My post about the unpleasant incident when I lost my virginity at the age of 10 sparked a chain of thought and some questions.
Given the traumatic nature of the experience why didn’t I simply go to my Mum and tell her what had happened?
There’s one very shallow and unconvincing answer which is that I was afraid of being punished myself.
Anyone of my generation will know how naughty boys were customarily dealt with and that would certainly have happened but I was hardly a stranger to this sort of treatment by the age of 10 and a sore bottom doesn’t stay sore for very long.
A slightly more realistic answer is that I was scared of K, the teenager who committed the offense. He was a great deal bigger than me, physically a full adult and tough, with a reputation for violent behaviour when crossed.
An even more convincing answer is the sense of shame I felt after that morning. I knew that everything I’d allowed, sometimes encouraged to happen was wrong not so much in the legal sense but in the moral and religious sense.
I had a pretty strict Christian upbringing and had been given a fairly strong set of moral values, most of which I appreciated and tried to live by. I wasn’t a cruel boy and never joined in when another child was picked on at school, I was far more likely to offer comfort to the victim.
It may seem facile to some but there was a trust issue as well. Every time I’d been with K he would extract my promise that I wouldn’t tell anybody what we’d been doing.
I’d learned some very painful lessons in my short life about the importance of keeping promises but didn’t have the analytical tools to understand that a promise of secrecy under those circumstances was meaningless.
Thus when K made me actually say the words “I promise not to tell anybody” after each meeting I believed that I had to keep that promise.
Intellectually, and I use the word advisedly, I knew that these clandestine meetings with K were wrong, that being naked around him was wrong and that letting him touch me (and touching him in return) was very wrong.
So why did I allow it to happen again and again? Taking my courage in both hands and admitting to Mum what had been going on would have changed history, well mine anyway.
Every time that K went too far and either hurt or frightened me his apologies were contrite and seemed utterly genuine. He would invest a great deal of time comforting me and would then scale back his actions while slowly building towards the next major event.
Like countless abuse victims before and after me, I accepted his apologies and allowed myself to remain in his power. That is the key word when discussing the successful perpetration of child abuse.
It’s all about power.
Love
Hello Mac. To tell or not tell is something misunderstood by many. Many times it is not even a conscious decision. I told on only one of my “partners” who was my sister’s about to be husband. They were living with my parents and he spent his first night in my bed. I told my sister at breakfast the next day what he did . My sister couldn’t stop laughing, she thought it was hilarious. So as he continued and I never said a word. At least he was gentle and never caused me any physical harm. Later I realized he must have gone on to my sisters two very young boys and that was the reason he married her. At the time I did not put it together and it would have done no good to tell my sister. He was not the first one to use me, and sadly not the last. So telling got me laughed at, imagine how I felt, this man had been inside me and my sister was laughing at it. Oh I was 11 at the time. It was the first time I thought to tell, and I never thought to again.
So I can totally understand why you simply took it inside your self. I wish I could give you words to help, but I keep mine own locked up , chained down in a place I hate to go. There is much hurt and anger, despair and darkness there in that place. Even glimpses into that pit causes my mind to swirl and when what is in there can, it tries to reach out to me. Keeping it at bay has been a life long task, one which I was doing a lousy job of until Ron joined me in the fight. Then I started winning.
Many warm hugs my friend,
Scottie
Scottie
Telling or staying silent is a huge decision for such young children and there aren’t really any rules, each child makes their decision for reasons that seem right to them. Of all the things I feared riducule wasn’t one of them, that would have hurt more than anything I think. I can only sympathise and understand why you returned to silence after that.
Until I told my younger sister last November the only person who knew about this was Gary, who had to know to understand why I fall into such apparently unprovoked fits of depression. During a conversation with our former neighbour, at Dad’s funeral in March, I felt the need to explain to her why Dad & I had fought so much and why he beat me so often so then everyone in my old village knew the truth, many of them were horrified that in such a small community they’d missed seeing what was happening.
Telling the world last week was the ultimate stage in that process of honesty and I’ll admit that doing it frightened me, I’ve been afraid that it might be too much information for some to deal with.
I was touched by the comments I got, especially those people who told me I’d been brave to do it, not something I expected at my age and after so many years of hiding from the truth.
What really astonishes me is the ability of a child mind to suppress such a traumatic even, I did it for the remainder of my childhood and all the way until I was nearly 40. Unfortunately closing off that period in my life also hid away the good memories, uncovering those is one of the few compensations in this process.
Love to you
Mac