Tough thoughts

I was sitting in my child abuse class astonished and dumbfounded.
I’m not in Kansas anymore.
I did not know that 80% of Swazi girls will be sexually abused by the time they reach form 5 (equavilant to our high school senior). 80%. Let that sink in…now go and hug your daughter.
These are often little girls left in the care of an uncle or neighbor while the parents go off to work, or perhaps, “allow” themselves to be abused in exchange for bread or a few Rand to buy a bit of food.
I see its evidence around me every day. There are a few mentally retarded women who come to our carepoints each day, and they keep having children. Who is preying on them, and why aren’t they protected?
There are sisters at a carepoint whose mother goes from man to man so that they will have a home to live in. In the mean time they are being abused by the neighbors.
A little girl has suddenly become angry and disruptive in her class. Her teacher told me now she refuses to go home when he has to leave the carepoint.
I tried to ask a Swazi coworker about these statistics. She had surprisingly little to say,- and quickly changed the subject. Sometimes it’s what we don’t say that tells the truth.
But the saddest part of all is the next statistic: 90% of abusers here have been abused themselves.
I don’t have all the answers, in fact I don’t have any answers. But I refuse to accept this common view, this Oprah view, that child abusers are monsters.
No, that lets them off too easily,- as if they were mutant animals with no control.
They are very real people with very dark problems.
And what I do know is that these abusers were once little tiny babies with a mommy and a daddy. Maybe they were loved and wanted, maybe not. Perhaps they were raised by a granny or auntie. But once they were innocent and pure.
Just like the little girl in your classroom.
Just like the grandson playing outside your window
Just like the baby sleeping in your arms as you read this.
One day that innocence was stolen from them. After that I don’t know what happened. What dark thoughts caused them to progress from that scared, shame-filled, never-tell child to the preditor waiting for children to come bathing at the river, or walking alone on the path.
And as I sit holding a little boy on my lap at a carepoint, I wonder, what must I do to prevent him from going that same path?