It was the early hours of a chilly Sunday morning at the beginning of December. I had slept a little but then woke with a start, heart pounding, thoughts racing, trying desperately to make sense of my experiences of the past few weeks.

I couldn't get back to sleep and not wanting to wake my husband I got up, crept downstairs and made myself a cup of tea. At three o'clock in the morning there is not a great choice of things to do. News 24, Open University and the ITV night screen didn't appeal so in an effort to find some distraction I decided to sit at my P.C. and log on to the Internet.

I began by searching for the website of an organisation known to me that ran children's camps, an organisation with whom I had spent many summer holidays throughout my childhood. The camps are designed to give kids a great time away from parents and carers but also to teach personal responsibility and basic survival skills. In my case, very basic. I can remember I rarely washed, cleaned my teeth or changed my clothes for the whole two weeks I was away. I always arrived back home desperately needing extended bathtime, my hair de-matting with the cat's comb and two weeks' food residue and other unidentifiable objects scraped from my teeth and gums. Several bars of soap and tubes of toothpaste later I was able to return to the human race. The reader will have
gathered that for those two weeks, for the most part, I was in child heaven.

I made lots of friends and undoubtedly a few enemies. I learned to build and light fires with kindling and sticks (no cheating with paper, paraffin or other flammable substances) and I passed my camp cooking tests with flying colours. I am happy to report nobody departed from this life as a result of food poisoning. I became proficient at digging makeshift toilets (affectionately known as 'lats') and the ability to erect a two-man tent, with flysheet and pegs, in under ten minutes has never left me - a bit like riding a bike, I suppose, you never forget! I can also remember many long summer evenings sitting round the campfire singing my heart out to 'Kum-By-Ah'. I still have the official
camp songbook tucked away in a drawer and I get it out occasionally when I wish to reminisce.

Anyway, back to my early morning encounter with the Internet. Initially it was curiosity that prompted me to look at the website. I felt the need to try to recall my experiences but at the same time I was afraid of what I might resurrect in the process.

I found the right web page without much difficulty and began searching for names of the brave souls who supervised the camps to see if there were any I recognised. It amazed me how many I remembered but as I looked down the page, a name jumped out at me and I can only say the shock of seeing it there made me feel physically sick. There in front of me was a name I recognised, a name I remembered so well, a name I could only associate with some of the events in my life I had recently been trying to piece together. Seeing 'his' name there in black and white sent me into a panic. What is more I had inadvertently placed myself in a moral dilemma that I could not forget about or simply ignore.

Despite the great times at camp, there was a dark side to one of my holidays that irrevocably marred what should have been one of the happiest times of my life. When I was six one individual (whose name I thought I had stumbled across on the Internet) changed my life for all time. I went to that camp, my first, with my innocence intact but returned with it stolen from me. Over the two-week holiday this man befriended me, made me feel special but then took advantage of the trust I freely gave him by making me perform sexual acts in the secrecy of his tent, in the confines of his sleeping bag.

Due to the acrimonious nature of my family life (my mum and dad didn't get on) the parental love I needed was in very short supply and this man became 'mum and dad' to me. I loved him and wanted to please him, so although I knew instinctively, even at the tender age of six, that what he was making me do was wrong, the craving for love and affection was stronger and I was desperate to receive his approval, at any cost.

Looking back now as an adult, I can accept that, as a paedophile, he was well equipped to target emotionally vulnerable children and I have since stopped blaming myself for what happened. At the time however, I was forced by him into a vow of silence and was devastated when we had to part at the end of the holiday. The heartbreak I experienced at our separation and the fear of being punished for 'spilling the beans' resulted in me burying my experiences, hoping naively that over time they would just fade away.

As I moved into adulthood the memories of what had happened returned to haunt me and I began experiencing recurrent flashbacks. Sometimes I would catch only vague glimpses or fleeting images but on other occasions the distorted emotions associated with the abuse were so strong I would have what in medical terms would be described as a panic attack. My life seemed to be heading in a downward spiral and I can remember feeling in such turmoil it took great effort on my part even to get up in the mornings. My bed was the only place where I could temporarily escape what was happening to me, but even then sleep often eluded me. I had a pathological fear of illness and imagined I was suffering from all sorts of deadly diseases. Some days I didn't feel in control of my own actions and was convinced I would end up doing something violent either to myself or
someone else who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I can remember one day walking around the glass and china section in our local department store and freezing with fear because I had a sudden urge to smash every piece of crockery in the shop. I understand now these were symptoms of a desperate cry for help. However, I don't think my husband would have appreciated being landed with an enormous bill from the shop for all the shattered pieces of Pilkington Glass and Denby Ware! And in case you're wondering, by the grace of God, I never did cross the line between thought and action.

Shortly before that memorable December morning I had spent a lot of time with my counsellor simply recalling my experiences and allowing the feelings I had buried to surface. It had taken me a long time to gain enough courage to tell my story. Thankfully, I can now talk about what happened without too much difficulty and one of the first steps to receiving my healing was understanding God's perspective in it all.

I became a Christian in my early teenage years and it didn't take long before it dawned on me that because I had been forgiven, God wanted me to forgive those who had hurt me. Before I became a Christian this had been a totally alien concept but because I now loved God and desperately wanted to please Him, I tried unsuccessfully many times, in my own strength and through gritted teeth, to forgive this man and other people who had violated me during my childhood.

I had, over the years, developed an over-sensitive conscience coupled with a tendency to blame myself for everything wrong in the world. To give you an example, if at a church meeting, there was a public call to repentance over some issue, I was usually the first to stand up or raise my hand in acknowledgement of something I probably hadn't even been guilty of in the first place. Consequently my Christian life was a struggle and I seemed to lurch from one emotional crisis to the next.

Some of the leaders at the church where I worshipped at the time didn't help my situation either. From certain quarters there was what seemed to me like an almost morbid obsession with Christ's death. There was what I would describe as an unhealthy emphasis on the putting to death of the sinful nature. With a balanced perspective this is a legitimate biblical principle. However, they conveyed their beliefs by advocating for example, that decapitation was an option to eliminate the problem of carnal thinking. At best the teaching was irresponsible, at worst heretical; but either way, in my confusion, I became convinced God didn't like me, let alone accept me and that ultimately he wanted me to kill myself.

I heard very little about God's grace, his love and compassion for a hurting world, his wonderful ability to come along side us in our weakness to help and strengthen us, his understanding of our pain and of his desire to bring healing and wholeness.

Although those church leaders were sincere, they succeeded in making me feel a failure as a Christian. They dogmatically preached week in and week out, that because Jesus died on the cross for my sins I was now separated from my past and that was the end of the matter. Their view was that it was now theologically impossible for experiences from the past to affect me.

I therefore had one huge problem. I accepted totally that Jesus' work of redemption was complete but here I was, still agonising over and wrestling with memories from the past that at times drove me to suicidal despair. Because I couldn't marry the truth of the cross with the way I felt, I survived by denying my feelings, pretending they weren't there, under a cloak of superficial spirituality. The truth was however was that I was an emotional wreck. My past experiences were still eating away inside me, but to admit this was a sign I had failed as a Christian because I wasn't living in the 'glorious victory' so many Christians seemed to talk about. I was afraid to let my guard down, let my reputation slip and instead I busied myself with what an outside observer would call legitimate church work and a demanding job, as well as trying to be a caring wife and mother.

When finally I couldn't carry on and I admitted I needed help, it took several months to peel away all the walls of unreality I had built to protect myself and finally acknowledge that inside there was a desperately needy, hurting little girl. I discovered one of the keys to my healing was not trying (and inevitably failing) to follow a legalistic dogma but rather by the application and outworking of biblical truth alongside a relationship with a loving Heavenly Father, who was on my side and wanted me to be free as much as I did.

My road to recovery has at times been painfully slow. One of the first things I needed to recognise and embrace was that I had been 'sinned against' - big time. My inclination had always been to defend this man despite what he had done. So it was quite a revelation when I realised that in order to even contemplate forgiving him, it was imperative for me to accept unequivocally that an offence' had been committed against me. My counsellor put it into perspective one day when she showed me a passage of scripture from Matthew 18 verse 6 when Jesus talking about the children who had come to see him said 'If anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone tied round his neck'. In anybody's book this is pretty strong stuff. She also pointed me to verses in the bible that emphasise God's love of justice together with his willingness to come along side the weak and oppressed to deliver them, heal them and set them free. I began to construct a picture of a very different kind of God, not one who was constantly accusing and condemning, but one who understood the human condition and, through Jesus and what He accomplished, was offering a very different kind of life.

The next step in my healing was being able to acknowledge the gamut of emotions surrounding my experiences that I had locked away and never expressed. I have to be honest and say this was at times quite scary. As I began to open up, I was sometimes shocked by the intensity of the feelings of bitterness, rage and anger that erupted from within. I can say however, that even at the most excruciating moments I sensed no finger of accusation. I knew that God was in control and that this was in fact what He wanted to happen. Rather than pretending these feelings weren't there, in acknowledging them I was on the way to letting them go and placing them at the foot of the cross where they belonged.

It would be untruthful of me to say that forgiving those who have hurt me has not, at times, been very difficult but I am learning if I refuse to forgive, the person who really loses out is me. I am the one who remains tangled up and bound by bitterness and resentment. Having said that, a forgiving attitude is something I have had to develop and nurture over time. Thankfully God is very patient and even if it's a pathetic, 'God I don't want to forgive, please help me to be willing', I have found Him to be very adept at coming alongside and giving me the strength I need in my weakness.

I realise I have to let God be God and relinquish any natural desire for vengeance. I am now certain God is just and fair and if there is any punishment to be meted out, I must not try to become god-like myself and take matters into my own hands but rather expend my energies on being salt and light in a dark world, concentrating on those things that are good, excellent and praiseworthy, and those things which serve to build up the Body of Christ!

Whether we like it or not we are all products of our past. Our parentage, background and upbringing, however deprived or unstable, in some ways is what makes us unique and it is not God's desire to simply obliterate that part of us. Jesus came to break the power of sin in our lives, not destroy us in the process. I don't believe God necessarily wants me to forget the past. It would be very un-natural if that part of my life became a blank in my memory, and I developed a sort of spiritual amnesia and although I can still remember what happened on the children's camp, it doesn't cause me pain anymore. If anything good has come out of it, I would say that I am able to understand and empathise with those who have been through similar experiences.

To go back to the discovery of the name on the Internet….. My dilemma was that I obviously didn't know for sure if the name I had stumbled across was the same person who had sexually abused me, though it was quite unusual. Part of me desperately wanted to see this man brought to justice but the implications of reporting the matter to the police were such that I didn't know if emotionally I could cope with giving evidence and being cross-examined in a witness box. At the same time I was unwilling to let the matter go with the thought he might still be abusing children in his care. After chewing it over with my counsellor I decided I had no option but to go to the police and tell them
what I had found. It was a very difficult time because, for legal reasons, my counsellor had to withdraw from particular incident. This made me feel isolated and I wondered if I could go through with it because she had been such a rock in the situation. In addition it all happened over the Christmas holiday period and though the police were very sympathetic, it took them a couple of weeks to check out the information I had given them. I found myself constantly thinking about the 'if's, but's and maybe's' and although I was staying in the relative comfort of my husband's parents' home in the Lake District and should have been enjoying the wonderful scenery and the family time together, much of the time my thoughts were elsewhere. In the end, I found the whole experience so distressing that the only thing I could do was trust God's sovereignty in the situation, whatever the outcome.

When the police finally informed me it was not the man who had assaulted me I felt a mixture of relief and anger, relief that I wasn't going to have to go to court, but anger that the man had not been brought to justice. I know Christians who have an annoying habit of gaily quoting Romans 8, verse 28 in times of trouble or hardship but looking back I now understand the wisdom of God in this situation. Not all things are good in themselves but 'We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him'. What happened wasn't good but God knew I would have had great difficulty coping with a possible court prosecution. I have been able to draw a line under this experience, though in future I may act a little more cautiously if I wake in the early hours of the morning with time on my hands!

Undoubtedly what happened to me as a child has coloured my views on life and people and the healing work therefore needs to continue. I am still on a journey but I am thankful to God for the distance he has brought me along the road to wholeness.

 

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