Don’t read any further if upset by injustice, neglect, poverty and perversion.

This be trigger city for some.

This is your last chance, I’m blunt but not coarse, I am going to discuss a terrible subject in the lightest possible manner.

Confusion.

When I was a child I was assaulted by an adult man (in the worst way). The most prominent symptom, apart from the physical pain was that of severe confusion. I became OCD as a result of trying to come to terms.

The whole thing was so completely and utterly at odds with everything I knew then, I was under ten years old and used to dolls, handstands and dresses. I went off dresses, handstands and dolls.

I’m fifty-one years old now. I love dresses now. Sod the handstands. It may surprise people to know that some actions are never forgotten – no matter how many other, lovely, consensual sexual moments one does experience.

If you were to get complacent and fool yourself, a flash back will remind you. Today I had one, it must have been ten years since the last. His face appeared when I was having wink. I decided to have an imaginary wiss on him. He went.

For a longest time, I thought along the lines of ‘why me?’ But then it became all about recovery, mainly because I have children. Many different pathways of recovery were tried.

I didn’t recover quickly because I was pushed towards forgiveness. No confrontation, no justice and no reasonable explanation. It took ages, as the confusion became anger, festered and grew  to become depression.

How does forgiveness help? If no one is saying sorry, you can only forgive so much.

Attending lots of therapy – when my children were young, I needed to deal with my anger and more recently, I started writing this online journal and some books to help. It really does help too. Whether it helps you or not is another matter…

These days, I feel that I am better, adjusted as much as humanly possible. I’m able to think about what happened back in Widewell Woods with less emotion and I apologise if I cause any harm or painful memories to those reading this. I understand it’s place in my life story.

It does not define me, but it is part of me, unfortunately, a regret out of my hands.

There are no safe places for children if we don’t fully understand. I feel it is not just a sexual fetish with innocence, even ‘perceived innocence’ is not the full picture. Control plays a part. It is a form of soul capture…making an imprint on a person for life. The man who hurt me was playing god.

Perhaps this is why the church didn’t help me. They couldn’t play god any more with me…I’d worked out he wasn’t really there to protect us at all because anyone could come along and trump him.

Obviously, no assault or abuse is the same. I’m going to come out with something controversial and declare that there was nothing sexually charged about the scene of my sexual assault.

It was a moment of ruination.

He wanted to ruin a female life, he planned to ruin it and he had, but it hadn’t ‘satisfied’ him. I suspect he wouldn’t have been satisfied until he’d taken more but a disturbance didn’t give him time.

He wanted to ruin a girl – in order to ruin a woman.

He did succeed for a while, but something was able to absorb the hatred I had, not the confusion, just the hatred. God was my buffer. I thank the ideology for that much, begrudgingly.

No one else cared enough for it to be effective if I was angry at them. It was only the church who had appeared in my life, made me feel some promise and then let me down, that it was worth getting angry with in my child’s mind.

No one promised life would be another way, ever. Since living with Dad and step mum I knew a life of pain. God had promised happiness if I followed certain rules. I had followed his rules.

I could be justifiably angry with him.

The assault shone a light on other confusions. Things my step mother had said some years before. I’d  started at school but was off sick. We had to go out. I’d upset her by slowing the process down. I was crying and she was pulling me about, putting my shoes on.

I said something to the effect that she was hurting me. The shoes were too small and they’d yet to be cut so that my feet could grow. This was a common thing for British families struggling in the 1970s. I had trouble with the buckles, they were too difficult for me to do up, she was angry.

In her defence, she was not my mother, I was yet to be diagnosed. Labelled stupid and clumsy because of the Elhers Danlos and extremely short sighted, it could not have been easy. I mean, it must have been frustrating for her.

It was horrifying for me, but I knew no different.

She spat her words at me,

“You should think yourself lucky, I could be shoving coat hangers up inside you.”

It was an odd thing to say to a five year old.

I had no idea of a vagina, only the vulva. I only knew the outside of my biological self.

My creative inners, ‘my vagina’, womb or ovaries were not on my radar. Biology is good like this, the female genitalia are not exactly accessible. I assumed she meant put coat hangers inside me via my belly button, that was, until Widewell, the man and the sexual assault.

In emotional health terms this is called ‘sexualization’. Children should not be sexualized early, it’s not healthy mentally, emotionally or physically. This is why we use terms like, the bird and the bees, the stork brought the baby and don’t discuss or do sexual things in front of children. We protect their innocence of creation.

The human act of copulation is not a child’s business. Children are just the result…

The man who assaulted me knew this. He knew he had no business going in my pants. I knew too and tried to stop him. It took him seconds to ruin my life, to change my perspective. In that moment, he set me apart from everything. He distanced me from my peers, my step mother, my father and just about everyone I knew.

How could a weak man gain control over strong, healthy and vibrant women other than to sabotage her as a child? This man is a coward, no more. A terminator of women…going back to a weaker point in their biological past to ruin them.

I know now he lacks the respect for women he should have, and his action is that of a misogynist.

I stayed fascinated with sex for decades, attempting to understand it’s dynamics. I can tell what desire is and what is hatred. I recognise love and respect and can see usage and control.

He was looking at my face when he hurt me. His was not a pretty face.

The man who assaulted me did not fancy me. He wasn’t attracted to me…he isn’t attracted to children. I’ll be very clear, he was into ruination, he wanted to destroy, to take my soul – his intention was only to hurt and cause pain.

He knew I was confused, he hoped it’d be hurting me forever, but it didn’t appear to make him happy. His brown, watery eyes were sad and angry as they looked into mine.

Gaining only sour gratification of his bitter hatred for women, he assaulted me, and then walked away. For all I know, back to his wife and children. Sorry, but it could be true – it’s all too late to do anything now and I didn’t do anything then.

The last human bone fuses for adulthood around thirty years old. I’m still confused at how females can be safely ready for child birth or penetrative sex beforehand.

Perhaps a doctor could explain it to me? Vets protect the youngsters from grown adult males in zoos.

Paedophiles are nothing more than human time travelling terminators, murderers of souls. They should not be given an audience at any level other than disgust. They should be kept away from society and not housed near families. I’d go as far to say that they should all be rounded up and put in Chinese style re-education camps until they change their views.

The End.

By Samantha “unextraordinarybint” Harris.

A small part of my own life story.