I Survived Abuse - and It Led Me to Start an Uprising - Karabo Tshikube - One Billion Rising Revolution
WOW, very inspirational and honest article.
After experiencing healing and claiming back my body. I went home and discovered this man had molested many people I know. Some even younger then the age he first Raped me. None of them wanted to go to the police. It was like he had brainwashed us all into thinking it was love. In My country victims very rarely get justice for abuse. If you see your neighbour report abuse and nothing happens and she and her children are left in terrible danger when the man is released you learn to be passive, to do nothing.
…This is densely interconnected with the culture of domestic violence we have here. I am a victim of domestic violence. My mother is a victim. My grandmother is a victim. It is a generational cycle and somebody has to break the chain. Nobody talks about it. They think we have to think about the family’s reputation, we have to think about what we are going to lose if we do anything about it. There’s something so cruel about violence behind closed doors. About a silent crime. About a young girl who has nowhere to go but the four walls that are surrounding her and every day she’s being abused by her father, her boyfriend, her husband. All violence is terrible but domestic violence is such an intimate crime, and an intimate betrayal.
It is the most sadistic kind of love. I think the greatest tragedy is that you end up loving the perpetrator, and you can even associate violence with love. I have dealt with cases of young girls who date guys who are rough, who throw them around, knowing that this is how a man shows love to a woman.