Contending with the trauma of child abuse
Correspondent | Friday November 20, 2020 17:11
Gaone, a 42-year-old woman is a victim of child abuse. From her late infancy into her childhood, she was a larger than life bubbly character. Always oozing with life. Warmhearted, helpful and refreshing to have around. Blessed with the knack to effortlessly engage people of different ages in various subjects.
Endowed with enthusiasm and overweening ambition. There was so much hope for this dynamic ball of fire! She would often tell adults who cared to ask that she aspired to be an oncologist. Not that she understood what that meant. Her aunt happened to be one and the bright-eyed precocious go-getter was keen to faithfully follow in her aunt’s footsteps.
At the tender age of 12, her father started expressing unusual interest in her. She had two older female siblings. She liked the fact that she was her father’s favourite child. Her father always showered her with love, sweets and gifts. In her view, the sun rose and set on her father. This inspired her trust in him. Unfortunately, a misplaced trust.
In time, her father started testing her boundaries being a little touchy with her, fondling her on her waist and her tummy. The courage to get more physical with his daughter quickly snowballed into sexual abuse as Gaone’s confidence and trust in him had known no boundaries. His grubby hands gradually found their way up to her breast buds, to her face and ultimately to parts where the sun never shines.
Gaone’s emotional attachment to her father intensified with time, resulting in the unconditional surrender of her reasoning faculties. He wasted no time in tossing her around at will, demanding absolute reverence and total submission, as his grooming was at a peak. Her father, unheeding to his moral compass, was eager to do all he could to satisfy his lechery, repeatedly molesting his biological daughter!
This experience tortured Gaone mentally. She felt humiliated by her own father [and probably herself]. Poor Gaone fell victim to the children’s equivalent of the Stockholm syndrome. Her reasoning capacity succumbed to a puerile version of the syndrome as her bond with her father eerily strengthened.
She was finally groomed into maintaining a code of silence and adherence to the principle of absolute loyalty to her abusive father! This worked as a survival strategy, enabling her to find fleeting and disturbing tranquillity than solace in an environment riddled with chronic abuse.
In her unbelievably inane, wild and untamed imagination, Gaone felt that her father’s ‘strong love’ for her would never place her in harm’s way. This hocus-pocus triggered moments of expressive and soothing escapism.
Her father’s manipulative strategy worked well in exploiting her naïveté. Much as Gaone picked a strange pattern in the evolution of their relationship, she kept on hoping against hope that everything would be normal. She had a strong edge to seek counsel in her mother and siblings about her disquietudes. But she could not muster the strength nor courage to do so. Her father had warned her that if she wanted to see the next sunrise she had to keep his indecent behaviour under wraps for life.
Gaone’s father had convinced her that though his deeds were unacceptable, her mother and siblings would never believe her. That natural feminal envy would drive her mother and sisters to hate her. And that owing to their filicidal and fratricidal persona, they would not hesitate to terminate her life. Gaone believed her father.
Gaone was torn between her mind and emotions. Her mind wanted to do the right thing. To tell on her father! But her emotions kept on screaming at her, ‘hold your horses, not too soon!’ By the time she hit 13, what had started off as touchy expressions of affection had ‘graduated’ to wholesale sexual abuse. This did not sit well with Gaone. She was determined to pour her heart out to her siblings. But again, she couldn’t. Her father had threatened to kill the entire family and commit suicide. Sadly, she believed him. She dreaded living in a world violently stripped of her closest kin.
Glaring signs of abuse kicked in. Gaone had always been an exuberant well-behaved child who performed with distinction at school. Her fortunes took a sudden southward turn converting her to a pitiable shadow of her former self. She gradually lost interest in her studies. Before long, the grades of this budding genius plummeted. Her straight As drastically dropped to Ds and Es. Concerned teachers observed that her attention spell seemed to be compromised by incessant bouts of daydreaming. Their former bright and courteous pupil had fallen victim to frequent unprovoked bursts of juvenile mythomania, vanity, pride and obstinacy. The spirit of insolence held sway!
An unpleasant whirlwind of escapism followed. Driven by childish petulance, Gaone aggressively talked back and flagrantly defied her teachers’ orders. Unbeknownst to them, as they were trying hard to deal with Gaone’s ‘skunky’ attitude, the teachers were busy nibbling at the ‘crumbs,’ oblivious to the full ‘cake’ of signs placed right at the centre of their binocular visual field.
Gaone started associating with ‘rotten potatoes’. Her language entered the swear-word arena. Irate teachers would often throw her out of class in a bid to drum sense into her ‘empty’ head, but this only served to harden her disgraceful demeanour. They opted to talk slower and louder to her.
That strategy that had always worked with other pupils was rendered ineffectual. Gaone ended up being considered a ‘problem child’ and for the sake of their own sanity, the teachers decided to neglect her. They silently purged her from their anterior insular cortex, the part of their brain that would normally trigger emotions associated with empathy and compassion.
After noting that her teachers’ sense of compassion was blunted, Gaone reckoned that the world had given up on her and she sank deeper and deeper into the quagmire of defiance and rebellion. More determined than ever before to violate all socially acceptable norms without the slightest twinge of conscience.
All efforts made by Gaone’s mother to encourage her to speak up were foiled by her father’s determination to continue abusing her. He seemed to derive some thrill and therapeutic liberation from that. Gaone’s mother suggested that they should engage a professional counsellor. Her husband, who was the sole breadwinner vehemently, opposed the idea, reasoning that it would be unwise to pour the family’s meagre financial resources down the drain, throwing his hard-earned money on a ‘kid’ who was clearly unsalvageable and bent on treading an unhealthy path of rebellion.
Gaone’s mother tried to reach out to her daughter, encouraging her to change her lifestyle and emulate her well-disciplined siblings.
All her efforts came to naught. Out of desperation, she pursued the route of shaming Gaone, hoping that her negative energy would breed positive deeds and rouse her daughter to her senses.
Unable to fight abuse from her father, Gaone lost the will to live. Gripped by low self-esteem, she no longer aspired to make it big in the world. For her the future was now. Full of vim and vigour and driven by a flawed view of living life to the fullest, she pursued a lifestyle of instant self-gratification.
Consequently, she slipped into the ranks of adolescent victims of alcohol and substance abuse.
Two years prior to her graduation from high school, her world came to a shuddering standstill when she fell pregnant and got expelled from school. Staunchly unrepentant, she continued polluting her body with toxic substances that were detrimental to the growth of the delicate foetus coiled in her womb.
Repeated efforts by family and friends to change her behaviour were unsuccessful. On the 12th week of her pregnancy, her body churned ripples of chills.
This was followed by heavy bleeding and a spell of painful abdominal cramps. An ultrasound exam revealed that the foetus was already out of the gestational sac. That’s how Gaone added one more avoidable statistic to the swelling barrel of victims of miscarriage!
By the time the miscarriage occurred, Gaone’s father had stopped abusing her. She went back to school the following year and ended up finishing high school with an unimpressive set of grades. Gaone secured a job as a receptionist.
Owing to her frequent mood swings and compromised interpersonal skills, she lost that job in less than six months. Her personality made it hard for her to secure a job on a long-term basis. Hopping from one job to another became second nature to her. Her frequent bouts of anxiety and depression did not help her cause.
Desperate for personal autonomy, she fell in love with Kabelo, a young man in his late 20s. She moved in with him. In less than a year, trust issues arose and the relationship was terminated. And so started a life of promiscuity, multiple partners and a trail of dysfunctional relationships. Genuine marital intimacy and fidelity were foreign and unrealistic concepts to her.
All her partners had failed to give her the emotional support she craved.
Eventually, bipolar disorder tiptoed into her life, further confusing her and ripping her spirits apart. All these factors colluded against her desire to build lasting relationships.
Her life’s smouldering embers had succeeded in converting the ball of fire she once was into a worthless balloon brimming with cinderous ashes. It was a tall order to rekindle the flickering embers.
At the ripe age of 42, Gaone is still struggling to find her feet in the world. She seems to be fighting the losing battle of rebuilding her life. The indelible mark of abuse left by her father cast a hail of fire and brimstone on what could have been a promising life.
The poor woman is a dejected soul. Her self-esteem has been adversely affected. She suffers from diabetes and eating disorders. Could she have been helped earlier? Could her mother, sisters and teachers have been more alert and observant? Did her only support structure fail her? Can we learn something from what happened to her?
The truth is, a transparent constellation of symptoms had always been out there, waiting to be picked by discerning adults. Signs that should not have been ignored by her loved ones and teachers.
Unfortunately, during her moment of need, the non-observant people who mattered were out to lunch. This is by no means unique to Gaone and other victims of sexual abuse. Victims of emotional and psychological abuse often go through a similar phase in their lives.
Harrowingly ignored and neglected by people endowed with the responsibility to shower them with heartfelt love and care. The second part of this article will focus on what we can do to save our loved ones from the trauma of child abuse.
KEVIN MOKENTO*
*Kevin Mokento is the pseudonym of a Mmegi contributor who cannot be named for professional reasons.
*Gaone is not her real name