I was raped by my father, uncle, teacher and school mates

With Auntie Agatha, gataedo@yahoo.com, agatha.edo@gmail.com Tel: 08054500626 Dear Agatha, I have been raped at various times by my father, uncle and our driver. My primary six teacher, also had his fill of me. While in secondary school, two boys ganged raped me in the classroom. Although all of them including my father, always came back to plead for my forgiveness after raping me, but such pleas don’t erase what they did to me. They all did it once. Till date, I avoid my father like a plague. He too is always very uncomfortable around me just like my uncle who nobody has seen since he came to plead with me. He stays in Jos and has refused to come home. Now I am in my 300 level and the only way I enjoy sex is for a man to be very rough with me. This worked for me until recently when I fell in love with my boyfriend. Honestly, love is happening to me for the first time since I became an adult. All my life, it has been animalistic urge; have sex and walk away from it all before it becomes too complex. I have never had any serious relationship in my entire life because I see men as wicked, opportunists and animals. Given what I feel for my boyfriend, I know I am very much in love with him but at times when I remember all the abuses I went through I wonder if this relationship is worth it. At times too, when I recount the many times I was raped by my father and all the other men, I wonder why me. Is there something about me that made all these men rape me? Once I went to a church where the pastor called me out of the congregation and told me to see him after service. When I saw him after service, as if looking into the mirror he told me everything about my life. since I haven’t told anybody the story of my life, I knew he was real. He told me it was done by my grandmother to destroy my life because she never approved of my father marrying my mother. He said she put an evil mark on me to instigate men to violating me at will. He conducted three days deliverance sessions for me. It was after that I met my boyfriend. Despite the signals I give him, he has resisted making love to me. He expresses the desire to marry me and has taken the steps of introducing me to his parents. He graduated three years ago and works with the energy sector. Although he has an idea of all that happened to me, I haven’t given him the entire details of the many men who raped me. Also, it is proper to tell him about my father since he has met him with him when he came with parents and extended family members for a mini introduction. Deep down, I have this urge to come clean with the story of my past. Another thing is how to respond to his love making when we eventually make love. Would it be proper to ask him to be violent with me as is my custom? Sometimes too, all the old hatred I have for men resurfaces. At such times, I keep away from him but it would be difficult to do once we are married. I am just confused about it all and what to do? Violated Lady. Dear Violated Lady, Given all your experiences in the hands of the various men that raped you, including your father and uncle, you have every reason to hate men and stay away from them completely. Unfortunately, life isn’t always about what we want but what is practicable. The natural order of things is for a man and woman to end up in matrimony. This is why you must find a way of divorcing the painful memories of your various abuses from your mind. if you don’t make up your mind to be happy, no matter the love and care your man showers on you, the understanding he offers; you will never be happy. Although the spiritual manipulations explains a lot of things about your experiences but only your efforts can really make the difference at this point in your life. You have come to that valuable point in your life when God has stepped in to make you happy. The ball is now in your court; to prove to yourself as well as all those who tried to manipulate your destiny that you have what it takes to be happy, succeed against all the odds they put along the path of your life. Most times talking about such experiences, helps to lessen the burden by more than half. Keeping all such experiences bottled up all these years isn’t healthy for your emotional growth which is why the bile comes up strongly when you remember everything you went through. This kind of experience needs time to be truly forgotten. So you have to learn to give yourself time to get over it. One of the ways to go about it is to talk to this man who has shown remarkable understanding to you. While you reserve the prerogative of telling him about what your father did to you, let him know about all the other men that have abused you and how you came to the conclusions about your sexual preferences as well as the kind of hatred you at times have for men. He needs this information to help him know what he is dealing with as well as map out how to help change your attitude towards sex as well as him in particular. When a woman has been repeatedly abused by different men, she needs a different kind of understanding from her man to help live a normal life. Another thing you must do is to admit aloud to yourself the kinds of negative conclusions you came to about yourself when all those abuses were going on. Like you said in your letter, while all those abuses were going on, you wondered why you. Even though the pastor’s explanation gave you an insight to the source of the problem, it won’t totally help you forget all those ugly incidents. You need to confront your father and uncle with what they did to you. Ask them why they raped you when their business was to support and protect you. Often than not, the answers to most of our pains and challenges are usually found in the scenes of the incidents. Drawing your father out to talk about it will help all of you forge forward. You have to know what he felt then and feels now. Going by what the pastor said, your father may not even understand what prompted him or how it all happened. The fact that he feels uncomfortable around you shows he too is suffering emotionally. There is nothing like self condemnation; if you don’t take the steps of talking about that one time he raped you, both of you will always be miserable. He has to understand what went wrong that day he did the abominable act of sleeping with his own daughter. The talk will definitely go a long way in kick starting your complete healing process. One that you can do from all these is to find ways of using your experiences to help others. The more you talk, the better you become and happier you will be at the end of it all. This way, you will be able to learn to love yourself again. Talking about it will help you meet the woman inside of you; the one whose growth was stunted by the bitterness of your experiences. Talking will help the woman to come out of her shell, find her confidence in life and her womanhood. You have to help yourself discover the strength, beauty, resilience and character of the woman in you. A woman isn’t all about rapes; she is created by God to be a companion, valuable partner to her man. By the time you finish sharing your story with your man, you will discover that life has much more to offer you than what you know. It is this discovery that will help you tolerate and enjoy the company of your man the way God wants it between a man and woman. You are not an animal; you are a woman created to be loved, cared for and protected by a man. Above all, ask God for help to be a complete woman. Good luck.