#SpeakingOut – Kind Bajans helped me

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by this author are their own and do not represent the official position of the Barbados Today Inc.

by M Charles

I’ve met some kind people from Barbados but in New York City. The very first kind Bajan I met was my mother’s friend mother. This Bajan woman was incredibly generous with the gifts. She spent her hard earned money on buying me nice dresses when I was a young child in America. Her kindness was astounding.

When I dealt with unemployment as an immigrant living in America, I benefited from Bajan generosity again. This time a kind Bajan stranger bought me dinner. The family had kind Bajan friends who were always there for you, and they stood with me when the child molestation was reported to law enforcement officials.

They overextended themselves and took me all the way through the process even for the questioning before the case was picked up by the sexual victims unit.

Usually, child abuse occurs in families, and many step-fathers go after their new wives’ children. The step-parent may love the mother and hate their child when there is just physical abuse.

They themselves may have had a rough childhood. My abuser ended up being sentenced and had refused a plea bargain. However, although my mother had testified in court and took me to the police station as her Bajan friends had encouraged her to do, she herself needed to respond better to learning about the sexual abuse that had gone on underdetected right in the home setting.

I recently published a book called Saving Your Abusive Parent. Child abuse survivors may be relying on faith for a solution to the continued hostility they now endure from a distance from their abusive parent(s). The hostility does not have to spread to the rest of the family as well.

What the non-abusing parent of the adult child abused in childhood may then do is attempt to ostracize them from the rest of the family. There are so many problems that may or may not happen after disclosure of child abuse whether disclosed when it happens in childhood or after years gone by and it is later disclosed in adulthood.

You don’t know how brave and courageous abuse victims truly are. They go on to do amazing things with their life despite continued hostility they may face from their independent families just for telling the truth about their lived experience of abuse in childhood.