My Story

My involvement in Rape Response and activism against rape and gender-based violence is becoming a very big part of my dealings with people from day to day and I feel it is time that I tell my own story. 

When I was 5 years old, my parents got divorced and my late mother had to move with her 4 children from Venterstad (near Colesberg in the Northern Cape) to Bloemfontein.  She acquired a duplex flat from the municipality, for twenty two Rand a month, in a poor neighborhood and while she and my older siblings moved in, I was sent to my uncle and aunt in a small town, Jagersfontein, for the holiday, before I would be placed in school in January 1971 (a year too early).  

I used to like visiting them, because my uncle had a candy floss machine. They did not have daughters, so we were usually spoiled rotten there.  My uncle also had a monkey, Felix that lived on a pole in his backyard.  

I slept in a room across the hall from their room, on a double bed.  There was pornography in the cupboard in that room, which was a very big deal, as pornography was illegal in South Africa at the time and I had never seen anything like that.  In those days, you did not even see underwear in magazines and very definitely not in the magazines my mom used to read! My brothers had copies of the Scope magazine in their room, but these only showed women with large breasts in skimpy swim-suits.  My uncle had real pornography in this cupboard in my room. 

I somehow knew my uncle slept naked. And he drank a bottle of Tab every night.  I sometimes stole some of his Tab in the mornings. 

One night he came into my room, sat next to me on the bed and placed his hand in between my legs.  My heart was pounding and I knew he wasn't allowed to do this, but I was frozen.  For many years this was all I could remember of what happened.  However I suffered nightmares, I had fears and complexes and whenever I saw anyone being violent toward a woman on television, even as an adult, I couldn't breathe.  As a teenager, I was prone to depression and mood swings and attempted suicide at least twice.  Once I took 22 aspirins, which was all I could find and another time, I tried to cut my wrist with a small pocket knife, but it was too blunt. 

I was suppressing the memories of what happened very deeply and although later, when I was 17, the realization that he has molested me, came to me, I was emotionally and psychologically unwilling to face more of these memories. I knew that there was more and a few times I came close to this veil lifting over my mind, but my heart started palpitating and my breathing constricted so badly, that I drew back from it each time. 

Before I continue, I must tell about what happened when I was 17 and the first memory came to me, because this is a significant part of the story.  It was a secondary trauma, but it was also the beginning of my road to healing.  

I went to YWAM (Youth with a Mission) in Namibia, after matriculating, where we were divided into small 'flock-groups' with a 'flock-leader'.  My flock leader was a young woman, only a few years older than I.  During private sessions, one is encouraged to 'open up' and share details about one's life. In retrospect, what basically happened bordered on psycho-analysis, but with untrained therapists.  One afternoon, during one of these sessions, the memory of my abuse, utterly unannounced and without warning, came back to my mind.

It is hard for people to understand this phenomenon.  "How can you forget something like that and how do you all of a sudden remember it again?" They may ask.  I can only explain it this way:  When you lose your car keys, you don't know where you put them.  You search all over, but the memory of their placement, is completely blocked from your mind.  Then eventually, you may think of getting something from the fridge and all of a sudden you remember... "I put the keys on the fridge".  And there they are.  The memory is back as if it never was gone.  Sometimes you can’t remember what a band is called, or you forget the name of an acquaintance or even celebrity and later it simply 'comes back to you'.  

Now imagine, something terrible happens to a small child, something that he/she has no frame of reference for.  This incident sinks into the subconscious to a place deep enough for the child to feel safe again and where it can function without the burden of the knowledge of the event.  It is different for children that are reminded constantly, by repeated abuse, but even in such cases children sometimes 'hide' these events from themselves, or find coping mechanisms such as developing imaginary personalities or places.  When these coping mechanisms begin to over-function, the child may grow up to develop multiple personality disorder, or other psychological problems. 

When I disclosed the molestation to my flock-group leader, she said nothing at all.  I had a ringing in my ears and my heart was beating violently. And she did not respond.  I walked back to the YWAM base and felt as if I had an over-full suitcase that had been opened and couldn't be closed again. Everything in that suitcase was hanging out and one could hardly keep it all together. This was the onset of a very traumatic time.  I had horrific night-mares and also hallucinations.  I would walk around the base at night, woken up from the nightmares and saw a menacing, black dog following me around. I physically heard this imaginary dog!  

One night I was so desperately at the end of myself that I crawled into the pump-house of the swimming pool (it was about 1 meter high and 2 meters long - with the pump inside) and tried to bash open my wrists with a stone. Only when I went back home and got counselling from a trained social worker at our church in Bloemfontein, Brenda Bosch, did I gain the resemblance of a grip on my life again.  I began working at the Post Bank in Bloemfontein, but was depressed and quiet.  I went home to my bedroom, straight from work, never went out and never dated anyone.  Thinking back, I must have been at my prettiest at that time - an 18 year old, blonde girl with blue eyes and a figure to die for, but I hardly had a friend and spent my evenings with my mother.  All my school friends had gone off to study and my plans to become a missionary and train with YWAM, had ended.  

I wrote in at the Teachers Training College in Bloemfontein, had a bursary and would have started studying in January the following year.  However, God had another plan with my life and it began unfolding soon after I was first molested.  One day, in the new house, when I was still 5 years old, my mom found me looking at a picture of Jesus knocking at a door and pointed out to me that, that is the door to my heart and it has no handle on the outside.  "Jesus is a gentleman" she said "He does not come in until you open for Him."  This gripped my heart.  I could not believe that Someone as amazing as the Lord Jesus Himself, could be barred from my heart, save I let Him in. The fact that I had the choice, over His desire to be with me, was too much for me to bear.  I went to my bed and cried uncontrollably and asked Him to come into my heart.  And He did.  He's been resident-owner, ever since.  

Just before I had to go off to college, I saw an advert for the Mobile School of Evangelism from Reinhardt Bonnke's organisation, Christ for all Nations (CfaN).  My first thought was that I would never get in, because every young Christian would be applying, but I literally fell to my knees and told God, if He wanted me to go to CfaN and would get me into the school, I would drop my plans and follow Him there.  A few weeks later CfaN had an event in Bloemfontein, I went for an interview and was accepted, one of only 2 girls with 18 young men.  

In January, instead of starting to train as a school teacher, I joined what was probably the coolest and most dynamic mission organisation in South Africa at the time.  I fell in love with my husband Leon on day one.  At first sight.  My brother Graham dropped me off at Witfield, Johannesburg and the student body left for a camp in the Magaliesberg for a week of orientation.  Leon was driving the van and I sat in the middle in the second row.  When I looked up into the rear-view mirror, I saw that he was looking at me.  So right there, with our two pairs of blue eyes meeting, we fell in love and got married 3 hours after graduation.  

We started our life as a missionary couple and began travelling throughout Southern- and Central Africa.  Later Reinhard Bonnke donated a tent to us that could seat 10 000 people.  It was a challenge and a valued resource in one and not a slight size too big for us, but a lot!  Later as we moved further up into Africa, we were given the opportunity to do fund-raising in Germany for our work and were drawn to the need among young people in that country.  

This brings me close to the rest of the memory of the sexual abuse that my uncle perpetrated against me.  We were travelling in Germany and sometimes had as many as 65 speaking engagements in 2 months. (plus travelling time between towns.)  I spoke to many girls who were sexually abused and raped and somehow they were drawn to me at these meetings.  Leon used to preach and I used to sing.  At the end of each meeting, we used to have a time of individual prayer for anyone who needed it and it was at these occasions that God began to bring victims of sexual abuse my way.  

The first time it happened I stood in front of a young girl and her mother.  She had been raped by her own father and I had no idea what to say to her. When I began praying for her, I saw a vision of a very ugly, gnarly old root system growing inside of her.  It filled her whole being.  Then I saw those roots being pulled out of her until she was nothing but a empty space where the roots used to be.  Then I saw a beautiful pitcher, filled with a perfume that looked like liquid pearls, poured into her, seeping into every crevice. Even the little hair-fine spaces where the root reached into the deepest parts of her, were filled with the perfume, until it permeated her very being.  The fragrance followed her where-ever she went.  All I could do was share this vision with her and thereafter for many years, when-ever I had a young girl standing in front me for prayer, I used to see that pitcher of liquid pearls and I knew she had been abused.  It was always positively confirmed when I inquired. 

We eventually moved to Germany and began working there full-time.  I built up a very close group of wonderful friends and used to lead worship at a women's conference from an denomination, the BFP, at least once a year. On one of these occasions, surrounded by my friends and in a very good, strong place emotionally, I began singing an English song during a morning session. 

I used to lead worship in German, but at this occasion I sang:  "Jesus, Lover of my Soul" in English, although I knew the song in German.  I told the ladies that I believe the song is for someone specific and then I said:  "Jesus is the Lover of your soul, but He is a gentleman, He will never force Himself on you." My friend Gaby Wentland, (who combats Sex Slavery and Human Trafficking in Germany today) stood at the furthest end of the hall and realized, that I am the person for whom that message was meant.  

As soon as I said it, I broke down in tears and saw what my uncle did to me. I don't know if it was on the same night that I remembered him entering my room and putting his hand between my legs.  It could have been a different night.  But I knew then that he had undressed me and pressing my body down between his legs, had non-penetrative sex with me. He did not put his penis inside me, but ejaculated on my stomach. 

I was behind the piano in this room full of women, at the furthest corner from the exit.  There was no escaping with this knowledge, to a private spot.  I was in front of all these women, sobbing uncontrollably and what better place to be?  My friends Gaby, Roswitha Ehrenholz, the other leaders and a crowd of beautiful, wonderful women that I can’t even remember by name today, rallied around me and prayed for me. It was the safest place to be, for this horrific memory to be dealt with and for my mind to be set free from the effects of this abuse.  

After the session, I went with Gaby to our room and I told her about the memory.  She prayed with me for complete freedom from this burden and then I washed my face, put on new make-up and joined everyone for lunch.  I was utterly amazed at the supernatural 'lifting' that I experienced in my heart and my mind.  I did not have any after-affects as I did the first time I remembered the abuse, which was about 15 years before that day.  

Today I still remember the room in that house, off the kitchen, where my grandmother used to stay.  It had a particular smell of 'old-age' to it.  I remember the room where later, my aunt had placed a shot-gut in her mouth, bent down and blew the side of her face away in a botched suicide attempt. I remember the vineyard, where they later found her dead with a rope around her neck, the rope had not broken her neck, but strangled her.  People suspected she was under hypnosis, which my uncle said, he used as a method of 'treatment' on her, because her depression deepened after the shooting. Sometimes, when I read about a case of child sexual abuse, in my mind, it plays off in the house of my uncle.  

This is a bit of residue.  He died before he could be brought to justice, so I never will have the opportunity to face him in a court, nor do I know if I will have the strength, as we expect women and girls to stand up and do every day.  However, the most powerful thing I could do and did, on my road to healing, was to forgive him for his sick and depraved actions.  

I realized that bitterness was like tying a corpse onto one's body.  I did not want his decay to take hold of my soul.  I had to let him go. I thank God that I was able to look at this man and understand something of the depravity that had him in its grips.  I understood that this is what happens when a person allows rot into one's heart, in the form of pornography, sick lust and degeneracy.  It begins small and eventually it drives a man to get up from his bed at night, where his beautiful wife is lying sleeping next to him, walk toward an innocent child of 5 years old and use that child to fulfil this degenerate lust - except it cannot be fulfilled.  It will want more and it will need worse kinds - it is a thirst for sin that cannot be quenched.