Behind Closed Doors

By Johan Botha

Gauteng, Boksburg: Author Johan Botha ( Agter Geslote Deure) has translated the mentioned book to English as; Behind Closed Doors. Ulterior Eye Publishing will publish this book During May 2010. Behind Closed Doors is a book about unresolved grief, sexual and drug abuse and a look at the seedy world of a psychotic parent. Exploring a darker side of sexual child abuse and the struggle of the child to cope with this, the book is a must read for each and every one of us.
Being sexually abused by both family members and his father, Johan is taken into the world of drugs, sex and alcohol by his father. Forcing Johan to have sex with other men his father cruelly dominates his whole life. Scared to death and scarred for life Johan has to make the best of it in order to survive. He becomes a loner and creates his own imaginary world of heroes and culprits. He has trust issues leading him to live like a hermit since his childhood. For the rest of his life he has commitment and responsibility issues. He has to learn to cope with this as an adult and survival is a key issue to Johan. Writing this book helped him to heal and his ideal is to reach other going through the same in order to let them know that they are not alone!

Praise received for Agter Geslote Deure:

This book has grabbed me deeply with the open honesty and soul baring of the author. It took 35 years to fight against it all. Where you find yourself is not a joke. Even against the people that are supposed to love and guard you. How does a person heal? This is one of the questions I ask myself when I see the pain that this child has to cope with.
This book grabs the deepest parts of being human and in the 35 years that has gone, where was the people in the system? Where are the adults and professional people ... ?
NAOMIE VICTOR, social worker, 37 years experience
Johan Botha is the Author of Agter Geslote Deure and is in the process of completing various other fiction titles. Creative writing is a passion with Johan and he has gone the extent of giving up everything else to follow a lifelong dream. He will be giving lectures at schools and venues to make other aware of sexual and drug abuse. Johan grew up in Johannesburg and now lives on the East Rand.
His influences are Wilbur Smith, Dean Koontz and Stephen King.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Johan Botha
• Release date: Apr 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9780620402309

Johan Botha

I am an author and publisher and supplier of books. Fiction, biography, training manuals, school books and do it yourself books.

Book preview

Behind Closed Doors

Johan Botha

A true story of abuse, harm, neglect and survival against all odds!

First published in South Africa in 2010 by Dreamcatcher Publishing SA

2nd Edition Printed in 2014 by Ulterior Eye Publishing.

© Johan Botha, 2015 and Ulterior Eye Publishing on Smashwords.

© Johan Botha, 2021 and Ulterior Eye Publishing on Smashwords.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission from the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

The right of Johan Botha to be identified as the author of the work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

Behind Closed Doors

Ulterior Eye Publishing (Pty) Ltd Reg. nr: 2013/080086/07, South Africa

Cover design and photos: Pete Klimek

ISBN: 978-0-620-40230-9

Printed and bound by: Ulterior Eye Publishers Johannesburg

For those people that care! For those confused! For those living in the deep darkness of what happened to them Behind Closed Doors!

FOREWORD

The purpose of this book is to share with others the traumatic effect that an abusive childhood can have on an adult person. I try to give a message of hope and courage to others out there in a similar position.

Placing no age restriction on this partly true, partly fictional story, I tell things as they happened.

By writing this book, for the past 4 years, I experienced a self-cleansing growth from hatred to love and forgiveness. It freed me from the horrors of the past, even though the memories are still not erasable from my mind. I can, at this late age in my life, throw off the mantle of self- inflicted guilt.

The cure is not an instant thing like coffee in a tin, but rather is a slow process of realizing how sick some people are and can be.

Take one step at a time, on a daily basis, and you will soon realize that you are entitled to live your life as a normal human being without anything holding you back to reach for the stars!

Self-forgiveness brings along a healthy attitude. Learn to love yourself and break the chains of the past!

Those that try to keep you bound will stay in their own chains forever! You can live!

Although this book is based on my own life, I wrote it as a story instead of writing a statement.

No harm is intended to any person. All the names of persons and places have been changed to guard the identity of the persons involved herein.

Any unintentional reference to persons with the same names as the characters in this book, or to people that stay in the same places where this story plays itself out, is of pure coincidence and not factual.

All rights are reserved.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to everyone that stood by me in my life, especially in the darkness of the depression that held me forever in its claws.

Thank you for listening when I needed it!

You all know who you are without your names being mentioned here. Johan.

Ps: Last, but not least, I need to say thank you to all the readers that bought this book in

Afrikaans and helping it become a success!

BEHIND CLOSED DOORS

Johan Botha

Chapter 1

It seems as if the sea has cleaned out its internal wrath on the sandy beach.

There was a storm the previous night and the whole beach is scattered with sea weed, shells and stones that broke off from somewhere. There seems to be thousands of bluebottles. The seagulls are enjoying themselves between all the available foods, some of them are even playing tag over a piece of sun-heated rotting carcass, as more than one grab for the same piece.

The sand is wet between my toes and a small wave breaks against my feet as I walk slowly towards the sunrise.

Torn, black plastic bags lie scattered all over. Where does the municipality dump these things? Somewhere in the sea? Wouldn’t this mean death to thousands of sea creatures and other marine life?

The heat of the early morning sun causes small rivulets of sweat to run down my forehead, while the massive mountains around the bay surround me with their majestic status and guardianship.

A few fishing boats are galloping on the waves in the distance. You can hardly make out the movements on the small boats as the men try to catch their daily quota in order to put bread on the table at home.

I wish that I could be like that, to clean myself, once and for all, from these internal storms within me. Then everything will be clean and I might be able to start living for the first time in forty years.

I’ve been fighting for the last 35 years against the past and self-acceptance. I’m fighting with God and Jesus and ministers and pastors. All the psychiatrists that I’ve seen don’t really understand, but as long as you pay their account then they are happy.

Only I know what is going on deep inside me. Can other people not accept me for who I am? For the person that God wanted me to become? The reject among His perfect beings? I am the one that is the failed project. Everybody says that God has big plans for me. Ha ha ha.

The ones who say that don’t have a fucking clue what going on inside here the internal soul of Johan Botha!

Hanna brought me to Cape Town with her to see some prophet from Nigeria or Zambia. Apparently he can help me to heal inside, mentally and in my heart, just by praying for me.

I know that she also has another agenda for bringing me with. I’ve already warned her on the first day that she came to my door with her finger under my nose.

Listen here, she said, I can’t get you out of my head and you are making me confused. I wanted to laugh because I immediately knew what she wanted to say. I only met her the previous evening and could read her body language as easily as you can read a book. Lonely people have that ability to read others.

Can women not understand that I do not want them in my life? God has made me different, and used my father as the instrument. It won’t even help to try and be normal as other men.

For months I have been trying to get her off my back. She does not want to listen. She knew about me before we met because this town where we stay has too many reporters and nobody has anything better to do than talk about others.

She is at my door every day without fail! As soon as she gets off from work, she is there, inviting herself into my life. As if she belongs there! I feel suffocated and my house feels likes a shoebox at those times! There is no space for me to move.

I put my foot down on something sharp and, at first; I thought that it was a bluebottle. Foot in the air, I hop around and see with relief only a small piece of broken shell. I bend down and see another small piece with a piece of mussel meat still in it.

What happened in your life?

You’re broken right through in the middle. Did some human stand on you and destroy you as well, or were you thrown against the rocks like me?

I want to get rid of the past. I want to wrench it out and empty it out of my life the way you clean a dustbin. You empty it, discard the rubbish on the dumps and let the earth swallow it. It becomes compost again that will hopefully be put to good use. But why? Is it only to create failure and chaos again? Why is life created if it is allowed to ruin another in the wink of an eye?

I put the broken shell back…softly.

The pain in my chest is so bad that I wish I could cry, but it doesn’t happen. It feels as if am standing next to my mother’s grave once again, the shock and rawness of her death sitting in my throat while I was standing next to her grave at the funeral.

"Mom, I love you and wish that you were here now. I am sorry about all the things that I

did wrong and that I never was the son that you wanted." Only the gulls hear me as I speak softly into the wind.

My father was the one that used his sperm to make me. He was supposed to be my friend and my trust, he was supposed to be my leader and pillar when I fell down. He was supposed to be there when life bullied or hurt me.

Instead he took, used and abused. He created and he murdered.

He was a very cruel and dominating person. You were too scared to fart when he was in the house. I always had to look over my shoulder and hope that I did not do anything to upset him. Whenever he called, it felt as if my legs would melt under me and as if my heart wanted to give in. If you dared to take too long hell broke loose in our house. He just called once and if you did not react, you were in big shit.

I will always remember the dope smell in our house. It was part of him and always clung to him, the sweet smell mixing with his sweat. Sometimes his eyes looked crazy after they smoked pills through a bottleneck. It gave him a demonic look that scared the hell out of me!

A biggish wave breaks against my leg and soaks my trousers. The cold, Cape waters bring me back to reality. In front of me lies a small, round, flat stone in the sand. I pick it up and skip it through the waves. It skips twice before sinking into the darkness. There is also a small fish with pieces of its brain sticking out. A seagull watches me suspiciously as I bend over. It seems to be telling me not to even dare to pick it up.

The first memory of my life and I was being held over the balcony of a block of flats by my ankle! My mom was screaming her lungs out at the person holding my life in his hands, while he was swearing and shouting at her.

Far down below a cemented yard was staring back at me!

In the one corner I could see the rubbish bins overflowing with rubbish. There are walls built around the premises to keep out the street dogs and hobos, of which Durban had a lot.

Across the busy road was a beautiful green park with lots of trees. Sometimes I was allowed to play there, having to cross the road all by myself, of course, and all alone.

The smell of Indian spices was hanging in the air.

I was three years old. The man holding me was full of dope and alcohol. His rage had brought out some of the neighbors around us on the 10th floor of the building.

That man was my dad!

This thing is not my fucking son! Why the hell must I look after him? He was shouting louder and louder as my mother tried to hold out her arms to me.

Please! He is your son! She is almost hysterical, PLEASE!

No, you whore! This is Bertus’s son! I can see it! He laughed at her.

I cannot help it if there is no food in the house, mom’s voice was soft and pleading, her voice broken and stuttering.

The others around us started talking to him. He gives me a shake in the air and my stomach made a weird turn. I cried and screamed in-between all the noise. I wet my pants and the piss ran down my small body and face, going into my nose and mixing with my tears before it dripped to the cement far below!

I could actually see the drops, until they suddenly disappeared from my view as I was being shaken by the ankles.

Bertus is his father! Why should I look after him?

No, please, he is yours! I swear it! I have never been with another man but you!

You are talking shit! He shouted back as he waved me around like a small rubber doll. Mom reached over the balcony, desperate to get hold of me. She slipped and almost went over the balcony, but someone grabbed her. She fell to the floor in a desperate heap, with fear in her eyes. The tears were running freely as she keeps on winking her huge blue eyes. Her face is full