Lloydsha Reece was just eight years old when she first encountered physical abuse.
Having immigrated from Jamaica with her mother and siblings to live in Trinidad, Reece was just getting to know her stepfather when she was first hit—a resounding slap to her face that left a physical imprint then and a mental one even till today.
Now 42, Reece is hoping to inspire change from the earliest possible stages to break the cycle of abuse she herself fell victim too.
In an interview with Guardian Media earlier this week, Reece recalled the horror of growing up in an abusive home.
“For the first couple of months, everything was good. The first time my stepfather abused me, I was playing a little hand game with him, at the end of it, you were supposed to hit the person a little slap on the face. I just touched him and he returned it with a full-blown slap, his hand printed out on my face. That was the first time he put his hands on me,” she said.
That first slap signalled the beginning of many beatings and at the tender age of 11, she was forced to become a housekeeper and missed many days at school to complete her endless amounts of chores.
She would wash, cook, clean and take care of her siblings but with her stepfather’s dislike for her apparently growing, Reece said she was soon stopped from eating the very meals she prepared.
As the tensions between her and her stepfather grew worse, her mother sent her off to live with a friend.
“My mother didn’t know what to do with me, so many times she would send me by people to clean so I could get somewhere to stay and food to eat. I don’t know if she didn’t know how to help herself but I used to stay at many people’s houses. One of the times they throw me out, I went by the neighbour house to stay and I had to clean their house because it was so close my stepfather used to make me come and clean his house too.”
While trying to cope with the constant abuse, Reece found what she thought was a ray of hope, a young man who showed her kindness when she felt there was none in the world.
“***Mike (not his real name) used to give me money to buy something to eat because I used to go to school hungry and come home hungry,” she recalled.
Although he was 22 and Reece was just 12, but the age difference made no difference to her.
When her stepfather put her out of the house less than a year later and the man offered her a place to stay, she moved in with him.
She spent almost an entire year living at his house before her mother went looking for her. Mike panicked and asked her to leave, knowing that he would be arrested if he was found to be living with a minor.
She went back home and the abuse started again. She got a job and at 15 was pregnant for her boss. It was the last straw for her mother and she once again found herself on the streets.
Mike stepped back in and took Reece and her unborn daughter in.
It was then he started to hit her. The abuse was much worse than she had endured before and recalling the incidents, Reece wept as she spoke.
She and Mike had five children together and she said her children were forever scarred by what they saw her endure.
He tried to kill her on several occasions, beating her severely and chopping her on the hand and stomach when she was pregnant with their first child.
Reece believes that beating and others in the years that followed, damaged her son psychologically.
“I am afraid that he will want to abuse a woman if he ever gets into a serious relationship because he was a very angry child growing up and when his father used to beat me, he would bang his head on the wall and scream.”
She moved from one place to another, always returning to Mike and her ‘home’ when she wore out her welcome at the homes of friends and well-wishers.
She is finally free from the abuse and in a relationship with someone who she said cares for her and her children.
Several years ago, she sat down and penned her autobiography—After All I’ve Been Through. The book was written in four parts and Reece’s dream is to publish all four parts.
She hopes her story can inspire change and teach women in abusive situations how to cope and how to get their children through the ordeals.
She even hopes one day to start her own television series, although she does not have the funding to do so now.
“Now there are so many ways to deal with abuse, to help children to get through it. Nobody has to go through what I went through,” she said.
