Restorative Justice Finally Arrived Over His Dead Body

TRIGGER WARNING. This article chronicles sexual assault.

Today is the Global Day of Forgiveness.

My mother’s brother is dead. His corpse was found expired and rotting like the spilled milk that I was once told not to cry over. He was my mother’s baby brother and a child sexual predator who molested me when I was about four or five years old. He was 14 years older than his sister’s baby girl. He took a perverse advantage of my mother’s trust in leaving her child in his care. He mind-fucked a preschooler into playing a salacious game of touch and instructed me to do things that get little girls labeled as fass in the imagination of the simple-minded. Of course, he told me not to tell anyone.

And for 20 years, I didn’t; not until the lucid rememory of vile things he had done to my body emerged.

I had a total recall of his skin on my skin; his adult body hovered over mine, him stroking his penis against places he shouldn’t.

All those years, I never told a soul.

According to Darkness To Light, I share this experience with many young children who are sexually abused by a family member and never tell and, as a trauma response, tend to block the incident from memory. Among other reasons for nondisclosure, the child advocacy organization lists “threats to the child, fear of the perpetrator, a lack of opportunity, and a lack of understanding of child sexual abuse,” which tracks because my four-year-old mind could not process that I was a victim of sexual manipulation.

Because of this phenomenon, the rate at which young people experience child sexual abuse is unknown. However, according to The Children’s Assessment Center, researchers have concluded that “500,000 babies born in the US this year will be sexually abused before they turn 18” years of age if prevention does not become a priority.

I eventually shared that grim part of my childhood with several family members as an adult. Some were appalled by the old news; a few were even disheartened. Others were unruffled, and not one was willing to wash their hands of this deplorable muthafucka. He and his saliva-laced lisp were still welcomed to the baby shower, the cookout, the reunion and Thanksgiving dinner. The most sobering response I got was from a family member who intimated that my sexual abuse was water under the bridge—spilled milk—because it had happened many moons ago and because my mother’s brother was “still family,” I should forgive and forget.

I won’t—and I don’t.

As a result, I came to understand two things: People who aren’t aware of abuse can’t protect you, and people who are aware won’t necessarily protect you either. Not even when people are relatives, and therein lies another reason why 60-70% of adults have never disclosed their encounters with childhood molestation.

Stop telling victims of violence to forgive their abusers . It’s not the Band-Aid people think it’s giving.

I will never forget what happened to me or my family member’s response, and forgiveness ain’t in me. That man, my mother’s brother, finessed me out of my innocence and my panties—literally, and got a pass. To keep it a hunnid, his death is the restorative justice I needed, particularly when people who purported to love me never canceled that miscreant. I’ve hated him till the day he died, and what that hatred has done to my body and how I negotiate relationships with men over the years has finally died with him.

I’m kinda glad that nigga is gone. Death becomes him.

And it is not lost on me that my response is cold and callous because my brand of victims’ justice is often confused with vindication, but let it not be lost on you that extending grace to niggas who harm is wild work.

If you or someone you know is experiencing- or has been a victim of -sexual abuse, assault or harassment and needs support, contact RAINN, the nation’s largest anti-sexual violence organization or call the National Sexual Assault Hotline which is confidential and provides around-the-clock support at 800. 656.4673