The following story is based on true events, names have been changed or concealed for confidentiality purposes.
Once upon a time there was a beautiful little family; mom, dad, Son, Daughter X and Y.
Well at least they started out as a beautiful family. The parents split up when Daughter X was 5 years old and Dad and his brother took over the care of the children with visitation rights for mom.
Three years go by and Daughter X is now 8 and one afternoon a distant cousin (who now lives with the family) take her up to the roof and tell her he wants to play. When they get up there he touches her inappropriately and does enough not leave any permanent damage, physically. This little game of theirs goes on for at least a year. Then Dad remarries and the family moves to a different home.
At this point, Daughter X is well into her 9th year of life and because of the sheltered life her father ensures for her she doesn't know that what is being done to her is completely wrong. So when Stepmom's nephew moves in and start playing the same games with her when she turns 11 she thinks nothing of it. Those games continue until she well into her thirteenth year and no one is aware of what is going on.
At 13 1/2 she moves in with Mom and as the years passed somehow buried the memories of these experiences until her sophomore year in college when one of her closest friends is raped and the memories came flooding back.
No one will ever be able to discern why her experiences empowered her instead of weakened her because she sought to become a counselor for women of domestic and sexual violence in order to help them deal with the experience. She sought therapy (Formal counseling with a psychologist) in order to help her understand how the molestation(s) impact her present day decisions.
She chose to serve women and children and their families and she understands that that decision was a direct result of her molestation. She has never been in a romantic relationship because the experience has made her distrustful of men. She admitted that therapy played a major role in her growing past her childhood experience but they are still a very large part of her personality.
Much like my friend in the story, violence affect million of children around the world. One of the major reasons why I dream of working for UNICEF one day is because of the work they do to alleviate some of the effects of violence on the development of the children. They provide soap, clean water, food, medicine, and other necessity to areas of great violence in order to alleviate some of the effects of war. In moments of violence and war, learning is interrupted, cognitive development is stunted, psychological development is impaired. Somalia is one of those regions impacted by war where the children need advocates.
