Comment More info about the rapper in the video. (Score -1, Offtopic) 236
http://movingforward.org/v1n2-firstperson.html
Text below.
Sexual Child Abuse: A Male Survivors Storyby M.E. Hart
I am an African American male, an attorney, and a professional actor; but first, I am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. This is my earliest life memory:
I was four years old. It was winter. There was a fire in the fireplace. I watched as it reflected through the room. The whole room was magically aglow.
"Okay, it's time for bed," Grandma yelled.
I grabbed the covers and climbed into the big, white bed. From up there, I felt like I was on top of the world. There were four us in the bed, one adult and three kids.
The adult was going to sleep beside me "so I wouldn't be scared." That's what everyone told me, although I didn't know why I should be afraid. I figured if he was there I would be fine. I laid down in the warmth of the fire's glow and I drifted off to sleep.
Later that night I felt something behind me on the adult's side. Many thoughts raced through my head. What was it -- maybe the thing I was supposed to fear -- maybe the Devil? But how could it get to me with an adult there to protect me? I didn't understand.
I felt it poking me. It was kind of soft-hard. It started poking down my back. It went down, down, down until it was poking me where my underwear covered. It was poking me in that place.
It started pulling down my underwear. I was really getting scared. I wondered if it had already gotten all the other people in the bed. Was I the only one left? Oh God, what was I going to do? Childhood denial set in. It wasn't hurting, just poking. Maybe it was trying to be friendly. Then it stabbed deep inside of me, tearing through my skin.
It was hurting me! I felt wet on my face -- tears. I was so scared I couldn't say anything. No words would come out. I wanted to go to sleep -- if I could sleep maybe it would be gone when I woke up. I was wrong. When I awoke, it was still poking me hard, but I knew I had to go to sleep. If I was going to go to hell with the Devil I wanted to be asleep. A pattern was set, poking, sleep, poking, sleep....
From that night on, I didn't really feel much anymore. I had been physically, emotionally, and spiritually assaulted. It was a brutal violation of my four-year-old world. My innocence had died, my cry had been silenced, my connection with my own body had been broken. The four-year old magic glow was gone; silent terror took its place. My life was changed forever.
This was the beginning of a fifteen-year cycle of sexual abuse. Within two years, that adult, a male cousin, had introduced his brother to the practice. Then he told a friend of his who also began to abuse me.
My family situation helped keep the abuse secret. I grew up in a public housing project. My father was an alcoholic, and my mother was taking tranqulizers. There was always fear in the house. We didn't know how my father was going to act when he came home and there were always arguments over money for food, rent, and clothes.
When my abuse started there were three children in my family -- eventually, there were six. With each new child came more demands, more alcohol, and more arguments. Fear prevented me from saying anything to my parents -- I was afraid they would blame me. But most of all, I was afraid it would cause more problems within the family.
My abusers started spreading rumors about me among their peers. Many of them called me names, exposed themselves to me, and then tried seduce me in private. Days and nights of utter terror made growing up difficult. During those warlike years, thirteen people were responsible for sexually abusing me. If this cycle were just beginning today, with the threat of AIDS, I shudder to think of the consequences.
Growing up abused affected my whole life. As a toddler, I felt fear, not love. I didn't know when an adult person might take me away and do something to me. In school, I felt isolated, and became very shy and withdrawn. Although I was afraid to go to school at first, it eventually became my refuge. As an adolescent, I didn't develop confidence. Denial and perfectionism insulated me from my feelings. I was ashamed. I knew more about sex than my peers and that made me feel uncomfortable to be around them. I was liked, but I had no male friends -- it was impossible to bond with people my age because I couldn't share what I was going through.
In school I began to excel. Doing so grew out of the need to be a keen observer in order to survive. I could walk into our house, no matter how cluttered it was, and tell if anything had been moved, broken, or taken. I could tell whether my father was drunk, my mother was on Valium, or my abusive cousins were there. This state of hyper-vigilance filtered into my school work. I was fortunate that it didn't lead me in less positive directions.
Throughout school, I alternated between withdrawing and trying to fit in. I started sports relatively late, participating not so much for my own enjoyment, but to maintain the image of being a "normal" male. My school achievements began to pay off. I began winning awards and college scholarships. It was a shock to me -- I didn't feet I deserved them.
My home life was so crazy, I couldn't focus on my achievements. The awards were nice because they made us seem like a normal family. But throughout high school and college, my family endured separations, divorce, threats, verbal and physical intimidation, illegitimate childbirth, a failed attempt at home ownership, which resulted in a devastating foreclosure, and a return to public housing projects, and more. As I tried to help with the family crises, I had to face insomnia, nightmares, flashbacks, job demands, housing problems, money problems, corrective surgery (because of damage done by prolonged abuse), and a cancer scare all while an undergraduate majoring in Russian and then later as a law student!
When I look back, I am amazed I survived. Even today, the duration of the abuse I suffered is difficult for me to accept. Many people have asked why I didn't stop it when I got "old enough." They don't realize that the early pattern of abuse completely destroyed my self-esteem. It taught me I couldn't control anything, not even what was done with my own body. My struggle to prove to myself that I was worth something led to overachieving perfectionism. I succeeded at many things, but enjoyed none of them.
I did not begin to deal with the effects of the abuse until I became the Legal advisor to the Director of the Office of Human Rights in Washington, DC. Working with people who felt hostility and pain brought back hidden memories. I was fighting legal battles by day and personal battles by night. On one particularly difficult night, so many sexual abuse memories had come back to me that I was flooded with shame. I felt like a worthless fraud. A very good friend came to my aid and actually saved my life.
Another friend directed me to a group where other survivors of childhood sexual abuse met to discuss the effects of their abuse. That group became my lifeline. I learned I was not alone. Though the group contained more women than men, and no other African Americans, I knew I belonged. We all had survived similar childhood horrors and had lived to talk about them. These were brave people; I found great strength and support being among them.
I have been working on removing from the effects of sexual abuse for almost four years. I still face insomnia and flashbacks occasionally, but now I can put them in perspective. The abuse no longer controls my life. My journey has made me a more sensitive, understanding, and hopefully, less judgmental person.
As a part of my recovery work, I have appeared on Black Entertainment Television and on a W*USA news special. Both programs dealt with I abuse. I did so because I wanted to add the face of an African American male to the images surrounding this major social problem.
It is clear that sexual abuse will continue to be a difficult topic because it awakens memories that many of us don't want, to face. But facing them is the only way to be free of the negative control the abuse has over our lives. I believe that until more adults who were abused as children come forward -- as they are ready -- it will remain easy for society to deny the epidemic proportions of childhood sexual abuse. When we see faces, and hear from men and women -- red, yellow, black white and brown -- about the of abuse on their lives, maybe, just maybe, we will begin to protect all of our children.
M.E. Hart is lawyer who works in Washington, DC.
