Ben Meliha Yıldız. Five years ago, in 5 Harfliler, it was I who wrote about the domestic sexual abuse she experienced under the pseudonym Dilara Sert. It’s time to take off the pseudonym. I’m not the one who should be hiding. I haven’t felt the need to hide since the time I said “My father raped me for years, and my mother turned a blind eye to it.” Even though I’ve known this fact for years, I’ve always blamed myself. I cleared my mother and father by blaming myself. It took me years to accept how bad a mother and father could be. I realized that my problem wasn’t being afraid of losing what I had; It was, not being able to accept what I’d already lost. Or that I was tired of trying to create those that didn’t exist at all… Yes, my parents did great many cruelties to me. They ripped my childhood apart. They made my life revolve around this trauma like a vortex. It lasted until my daughter started growing up. Traumas of many generations were beginning to crush my daughter. I couldn’t let that happen. It was my daughter who gave me the courage to face what I’d lost. I guess that’s the hardest part about having a kid. You can’t be a good parent if you haven’t yet faced your own childhood.
Looking back now I had always told. To my mother, my love, my brothers, my friends, my relatives… I have been telling since I was eight. Now I realize it wasn’t about us not telling, it was about people not wanting to hear it. So maybe that’s why it is in pseudonym … People don’t want you to say: “I’ve been through this!” openly, with your I.D. clear. For example, one listened to you, she’d think: “I wonder?” because she’s got a kid… She doesn’t even want to be in doubt when child abuse is so widespread (unfortunately, this approach only benefits the perpetrators). Or knowing that some children are going through this somewhere requires doing something about it. And because she doesn’t want to do anything, she doesn’t turn around and look at someone else’s pain. Or if someone in her inner circle has been through this, she still feels guilty because she didn’t give her hand to you, because she didn’t understand you.
After the interview where I told them what I’d been through, a lot of my friends said, “Why didn’t you tell me?” “I told you!” “But that’s not how you told it.” “You didn’t ask.” When I told my inner circle what I had been through, I was always met with silence. The video created a shock effect. Because the camera mirrored people. This mirror was asking this: “What do you do in case of a child abuse?” Some of my friends have never watched the video…
Yes, it’s agony. It is even difficult to bear such pain… But what about the people who are going through it? What makes us human if we’re turning our backs on each other’s pain? True, it really is difficult to look at some pains. And these certainly won’t be solved anytime soon. But once we think: “What can I do?” and start from somewhere, we can go a long way. The experience I gained from women’s movements absolutely affected my ability to talk today. If I’d given my interview 10 years ago, I might be exaggerating a little, they’d have stoned me. Ten years ago, when I went online to research incest, I only came across porn sites. The parallelism between my story of empowerment and the rise of the women’s movement gave birth to this interview.
So, come, let’s tell our stories and stop child’s sexual abuse being taboo. It’s not just our problem; It’s a problem of this society. Let’s not let the problem that causes such widespread and severe trauma go in vain with silence. Especially those who are victims or exposed to it! Our confrontation will allow us to heal and strengthen, and it will be a solution for other children who are experiencing it even now.