Thought Picnic: The memories that become our stories

The burden of memory

Memories are burdens we inadvertently lift, given through some experiences we never orchestrated, the accidents in our humanity that could so easily define us.

Be it in people, dates, events, or some feeling and sense that becomes a recollection of significance, we may not be victims of circumstance, but of circumstances that might belie and present opportunity for becoming victims.

Where we choose not to be victims but victors instead, we take some sort of lesson to probably not be found in such a vulnerable position again or to ensure others do not suffer from what has become part of our story, shielded in many ways from scrutiny and accountability of the perpetrators of mischief on our person.

Sheep in wolf jaws

Childhood, something most of us reading this would have experienced can be evocative to various extents. Some of us do have the protections and safety of home and homeliness with strong family structures that extend arms to give opportunities to those who are less privileged than us.

That semblance of security can be exploited by those brought under that umbrella, easy pleasures and stolen innocence concealed in the gentility of respectable existence, exacerbated by the lack of curiosity that corrals and feeds helpless sheep into the salivating lips of ravenous wolves tended as part of the flock.

We live our memories

What many may have forgotten about rarely sinks into total amnesia of the adult who was once a child, some things are too indelible and will never be erased.

Of the scars we carry, they are marks of our living, but thankfully not bleeding sores of harms inflicted decades before. Even where we try, a memory has that grip hold, we have just refused to fold, even if what happened is left untold.

Innocent at sea

In the bait of innocence

I am innocent,
          He protests vehemently,
To those listening,
          He persuades so intently,

This is the innocence,
          You might well observe on a fishing boat,
Here with a fishing rod,
          Cast into the water with a visible float,

Then on the defensive,
          He avers to make the crucial insignificant,
By which time you are ensnared,
          And to run or flee you obviously can’t,

You are a victim and a slave,
          To the lure of words that have you in a grip,
Before you can come to,
          You have been taken on the longest trip,

For to be totally blameless,
          Is that rather longing wish,
And when absolved of guilt,
          Of what the bait said to the fish,

The piscine catch,
          Glistening beautifully in the sun,
Is taken to a new world,
          Way away from its sense of fun,

Prepared sumptuously,
          For a hungry and waiting palate,
Of what became a dish,
          Innocent is not what you’ll call the bait.

Living around shadows of childhood violation

In the loss of innocence

I found myself offering some counsel on a very intimate matter of shared experiences that with difficulty I could not find the right form of words to address some particularities. Too many of us were violated in familiar and trusting environments by people known to us and decades after, those people are in the periphery, within reach, if we so needed to contact them, though we usually avoid them.

On the matter of experiencing sex earlier than legally or morally allowed, I opined that our exposure to sex, even the desire for it at such a young age does not make us catamites obligated to pederasty; it was wrong even if we appeared to enjoy it, because it robs us of essential childhood innocence which in development is to help how we build trust and relationships, beyond that our innate confidence is messed with.

Through the valley of realisation

In times, we even had juvenile infatuation, probably all of us experience it, the dreamy idea of that one most desirable person to be intimate with and the memories that took hold. That same-sex attraction that defined a journey of exploration that we travelled to destinations of thrill and expectations of more, unknowing of the fact that we were being used and abused for sexual ends.

We grew up, maybe found new distractions or our attention got arrested by other things, yet, we have our lives and stories, some secrets we never do share. The effects of those childhood encounters remain even if we blank out the memories. We are forever changed by the premature loss of innocence that leads to conflicted prepubescence with the characteristics of wondering adolescence. It is somewhat devastating and yet, so of us have survived and escape irredeemably consequential trauma.

Thought Picnic: A child has memories that last a lifetime

Caught in a body of lustful desire

Lasciviousness is a word I first saw in the Bible, and I could only wonder what it meant and why especially in the Pauline epistles, it had consequence on church building and church discipline.

The gospel had been taken to heathen nations with completely liberal and sometimes abusive human relationships along with the absence or lack of moral restraint. People just did what they tended to do until someone came with the message, that was all wrong and not how to behave as Christians.

Until a moral code was introduced through Christianity or some religious instruction, human beings were just themselves to live, strive, maybe thrive and die.

I never had a virginity

That I had to answer a question, ‘Are you so loose?’, left me pondering the many things that I have covered on my blog many times which pertain to the consequences of child sexual abuse and how I have hopefully used my experience to help others who might have had even more debilitating outcomes in life than I have been fortunate to have.

For instance, I was introduced to sex a lot earlier than I should ever have been. There were probably signs in my character and personality that something had happened to me, but only the trained eye might have been able to notice. On that point, this was at the age of 7 and who it was will not be revealed to anyone except if I decide to put it in a book. My first reference in January 2007 covers some of that experience.

Blog - My Sex Post (January 2007)

Then, I wrote a blog about virginity with the conclusion that I never knew I even had one. There are people who later in life got to experience sex for the first time in a place and manner of their choosing. What does a child know about those kinds of choices?

Blog - Thought Picnic: How do you lose your virginity? (August 2011)

And I am one of the lucky ones

I went to watch the film Spotlight in 2016, it was about the investigation of clerical child abuse in America. I was the last to leave the cinema theatre when the film ended, it was not only distressing, but I was also weeping because I knew what those children had gone through. Many victims of child sexual abuse do not even know they are being groomed, programmed, and abused.

The people who exploit children for sexual pleasure are good at winning the confidences of both parent and child that by the time the child has been violated the odds are so stacked against the child that they have no one to run to in time of need as the abuse is perpetuated.

Blog - Shine a Spotlight on child sexual abuse (January 2013)

The impact of indirect action

My father was a strict disciplinarian in every sense of the word, he probably meted out his most violent punishments on his youngest sister. I hate to think of the ways she might have sought revenge against her brother, inadvertently, I was a casualty a few times.

As a child observer of what was happening, my father became unapproachable, even an ogre of sorts, when we began to have our disagreements in my teenage years, we were long past a place of useful reconciliation and confidences. Yet, he had this seething displeasure with me for so long, with the view that I was constantly disrespectful of him as I did not subscribe to the obsequiousness that others had towards him. I am a son; I would scream within myself, but a relationship did not thrive.

“When our parents confused our fear of them with our respect of them, they lost the many times we could have confided in them.”

Blog - Thought Picnic: The Barrier to Confiding in our Guardians (May 2013)

We talked about sex once

Time does not heal the loss of innocence; it simply compounds the experience to the inability to either discriminate or make the right choices about something as intimate and serious as sex. I do wonder how many of my generation ever had a conversation about sex with their parents.

I know I never did and the first time that topic ever came up was when our housemaid fell pregnant. She, under interrogation of my mother, my mother asked her if I was responsible for it.

Well, whilst the houseboys and sometimes gateman had taken sexual favours off me from the age of 8 into my teens, I doubt I gave the house-girls a third look. As I would not have initiated anything.

It was recently that I learnt a whole new truth about that sordid event because all the while, I remember returning home from seeing my mother at the hairdressers with my cousin to see her dishevelled and apparently roughed-up, I asked no questions, but I thought whoever I thought was responsible was apparently not the person who violated her. Anyway…

Blog - Thought Picnic: We Never Knew What a Healthy Sexual Relationship Was Because ... (May 2013)

I can’t speak evil of my parents

There are two episodes in my childhood that mark out the relationship I have had with my parents and the sad reality that they might only learn some things for the first time out of reading my blog.

I was taken ill and sleeping in my bed when a female family friend of ours came into my room and sat on me. I knew who she was because of what I said to her, “I will tell your husband.”

My mother was in the next room nursing my brother when she called out to me to determine what was going on. I completely drew a blank, it was as if the memory of who assailed me had been erased, eventually out the recesses of my memory, I now remember who she was.

However, this began a number of ritualistic and religious activities apparently contracted to save me from harm, the extension to that is how my mother bought my silence many years later after a visit to some spiritual figure by threatening with that kind of experience again.

Then, my aunt, my father’s youngest sister was chatting to our houseboy one day about paranormal activity in the presence of my utterly impressionable mind. That night we had visitors and I was called to clear the dishes to the kitchen, though the washing area was in the garden in the dark.

When I returned to the kitchen with the dishes, my aunt adjured me to take them to the washing area and as I stepped up to the table and before me, I saw a tall, big red-chested beastly apparition, that I heard later that night and saw again in the presence of my mother, I believed was the devil and screamed in terror. Everyone ran out and I told my tale, well, my dad dismissed it, the burden fell to my mother to deal with and that was one of the things I was threatened with if I revealed where we had been.

Blog - The damage done when parents fail to listen (February 2015)

If anyone touches you: A parent talks

I wonder if there is much to say about the need for parental involvement fully in sexual education. It should not be ignored first in the view that the child is innocent or secondly in the fear that it might corrupt the child.

Just imagine for one if a parent as the child was growing up had said, “If anyone touches you there, run to me and tell me, do not think twice about it, I am here to protect you.” It is speculation, but I think a lot of child sexual abuse might have been nipped in the bud.

Then, who knows?

Blog - Sexual Education and Parental Naivety (August 2019)

I write to help myself and others

I am not looking for anyone to believe me or even pity me for what I have experienced, but what I will not allow to be taken away from me is my own story in my own words. What my blog has done fore me and to help me come to terms with many things is immeasurable.

Fundamentally, I hold nothing against anyone including my parents, but that does not obviate the essential necessity to bring these things into the open so they can be discussed privately, if that opportunity comes up or publicly with others who might find that what I have written resonates with them.

What matters the most is that the old mistakes are not repeated in the generations that come after us. If anything, that it is the most important thing.

Blog - A survivor does not owe you a convincing story (July 2019)

Back to the question

Lasciviousness: unrestrained sexual behaviour, or a habitual inclination to such behaviour; lustfulness: [Dictionary.com]

So, the question was, Are you so loose (sexually, morally, whatever)? How would I know, if I lost my innocence at 7? Sex became utilitarian and I was already sexually active from 8 and it is from sexual activity that I contracted HIV almost 19 years ago, and all the things that emanated from that.

I am thankful for what new love has given me in preserving and preparing myself for intimacy that has value, I cannot escape from my history, but I can refuse it let it define me.

Am I so loose? Go figure!

The memories of sexual abuse never fade

No two are the same

Each case of sexual abuse is different and unique. The age at which that abuse first happened can be life-defining. However, one thing you cannot discount is the personal memory of the abuse to the individual, to the person and to the child.

Following a blog written about friendship early last year, the write-up went viral and by happenstance ended up in the readership of my father.

He had a perspective and an expectation of who I was supposed to be and where I might have been lacking, in another conversation from over a decade ago, it was one lacking responsibility. That comes with all sorts of connotations, but I challenged it.

Stand up for who you are

My response was, “If after all this while, you think I am irresponsible, that is unfortunate.”

He replied, sensing my hurt and disappointment, that was not what he meant. As I shook and trembled, I was not backing down when I said, “I know what you meant, I speak English too.”

Even to our parents, we have to come to a point where we are ready to stand up for who were are, regardless of who they expect us to be.

Soon, we continued our conversation on other topics until I received a text message of instructions to follow and respond to last August, following his knowledge of that blog.

The memories well up again

I was a few months short of my 52^nd birthday when my father learnt that as a child under his roof and where people employed to care for us, were on the side, taking sexual favours.

It was not my intention to share certain dark episodes of my early life that my parents were completely oblivious of, but occasion warranted the need to talk about it at that time.

My memories of these events over 40 years ago are keen and vivid, they are not insignificant and for all that I have written about abuse in well over a decade, I have been fortunate not to consider myself a victim or be victimised for the experiences I have had. I have been blessed and lucky.

I know how the loss of sexual innocence consequently affects relationships, healthy choices, trust and confidence. This is always on my mind when people talk about their experiences of sexual abuse. We would prefer we never had to recall and recount any of it, and whether or not anyone believes us, one thing they can never do it consign us to irrelevance and relegate our lives or history to obloquy.

Innocence lost!

The end of the matter,
Was the beginning of a flutter,
Crutched in secret,
Not too discreet,
There on a prompting,
A decision found wanting,
To stick it in,
For her was a win,
He did not know,
What was on show,
At an age twice of him,
A tryst on the whim,
In a backroom then at home,
With little scope to roam,
When the deed was done,
His innocence quickly gone,
To lure a boy of seven,
Is to close the door to heaven,
The tales still gets told,
For what happened can never go cold,
Of taboos tasted raw,
No distinction to draw,
Therein is a cause,
To save other from that curse,
His purity thus polluted,
His young soul fully looted.

Thought Picnic: Fucked-up, but coping well

“You want to know how to rip the child out of a child? Fuck him.” [Judgement on Bailli]

Just as crude as it is

Following on from the conversation I started yesterday about the freedom to speak the truth regardless of whether it shocks or it is brutal, the excerpt at the beginning of this blog speaks volumes. It does not have to be gender specific, it applies to all children.

Blog - Reflecting on the brutal rape of my childhood innocence

On the matter of child sexual abuse, I cannot say when I read the many harrowing ordeals others experienced that I suffered anywhere along the lines of what they endured, not by any stretch of the imagination.

Yet, the crudeness of the opening statement does not begin to describe the loss of innocence of a child when exposed to such atrocious abuse and being made the object of abuse without any sense of humanity for the inordinate pleasure of the perpetrator.

We cope, either way

Though some of us who once were victims of abuse have found coping mechanisms to live somewhat well-adjusted lives, none of what happened then is without lasting consequence.

One such consequence for some of us was in getting this early practical and harrowing introduction to sex, we became like suckling toddlers who before being weaned had our diets changed from milk to meat. I covered that issue the blog below.

Blog - Thought Picnic: We Never Knew What a Healthy Sexual Relationship Was Because ...

Carrying on the theme from the introduction, one can in the colloquial say, these acts of child sexual abuse in ripping out the child out of the child fucks up their heads and fucks up their lives and that is the beginning of many other fuck ups that people may not understand.

The signs missed

A usually normal gregarious child that suddenly becomes withdrawn and introverted, performance at school going downhill, unexplained and out-of-character behaviour giving guardians concern, a tendency to unhealthy habits leading to inexplicable addictions – these are usually symptoms of something gone wrong and usually never properly understood without professional help.

Then you begin to wonder why certain children later in life do not measure up to all sorts of expectations of them. Enough mental anguish and energy is expended in attaining a sense of normalcy without being harangued by parent, relation, friend, acquaintance or anyone to fit to some model of responsibility and status.

No more abuse

Yet, many suffer all the more for trying to please from when they were under threat after abuse through to the present time. Not that we give much thought to being let down or finding no protection where ideally there should have been support, succour, comfort and protection, in most cases we harbour no grudges.

However, there comes a time that if the pushing and urging does not stop the ensuing torrent of bottled up emotion and hurt will sweep people completely out of the way like a flood with shock.

It behoves many that these stories be told at a convenient time and that what many may not understand about that others read to be habit and attitude might well be the ultimate act of self-preservation. We might be just a bit fucked-up, but we cope well, however, if you encroach too much on our space, do not be surprised when we firmly say, fuck-off!

Reflecting on the brutal rape of my childhood innocence

Instrumental inspiration

I just finished listening to the pianist James Rhodes being interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s FrontRow programme and as I have learnt from the many stories shared by many people on these kinds of programmes you find something that resonates.

James Rhodes had many things to say about creativity and mental illness, but more poignantly I was arrested by the saga behind the publication of his life story which depicted in quite graphic detail the sexual rape he endured from the age of six along with the atrocious abuse that it included.

Instrumental: A Memoir of Madness, Medication and Music (Guardian Review) [Amazon] became a subject of litigation when his ex-wife took out an injunction to prevent the publication of the book because she believed that the graphic detail in the book might be injurious to their 12-year old son.

The right to tell the truth

Whilst there probably is a case for this from a mother’s perspective as concerns the welfare of a child, the case that came before the Supreme Court in the UK concluded in the following quote by overturning the injunction that:

“A person who has suffered in the way that the appellant has suffered, and has struggled to cope with the consequences of his suffering in the way that he has struggled, has the right to tell the world about it. And there is a corresponding public interest in others being able to listen to his life story in all its searing detail.” [The Law Society Gazatte]

In the Supreme Court judgement, some of the words are as graphic as to be shocking in their content, yet therein lies a story that must be told as it is.

“You want to know how to rip the child out of a child? Fuck him.” [Judgement on Bailli]

My lost innocence

Now, I have written several blogs on the matter of child sexual abuse, the first of which I wrote on the 17^th of January, 2007, titled, My Sex Post and in it the only piece of information I gave away was that I had my first sexual experience at 7.

I have not mentioned who it was with, where it happened or what exactly happened, but that afternoon is as vivid in my memory as it could literally be played back in a film.

Child sexual abuse which happens quite frequently in Nigeria that we have found a fanciful word to spare our blushes in court to call the sexual abuse, rape and violation of a child defilement is a taboo subject in most cases.

The helplessness in abuse

I know of too many cases where an abused child has been silenced by people supposedly responsible for the child because of the embarrassment that the truth of what happened might bring upon that family, it becomes a hush-hush issue of shame that only a few get into the criminal justice system to feed the lascivious hunger of an outrageously voyeuristic media that has little concern for child involved as they print the salacious without conscience or compassion.

It might well be that this along with the tendency to either disbelieve or blame the victim that results in the child bottling up the abuse or where the abuse is revealed the belief is that besides medical intervention time will eventually make that ordeal fade from memory.

As a man, I know this is not the truth, I was violated by people my parents felt they had the obligation to care for and by those they brought into our home on trust that they will care for use as the adults in their absence.

The faults are many

Yet, whilst I cannot entirely fault my parents, the absence of curiosity on their part was damaging enough because I was not the only one abused and when they learnt of the abuse of another within our family setting they could have made enquiries and realised that at the age of 10 I was already sexually active for 3 years already.

In that is a number of stories I have mostly written in third person being slightly culturally restrained by the magnitude of what the truth of such narratives might have on people living who might be shocked to realise that not only is the memory as keen as it ever was, but also the fear for their realisation of that more could have been done that wasn’t.

Launching a catalogue of abuses

My first experience of sex which I had no idea of before came through this person and then three years later, my first experience of terrifying fear when I believed I saw an apparition of the devil came from things I heard this person say. The reality of my terror was dismissed by my father whilst I found myself pressganged into numerous unprintable religious and animist rituals to ward off evil spirits.

On reflection, what I needed was professional psychological or psychiatric help, but I was reading Psalms in a language I could not speak, visiting prophets, witch doctors and shamans who all had bizarre idea upon bizarre idea of potions, cuttings, baths, concoctions and much else that cost money but also was a secondary form of abuse in the guise of being helped and being cured.

Secrecy really has no place in this

Each of these events is a story I compelled to tell and yet afraid to write, but I can find one great consolation in the judgement that lifted the injunction on James Rhodes’s book.

Whilst the freedom of expression neither guarantees the freedom from responsibility for what is said or written nor the freedom from consequence for what is heard or read, in the words of Tamsin Allen, James Rhodes’ lawyer, “In overturning the injunction, the Supreme Court has reaffirmed the fundamental importance of the freedom to speak the truth, even if the truth is brutal or shocking.”

The fundamental freedom to speak the truth affirmed, even if the truth is brutal or shocking, and more so, ‘Secrecy has no place in this story’ and many other stories that need to be told of abuse, of rape, of violation, of neglect, of indifference and of the consequence of all this in the life of the child and as they child harbours all this cachet of a life of experience into adulthood.

Thought Picnic: How do you lose your virginity?

Sex before time

There are some things it would take another life to have, a life where all the good knowledge and wisdom one has would have to be readily accessible at birth, but I do not believe in reincarnation, the life I have is the one I am living already.

Sex has always been a fascinating topic from the perspective that I first experienced it when I did not know what it was about and when I finally began to understand what it was about, its uses never found the value that was placed on it.

There have been many ways to explain away the deviations from the norm that have accompanied the loss of innocence on the matter of sex but the fact is, if you are more than sexually aware long before puberty there are many things that affect you just as the sensation of eating unripe fruit.

What is virginity?

That is an analogy rather than a parallel; but this thinking arises from having seen a number of tweets on virginity and I very well commend those who have been able to retain their virginity for all sorts of reasons or at least they have been able to decided when they want to lose theirs.

I write this in the mind of a child who never had a virginity, there is no comprehension of what it means before puberty and once you reach puberty sexual curiosity is hardly what it seems; it is neither exploratory nor gratifying, it probably is an animal passion driven by peer pressure or daring experimentation.

Depending on the level of abuse, there might be an aversion to it completely; a case of being speedily matured and damaged long before one can value what it is all about.

Sparing my children

That part of one’s childhood can make all the difference, the loss of innocence that leads to decisions that are difficult to understand, but I see that there is a part of me that is rational – if in the setting that I grew up in I could not be protected from predators, what chance have I having my own children protected from predators of another generation?

Indeed, there are aspects of the life I have lived that I would hate for any possible children of mine to experience and so I have had no children, the likelihood that I could ever have any was remote for a long time (there are studies that suggest pre-term babies do not generally go on to have children in adulthood), the possibility became less evident as time progressed and well after chemotherapy, we might well have reached the terminus.

All that just makes a simple story long, the question is how do you lose your virginity if you never had one?

Thought Picnic: Preserving childhood sexual innocence

A childhood unlike many

I had to give myself time for my anger to percolate and evaporate before writing this piece because it goes to the heart of what rankles me most about our humanity.

Invariably, I can understand why I would never be a parent, my concern for child welfare is almost too Utopian to be possible, but it really is not, the rearing of a child, a stage of development I also went through has its memorable and blissful moments where the pursuit of happiness and realisation of childish dreams effortlessly happened because my parents and the community I was in provided for such.

I have written a lot about my childhood and I know for some readers, it would be unimaginable that such childhood experiences could be in Nigeria – my childhood memories are living fossils of wealth that stand in good stead for my present and future.

The loss of sexual innocence

The dark moments of this childhood only became evident with enlightenment after growing up, when at 7, my sexual innocence was tampered with, I was none the wiser about what was going on as to tell my parents that I had been interfered with.

When until I was 10 the male servants had their sweet desserts on my account, I felt I was just as culpable that it was not something I could report to my parents either. The situation was set up in such as way as to make me appear willing, encouraged, pliant, and available. I could have been as close to a catamite as you could get but it is all now clear that it was all wrong.

No child should have its sexual innocence violated and defiled by adults whose despicable and repressed sexual desires find an outlet in children in their care.

It is wrong, it is criminal and it must be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

Giving children a voice

It means we must make our children aware of those dangers and foster an environment where at the initial stage of grooming the intended act is nipped in the bud and perpetrators quickly curtailed.

Indeed, there are societies that cannot handle child sexual abuse with understanding, maturity and the resolution to manage the trauma whilst punishing the offenders, however, there is no excuse to ignore the victim to spare our blushes – that would be the greatest crime of all.