Innocence Interrupted: A Sexual Molestation Survival & Prevention Guide

By Chidi Asika-Enahoro

"A very insightful book for every parent and individual who is concerned about the predatory evil of sexual molestation in this modern time."


-Dr. Emmanuel Junard, president, Get-Well Naturally, Inc.

"Readers will be drawn to Innocence Interrupted because of the brilliant approach of the author in freeing the victims of sexual abuse from unwarranted guilt."


-Loretta Mbadugha, PhD, Dillard University, New Orleans, Louisiana

Innocence Interrupted presents a graphic look into the mind of the molested child and explores the simple techniques sexual predators use to evade justice. Author Chidi Asika-Enahoro examines what everyone should know about sexual abuse and molestation.

With its remarkable twist of gripping sexual consequences embedded within unintended family values, Innocence Interrupted explores the core of family structure to inspire parents to become more attentive to the needs of everyone at home.

Innocence Interrupted is a refreshing attempt to expand human awareness and to encourage ultimate love and guilt-free existence. This awareness assures the safety of our youth and ensures that innocence is not interrupted.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Sep 30, 2005
• ISBN: 9780595806690

Chidi Asika-Enahoro

My dearly departed mother (Enyi Gloria Asika) was fond of quoting an African proverb: “Nobody needs to tell a deaf person when a war breaks out.” In other words, “he who has ears, let him hear.” Chidi Asika-Enahoro is the founder of Love and Balance, Inc. Chidi is a motivational speaker, an empowerment trainer, a certified senior disability analyst, and was a talk show host. Chidi has authored three acclaimed books; A Slice of Africa, Innocence Interrupted, and Till Cheating Do Us Part. Website: www.loveandbalance.com

Book preview

Contents

Acknowledgements

Note to the reader

Preface

Introduction

Culture and belief system

Cultural perspective africa and the western world

Causes of sexual abuse

Causes of sexual abuse

Social structure

Family structure

Mental health

Desire and self control

Different forms of sexual molestation

Child manipulation and abuse linda’s survival

Incest meg’s twisted tragedy

Stella’s promise

Rape gang action

Ify’s rape ordeal

Victimization of the victims and justice

Victimization of the victims

What predators wish you didn’t know

Who is the sexual predator?

What is the predator’s story?

What is his sexual trigger

Where does a predator operate?

How does the predator operate?

Who is the target?

Public exposure versus consequences

Consequences and planned intervention

Reactions to traumatic events

What to do after a molestation Attack

Emergency contact designation

Official police report

Immediate medical examination

Personal tips

Tips against unfamiliar predators

Summation and concluding recommendations

Summation and conclusions

References

About the author

I dedicate this book to the memory of Ajie Ukpabi Asika and Okpuzor Phina Asika who were both magnanimous parents, mentors and spiritual guides to me. I often review my life’s lessons and the privileged conversations I shared with these two dearly departed souls and shudder in amazement at the depth of their boundless love.

I continue to seek guidance through meditation to understand and positively utilize the lessons they brought to me in this journey. Their recent sudden departure from this world left a very deep cut in my heart, which will take forever to heal. I am very thankful that they shared their love and infinite wisdom with me. I pray that God will grant them eternal rest and peace in his kingdom above.

Acknowledgements

My life is enriched by the many wonderful souls I have had the privilege of encountering in my current soul journey. It will not be possible to mention everyone by name here. It is my sincere wish to recognize all my families and friends. They have influenced and given me the courage to complete this work.

While I combined inferences from my personal experiences in the stories of friends and my counseling work, no resemblance to any specific person is intended.

I am eternally grateful for all the support and love from my beautiful dynamic sisters in life and spirit: Ada Ibekwe, Dr. Loretta Mbadugha, Loretta Mabinton, Dr. Anene Ejikeme, Nnenna Onyewuchi, Dr. Nnenna Olaleye, Ifeanyi Ihekoro-madu, Uju Asika, Ngozi Asika, Uchenna Asika, Nkiru Asika-Oluwasanmi, Tanya Simmons-Oparah, Juliet Obiora, Lizzy Agwu, Liz Asika, Dr. Helen Analo, Glenda Solomon, Azuka Emodi and Uju Anyakwor.

I extend much love and gratitude to my other maternal influences and role models: Nnenmanwu Gloria Asika, Dibueze Chinyere Asika, Ugochi Sylvia Akosa, Enyikenyi Chineze Ihekoromadu, Odera Onwi Bazuaye, Medo Odiari and Madam Helen Enahoro.

I dedicate my undying love to my husband and soul mate Victor Maurice Ena-horo and our two prize gifts from God: Tara Peaches Enahoro and Ritchie Anthony Enahoro. Your love and support keep me grounded. I must mention my three extended lovely children: Summie Tokumbo Enahoro, Blair Enahoro and Brooke Enahoro.

This book is for all the mothers that silently suffered sexual abuse, personally or vicariously through their own children and others close to them. Ladies, share your stories, support each other and stop the madness. May all that read this book find Light and Love in this lifetime.

Note To The Reader

Although all the incidents in this book are true, I made changes to the places and names of the characters to maintain privacy. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is unintentional and purely coincidental.

The author based Innocence Interrupted mainly on her feelings and opinions drawn from her personal experiences with sexual molestation/rapes and from conversations with friends, family members and clients who experienced sex crimes.

Preface

Recently I found out that a registered sex offender lives in my 32-unit condominium complex. He is 78 years old and served 10 years for the sexual molestation of an 11-year-old girl. There are only two other children in the complex and I telephoned their parents. One already knew and the second did not.

She immediately rushed to my place to see the photographs of registered sex offenders on the Texas Department of Public Safety website. My neighbor said, "Gosh, they all look so creepy. I disagreed. I would look like a criminal in a mug shot. I think most of us would."

Innocence Interrupted is an extremely timely book. I think that the move by some States to disclose the faces and addresses of convicted sex offenders can easily give a false sense of security. Not all sex offenders are registered. Moreover, most sex offenders look normal. They are people’s children, spouses, siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles and friends.

It is because sex offenders bear no particular distinguishing mark that those of us who are responsible for children and young adults (parents, teachers, pastors, etc), need to educate ourselves about sex abuse. You cannot tell a sexual abuser simply by looking at his or her face. Nor can one keep one’s children under lock and key 24 hours a day. One should not. Nor can we supervise them every minute of every day.

Nevertheless, there are some warning signs to assist us in keeping those in our charge from harm’s way or to know that they need our help if they get hurt. Research has shown conclusively that their victims know most sex offenders. However, so often we focus our attention on strangers as the potential source of harm to our children.

We typically imagine the sex offender as male and while that is the case in the vast majority of cases, victims of female sex offenders are no less scarred by the experience. The truth is that sexual predators run the entire gamut. There are registered sex offenders who are male as well as female. Some are teenagers, others are elderly retirees.

They fall into all ethnic/racial categories. Survivors range in age from infants to the elderly; they are male and female. In the Texas DPS the registered offenders include a 27 year old woman who molested a 12 year old girl, a 26 year old woman who molested a 5 year old boy, 78 year old woman who molested a 6 year old boy, a 77 year old woman who molested an 11 year old boy, a 17 year old girl who abused a 7 year old boy and a 25 year old woman who abused a 2year old girl.

Every parent who imagines that keeping up with the registered sex offenders in the community provides him/her with the best protection needs to read this book. Chidi Asika-Enahoro’s book is a timely tool that will be of great use to parents everywhere.

Anyone who has a child—infant, teenager or adult—needs to read this book. This is a book that speaks to all of us, whatever our economic, social or ethnic affiliation. Chidi Asika-Enahoro has written a book that truly serves a public purpose. Her multicultural background affords her a unique position to address this extremely important issue, which knows no barriers of race, class, religion, gender or nationality.

Chidi Asika-Enahoro is uniquely qualified to address the ways in which parents, educators and others can assist those who have been victims of child sexual abuse. Chidi spent years as a therapist in the states of Connecticut, New York and Florida. She has counseled hundreds of patients.

Anene Ejikeme, Ph.D History Dept., Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas

Introduction

Innocence Interrupted explores the unique aspects of sexual molestation and child abuse from the victims’ eyes. As a child, I was privileged (if you will), to encounter these types of shameful behaviors from pretentious adults. I felt intimately connected to the many accounts reported by the victims. It was easy to empathize with each individual varied circumstance because each victim’s dilemma is always the same regardless of place and time.

Innocence Interrupted combined inferences from real life traumatic dramas to examine the different cultural dynamics and the implications of unrestrained human desires. It is a recommended reading for new parents but especially for single parents who need to learn or remind themselves that sexual predators are rarely strangers.

Innocence Interrupted also presents sexual molestation and abuse of children from a multi-cultural perspective. It focuses on abnormal inter-personal taboo relationships such as incest, child molestation and rape. It reviews how Africa and the rest of the world handle such human travesties. Sexual depravity is as old as man and even exists in the Bible.

Sexually deviant behaviors ring true across the continents and are not isolated cultural occurrences. There are records across the globe where human beings have been known to cavort with inanimate objects, engage in sex with children, animals and even participate in dangerous orgies. Victims and predators are neither gender specific, social strata inclined nor are they race superior.

It seems that social issues like rape, child molestation and child abuse are relative terms when it comes to cultural interpretations. The boundaries are more loosely defined in some cultures than others. It is abhorrent nonetheless to abruptly interrupt the innocence of any child, regardless of their cultural background.

Pain and trauma are unpleasant in any language. Human beings are reasonable only to the context of their belief systems. A person’s sense of logic is usually relative to his or her frame of reference even if the reasoning is clearly irrational to some others. The interruptions of all the innocents reviewed here seem to have semblances of grand conspiracies on the part of all the adults.

In actuality, most of the non-perpetrating adults were present but simply oblivious to the activities around them. Innocence is bliss. It knows no boundaries, limitations, prejudice nor guilt. It does not understand sadness, anger, abuse and wickedness. Innocence is childlike fascination with life, with everything, every movement of any object, the birds, the sea, the flowers and the animals.

Adulthood should be a gradual process that takes years to mature.

Innocence does not discriminate. It is pure joy and fascination with sounds, colors shapes and sizes. Everything is taken as it is in its own individual form. The world would be a paradise if all humans remained innocent and untainted with crimes and tragedies. Sad as it may seem, everybody in life has to grow up eventually.

It is unconscionable for some people to destroy the innocence of the children they profess to love. Parents raise their children from their own personal resources and if their childhood was ugly, a vicious circle could ensue. Most people grow up learning to discriminate and to react to certain stimuli. Most notably they become egotistical and self centered.

Children are taught to "take care of yourself, do for yourself, trust yourself, focus on your self, put yourself first, have your own goals, be your own best friend’ etc. As we grow up, we learn that survival is competition to succeed or finish first. As we master the process, we loose the innocence that made life so peaceful and joyful. We embrace stress and introduce pain and suffering.

Children are always baffled about these new trends of events. When they turn to the adults for guidance, the answers are usually more confusing: "that’s life, life is not fair, get used to it, and get over it" etc. Many adults are also at a loss as to how we arrived at this stage in our evolution. It is frustrating to grasp at straws for solutions.

We join the rat race because we feel helpless to stop the cycle. We play our own role in perpetuating the madness. When things become unbearable, we seek escape from our self created mess by engaging in mind altering agents, vacation retreats, religious communes etc, to get away from ourselves. This type of relief is usually only temporary.

Such is the process of life and coming of age. Everyone is supposed to go through the same uniform aging process. That makes life bearable. There is some type of perverse comfort in numbers and in knowing that we are all in this group suffering process together. Parents must never abdicate their parental roles of mentoring and modeling for their children.

The abrupt loss of innocence creates a quiet storm that rages within and destroys more than the eyes can see. This type of loss interrupts the normal cause of growth and gives birth to an enemy inside the victim. This monster within can be self destructive without intending to be. It can also give rise to a menace to others and society at large.

It is invariably criminal to have a vicious adult abruptly interrupt and devastate the innocence of a child in a manner that is not the general norm of the growing up process. In most of the instances of child molestations, the children have no one to share their experiences with because they have been threatened to secrecy by the molesters.

Many do not report because they are made to feel a twisted sense of responsibility for what happened to them. This is notwithstanding the fact that the children are mere minors with absolutely no control over their lives. In most traditional homes, children are brought up to be quiet and obedient. Children are only to be seen and not heard.

The adults in the homes tend to rule and control the children. In such cultural backgrounds, adults are more likely to be believed than children in a conflict situation. Based on my travels and conversations with all types of people, I find that preferential treatment is a human phenomenon that is based on all types of shenanigans all over.

Sometimes men are favored over women. For the same reason, most rich folks will be believed first against the poor ones. Most attractive people get it over unattractive ones and many white people get preferential treatment over black people. This syndrome of ageism, status symbolism and sexism is age old and true in all cultures albeit some have more subtle ways of handling things.

It may be an unfortunate fact of life but that is the way things are. Of course, there are activists and advocates for all sorts of groups. Activism is more prevalent in the Western cultures than in the third world countries because those societies have evolved to that stage where systems are set to protect (or at least attempt to protect) the innocent victims.

Freedom of expression is a very rare commodity that comes with very high prices when available. All cultures of the world share the same social issues about human interaction. However, some cultures are more structured and have varied priorities in terms of human relations; whereas other cultures are still in the ‘survival of the fittest’ mode.

Sex is one very prime human relation issue that is still not discussed out loud or delved into with much ease. In some societies where it would even seem that morals are lax with sexual activities and rampant depravity, sex is still a touchy subject. Most people would rather have sex than talk about it. For that reason there are few laws about sex and sex related activities in many countries.

Some people would not even discuss any issues surrounding sex, even in societies where promiscuity is visibly high. A lot of people tend to be prudish in that regard when it comes to educating the young ones about sex. Nevertheless, sex is a necessary and normal part of life. The world at large suffers the negative effect of a puritanical attitude.

As a result, there is a general world wide youth ignorance and misinformation on sex. This has led to an increase in teenage sexually transmitted diseases (Center for Disease Control), promiscuity, sexual acting out, unplanned and unwanted pregnancies. To the youth, there is an impression that the world is conspiring to keep sex a secret.

It seems to me that the more it is hushed, the more curiosity it instigates and the more radical it becomes. All human beings are naturally inquisitive about life and sex is a part of life. We have to applaud the efforts of the progressives who have introduced sex education into the school systems amidst some parental and general community protest.

Innocence Interrupted is going to explore the effect of this seemingly clandestine phenomenon of sex as a taboo subject, in Africa where everyone is ferociously engaging in one form of sex or the other. Some people indulge to the most extreme measures imaginable exhibiting total irresponsibility in sexual behavior and attitude.

Innocence Interrupted will draw inferences from England and the