Guest Contributor Koliko: God does not accept wounds—story of an abused child

I am shocked that even up till now I can’t still write about abuse; mine. I live in a country where everything is given to God. Whereas this may not be an entirely bad thing, I’ve found God doesn’t accept the wounds of victims. We can leave perpetuators of abuse and violence in the hands of God, but those who suffer abuse need our hands too. The effect of abuse on a person is not something that goes away on its own. It has to be dealt with, consciously; talking about it, crying about it, getting professional help, helps. Having family and friends tell you to “give it God”, “it is nothing”, “you’ve cried enough” doesn’t help, at least not in my case.

I was abused as a child by seven different men, not seven times, but as many times as my extra-classes teacher wanted, as many times as pleased the driver who picked me up from school, as many times as our neighbor who borrowed our iron and sat in our hall to watch TV wanted, as many times as the man opposite our house called the children to his room to watch porn wanted, and then that one time when I was too afraid to go home with the driver so I hid in our school toilet and when he left, I began to walk home.

If only I knew, that there was another man like him, who would stop me on the way and ask me to buy him bananas and groundnut from the junction, I would have gone with the driver and let him insert his fingers the way he pleased in my 12 year old vagina. But I was taught to be respectful so I went and bought this man his bananas and when I knocked on his boys quarter door, he asked me to come in and then he locked the door.

If I knew that, that old man who mended broken buckets wanted more than water and food from our kitchen, I wouldn’t have asked my mother to feed him and she wouldn’t have asked me to take him to the kitchen and give him some water and the dinner that was left over. She wouldn’t have said that I should stay with him and see if he needed anything more. My mother wouldn’t have left us to rest in her bedroom.

If only I had told someone early enough and not waited till I was 18yrs and was clueless on how to talk about pain that had grown older than me. If at 18yrs, I couldn’t push away the guy who asked me to have dinner with him in a hotel room. If I couldn’t scream at 18yrs but sobbed and begged like a little girl, how dare I blame anybody but myself?

And if I had told you before now, wouldn’t you have said the same thing? That my boobs were irresistible, that my eyes were too attractive, that if I came to the hotel room then it meant I wanted it? I must have wanted to be raped again, don’t you think so?

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37 comments On Guest Contributor Koliko: God does not accept wounds—story of an abused child

  • My heart just broke for you. These scenarios are my worst fears as a mother, a woman, a freaking human BEING with any notion of compassion. Rise up sister, and lived a blessed life if you can will yourself to do it.

  • oh I don’t want your heart broken and thank you for the positive message. I share in your fears, but what can we do? What do we do with the compassion in us if we don’t use it? I will rise! 🙂 @Malaka

  • God. Not even just once. Bloody abusers. I can’t even talk right now, I am freaking pissed!

  • Of course not!! This story is so heart breaking.. Brings very painful tears to my eyes. I wish i had some profound words of wisdom to share with u, but i dont. All i know and can say is, it was not your fault..

  • @Nnenna Marcia. If we could find a way to make women and girls safer now then maybe, there wouldn’t be much to pissed about later.

    @Ozohu “it was not your fault” is profound and reassuring. 🙂

  • wow, I fell sick and so I’m just reading all of this. @ Koliko, my heart really goes out to you. As a person that was also molested, I understand how heartbreaking this must be for you especially since there were 7 different perpetrators. Did your mum ever find out what these men did? Have you been able to get professional help? The one thing that has really helped me is professional help. It was difficult getting it in Ghana & so initially, I had to talk to church counselors & pastors but this made my situation worse because they’re not trained to handle this kind of situation. So most of them just told me to pray, believe God & stop focusing on the past. But that didn’t help me in anyway. I believe that God created doctors & psychologists not just to heal us physically but to help us emotionally too. Anyways, eventually, I located a psychologist in Ghana (I had to ask a friend who referred him) & he was good but I couldn’t afford his services (it was GHC 200 for registration & GHC65 for each meeting, and I met him once or twice a week). However, when I came to grad school in the US, I’ve been given a psychologist & I’ve made so much progress! I never realized I was ignoring my emotions (to avoid pain) & then trying to gain relief through overeating & sex. I never realized that I was consistently dating abusive men & that I couldn’t say no to my friends & family & I was always putting their interest first because of the abuse. I never realized how much I hated myself. Through the therapy sessions, I’ve learnt to overcome all these challenges. I wish more abuse survivors in Ghana had access to professional help rather than being told to give it to God.

  • Chale, you make I weak sef! E be like you dey talk my matter p33p3p3 sake of, me no, I just dey take my feelings for granted. Everyone else’s feelings is more important than mine. And then once in a while I overreact and totally shock myself. I started getting professional help but chale, it was 80cedis per hour ooo and because I was letting all these feeling out, I started getting panic attacks at random places, at work, asleep, talking to a friend, while driving, oh chale! I made a total idiot of myself several times. I stopped going to therapy cos it got too expensive for me, I became dependent on my therapist. I became too weak so to speak and wanted to see her all the time. That did no good to my bank account. Now the prices has been increased. My psychologist offered to see me at home at a discount but I didn’t take the offer, I generally don’t like owing people, I don’t know why that is. Broke woman with pride maybe. 😀 I still call her up sometimes when i get overwhelmed but no, i haven’t had consistent professional help. Maybe i should do that this year. Maybe i should call her and ask if the offer still holds. Thanks Ekuba, I don’t feel so irreparably fucked-up anymore. 🙂

  • Feel better soon. xxx @Ekuba

  • Koliko, sorry. That’s all I can say. Sorry.

  • @ Koliko: Wow I’m sorry therapy was so stressful for you. Yeah, I heard some people go through all kinds of things when they start facing up to their past & of course I’m no expert in these things but maybe you weren’t ready to talk about them in detail (& maybe your therapist shouldn’t have made you talk about them at that time?). Have you thought about switching therapists? If I were to do it all over again, I’d just muster courage, schedule an appointment with a doctor @ any good hospital & ask him/ her to suggest psychologists. The experienced doctors usually know experienced psychologists & they tend to be more affordable than the younger psychologists. When I graduate this year & come to Ghana, I intend to do this or even go to the Accra psychiatric hospital & ask them to refer a psychologist. Sometimes, when we’re not doing as well as we should in recovery, it may also be that our therapist is not the best for us (although he/ she is great at their job) & so we might consider switching things up a bit till we get the right fit.

  • @Roots4life chale ego be, you hear? 🙂

    @Ekuba: to be fair to her, I may have been unhelpful to the situation. I remember, most the recollection happened in my head and I really didn’t speak it out. I sat there for the hour and virtually just cried and cried and cried. And you know how it works, when the hour is over, it is. So, I get up and go home and then come back the next day to cry some more, basically that was the routine. But you are right, I should consider switching up things because I feel I didn’t tell her much because there was something about her that i didn’t trust. She was very warm, but at the back of my head I did feel like she cared, like she would forget everything I said the moment i walked out. I don’t know, it might just be paranoia. Thanks for the suggestion; I guess I’ll find out if I’ll feel the same way with another person.

  • @ Koliko: I completely understand you & to be honest your psychologist sounds like a very capable, caring individual. But I don’t think it’s your fault that you were crying & not talking about your issues etc. I think these are just symptoms of the ‘disease’ you had & so it’s the duty of your doctor (psychologist in this case) to diagnose it & treat you. If the treatment doesn’t seem to be forthcoming, then maybe you can sample other treatments. Hope you catch my drift? You see, when I was in Ghana, I saw a psychologist & he’s probably the best known psychologist in Ghana. But his treatment didn’t work for me because he used to make me talk about the abuse (even when I would cry & stuff we’d still talk about it) & it made me feel suicidal & I got worse. However,my therapist’s treatment worked for me because she’s very practical & her tactic was : ‘hey, you were abused & it’s very sad but you can still make it out of this’. so, she’d make me talk about the abuse but if I wept a lot & started getting traumatized, she’d remind me of where I was & then gently change the topic (to get back to it another time). This way, I was able to talk about it without getting overly traumatized & after 6 months of counseling, I’m due to finish in 1 month! So I guess what I’m saying is that I’m worried about you getting panic attacks & becoming dependent on your therapists, those are red lights to me & could mean that the treatment wasn’t helping you (although she’s very good). Maybe another therapist could help? What do you think? And I just realized my other question got forgotten by both of us, did your mum or any family members ever find out? Do you meet any of the perpetrators now that you’re an adult?

  • Hmmm… perhaps you are right, maybe another therapist would help. Ah, now to the forgotten question. Well, I sort of told my mother, when I turned 18 or so. Sort of means, I didn’t tell her the whole story. I just told her about one guy because he kept coming to our house and my mother would make me serve him with water and shit. I would go to my room and hide anytime he was in my house and my mother would complain that it is a bad thing that I don’t like people and I should go say hello, bla bla bla. 18yrs was a very dramatic age for me. I left home for the streets of Accra. I was tired of being called lazy and unfriendly. I was always the last person to wake up at home and sometimes I just didn’t want to leave my room and my family called it laziness. What actually happened was, and I don’t blame them because they didn’t know this, I wasn’t sleeping at night; I was afraid someone would sneak into my room. And when I fell asleep at night, I would have nightmares, so I just stayed up and when I heard that my mother was awake in the morning, I would try to sleep because I felt safe and I knew that my mother wouldn’t let anything bad happen to me if she was around. One morning my dad got really pissed that I was still in bed when my siblings were up and doing chores and shit. I had had a really rough night and was just trying to sleep. It felt like the whole family had ganged up against me, they we all calling me names, it was just too fucking loud for me so I was like fuck it, “I’m leaving” and my dad was like “fine.” Now my dad is the sweetest dad on earth so I hope I’m not making him seem like pure evil here, far from that. I guess they were just frustrated having a child who had such mood swings and was generally rebellious. To cut a long story short, I told my mother when they finally found me and brought me back home, that i was not lazy and i didn’t like that she made me do things that i didn’t want to, like serving that stupid man… and then my mother sort of figured it out and got really sad and told me about her own abuse. She told my dad, my dad threaten to get the man arrested….bla bla blaaaaaa! Long story really, but, in the end everybody calmed down. I went back to being “lazy” they occasionally complained but you know, I was in my own world. I wanted to tell my mother everything but I saw they were heart broken when I told them just that little bit and i didn’t want to break their hearts again. So I just didn’t tell them anything more. As an adult I was once going out of my office to grab lunch and there he was, one of the perpetrators standing at our office reception, smiling at me and asking about my parents and how I was doing. I froze. Walked back to my office and cried uncontrollably like a little girl. That whole week was rough for me but after a while I was cool chale.

  • @ Koliko: you were really brave to tell your mum. I was never able to tell my mum although I told all my siblings. God bless our families but their reaction is the reason why abuse survivors never tell anyone about the abuse. This is the reaction of most families when they find out their daughter has been abused: the men (fathers & brothers) get raving mad & of course the mothers (& other female relatives) become sad or heartbroken & have an emotional breakdown or whatever. Then after the 3 seconds of drama, everyone calms down & we’re back to square one where we’re all supposed to pretend the abuse never happened & go on with our lives. At the end of the day, nothing changes after the abuse is reported. No one checks in to find out how the abuse survivor can be helped & if she’s doing ok. Another thing that intrigues me is how often survivors of abuse have mothers who were themselves abused. My mum wasn’t sexually abused (well to the best of my knowledge) but she was emotionally & physically abused. I think this is because abused women put everyone’s needs above their own & raise their kids to do the same & so this makes the children vulnerable to abuse. This is something both you & I have to be conscious about (that is if you’d like to have your own kids one day or adopt) because we have to make sure we raise our kids to be empowered & to value their own needs too. The nightmares thing happens to a lot of abuse survivors, I used to have a lot of nightmares too & so I couldn’t sleep at night & would sometimes wait outside my parents’ door which of course made me wake up late & got me branded as ‘lazy’. I think that by being rebellious & having mood swings (which I also had) you were just displaying the anger you had bottled up inside. I never actually run away from home but I used to dream about it a lot. I read that children who are sexually abused are twice as likely to run away from home than other kids. I’m finishing therapy this month which is a huge progress for me because I’ve actually been hospitalized before for a suicide attempt. I really wish you could get therapy that could assist you to deal with all this but I know it’s so difficult to get this in Ghana for some reason (cos seriously, the therapist I saw back home made me worse). I guess I’m just lucky to be in a developed country now where I’ve had access to this psychologist. A part of me is afraid that when I graduate & come home this year, if I relapse (which I hope I wont) what will I do? How will I find a good therapist again? I don’t have answers to that.

  • Your story made me freeze in horror…i cant and dont want to picture being abused over and over again. My heart goes out to you, but i can sense frim the way you write that you are strong and i get the feeling you are going to rise above all that. I hope you find more strenght even to be able to help others who have been in your situation. I wish you well, Koliko

  • @Naa Adjeley, chale I feel the love. 🙂 Thank you and amen to finding strength to rise above and to help others cos I really would love this to mean something bigger than just me surviving and recovering and thriving… you know, it just has to be bigger than me.

    @Ekuba, Family! nsempiii. I mean I have an amazing family but I guess they were just incompetent in handling a child that was abused. I don’t know, I think people generally don’t know how to handle the news and they don’t understand the kind of needs abuse survivors acquire. I feel that if abuse is spoken about more openly with focus on how the survivor feels and what kind of support they need, it would do a lot more good than focusing on the motherfucking abuser all the damn time. Yeah, call him names, diss him, curse him, beat him up, arrest him, but what does that do for me?

    Indeed the line you draw connecting an abuse survivor to how they raise their kids is intriguing and it is something that must be looked into and talked about. Chale, one of my greatest fears is to risk my child’s life in any way, you know, not be present and then something bad happens to my child. Fuck! That is going to totally kill me. I’m so scared about raising kids, it’s crazy, yet i love kids and i want to nurture my own. So thanks for pointing out that there is some conscious work to be done once i hit that road.

    On being suicidal, aaaah! I have tried and failed many times to kill my bloody self! From drinking two bottles of Detol in senior secondary school (which has fucked up my respiratory tract forever) to swallowing a concoction of pills, injecting myself, abusing alcohol, starving for weeks, trying to jump into the ocean, trying to suffocate and struggle myself… oh lalala! chale, maybe if I had a gun, I would have been dead by now. Yet, after the moment of weakness is over, I have such a huge will to live and to move past this and, you know, to do sometime that will create change that will be significant for my generation and beyond. I wake up every day wanting to live but I am not sure when trauma will hit or life’s stresses will be unbearable and I’ll feel l’ve made no progress at all. Those are the fucking days when I want to end this shit and start afresh. When i get weak, i am just weak and it’s disgusting.

    Hang in there, I’ll start my search soon and if i get hold of a good therapist, you’ll be the first to know but hopefully you won’t relapse and won’t need one, yes?

  • I promise on my honour and in the name of God that as a man I will never force myself on a woman if she is not ready for whatsoever reason. Not even my wife. God be my help.
    I pray for inner strength for all abused persons on dis plaform. You wii sail tru.

  • @ Koliko: “…drinking two bottles of Detol in senior secondary school…” that & your other suicide attempts got me quite worried. Because I know that when a person has suicidal tendencies, anything can cause them to flip & hurt themselves. Is there a close friend that you talk to about these things? Is there a trusted person you could tell about the fact that sometimes you feel suicidal so that whenever you’re sinking into that mood & don’t feel safe, you could contact them (to keep you from hurting yourself?). I’m asking all these questions because I’ve noticed (& most of the commentators on this page have said that) you’re a strong woman. However, I also know that we, survivors of abuse are great at putting on a strong, cheery face when we’re dying inside. Would you say that you have a lot of supportive relationships? & do the men/ women? (I don’t know your orientation so pardon me) that you get into intimate relationships with know about your abusive past & are they helpful & understanding? Please pardon me if my questions seem too personal & you’d rather not discuss all of that. & if you have an issue with putting these things out here also, you could email me at ekubabentil@gmail.com. Best wishes & please stay safe.

  • @ Ekuba oh dear, I’m sorry I got you worried. I don’t think I’ll harm myself now, okay? I was mostly a disturbed teenager and though I may not try to kill myself again for the wrong reason, because I do believe that no matter what i do i won’t die, I’ld just recover with a defect of some sort. Chale, if i go and stand in front of a moving train and get mashed up, that would be the day scientist discover a way to put together a mashed up human body and I would live the rest of my life in painful stitches. Not the best reason to keep alive by but a good enough, right? To answer your question, I don’t think any of my friends know that i was/am suicidal cos I haven’t told them. And you are right, everybody knows the strong me, I am strong most of the time and I don’t fake it. I had to tell my current lover i was suicidal, actually, she had to see it for herself. She has a lot of emotional wahala and I took it on and got so overwhelmed. But it was a good thing she saw just how vulnerable i could get, I think it brought a certain level of balance to our relationship. It’s okay to talk about it here. Someone else may have had a similar experience and may chance on this blog. You have so much knowledge and compassion. Thank you for being so supportive. Medaase wai. Best wishes to you too!

  • Wow, is it just me, or is this systematic abuse of kids very very common in our society? The more I hear about these horror stories, the more I fear that someone close to me may have been a victim and I never knew. Sorry Koliko, be strong and pass your experience on to younger people!

  • not just you babyjet it is very common chale. Everybody needs to pay attention to kids around them. I have a 6 year old niece and anytime I at my parents’ and she gets back from school, I ask her to tell me everything that happened in school. And sometimes it is shocking what she says. The other time she said, one of her friends slapped her, so I asked what she did. and she said she told her teacher and her teacher asked her to slap the boy too, and she did. These are kids and some teacher is teaching them that violence is ok. I was so pissed, I wanted to the school the next day. My mother said no, she didn’t want me to go and flare up and that she would call the teacher and talk to her. I think we should get the child out of that school…Anyway, thanks for the positive energy, it’s easier to be strong with such support from you all.

  • Dont know why i keep returning to this post, but i’m deeply disturbed. I have younger cousins who i would kill for, theyre more like sisters. I just get this tightness in my chest everytime it crosses my mind that they may fall prey to some beast out there. This is not the first time i’ve felt like this and of late, i’m feeling its about time i gave them an age-appropriate sex talk. Rape in our society is getting too common and i daresay is approaching ‘normalcy’. I remember when i was younger, we had this neighbour my mum was fond off. He sometimes used to come to my room and i got uncomfortable. Just to make sure i had my mum on my side in case anything happened, i asked her, out of curiosity if she would believe me if i told her he had tried raping me. Imagine my horror and disappointment when she said no, she wouldnt. That answer was all i needed to decide that if someone who was supposed to be caring for me wouldnt, i needed to do it myself. I was 15 then, tough decision, but i told him pointedly to NEVER enter my room again and i made it a point never to be alone in the same room with him again. I wasnt strong, in fact i was very scared because i knew i had no support and yet somehow, the fear helped me confront him. I realised that family support is so important in preventing and managing such occurences yet it is so lacking in most cases. I asked my woman to read this piece and when i wanted to discuss it with her after, she didnt seem interested. You know why? She was abused at a young age by her classes teacher who got covered up by her mom who just simply dismissed him because she was scared her husband, who was powerful, was going to get him beat up or even killed ( i’m not sure why the bastard didnt deserve this). Her mom, who was supposed to be her daughter’s biggest protector, let the predator get away with it. Result is, she doesnt like to talk about it, has never been encouraged to. I know the pain is there but remains quelled because she has never been helped to confront it. Everytime i broach the topic, she claims she cant really remember and just shuts down. She only confessed once that it was because of thr panic i always showed whenever we started talking about it. Well i panic because i wonder why it had to happen, why our parents are so lacking in handling it and i panic mostly because a mental picture of my little girls and my friends flashes in my mind. That being said, I guess the best cure is prevention….lets prevent the need for all the expensive, unavailable therapy later in the lives of these little women …time for that sex talk folks…lets do it. Thanks again for sharing your story Koliko

  • @ Naa Adjeley: I absolutely understand why you panic when your girlfriend talks about her abusive past. It’s very difficult to hear our loved ones talk about being mistreated & there’s nothing we can do to help them. But at the same time, the best way you can help her is by suppressing the panic you feel & encouraging her to talk without displaying much emotion besides empathy (don’t worry, you can punch your pillow later in anger! or hit a punching bag @ the gym). The thing is that abuse is horrible- and painful. But the human spirit is resilient & so it survives all kinds of horrible things. Which is why burn victims & other people who survive tragic things are able to go on with hope for life & even smile again. I guess all I’m saying is that the one thing that most survivors of abuse need is for their family members, partners & friends to provide them the space to share their experiences, feelings & challenges in an atmosphere where there’s little rage, panic or deep sadness but lots of empathy & lots of calm. I’m sure you can give your girl that? (or probably may even have been giving it to her already). Best wishes

  • Its great to see the courage, you brave ladies have to share your stories and also the support from everyone. Here is a website I got from one of my clients http://www.aftersilence.org/ They have a forum and live chat services. Another organization that I directly donate wine to for their annual gala is http://www.barcc.org/. They have a 24hr call line that you can call as well. I wish more of these services were available in Ghana but thats something that we can all work on.

    @Naa Adjeley and everyone else who is trying to help their partners through this http://www.pandys.org/index.html is another website that could aid you in approaching the subject.

    @koliko and Ekuba
    You are brave souls and more power to you

  • Thanks for the links @ Nana

  • Icanttalkaboutit.Icantdeal. IcantseeatherapistbecauseiwouldnIcantseeatherapistbecaus.Iwouldntknowwheretostart.

  • @fordewhere, somehow I missed your comment early on. Way to go! And thanks for your prayers.

    @Naa Adjeley your mum’s response to your question and how your woman’s mum dismissed her abuse horrifies me! Ei chale, I can’t imagine how you both must have felt. So if you can’t trust your mum, who is there to trust? Fuck it! And you are absolutely right, family support is paramount in dealing with and preventing abuse.

    @Nana, a.k.a super woman, thanks for links… 🙂 I’ll let you know how it goes.

    @Nnenna, is everything okay? Xxx

    @Ekuba, I sent you an email, like 200yrs ago.

  • I don’t know why I still get surprised when I read or hear about stories of abuse in the Ghanaian society. As a survivor myself, I’ve always felt alone in this experience, partly because it’s not something that’s talked about. Everyone’s mother, wife, daughter, sister is perfect, the epitome of all that is good and pure. So even when you’re broken, you there’s no space to confront this truth, no space to heal. No, ain’t nobody got time for that in Ghana. That’s a shame, because these scars may be buried, but they never heal. I was ok till I read this post, now I realize how much I have buried inside, and how much I need to deal with. It’s ok to fix yourself with band-aids, but I’m learning that they never quite fix the problem. There needs to be a space in Ghana where people can talk about this without the weight of societal expectations and norms on our shoulders.

  • @ Koliko: you’ve busted me, I’ve been using only my school email & neglecting my regular email. Ok, I’m going to read it now & reply.
    @ Nubian Beauty: I’m very sorry that you had to go through all that. Yes, I think there are a lot of women walking in our societies with emotional problems but because there’s no space to discuss it, we just cover up with ‘band aids’ as you call it & take out our frustrations on our kids & other people around us. I hope that you’ll be able to find some assistance to deal with everything you’ve gone through. Best wishes

  • lol, I posted what is written under @ Koliko, I think I typed in my name wrong for the first time! Please ignore everyone. Thanks

  • @Koliko keep me posted. BTW I am a man but appreciate the superwoman reference, It would make me the smartest man in world:)

  • oh sorry Nana. I thought you were a different Nana. 🙂

  • cant even begin to say i know how. you feel NO! This one should have never been any *faky3 Nyame * BS bia ( all due respect )

  • I like it when other people get angry for me. 🙂 thanks.

  • I broken and angry by this. IEverytime i see a chikd on the streets i stop.and hope they are safe. Surely ypou cannot.give all this to God. Mothers have so much work to doespecially in Africa. We need to form the strongest bonds with both female and male children and keep vigil night and day! Please get therapy. There is a lot of pain to work through. Many women wind up twisted and bitter inside and it is all the fault of our society. you need a well of love.

  • I’ve been reading this thread and I’m overwhelmed,not by the stories of abuse, those are common enough. But by the Love, empathy, support and care I’ve seen on here.

    I really don’t have anything to add. I have been mostly learning. For instance, it’s never occured to me the vicious cycle of abuse through generations of victims.

    Thank you all so much for being so real, so honest, so strong, so determined to beat the odds, for the reassurances that you will never succumb to suicide.

    I feel……grateful. Grateful that i came on here today. It is well.

  • @Pirple yes, “a well of love!”

    @Pearl you are welcome.

    🙂

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