Kate Halim
When a dog bites a man, it is no news, so goes an old journalism dictum. But when a man bites a dog it becomes news. The same truth applies when it comes to sexual abuse. You’ve heard of female victims sharing their painful emotional traumatic experiences but what you don’t know is that men are also abused. This special report describes what it feels like wearing the shoe on the other leg.
Mr. Martins Iyene has been married for almost four years but he finds it hard to make love to his wife. While they were courting, he conveniently told her that he would want them to keep themselves sexually pure for each other before marriage.
Though surprised that a young man in this time and age would suggest such an arrangement, his fiancée nevertheless agreed. She thought she was lucky to meet a man who wanted to wait till marriage before having sex with her. To her this was quite unlike majority of the men she had dated before him and who just wanted sex.
They courted for three years and eventually got married. But that was when their problems started. Iyene couldn’t have sex with his wife without being rough with her. Most times, she ended up hurt, bruised and unsatisfied. The problem was threatening to scatter their young marriage.
For almost a year, Iyene and his wife struggled to enjoy sex like newlyweds. One day, when the woman couldn’t take it any longer, she moved out of their matrimonial home but she refused to say what the problem was, except that she confided in her father who invited his son-in-law for a heart-to-heart talk.
During the talk, Iyene broke down in tears. He confessed that he was struggling to make love to his wife because he was carrying a childhood trauma that he has refused to confront or talk about. Pressed further, Iyene revealed that he was sexually abused for years by the house help who lived with them when he was a boy. He revealed how she would grab him, open her legs and command him to have sex with her.
“Nineteen-year-old Aunty Lucy would fiddle with my manhood, stroke it forcefully and sometimes put it in her mouth,” he said. “Sometimes, she would tell me to have sex with her if no one was at home. I was helpless. I couldn’t say no. I didn’t know how to tell my parents about what was happening.”
For over two years, Iyene was performing sex acts both oral and penetrative on Aunty Lucy with fear. He knew that what they were doing was wrong but whenever he resisted her, she would threaten to tell his parents that he was touching her inappropriately.
“I kept doing her bidding while living in fear until she left our house. Since then, I feel incomplete, lost and incapable of being myself around a woman. My wife is the third woman I dated. I had two failed relationships in the past because of my inability to have sex,” he said.
Iyene’s wife is back home while he’s going for therapy and counseling to help him get better. The sad thing is that sexual abuse of the boy-child has been happening for a long time in Nigeria.
What is sexual abuse?
If someone older, stronger or more experienced than you coerced you into sexual activity when you were a child or an adolescent, then you were sexually abused. Sexual abuse doesn’t refer only to sexual touching. If you were forced as a child to watch sexual activity or pornography, this is a form of sexual abuse. If an adult continually invaded your privacy – by watching you shower, or making sexualized comments about your body, this is another form of sexual abuse. While greater attention has been paid on the girl-child, there are under-reported yet steadily growing cases of sexual abuse of the boy-child.
Recently, some men who passed through it finally opened up and shared their stories with Saturday Sun.
Our sexual abuse stories
Joseph Amodu told Saturday Sun that his childhood was stolen from him when, at the age of eight, a female neighbour started abusing him sexually. She would threaten to kill him if he opened his mouth about what was going on.
“She must have been around 20 or older,” he recalled. “In the name of helping my mum take care of me, she began to sexually abusing me. In the bathroom, she would ask me to put my mouth on her breast and she would fondle my penis. The abuse continued undetected until we moved out of the compound.”
Amodu continued to pleasure his mistress until he became a sex addict. As a teenager, he was bold to touch and kiss girls. He would demand more than just holding hands and hugging like some teenagers did while crushing on the opposite sex.
“I later discovered that I was addicted to sex. I opened up to a pastor after I attended a programme on campus. He counseled me and gave me books to read about sex addiction. He was the first person I told about my sexual abuse as a child.”
While the pastor helped him spiritually to stay off sex for a while, Amodu knew he had to put in more efforts to fight the demon he had been carrying about since childhood. He started seeing a therapist and was encouraged to share his story with other victims so he could be free.
Francis Nwokolo (not real name) is another victim who narrated his story. According to him, he was about eight-years- old when the abuses started. The abuser was a neighbour who pretended to be a caring aunty who always wanted him to be with her.
Nwokolo revealed that the sad aspect of his abuse was that his abuser was a trusted person, someone in whose care his parents could leave him for as long as they wished. She was a teenager at the time and made him watch pornographic movies with her while touching his penis.
Nwokolo said: “You can imagine a young lady undressing before me, forcing me to suck her breasts and stroking my penis. She would buy me biscuits and soft drinks before then. I thought she was buying me these things because she liked me initially. I didn’t know he was preparing me for sexual abuse.”
As a teenager, Nwokolo became addicted to masturbation. For years, he watched a young lady masturbate and watched porn movies and that became normal for him afterward. But the aftermath is today, Nwokolo finds it hard to have a relationship with women his age mate. He prefers to go for older ladies whom he can masturbate with. He has been fighting the urge to stop masturbation but it has been a tough journey.
Forty-two-year-old Ajibola Okeowo revealed how his male neighbour popularly known as Uncle Johnson serially invited children into his room and slotted pornographic movies for them to watch. After that, he would ask the children to practise what they had watched, boy to girl. He usually blackmailed them with not buying them sweets and biscuits if they refused.
This continued for a while because parents in their compound were not suspicious of what was happening in Uncle Johnson’s room until one girl let the cat out of the bag. She told her mother what uncle Johnson was forcing her to do with other children and a trap was set for the abuser.
Okeowo revealed that one evening, Uncle Johnson gathered the children in his room and slotted in a porn movie as usual, he then told the children to start performing sex acts on one another and that was when the little girl who confessed what had been happening in his room walked in with four other parents in the compound.
Uncle Johnson was caught red-handed. Parents in the compound beat him blue black and handed him over the police afterwards. After a week, he came for his things and moved out of the compound. He was never seen or heard from again but Okeowo has been damaged.
Culture of silence fueling sexual abuse of boy-child
According to a Lagos-based psychologist, Ifeoma Onyema, it is commonly believed that men don’t talk and express emotions so as not to be perceived as weaklings.
“Boys are quiet about suffering sexual abuse out of fear or a desire to keep enjoying gratifications that come from the abuser or because they don’t feel free enough to discuss sexual issues with their parents or other adults around them. Inevitably, this fuels the abuse and eventually wrecks the child, Onyema noted.”
According to Onyema, if something happens to a boy, he is unable to express his emotions because his parents shut him down with words like, ‘are you not a man? Stop behaving like a woman.’ And that codification has been knocked into the subconscious of the boy-child. When he suffers abuse, he finds it hard to talk about it.
“Our society has taught children that boys should not cry, should not show emotions, so the boy is dying inside and is forming macho. I think our society will do well by not telling the boy child to be a man and not to show emotions.”
What parents should do
Just as is being done with the girl-child, Dr. Onyema advises parents to get closer to their sons and educate them about sexual abuse. They should be told to report any person that touches their private parts. Parents should communicate with their children so that children can be their friends.
According to Onyema, sexual abuse becomes inevitable when parents are absent and not fully involved in the lives of their children. Children need the presence of their parents as well as their protection from pedophiles crawling around.
“There are four ways you can abuse children – verbal abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse and abuse by negligence. Most parents abuse their children by negligence.”
Parents must also know the signs to look out for. Onyema says your child may have been sexually abused when he has nightmare or other sleep problems without an explanation, seems distracted or distant at odd times, and has a sudden change in eating habits, sudden mood-swings, rage, fear, insecurity or withdrawal and keeps secrets, something is wrong.
Other signs include leaving clues that seem likely to provoke a discussion about sexual issue, refusing to talk about a secret shared with an adult or older child, exhibits adult-like sexual behaviour, language and knowledge, asks other children to behave sexually or plays sexual games, and mimicking adult-like sexual behaviour.”
Psychological effects of sexual abuse on men
A clinical psychologist, Patricia Chiegboka stated that the way men perceive sexual violations is different from the way women see it. “Men basically don’t see it as trauma; they enjoy it. Boys that are being abused by older women enjoy it. Talking about boyhood sexual abuse and its aftermath for men can be difficult, even painful.”
Chiegboka told Saturday Sun that it is disturbing to think about what it means to a boy when he’s sexually abused by someone he trusts. Uncomfortable as it feels, however, victims must talk about the reality of their experiences or continue to live in silence, with devastating consequences.
“Many sexually abused boys grow up distrustful, considering people dishonest, malevolent, and undependable. They often become frightened of emotional connection and isolate themselves.”
Some confuse affection with abuse, desire with tenderness, and they often become men who have difficulty distinguishing among sex, love, nurturance, affection, and abuse.
Believing sexual closeness is the way to feel loved but experiencing love as abuse, some of these men solve their dilemma by engaging in frequent, indiscriminate, and compulsive sexual encounters. Sex is pursued incessantly, but with little chance for intimacy.
Chiegboka stated that male victims of sexual abuse also feel shame and guilt. Their abusers cut off the victims from the support of their loved ones during the abuse by forcing them to keep the abuse secret.
They might have told these victims that no one would want anything to do with them if they knew what they were doing. Guilt is related to shame. Guilt comes from the belief that you are responsible for the abuse.
Victims of sexual abuse may also have difficulties with sexual functioning. Painful erections, difficulty maintaining erections, premature ejaculation, lack of desire, or an obsession with sex may all stem from childhood sexual abuse, stated Chiegboka.
Some victims also have difficulties with intimacy. If you once trusted someone who abused you when he/she should have been protecting you, you may now have difficulty trusting anyone enough to enjoy a long-term intimate relationship.
As a sexual abuse victim, long-term relationships may remind you of those feelings of powerlessness, so you might avoid them. You may have difficulty making commitments in other areas of your life for the same reason.
There is also the effect of dependency or misuse of drugs, alcohol or food. If you have trouble regulating your use of drugs, alcohol, or food, it may mean that you are using these substances to mask the pain of sexual abuse. It could also mean that the abuser used these substances to lure you into sexual activity. Because these substances can be addictive, they can block your recovery notes Chiegboka.
Some victims feel worthless as a result of the abuse they suffered so much that they could turn these painful feelings against themselves. They might start cutting, burning or harming themselves. They may find themselves in situations or remain in relationships that are harmful to them, emotionally, physically, sexually or otherwise, she said.