fading, never-relenting memory of what you did! You are dead now! And I wish you could die again!" I whimpered as I fell back exhausted and slowed down; I did not want to kill myself.

"The pain, the anger, the bouts of self-doubt and depression... Were you thinking when you did this to us? You were not. You were just thinking of yourself. You devil! Of your own pleasure. Using three innocent little children...abusing us. What did you imagine? That we would go on as if nothing had happened? That we would grow up normal?

Armed heart

"Look at me now! Look at us now! Twenty-six years later... I trust no one. I give no one a chance to come close, to touch me, to love me... I have armed my heart to protect my soul. I will give no one the opportunity to hurt me again! Yet every day I am losing out on the chance to love and be loved...

"Were you thinking of my future when you did this to me? Were you thinking about what memories you were imprinting on my mind? Memories that I may never lay to rest, but for the grace of God?

"You are everywhere I turn. On every packet of biscuits you brought us, trying to bribe me into forgetting what you did. In the name of your son and of your mother's son, blinking on my cell phone screen when he calls... I don't have to pick it up.... I don't have to speak to him. For the sins of the father shall not be visited on the son to say 'hello!' But I do and I will. Nor shall they be visited on the brother... Die! Die again! Die! Die! Die!

"You messed up my life! And now I am left stringing together the pieces... And praying that my family's constant and unfailing love will last long enough to carry me through the hurt, the anger, the pain and bouts of depression that keep coming over me. Shout The Silence!"

Through the turmoil, the ups and downs of his everyday life, the struggle with memories and bouts of depression, the very real struggle to stay afloat, I became his confidant. I finally told him it did not matter what had happened. I accepted him and loved him... and he began to open up and talk with me when things were not going so well.

ShoutTheSilence! came about when I realised there were probably many young people out there struggling in silence in the midst of busy friends and family who did not see the signs but probably saw the person as rebellious or going through a very difficult adolescence.

Depression, extreme mood swings, addiction to alcohol, drugs, withdrawal from previously enjoyed social interactions, seemingly unexplained expressions of extreme anger... look closely. Do not brush it off. Do not assume. These signs could be a cry for help.

'Difficult' people

I have learnt to be very careful about how I react to 'difficult' people. They could just be reaching out, hoping somebody will look beyond the surface and see that they are in trouble. Sexual abuse is a very difficult thing to speak out about.

"Will the people you love, your family and friends, still accept you when they find out that what you really think of yourself is that you are unlovable because somebody thought you unworthy enough to love and abused you?"

"Is it worth the risk of telling them and living the rest of my life without their love and acceptance?"

These are the kind of questions survivors ask themselves and often choose to keep silent when they are not sure they will still be loved after speaking out.

So I thought of a way through which survivors could express themselves and minimise the risk of unnecessary exposure of their identity but still enable them shout the silence of the abuse they suffered. The website, www.shoutthesilence.org, has an online forum enabling survivors tell their stories in any creative form – story, poetry, audio recording, drawing or song.

The site also provides information about sexual abuse and avenues of help available to both survivors and their caregivers and families. Our mission is to support, educate, empower, and validate survivors of child sexual abuse who have not known where to turn or who to talk to. We want them to know they are not alone and we acknowledge what they feel and do not judge.

But what about the children currently suffering sexual abuse in various parts of this country?

The Public Health ministry and Mama Lucy Kibaki Hospital in Nairobi, and various groups concerned with gender-based violence in our communities, show abuse of the boy child is rampant. According to almost daily Press reports, cases of abuse of the boy have become too common. And a 2010 Unicef report shows this as a growing concern that should have us all worried.