BO­BIE-LEE DIXON

bo­bie-lee.dixon@guardian.co.tt

Forty-five years have not been enough time for To­ra, an alias she gave Guardian Me­dia to con­ceal her iden­ti­ty, to heal from the deep wounds sus­tained as a child, hav­ing been sex­u­al­ly abused by those clos­est to her.

“I ain’t get over that you know. I say no mat­ter what, I ain’t get over that,” the 54-year-old woman told Guardian Me­dia while sob­bing.

A woman, who vowed to her par­ents, to take care of To­ra, would turn out to be the in­sti­ga­tor be­hind her two adult sons, sex­u­al­ly abus­ing a then nine-year-old To­ra for over two years.

“You know what that woman do? Hmm…what that woman do me? She make that boy lie down on top of me...and for hours. And when I couldn’t take it, I just re­mained dey. Ah lie down…lie down. And she telling him what to do meh yuh know.

“A young lit­tle girl yuh know…a young girl and she telling him what to do meh,” re­called a weep­ing To­ra of the painful mem­o­ry, as she told her sto­ry from the liv­ing room of her house.

She of­ten re­lives the haunt­ing ex­pe­ri­ence when sim­i­lar sto­ries make head­lines to­day.

“Yuh see when I hear like young chil­dren and thing get rape or peo­ple in­ter­fere with them it does…it does hurt meh and it does bring up all the emo­tions. It does bring it up, “she wailed.

Though To­ra has kept a close watch over her own two daugh­ters, she al­so lives in fear, that some­day some­one might do the same to them.

Point­ing to the younger of the two, she said: “This last one, well she liv­ing here with me. My big­ger girl she mar­ried and she gone. This last one, I doesn’t want she go no way. I nev­er ex­plain to she why. Even some­times by she sis­ter self be­cause some way or the oth­er I go feel like some­body will in­ter­fere with she and I don’t know what I would do. What length I would go, no mat­ter I might be serv­ing God…what length I would go. I would talk it to my hus­band, I does tell him I don’t know what I would do.”

She con­tin­ued: “I have one son, he sleeps in that room, she in that room, I and my hus­band in that bed­room.

“I know he would not in­ter­fere with he sis­ter. But some­how or the oth­er with­in me, I so in­se­cure that I does feel like some­thing wrong.

“Many nights, yuh could just hear a noise on the gal­vanise, I will get up and go in the bed­room, fuss ah doh want noth­ing to hap­pen to she,” she be­moaned.

A smiling 24-year-old Lindon Hall.

Seek­ing help turns in­to hor­ror

The heinous acts com­mit­ted against a de­fense­less To­ra be­gan in a small vil­lage in Cu­mu­to, where the girl who came from a fam­i­ly of 12, was sent to live with her god­moth­er to ease the strain on her par­ents, hav­ing too many mouths to feed. It was there, To­ra would fall vic­tim to her two de­viant god­broth­ers.

At the start of her stay, one would im­me­di­ate­ly be­gin to try sex­u­al­ly groom­ing the young girl.

“In the day when every­body gone out, he would come and sit on the ban­nis­ter and one day I no­ticed that he pulled out this thing…yuh know. But I no­tice like a brown thing. Yuh know at that time I was in­no­cent so I did not know what it was. And while look­ing at him, he al­ways, want­ed me to touch it and I wouldn’t touch it for no rea­son. I wouldn’t touch it be­cause like it was a joke to he,” To­ra il­lus­trat­ed.

Soon af­ter, it moved from this god­broth­er, just flash­ing her, to the both of them sex­u­al­ly abus­ing To­ra where she slept at night.

“I would hear the door open­ing. I don’t know how the door…be­cause I sound asleep. When I get up is be­cause they over me,” she cried.

To­ra would try to ex­plain to her god­moth­er what was hap­pen­ing, but she paid her no mind, just telling her she was “imag­in­ing or ly­ing to cause con­fu­sion.”

“I used to tell meh­self, she know ex­act­ly what go­ing on. And lat­er on, it turn out to be so,” said To­ra, in a bit of an an­gry tone.

With no one to res­cue her from the night­ly ter­ror, To­ra tat­tle­tales it all to her moth­er when next she saw her, but her de­spair grew, when her moth­er al­so did not be­lieve her.

“I tell meh moth­er. I don’t know for why meh moth­er didn’t use to be­lieve meh. When I telling she, she ain’t be­liev­ing meh. Doh mat­ter how I tell her, she ain’t be­lieve me.”

To­ra would even suf­fer phys­i­cal abuse at the hands of one of her god­broth­ers.

It had a day he beat meh, the last one, he beat meh. He beat me with one piece of cas­sa­va for talk­ing to some peo­ple liv­ing in­side the road and my hand swell big so,” she said point­ing at her left fore­arm.

Oth­er times, To­ra would en­dure blows to per­form do­mes­tic du­ties for her god­broth­ers.

“A lit­tle girl like me. I get­ting licks to wash dey clothes and wares and thing.”

To­ra’s tor­ture at her god­moth­er’s home, even­tu­al­ly came to an end, when her moth­er found out the woman in­tend­ed to make her daugh­ter a child bride.

“I say, mom­my that nasty man. All how I used to tell you, yuh didn’t used to be­lieve meh. All what they used to be do­ing meh, yuh didn’t used to be­lieve. Ah say, yuh see for yuh­self now. Ah say, yuh didn’t know what I was go­ing through.”

Years lat­er, To­ra con­front­ed her god­moth­er about what she had done, but the woman de­nied be­ing be­hind the dread­ful crime.

“I didn’t for­get that woman. I didn’t for­get she. I tell she, I say mom you know every­thing that I went through…every­thing. I didn’t for­get she… I say every­thing, when I used to tell yuh, yuh did say­ing how yuh didn’t know, but I used to tell yuh.

“She say that how ‘I didn’t know.’ I say, yes mom, I used to tell yuh. I used to tell yuh how (name called), used to want to be sleep­ing with me and thing as a lit­tle child and thing,” To­ra re-en­act­ed the di­a­logue, tear­ful­ly.

Marcus Kissoon speaks to Guardian Media’s Bobie-Lee Dixon.

Sex­u­al crimes against chil­dren in T&T, top form of abuse

To­ra’s sto­ry, how­ev­er, is sad­ly one of many, as, on Oc­to­ber 12, 2020, Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy, Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, with the du­ty of Gen­der and Child Af­fairs dis­closed star­tling sta­tis­tics of child abuse with cas­es of sex­u­al abuse be­ing the high­est in­stances of re­ports re­ceived coun­try­wide at a 22.6 per cent rate.

Act­ing Su­per­in­ten­dent of Po­lice, Natasha George who sub­se­quent­ly said 80 per cent of crimes of abuse against chil­dren, re­port­ed to the Child Pro­tec­tion Unit (CPU) of the TTPS, were sex­u­al, ac­cen­tu­at­ed this rev­e­la­tion.

She al­so con­firmed in most in­stances the per­pe­tra­tor was known to the vic­tim.

Twen­ty-four-year-old Lin­don Hall can at­test to this. Like To­ra, it was the ones he knew who hurt him. Re­count­ing the dis­turb­ing ex­pe­ri­ence, Hall spoke to Guardian Me­dia, can­did­ly of that time.

“The ear­li­est mem­o­ry I have of it when I was six. It hap­pened just as we are in this play park to­day. All the kids in the neigh­bour­hood, would gath­er and play like catch and stuff.

“And my sis­ter is like nine years my se­nior, so they (per­pe­tra­tors), were in their teens at that time. And I re­mem­ber her friend and I de­cid­ed, we would be do­ing the count­ing and then we would go and catch them be­cause they were go­ing to play catch.

“And she took me in­to this aban­doned build­ing. It had roach­es; it was re­al­ly in a mess. And then she start­ed touch­ing me and stuff like that and even­tu­al­ly my pants was down, but at that time I re­al­ly didn’t un­der­stand what was hap­pen­ing be­cause no one at that time had a con­ver­sa­tion with me say­ing okay, this is a good touch, this is a bad touch or any­thing like that,” he re­layed.

While still trau­ma­tised by that event, an­oth­er friend of Hall’s sis­ter strikes. This time the per­pe­tra­tor is a male who, for a year, would sex­u­al­ly mo­lest a young Hall.

“I wouldn’t say it was like rape, but it was more like cud­dling and touch­ing in in­ap­pro­pri­ate ar­eas and stuff like that,” he dis­closed.

Raised in a strong Chris­t­ian home, at 12-years-old Hall turned to a pas­tor when he fi­nal­ly dared to speak of what was first done to him by his sis­ter’s fe­male friend. But the pas­tor’s re­sponse sent him back in­to si­lence.

“He start­ed laugh­ing. He went like ‘I wish that did hap­pen to me. So af­ter that, I start­ed keep­ing it to my­self,” said Hall.

Psychologist Dr Keshan Latchman

Cul­tur­al at­ti­tudes keep men silent

“It’s a re­sponse,” Mar­cus Kissoon, so­cial work­er, and UWI, St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus’s re­search as­sis­tant on the Break the Si­lence: End Child Abuse cam­paign, at the In­sti­tute for Gen­der and De­vel­op­ment Stud­ies (IGDS), ex­plained, is so­cial­ly and cul­tur­al­ly can­cer­ous to this fight and con­tributes to low­er re­port­ing rates by male vic­tims.

“The gen­dered el­e­ments around re­port­ing are dif­fer­ent for boys. Boys don’t re­port be­cause it is a mark of los­ing mas­cu­line sta­tus, they’re seen as weak,” he told Guardian Me­dia

Where it in­volves a male per­pe­tra­tor, which Kissoon re­vealed was in the ma­jor­i­ty, it’s even hard­er for a male vic­tim to break his si­lence.

“We live in a ho­mo­pho­bic so­ci­ety. Boys are afraid to dis­close their abuse be­cause they’re afraid that so­ci­ety would fo­cus on ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty ver­sus the abuse.”

Kissoon said, sex and sex ed­u­ca­tion re­main­ing taboo in these parts, was al­so re­spon­si­ble for fear of dis­clo­sure by both boys and girls.

“We live in a so­ci­ety where we don’t com­fort­ably speak about sex. It’s very much taboo and as a re­sult, chil­dren don’t have the lan­guage to come and say, ‘some­one is touch­ing my vagi­na, some­one is touch­ing my pe­nis.’ Some­one is ask­ing me to touch their vagi­na or pe­nis. And that has be­come a large bar­ri­er in the way in which chil­dren can do this. What we call com­mu­nica­tive sex­u­al­i­ty.”

He con­tin­ued: “We have to talk about sex and sex­u­al­i­ty so that it be­comes nor­mal for chil­dren to feel com­fort­able to share. When we shy away and we do that from very young…. hide this, hide that…cov­er-up that, we start to put in­to chil­dren’s, minds, that their body is at fault for some­thing. “

Ex­act­ly this, Hall has strug­gled with. Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tion on how the abuse af­fect­ed his life, he ex­pressed:

“To be hon­est I felt like I didn’t have the strength to be alive any­more. I hat­ed my­self...hat­ed the way I speak...hat­ed the way I look in the mir­ror.”

He’s even es­tranged from an im­por­tant emo­tion, he does not be­lieve he de­serves.

“I don’t feel like I’m in a place to be loved or be in love. That is some­thing I strug­gle with. Like I don’t think I need love or I don’t ac­cept love from peo­ple. Even if fam­i­ly mem­bers say, ‘I love you and stuff like that, it don’t reg­is­ter cause I feel like I don’t de­serve love.”

Child sex­u­al abuse-re­lat­ed trau­ma lingers in­to adult­hood

But Hall’s feel­ings of un­wor­thi­ness and To­ra’s crip­pling fear, re­vealed by psy­chol­o­gist Ke­shan Latch­man, are not un­com­mon emo­tions in adults who were sex­u­al­ly abused as chil­dren. He even ex­plained how it af­fects their in­ti­mate lives.

“As adults, it can man­i­fest in these two ex­tremes—be­com­ing hy­per-sex­u­al or hy­po-sex­u­al,” said Latch­man.

Hy­per-sex­u­al, Latch­man de­pict­ed, was an ex­ag­ger­at­ed pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with sex and sex­u­al­ly re­lat­ed ma­te­r­i­al in­clud­ing pornog­ra­phy, ad­dic­tions to pornog­ra­phy, or sex ad­dic­tions.

He said while this be­hav­iour­al pat­tern was not on­ly syn­ony­mous with such adults, it of­ten is and could sig­nal some form of sex­u­al child abuse might have oc­curred.

In the case of hy­po-sex­u­al­i­ty, it’s the ex­act op­po­site where sex or sex­u­al­ly re­lat­ed ma­te­r­i­al could act as trig­gers, and the per­son can shut down, with­draw or even go in­to a state of de­pres­sion or anx­i­ety.

All of what adults who were sex­u­al­ly abused as chil­dren ex­pe­ri­ence, Latch­man ex­plains stems from their nat­ur­al de­vel­op­ment and pro­gres­sion as a child be­com­ing dis­tort­ed by the pre­ma­ture sex­u­al im­po­si­tions.

“When that starts pret­ty ear­ly on when the child isn’t ready in any way yet, it shifts the fo­cus from de­vel­op­ing in oth­er ar­eas to­wards this sort of a cu­rios­i­ty or try­ing to make sense of what hap­pened…what didn’t feel very com­fort­able or very right.”

Lindon Hall

Heal­ing is para­mount

While the painful past of Hall, To­ra, and all oth­er sur­vivors of child sex­u­al abuse can­not be erased and their in­no­cence re­turned.

For a chance at get­ting past that trau­ma and liv­ing a mean­ing­ful life, Latch­man said heal­ing was at the start­ing line.

“It kind of starts with un­der­stand­ing what has hap­pened…un­der­stand­ing how it may have af­fect­ed their de­vel­op­ment. And it re­al­ly is about be­ing able to recog­nise that they’ve been hurt.”

Hall has re­cent­ly tak­en that first step, even au­thor­ing his first book—Pur­suit of Suc­cess—but he ad­mits it is very dif­fi­cult. And al­though his per­pe­tra­tors have nev­er told him sor­ry, with the help he has got so far, he told them this:

“I am work­ing to­wards for­giv­ing you, cause every day is a strug­gle, but I’m work­ing to­wards for­giv­ing you be­cause where I want to be in life, I need to be free.”