An interview with an “eight-year-old survivor” who was sexually abused by a neighbor for a year, remembering her/his experiences for the first time thirty-nine years later.
Can you tell us about your childhood neighborhood first?
Worker’s neighborhood… The women are at home. Not many women are working. Men usually work. Classic working families… We children are on the street from morning till night. It works for mothers, too, of course, to have kids outside. I grew up in a family with five children. The families in the area usually had three or four children. The residents of the neighborhood are mostly migrants from Anatolia… In the ’78s, during the period of martial law, apartment buildings were built with the declaration of a slum prevention zone. Most of the apartments are worker co-op houses and worker blocks. The house we lived in was one of the houses built by the Ministry of Zoning. One plus one. One room, one living room, one toilet, one kitchen.
Our playgrounds are streets and construction sites. There were green areas as well. There was a big green space that separated our neighborhood from another. At the top of the stream… The houses on the side of the stream were built as one row. There was no alley. The gardens were built in adjoining order, some houses were built in adjoining order. Here we could walk through the garden of a house at 100, 150 meters to the big green area in the back. One of the crossings was in the middle of our street, in the garden of the Yusufs’ house.
I remember now. We had a gang. Were we mad at the elders or what, we make promises among ourselves. We’ll all grow up in the future, come to certain positions. We will unite, we will protect each other. We will get stronger. We will rule together. I don’t know where we’re going to rule, though. We used to play Indian-cowboy. I wouldn’t be a cowboy.
How were your relationships within the family? How were your parents’ relationship with you?
The year I started elementary school; my father promised me. He said, “I’ll take you to school.” At the time, clothes were sold in Topkapi. We went to Topkapi. My dad bought me school clothes and a bag for school. Two or three days before the schools opened, they called my father from abroad as a worker. My father went abroad before the schools opened. I didn’t say goodbye to my father thinking ‘You promised me, but you didn’t keep your word.’ Looking back, it seems to me that my father and I had our first moment of breaking, our great break. Because I couldn’t understand what I felt when I was only five years old…
Here’s how that thing happened: Then we hadn’t moved to Istanbul yet. We had an acquaintance, Havva, who was sixteen and seventeen. They usually entrusted us to her. She’s playing with us. We’re going after her, we’re going for a stroll. One day all the kids are gone, and I’m left with a poor girl. We were playing house. Havva said, “Let me show you what house is really like.” She said “You lie down.” to the girl, and “You get on top of her.” to me. Things like ‘go forward and backward, rub it etc.’ We have our clothes on. We’re laughing, of course. The girl is tickling, she’s laughing. I’m laughing because she’s laughing. We don’t know what’s happening… Anyway, we got up and left. It had been an hour or so. I heard someone talking at the door of my house, and that little girl was crying. “Well, they are just children, but that’s what happened. We did what we had to do to Havva. We talked to her parents. Her parents punished her. We’re just informing you. Don’t make your children play with Havva.” I understand that something bad has happened. Something bad happened, and the girl’s parents showed up, but I don’t know what’s bad. My dad came over that night. They were talking with mom. Dad just yelled, “Bring him here!” He asked my mother to bring a rope. I remember him beating me. Then he put a chair in the middle of the room. Back then, there were hooks on the ceilings to connect the cribs. He put the rope in the hook, and around my neck. Meanwhile, the outside door rang. My mother opened the door. The neighbors came hearing our noises. They came just as my father was about to kick the chair. “I’m going to kill you!” he said to me. They took me from my father’s hands…
My father came from abroad a year later. He was caming to Turkey once a year now. He was staying for a month, and was spening maybe three or four days of that month with us. He was traveling, visiting: the village, friends, relatives etc. They love my dad out there. He’s a democratic, revolutionary man out there. Polite. Softhearted. But not inside the house. A despot, a dictator… In fact, it seems to me that my father and I never had a father-son relationship.
This is how it is with my father. My mom and I didn’t have much trouble. She is an elementary school dropout. Then he finished elementary school, but with many difficulties. My mother got through everything. She raised five kids. She did all the housework, food, cleaning etc.
Here’s how my mother used to tell her story of marriage. On Tuesday, someone told my grandfather about my mother. Grandpa comes and sees my mom on Wednesday. They do the arrangement on Thursday. They’re taking her on Friday and bringing her in. And on Saturday, my father goes to join the army. She comes in axpecting one mother-in-law, but three mothers-in-law turn out at home: her sisters-in-law.
Annen baban bunları yaşarken sen neler yaşıyorsun?
There are three other kids besides me when dad was gone. I’m about eight years old.. I have a friend, Yusuf. I used to go to teach Yusuf’s. He had two older brothers. One was five years older than me and one was 12 years older. Joseph also had an older sister. She was two or three years older than me. She’s got polio, she’s bedridden. She can’t talk about anything. She was a beautiful girl. Her name was Leila. Her mother combed Leyla’s hair and loved her dearly. “Oh girl, beautiful girl, dear girl…” I’d envy him. I hadn’t heard that from my parents. Leyla laughed as she said so. Except when her mother loved her, she had a different bitter smile on her face. I remember that clearly. Because I remember a different face on her. To learn that someone you think doesn’t know anything, doesn’t understand much, actually understands and realizes everything…
One day we were having dinner at Yusuf’s, with friends. They were all of a sudden.. We were going to go to the big greenery. So I got up, but I couldn’t make it.. I’m moving a little slow, because of my foot.. I couldn’t walk without my hand on my foot because of polio. I almost walked with my face parallel to the ground. I was walking too slow. I couldn’t run… I wasn’t done eating yet. Cevdet, Yusuf’s brother said, “Finish your meal, and you will come out.” So I finished it. I was just leaving. He pulled me, closed my mouth. What else did he do? I don’t remember that.
I don’t remember how the next few days went. The kids are calling, I don’t want to go out. I don’t want to play games. I’m taking the long way to the greenery to join with the friends. I don’t want to go through their garden. I was going to the greenery that time, there was no one. I was walking slowly, so the game was over by the time I arrived there. One day, the kids went that way again. I’m going through the garden of Yusuf’s with fear. I was almost stuck in the wall of the other house. The door opened fast, and someone pulled me in. We were in another room when he first did it. The next one was where Leyla slept. And my face was facing her. I remember Leyla, who I remember earlier with her smile when her mother combed her hair, with her facial expression from that day for the last year and a half.
There was another boy when he did it in Leyla’s room. We’re two kids. He was pressing one hand on one of us while he was on top of the other. That kid wasn’t from our neighborhood, he was from another neighborhood. That kid was a little older than me.. At one point, when he was on top of me, I turned to the kid as if to ask for help, to say something. I saw him watching me with a slight smile.
I looked at the boy as Cevdet pressed his hand on me again and climbed on top of the other child. “Don’t turn your head,” Cevdet told me. I turned my head because I wanted to see what he was doing. Because I wanted to understand what he did to me. I didn’t know what he was doing to me. It hurt, but I didn’t know how it hurt. You’re a man, but you don’t know if your genitals can hurt. You’re wondering if he’s hurting you with something else.
I remember what you did to Leyla once. He locked the door. He was half naked. He had my eyes closed and my back turned before he took his pants off. He told me to turn back. He was on Leyla when I turned back.. “Look, if it were something that bad, I wouldn’t do it to my sister.”
Have you thought about asking your family for help?
After my father tried to hang me when I was five years old … Now, when you’re faced with a reaction like that when you’re not guilty of a crime and you’re not hurting anyone else, you don’t know what you’re going to get when you’re raped. My father would kill me if I told him. No one would do anything to Cevdet. Plus, he had his threats: “I’ll do it to your sister, I’ll do it to your brother.” No one can touch me. I’ve been here a long time. No one will believe you.” You’re a kid. You’re thinking, “Is it my word or his word?”. You can’t stay in the neighborhood anymore. And then my consciousness chose to shut down that section. I can’t remember exactly when I forgot.
We used to go to my uncles in the summer. Sometimes we stayed 15 days. With all my brothers. And where we’re staying is one room; fifteen square meters. They have four children. We’re lying in arms, boys and girls. It felt like a palace to me. It felt like I was sleeping alone. I was relaxed, I was at peace. That’s why I was looking forward to summer.
How did the abuse end?
I know it went on for about a year. But I can’t remember how many times. I’m sure it’s more than four or five times. When I’m watching something about these things, reading them, I see flashes of images of what I had been through. I have a different outfit on me every time. Either we’re in a different room of the house… Or he’s wearing a different outfit.… I mean, I think this is probably not a game of my mind. I think these are memories of that period. So I’m guessing there’s a lot of them. . But I don’t know how many different outfits or different places I’ve seen myself in. It was no more at the age of nine. How do I know it’s been no more?.. I had a friend, my father’s uncle’s son. He was polishing shoes, selling bagels. I didn’t tell him what I went through. One day he said, “You take the shoe polishing chest, I sell bagels.” That’s how I got out of the neighborhood.
You’re also telling me that this man abused others?
I know someone, but not from our neighborhood. I don’t know if he did it to anyone else. I told a friend from the neighborhood what I had been through. I told him who did it, where he lived. I said, could you check anonymously? If you have a representative who lives in that area. He talked to a few people there. I was surprised by the response. It made me angry, as well. “We never send our child there for years.” I’m angry about the hypocrisy and the abomination of society. So, I think there were others in the neighborhood. And there were families who knew that. I’m sure there are parents who kept quiet so their kids’ name wouldn’t get stained.
Sometimes I think, do his brothers know about what he did? My friend Yusuf died of a heart attack. He died very young. It’s been ten years. I couldn’t go to his funeral.. If I went to his funeral, maybe ten years ago, I’d remember. He’s been retired a year. Their house was three stories high. Yusuf was staying with his family on one floor. On one floor Cevdet and his family. On one floor is Yusuf’s father. After Yusuf passed away, his wife took her children and moved away. She rented another place. She didn’t rent their house out. That house is still empty.
Looking back from this day, do you think the abuse you experienced affected your next life?
When I was nine, I started going away from the neighborhood and home to work. I’ve actually improved my social side.. My work wasn’t out of financial necessity. I sold bagels. I worked in the marketplaces… I had to succeed out there to stay in the neighborhood. While playing on the street with all my friends… I couldn’t be a child. I didn’t have childhood or adolescence. I was a vendor on trains while people were dealing with puberty problems. I was competing with 45-50-year-old men. Because I had to prove myself and get a place there. They kicked me. They threw my bag away; they threw it off the train…
Normally, I can communicate with a person very easily. I can meet and chat with an ordinary person, but when it goes into an emotional dimension… Especially in my relationships with women… I either told them my disability or I thought they wouldn’t like me.. Deep down, maybe the abuse or rape I’ve been through has left me short of something… I don’t know about that anymore, I was pulling back. Men have conversations among themselves. It’s about sexuality, it’s about sex. Nothing they told me was familiar to me. What they said about desires, fantasies, masturbation… None of it was what they said it would be like with me. I am naturally insecure as a man… Thinking you can’t give the opposite sex what she wants… For me, I’m in evening high school in year ‘95. There was one girl I loved very much. I don’t mean fancying, I mean love. There was a moment. She confessed. I was just going to say it, I couldn’t say it for a second. Then there was a time when I was very angry with women. Women can’t be trusted. I thought they didn’t deserve pure love. I had a lot of women around me because of my job. I’ve got eight or nine months like this.. It’s a time when I’m not looking for any criteria in a relationship, I’m kind of taking revenge from women.
How did you remember the traumatic event you had? How did your confrontation begin?
Pandemic era… Chain stores are everywhere in our neighborhood. This store is right across the street from his house. I was living with my daughter at the time. My daughter was preparing for her college exams. That’s why I’m doing the shopping. I was going to go get something. The vegetable aisle was outside the door. I saw him there. I stopped for a moment… I felt pain behind me. I turned around askin ‘Did I hit myself, because the unit hit me?’ There’s no one, my back’s empty. Then I came home with nothing. I came and closed my room. I tried to figure out what happened first… I cried so hard. I remember crying the moment I realized what had happened. But I cried for two or three hours, maybe more, not half an hour or an hour. I beat myself up, I hit myself.. I remember punching the wall. I thought I’d get a knife and go back.. EI thought I’d catch him on the way home from the grocery store.. Then I thought about my daughter. I didn’t leave the house for two or three days. I couldn’t. There’s a grocery store a little further away. In the next few days, I walked down the back streets to the grocery store further away. I drove to the farther market on bus for a certain period of time. To avoid meeting him again…
Then I started telling my friends. Some of my friends have stopped communicating with me. That’s when your interview was published.… I wanted to call you crazily. Because I’m saying, I’m telling my friends, I see they are upset, but that’s not what I’m looking for.. “I feel your pain,” they say, but it doesn’t feel that way to me. . I’m sure my friends are sincere, but I don’t get the response I sought. I thought that Meliha would understand me alone in the world, but Meliha’s problems are bigger than me… How would I get in touch with her? Then I texted you.
The process I started therapy; I was completely alone at home. I’d say it didn’t go very well. I feel so terrible, I felt like I couldn’t handle it. There was a time when I was thinking about suicide two or three times a day. I was sleeping a day or two a week now. I was sleep deprived for the rest. My body was starting to shake, too. I couldn’t think straight, I was distracted. My house was a mess. There was a time like that. This continued until I shared it with my therapist and psychiatrist. When my therapist and psychiatrist interviews started, they gave me drugs immediately.
What I felt at first was pain and crushing under a weight. I mean, I felt the feeling of an eight-year-old boy at the age of 50. I was being crushed in the same way. There’s something, there’s a weight on me. And a pain in my back. When the therapies hadn’t started yet, I was home alone. There was something like this on the news again. I found myself yelling, “No, don’t do it!” I felt it more at first, actually. The feeling of being crushed, crying, the need for protection… Come to think of it, I couldn’t sit down for an hour or two. When I watch something similar, I can’t sit and watch.
Because he was hurting me so much. I remember one time my underwear was bloodied, he took it off and gave me his brother’s underwear… Another time he burned my underwear in the stove… You know when they say when you eat certain food you get diarrhea? I was always eating those foods so I wouldn’t get hurt when I go to the bathroom. And I almost always had diarrhea that year. I remember losing weight. I know mom was worried about me losing weight. I wasn’t a very healthy kid. But they never once took me to the doctor.
I don’t know if we can call this process confrontation. I’ve never confronted anyone but myself. My own process is still ongoing. It’s been, like, a year and a half. I was forty-eight when the process began. I buried this for 39 years. I buried it subconsciously. I guess that’s how my mind thought I could get away with it. Because I didn’t remember anything until I met him at the grocery store.. My reaction to negative news about children after I remember that is not the same as my reaction before. Before, I was just looking at it with a sense of anger, anger and pity, when I saw the news. Now I empathize. I feel their pain. You know how we usually say, “I feel your pain, I understand you…” If we haven’t been through this, we don’t really understand. As much as we say we understand… Now I’m thinking about how the kid might have felt or what he might have suffered. I feel sad, it’s not a feeling of pity anymore. Because I know what they are going to go through in their lives. Knowing what challenges they will face… They’ll either forget it like me, or when a certain time comes, their minds will remember when they say, “I’ll come out of it strong, I’ll prevail.” Or they’ll never forget, they’ll struggle with that trauma for the rest of their lives. They won’t be at peace neither with themselves nor the society.
How did you decide to talk to your daughter?
My daughter’s relationship with her mother was bad. Her mother has wounds, too. Now she’s not living a very healthy life. She can’t make healthy decisions. Sometimes my daughter becomes the parent of her mother. And I know my daughter trusts me. She said, “You are my greatest assurance in life.” Now that she has said something like that, you can’t go to her and say, “Trust me, I am not invincible.” I couldn’t tell my daughter right away.
My daughter made great progress last year after going to college in another city. Matured. Standing on her own two feet alone… Free life has boosted my daughter’s self-esteem. When my daughter came after her first year of school, I said, “I shouldn’t hide anything from my daughter.” When the idea of ‘She trusts me, and I have to trust her. If anything happens, we’ll put it together.’ occurred… One day when she said, “Dad, where are you going every Tuesday?” I said “To therapy.” “What therapy?” I said, “I’ll tell you when I’m ready.” I was encouraged by a word there. “Tell me because you want to tell me. I’m ready to listen to whatever you say, that you feel ready to tell, and tell it not just because I’m curious, but because you are ready to, no matter what.” It surprised and encouraged me. I said, “I feel ready, but I’m worried that your trust in me will be damaged.”. She said, “No matter what happens, my trust in you will not be damaged”, and he encouraged me. I told her.
She stopped. She looked at me for a second… She hugged me around my neck. I didn’t say anything. Of course, I was moved by her move. I started crying. She started crying. On each other’s shoulders… Then she turned, “I’ve doubled my confidence in you. Because now I know what you had been through before. I know you handled them. I see you’re getting stronger with that. You’re even more indestructible to me now.” Then she kissed me on the cheek. She kissed my hands. “Thank you for trusting me and telling me. If you hadn’t told me, then I’d be sorry. I would believe you didn’t trust me. You’re an even more indestructible mountain to me. I will always be there for you,” she said.
What would you do if you were in a world where no one would judge you for what you’ve been through, and they’d support you to the end?
I wish I could scream and tell you what I’ve been through, who’s put me through that. But since we don’t live in a world like that… I’m sure it’ll make me feel better.
Do you have anything to add? What else do you want to say?
I talked to my therapist today. One seeks this sometimes: I don’t know if you ever had it. Wh, what for? Why me? Why did he choose me? Reason? Did I do something wrong? Did I misunderstand? When you make this inquiry… One day this week, when I did this interrogation again, I couldn’t sleep at night. I kept rolling in my bed. I got up. I smoked. I went to bed. I got up. I had a drink; I went under the shower. I couldn’t sleep at all. I couldn’t sleep for 48 hours. That part still makes me nervous, angry; when the time comes, making me not know what to project my anger on… Sometimes I blame myself. Sometimes I get mad at the guy. He showed up that day! Then he did it. And he came up to me and gave me a second shock. He showed up in the store again that day! Sometimes I wish I hadn’t been through what I went through between eight and nine… Sometimes I want to live in the time when I didn’t remember. But unfortunately, that’s not how life goes on.