translated from Spanish: Why I decided to confess that I was raped at 7 years six years later

The journalist, BBC columnist and former Minister of the Ghanaian government, Elizabeth Ohene, explains the reasons in this article. This is his story.
I’m not quite sure I’ve considered what the effect would be if I made public the story of my sexual abuse last Wednesday, in the weekly column I write for Ghana’s largest circulation newspaper, the Daily Graphic.
I’m a 74-year-old woman and I was telling you something that happened 67 years ago.
One of my best friends asked me why I had chosen to free myself from my memories. I’m told my story is hard to read.
So, if I’ve been able to keep it for myself for 67 years, why was I counting it now? Why not take her to my grave?
My story
I’m not sure I want to unload my past in an unsuspecting audience. I had long decided that I had a responsibility to tell this story in the hope that a girl somewhere would be protected from suffering what I went through.
So first I’ll tell my experience and then try to explain why I’m counting it now.
In 1952, I was a happy seven-year-old girl living with my grandmother in our village. One day, a family man who lived next door grabbed me to his room and touched me.
I have difficulty with terminology describing what happened to me. At the time, I can’t say that I knew what he had done, I didn’t have a name for it. I didn’t even have a name for the part of my body that had been raped.
All I know is she pushed her rough, broken fingernails into my vagina.
Ohene decided to talk to break the taboos of society in Ghana.No I remember him saying something, what he stayed with me 67 years later is the smell of his body and his cowered fingers and his broken fingernails.
Today I understand what this man did and one of my frustrations is that social rules don’t let me describe exactly what happened, reducing me to using words like “disgrace” and “sexual abuse.”
My grandmother gave me back my health, at least physics. I didn’t tell him anything about what happened. The next morning, as she showered me, she noticed how pus came out of my vagina and determined that it was an infection.
He didn’t ask me if anything had happened, he just focused on getting my health back. Maybe it’s just that he didn’t imagine that something so disturbing could have happened to his favorite granddaughter.
Years later, as an adult, trying to understand the incident, that was the conclusion I reached. It was the easiest explanation.
The next time it happened when I was 11. I was raped, it was violent and it was the same man.
There it is, I was able to say it.
I can’t say I understood the second incident better than the first, but one was a greater burden and I think I was in danger of what I would now call a psychological trauma.
But I guess it’s fair to say that I wasn’t irretrievably damaged by these experiences.
I have achieved what would be considered a reasonable success in my life as a journalist, writer and civil servant. I’m 74 years old, and if I were to die today, my obituary would be titled “Celebration of Life” or “Call to Glory.”
In other words, you’d say I’ve had a full life.
Ohene (centre) has led a life that would be considered “successful.” Then they ask me: why reveal such a nasty and dirty matter now?
I firmly believe that there is an outrageous acceptance of child abuse in our society as normal. Specifically, girls are at risk for adult men. It’s something we don’t want to talk about.
Recently there have been attempts to confront the phenomenon, but the task is uphill. If a child is abused and a brave man dares to report it to the police, the person ends up pressured by the authorities to drop the case, claiming that it is better to “solve it at home”.
If you insist that the abuser be prosecuted, you run the risk of ostracity in the family. That’s why many of these cases never make it to court or are successfully prosecuted.
I’m afraid that other seven- or even three-year-olds will go through what I experienced so long ago.
Outrage over homosexuality, but not for abuse
I think this situation will persist until we’re ready to talk about it. In Ghana there is a great reluctance to talk about sex unless it is to express disagreement about homosexuality.
Many Ghanes are Christians and consider homosexuality to be against the Bible.Yes I would say that there is a general consensus that Ghanes do not tolerate LGBT people within their society. A pew Research study found that only 3% of the population in Ghana says homosexuality should be accepted.
The religious community is very close and there is a suspicion that sex education in primary schools is not only against our culture and is “antighanesa” but is also an attempt to introduce homosexuality into our society through the back door.
Recently, the country experienced a collective hysteria after it became apparent that attempts would be made to introduce something called Exhaustive Sex Education into the school curriculum. The reactions caused the president, to calm things down, to deny any intention to implement something similar.
But it’s hard to build such a passion for abuse in heterosexual relationships, especially when the balance of power is unbalanced against women.
It fills me with humility if I helped
The reaction to my story has been overwhelming. Everyone feels uncomfortable with her. It’s an awkward story, telling it is awkward and I wouldn’t be surprised if reading it is too.
Some have told me I’m brave to reveal it. It’s taken me 67 years to muster the courage to do it, so I’m not sure where the bravery is.
Others have said it’s unfair that I put something so dirty in the public space. I have nothing to comment on that.
Many people, most of them women, have thanked me and said that it has given them the courage to deal with their own personal demons. That fills me with humility.
If this leads to a greater openness to talk about sexual practices and trains children to deal with abuse, then I will really go to the grave like a happy woman.

Original source in Spanish

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