We continue to receive confessions from women on how they were molested as girls. This is in response to our column on May 1, Molested By My Mum’s Man. The following is an edited version of one such response.
MY EARLY YEARS were horrible. I lived in a home of extended family members. My mother’s man would touch my breast as I passed by him. One night I was asleep and got up to find him pushing his fingers inside of me.
I told my mother and she did not believe me, so I told my grandmother and she put him out. My mother left with her man and left me with her mother (my grandmother). I had an uncle a couple of years older than me, so I guessed he felt [that he, too, could take advantage of me].
One night I got up to find him trying to pull down my panties. Again I called out to my grandmother. She got out of her sleep and “slapped him with the topsy”. He never messed with me again.
My grandmother took that incident to her grave. I went to school in the north, and my teacher felt it was okay to touch me. I became depressed and cried because I felt like I had no one to turn to. I hated that teacher and I just wanted all of them to die.
One day I could not take it anymore, so I told one of my female teachers. She told the headmaster, and that is when all hell broke loose. My father came from the United States to get me and was going to kill the teacher.
I moved away to the United States in the late 1980s – it was a welcome move. By then my mother’s man had died from prostate cancer, and I was the happiest person ever. My uncle is still alive, but from what I heard he molested his own daughter.
The problem with this is that no one believed her because my grandmother took the fact that he did this to a couple of his nieces to the grave with her. To this day none of us speak to him. I had to learn to forgive. It took me a while to forgive my mother, my mother’s man, the teacher and my uncle.
I now have two children of my own, and I’ve let them know that by no means should they allow anyone to touch them inappropriately, no matter who they may be. I hope and pray to God that that day never comes because I will not be asking questions. I’m going with a machete, and God help whoever gets in the way!
This is a scar that affects my life. I’m in my late 30s and still struggle with relationships. I just wish that the people in Barbados would wake up and see what this kind of thing can do to their young women and men. There are sick people out there, but you should not have to deal with it in your own home.
