I Fingered My Daughter

I Fingered My Daughter
I Was 10 When My Grandfather Touched Me “Down There”. My Parents Were Just Upstairs.
I Made Some Extra Cash Last Week Just By Doing A Little Swiping, And Unlocking My Phone

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8 Jul 2022

It happened when I was 10. It’s not like most stories that you might have read about; there was no struggling, no screaming, no taunting or violence. It was silent—mostly because I had no idea what was going on.
It didn’t happen in an alleyway, or in a sleazy motel room. Not even in my own bedroom. It was in a dusty half-lit store pantry on the ground floor of my grandfather’s house. With about 9 other relatives on the first floor. It happened when I wasn’t alone.
Was it frightening? Hardly. If anything, it was confusing. I was only 10.
I grew up in a conservative home. I didn’t know the word ‘f*ck’ until I was 15. I only understood its meaning a whole year later. And yet now we have 8-year-olds using the word in grammatically correct sentences. My parents were traditional in their ways (and very strict).
I never once asked them, “Mommy, where do babies come from?” Maybe I wasn’t quite an inquisitive child. I knew there was a hole somewhere in my nether regions but I thought it was just for peeing.
So when grandfather asked me to follow him into the pantry and put his hands down my panties, I just stood there like the good doll I was while he sat on a stool behind me. He was gentle. But determined. Quick—before anyone else came into the kitchen—but long enough for me to remember his stubby beard rubbing against my neck.
I can’t remember when I realised the disturbing intentions of his action. Maybe it was when I discovered porn by accident. Maybe it was when I studied Chapter 4 of Science in Form 3. Maybe it was during “girl talk” with my guy friends in school.
But even before I figured it out, I knew my grandfather did something bad. Bad enough for my parents to tell me to avoid going near him when we visit after I told them about how he touched me “down there”. However, in my 10-year-old mind, it couldn’t have been that bad since they never confronted him about it. There wasn’t any big hoo-ha or dramatic family intervention. They simply told me not to tell anyone about it—sorry, mom and dad, for this.
In their defence, they couldn’t have prevented it. Not before it happened anyway. They couldn’t have known that they shouldn’t leave me alone downstairs while they chatted happily just several metres away. They couldn’t have known that they should have told me from a young age to “scream for help and run if someone touches you here or here “. And for that, I’ve never blamed them.
That’s not the case for my grandfather. Although I listened to my parents and avoided him, it was out of obedience and ignorance. Not because I actually understood why I should. And when I finally did many years later, I hated him for it. Which is a difficult task to do even after all these years.
It might be because it’s hard to hate someone who’s been dead for at least 10 years (I don’t keep count of the exact number). There’s only so much hate that you can give to a dead person because you can’t really do anything about it.
I don’t have any extraordinary lesson for you, other than the predictable ones. Educate your children so that their understanding of “down there” is not lacking; be observant so that any changes in your child’s behaviour doesn’t go by unnoticed; and do something when your child confides in you so that they know they can trust you.
Because not every case of child sexual abuse and molestation is about a child kicking and screaming.
Sometimes it’s a silent one, not because they are unafraid, but because they are confused, unaware, and simply just don’t know any better.
I consider myself very lucky. It only happened once and I was still ignorant. Nevertheless I’m in no way belittling it. I’ve heard of horrific experiences from victims of abuse, and even if it happened once, twice, or many times, there is always one similarity between them—they will be affected.
I sometimes wish that my parents did make a big deal out of it. I wish my relatives knew what a creep grandfather was.
On the other hand, I’m relieved that they didn’t. I can’t imagine having to face the embarrassment and the humiliation. More importantly, I also can’t imagine handling the rejection if they all knew but still did nothing about it. Or worse still, didn’t believe me.
Am I traumatised and never able to trust men again? Not quite. I am, after all, happily married. But till this day, I can’t stand stubby beards.
Editor’s note: This article is in response to the sudden (but very necessary) interest in the ugly truth of child sexual abuse cases in Malaysia . The writer would like to remain anonymous; however she’d like to remind readers that if they have a sexually abused child, it’s your responsibility to make them feel secure and accepted. Lodge a police report, or seek professional advice from a child psychologist/counsellor. Let them know that they are significant and that their well-being matters.
Feature image adapted from http://www.doctorinsta.com/
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Vulcan Post aims to be the knowledge hub of Singapore and Malaysia.
© 2021 GRVTY Media Pte. Ltd. (UEN 201431998C.)

Man sleeps with 7-year-old daughter, inserts manhood into her mouth

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A seven-year-old girl, Nneka (not real name) has narrated how her father usually play with her private part and insert his manhood in her mouth.
The victim, who lives with her parents at their Ojokoro Housing Estate, Meiran, Ijaiye, Lagos, said the father would pay her after making love with her.
The primary three pupil while narrating the incestuous incident to newsmen recently said, “My daddy usually gives me money after touching my private part or putting his penis in my mouth. He touches my private part when my mother is outside washing clothes or when she is not in the house.”
According to Vanguard report, the victim’s father, whose identity was given as Chukwuemeka Odunzie, allegedly started defiling his daughter early last year.
Narrating her ordeal, the victim’s mother, Mrs Odunzie, said: “Last year, my son told me that his younger sister was fond of playing with her private parts. It sounded strange that a seven-year-old child would be doing that.
“I will talk to her, scold her and sometimes beat her. There was a time I told my husband.
“All he said was that if she was acting strangely I should take her to any of these white garment churches. I was alarmed when one day, while we were in the sitting room, she started touching and playing with herself.
“Immediately, I called her inside the room and asked her what the problem was. I asked her if anyone was fiddling with her private parts. She said it was her father that always touched her private parts and that after touching her private parts, he would give her money.
“I confronted my husband when he returned from work but he denied vehemently. I reported a case of defilement to Ebenezer Divisional Police and the policemen invited my husband for questioning.
“He was arrested later by the police, who gave me a report to take my daughter to the hospital. The doctor said there had been no penetration, but that there is an opening in her vagina and advised that the victim be tested for infection.
“By the time we came back from the hospital, the IPO said it was a family issue and that we should go home and settle
the case.
“Members of his family were shouting, saying that I had no right to report the case to the police, that it was a family issue that should be treated as one. They pressurized me till I withdrew the case, after which he promised not to defile our daughter again.
“After I withdrew the case, my husband began to beat the children at the slightest provocation. And at times, he would beat them for no tangible reason.
“Two weeks ago, it happened again. I asked her what she did for her father that made him give her money without giving her siblings. That was when she said that daddy gave her the money after touching her private part.
“Her siblings said it had been ongoing for a while and that they refused to tell me because the last time they did, their daddy kept beating them.
“Her brother said whenever I was not around, or I was outside washing clothes, daddy would send him and his other siblings inside the bedroom, while he would ask the victim to kneel down in between his legs and bend her head towards his manhood.
“She also confirmed that after touching her, daddy would put his penis in her mouth.
“There was even a time my daughter was caught in the act with a four-year-old boy, who is a neighbour’s child.”
The accused, Chukwuemeka Odunzie, admitted that it was only once he abused his daughter and that he was not doing it for diabolic reasons.
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Published March 24, 2013 1:00AM (EDT)

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Names and identifying details have been changed.
Over the years, I have called it an "inappropriate relationship." I have called it "an incident with an older man." Most frequently, I have called it "the thing that happened that summer." As in -- remember the thing that happened that summer?
I never called it sexual abuse, because it felt like an overly dramatic Oprah-ization of what happened. The word "abuse" seems to imply victimization and has always made me uncomfortable in this instance. Until now, I have been far too politicized to admit the chief reason I never called it sexual abuse in spite of the fact that it would be considered as much from both a criminal and a clinical perspective. The real reason is because I believed I asked for it.
The summer I turned 12, I went to sleepaway camp. I shaved my legs for the first time, dumped Sun-In in my hair and tanned with baby oil. I had my first boyfriend -- a skinny, freckly arrogant kid a year my senior who took me for two paddle boat rides and then broke up with me, declaring me a prude and, I was sure, ruining my romantic life forever.
I turned from real life to fantasy, and eschewed the hazardous boys my own age in favor of a secret crush on Nathan, the 20-year-old swimming counselor. Nathan was sarcastic and slouchy and unusually stylish for a camp full of spoiled East Coast Jewish kids. His dyed black hair spilled over one eye and he wore his shorts low on his hips. Trumping all, he was from New York City, mecca of all things wild and wonderful. I spent countless hours imagining myself into a future in which I strolled through Washington Square Park with Nathan, preferably on a fall day in between college classes.
Nathan didn’t quite fit in and there were all kinds of rumors circulating about him. He was bisexual; he was friendly with Morrissey; he was a model for the United Colors of Benetton. I, too, felt like an outsider, never able to summon the same gung-ho camp spirit as the other girls. I imagined Nathan understood me in some fundamental way, he just didn’t know it yet.
One morning in the chilly lake, Nathan swam up behind me to correct my stroke and an electrical charge passed between us that was unlike anything I had ever felt before. My whole chest seemed to tighten around it. I was flooded with the exquisite realization that I was not alone in my desire. After that, my crush flowered into something more raw and persistent. I plotted and preened and placed myself in his eyeline at every possible moment. I gave myself asthma attacks and stomachaches with the anxiety of it all.
This went on for weeks before I finally found the courage to seek him out alone. I was asking for it, to be sure, but what exactly was I asking for? I wanted to kiss him; I thought about it constantly. But ultimately, I was asking to be loved, without grasping the possible manifestations that love might take.
The night I snuck out to see him, I slept carefully on my hair, set my alarm clock under my pillow and stationed my white Keds at the ready by my bedside. It was a long walk across camp and the darkness outside my flashlight beam seemed alive and threatening. I was covered in a cold sweat when I arrived. Nathan’s bunk smelled like feet and mold and was strewn with the detritus of the 8-year-old boys for whom he was a counselor. I tread silently, aware that the stakes were very different than those of any of my previous transgressions.
I found his bed and stood over him, trembling with adrenaline. What if he sent me away? What if he didn’t? Finally, I reached out and touched his bare shoulder. When he opened his eyes, he didn’t seem surprised at all. A bright moon hung in the frame of the window behind him and he was only a silhouette when he cradled my face in his hands and leaned in to kiss me. I closed my eyes and tried to memorize it, figuring that it was my first real kiss and I would want to remember it someday. When his breath started to get ragged, he whispered in my ear, “Do you even know how I feel when I have to look at you running around in your shorts all day long. You're so pretty and I can’t even tell anyone. Do you even know what you do to me?”
I didn’t know what to say. Of course I didn’t know. How could I have known?
Over the next couple of weeks I went see him every night until I was exhausted and confused. I wanted it to stop and I wanted it never to stop. Eventually we were caught and he got fired. I found myself crumpled in a chair in front of the camp director’s desk, bombarded with impossible questions like, “What were you thinking?”
The director responded, “You’re 12 years old, you don’t know what love is.”
Which is foolish, of course. I’m a grown woman now and I can say without reservation that I did. I loved him truly and with all the audacity of youth, which is to say with absolutely no sense of consequences.
I don’t remember it with anger. I still remember the initial deliciousness of getting what I wanted, of feeling truly desired for the first time, and in such a transgressive and erotically charged way. And yet, upon closer inspection, I’m not sure I asked for "it" exactly. I was just asking for my longing to be answered, for the suffering to be relieved. I asked with all of the need and chaos of a burgeoning sexuality I did not yet understand.
At the website of the Department of Health and Human Services, one of the qualifiers for the clinical definition of sexual abuse is a “knowledge differential.” It states, “An act is considered abusive when one party (the offender) has a more sophisticated understanding of the significance and implication of the sexual encounter.” This is certainly true about my "inappropriate relationship," my "incident with an older guy."
Whether or not I feel comfortable identifying as a victim, I acknowledge the profound and lasting impact that my relationship with Nathan had on my life. My first kiss was not about pleasure but about power and for a long time those two things became indistinguishable. I learned to trade sex for affection. This was a dangerous lesson for a young girl, and I believe one that ultimately kept me from deriving much authentic pleasure from my body for a long time. And while it would be too reductive to say that this led me to spend a number of years as a sex worker, I do believe that it was an ingredient in the mix.
Furthermore, when it all came to light, I learned that my parents and others in authority positions concurred that the incident had been, at least partially, my fault. I learned what kind of girl I was: I was a boundary-pusher, a rule-breaker, a girl who was always in trouble. This was what happened to girls like me. When the incident at camp somehow managed to make it to the gossip mill at my school, I immediately went from a girl who had never been kissed to a notorious slut.
I wonder what I would have learned from not getting what I asked for. Would I have learned that there are other things about me as valuable and compelling as my sexuality? Would I have learned that some men are trustworthy? Would I have had more options than the ones available to "that kind of girl"?
I recently spent an afternoon at the beach with a friend and her 12-year-old daughter. I noted the sharp lines of the daughter’s body (perfection, by our media’s standards), so like my own at that age. She was dazzling and precious and still unaware of the ruckus she was causing among the male onlookers. I realized that regardless of what thi
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