Malachi's sexual abuse began when he was a mere first grader and continued to the end of his second grade year of school. His abuser was a young man that his mother had entrusted to walk him home from school since she could not afford the luxury of being a stay at home mom. They lived in an urban apartment building filled with single mothers who often left their children home alone. To them, it was better to leave your child alone while you go “win the bread” than to stay at home with them and live limited by the confines of public assistance. His mother would never have left him with a baby sitter because you simple couldn’t trust people to hold your child’s best interest as paramount. There are a lot of sick people in the world, so keeping Malachi home alone was her way of protecting him from those people. After meeting another single mother with a son in middle school, she found a solution to her problem. Surely, she felt she could trust him to be a companion for Malachi and keep him safe everyday as they made the block and a half journey home from school.
Malachi begin to form a deep relationship with the young man and a brotherly bond. He trusted him, because that is what small children do; they trust the world around them and idolize the people they look up to. The naivety of a child is what makes them precious to many members of society but for a predator the scent of an innocent child without proper protection oozes like blood in shark filled waters. The ‘blood’ of Malachi's innocence was seeping into the waters of danger in great quantities as each day my trust grew stronger and the opportunities to capitalize on them multiplied. Finally, on a day where both their parents were just in the next room, the molestation began. It began with games and strange touches that lead to sexual acts. No one ever forgets the first time. The images never leave your mind of a first sexual experience stolen years before sexuality should be awakened and turned into something perverted.
So what did Malachi do? He kept silent.
The abuse eventually stopped as his abuser replaced him with another victim. He never told another living soul; he tucked the memory of abuse away in his mind and hid them deeply into the sanctum of his soul where not even he would dare go to visit its archives. He wouldn't realize how much the abuse affected his life until he was almost an adult. It changed the way he valued himself as a person and framed the way he treated others and expected to be treated. It made Malachi very distrustful of others and very cold in relation. It defined his sexuality and caused him to equate intimacy with immorality and shame.
One of Malachi's favorite moments in the movie (based on the play/book) “For Colored Girls” is when one of the characters breaks into a soliloquy about how somebody almost walked away with all of her stuff. The character opens saying:
“…stealing my [stuff] from me don’t make it yours, makes it stolen.
Somebody almost run off with all of my stuff & I was standing there looking at myself the whole time
& it wasn’t a spirit that took my stuff…. it was a man whose ego walked around like Rodan’s shadow…it was a man faster
than my innocence…”
This was exactly how he felt. Like somebody had come at the very start of his life, before the first crush and school dance, and walked away with all of 'his stuff'. They walked away with his self-image and left him self-aware. They walked away with his sexual freedom and left him sexually confused. They walked away with his innocence and left him corrupted. They walked away with the twinkle in his eyes and left deep sadness and a desire to be protected from an invisible monster. They walked away with his decision to give my body to someone one day by just just taking his body! They took his legs, thighs, his smile, his bruises and birth marks and left a little boy that he didn’t recognize; the thief left a boy who who was angry, afraid and insecure.
The WORSE part is that his abuser walked away with all of Malachi and no one even noticed!
He had to get himself back. It was many years later, and after a lot of downward spirals and negative attempts to ‘self- medicate’, he finally realized what had happened to him wasn’t his fault. He finally realized he was a victim and not a participant. Malachi found himself a survivor that desperately wanted, no needed, to be an over-comer. So he started by taking back the first thing the abuser stole from him, HIS VOICE.
Malachi's first book, 'Journey to Malachi' is a result of that decision to take back his voice! The follwing list is provided to help others regain their won voices as well.
For Male Survivors Support: http://www.malesurvivor.org/
To Contact a Help Hotline: http://www.rainn.org/
For Christian Counseling: http://www.miraculumcounsellingservices.com/
For Counseling on SSA: http://exodusinternational.org/
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