I recently learned about the peculiar situation that some friends of mine experienced. The grandmother of the family, Mrs. Maria, is a lady from Barbados. She still has a hard time speaking good Spanish and I doubt she ever will and she is already 70 years old.
The truth is that she told me that her granddaughter, barely 10 years old, was recently raped by the former sexual partner of the girl's mother.
No one in the family realized that the girl was being sexually abused by this individual who lived with the girl's mother and I say “in the family” because they are a large family, but they have in common that they all have problems in their homes.
The mother of the 10 year old girl's name is Francisca. She was living with her sexual partner about 11 years ago and, while being pregnant, she realized that she no longer loved her husband, named Arturo. So when she was 9 months pregnant she decided to leave her husband Arturo and take care of her daughter.
As a separated couple they went through very difficult and cruel times, both families fought over the child's upbringing. Everyone wanted to take care of her under their own rules and none of the families could really agree, there were only quarrels from side to side and Arturo was even physically assaulted twice by Francisca who left bruises on his face.
This aggression was denounced to the authorities and consequently the couple was under a regime of not establishing any physical communication unless the girl needed it.
This is how the disputes between the two families, the two grandparents on both sides continue with the bad relations. All this is suffered by the little girl as she grows up, she sees the quarrels and fights between her relatives and she begins to have emotional problems as expected.
She feels that she is not loved and says so within Arturo's family, then when she is at the home of her maternal grandparents, Francisca's parents, Rubi says that she is treated badly by her paternal grandparents.
As if to encourage even more disputes, this happens very often and my friends from both sides tend to meet me from time to time in the ways of God and each one tells me about their experiences in relation to the opposing family. I of course only speak in favor of reconciliation. I don’t like quarrels under any circumstances.
Years have passed. Rubi continues to grow. At only 10 years old she is very tall and is developing physical characteristics of a teenager. I see her passing by with her grandmother and I tell her grandmother that the girl is very pretty but she always has a sad face…
This is when the grandmother tells me what happened with her granddaughter a few months ago.
Her mother, Francisca, was with another partner. Francisca has already had three partners since she separated from Arturo and with none of them she has had a stable relationship. They ended up separating and this third time was no different, Francisca decides to break up with her husband and tells her daughter that she will no longer accept her husband.
The girl waits a few days and asks her mother if the husband will really never come back. She makes her mother promise to swear that he will never come back. Francisca, seeing the daughter's position promises her under oath that she will no longer accept her ex-husband's return.
Rubi asks her to sit down and listen to her carefully, she tells her that when she went to work her new husband forced her to have sex with him, under threat of killing her mother and grandparents with a gun if she tells them anything about what they do.
The girl feels pressured and ends up enduring the multiple rapes she was subjected to for 6 months by this man.
He harassed her more and more and threatened her with new things to keep her under the pressure of terror. The family members didn’t notice anything at all, any change in Rubi. Each family has its own problems and the girl's problems didn’t matter.
The little girl would then give vent to her frustrations and asked her parents where were they when she was being abused, why didn't any of them protect her.
She is now being treated by psychologists and social workers who are handling her case. One more number in the tireless case histories of girls raped within their families.
It’s a very sad situation, the worst thing is that more and more cases of girls being raped at home by their own relatives, uncles, cousins or fathers are on the rise. No matter how much is shared on social networks that children should be taken care of. If in reality I believe that the only ones who find out about these situations are those who publish the cases of the affected families.
Irresponsible parents spend their time dealing with other issues and not talking to their children about how they spend their day, they don’t notice the changes in their children's behavior from day to day, they don't share their frustrations with their children or have quality time with them.
And that is why children have to suffer the attacks of sexual predators who are becoming more and more educated and smart about their actions...
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What a sad story, it makes me very sad to know that even things like this happen every day.