I want to talk about rape — specifically, my childhood rape. I want to tell this difficult story for two reasons: healing for myself, and more importantly healing for anyone else reading. Please read at your own discretion.

It was the Wednesday before Mother’s Day 1969. I was eight years old, walking home from school. A block away, a Black man (his race is important for reasons I’ll discuss later) approached me and asked if I’d yet gotten a gift for my mom on Mother’s Day. I told him no. He said there was a peach tree behind this house, and we should pick some for my mom.

He gave me a peach to taste. It wasn’t ripe.

“There will be ripe ones on the tree,” he said.

Looking back now, I see how naive I was. How could I fall for the peaches thing? But back then, people were more trusting. We didn’t think about things like pedophiles or rape. Yes, it happened; adults just didn’t talk about it. At least not around kids.

This Black man walked me through a condemned house. I saw construction workers in another nearby house. He saw me looking at them and said, “Don’t even think about it.”

Next thing I knew, he had me facedown in the debris, his knee in the small of my back. He pulled my jeans down, put his hand over my mouth, and raped me.

Then he left.

I got up and saw that I was bleeding. I pulled up my jeans and walked home. My mom wasn’t supposed to be home yet, but she was. I rushed past her bedroom. She called me back and asked what happened to my jeans. I told her that I fell. She believed me.

Later that day, I decided I wouldn’t have anything more to do with Black culture unless I didn’t have a choice. I never learned any of the handshakes, never grew an afro, never wore loud-colored clothes, never listened to “Black music,” and watched lots of PBS to learn how to enunciate.

Being around large groups of Black people always made me feel trapped. My own Black family never knew why I changed.

Throughout my schooling years, I never hung out with fellow Black people. I refused to catch the bus. I walked to school every year but one because it was too far. I purposely didn’t hang out with the kids in my neighborhood.

One day when I was seventeen, my mom drove us home from the store. We had just passed the place where I was raped, and I stared out the window. She looked over at me and asked, “What are you thinking about?”

“About the time I was raped,” I said.

“What?!”

“About the time I was raped,” I repeated. Whenever I’m asked a direct question, I just tell the truth because it’s easier to give an honest answer instead of telling a lie and then trying to remember which lie I told which person.

My mom pulled over and started asking me twenty questions about my childhood rape. She never told my sisters.

When I was in the Army and when I attended my dad’s funeral, I found myself often stifled, surrounded by so many Black people in one place; needless to say, I wasn’t very popular. People called me an “Uncle Tom” and an “Oreo” (a Black man who acts white). When I got out of the Army, I only lived in predominantly white neighborhoods. I used to talk about Black people like I was a redneck (no offense).

At one point, I hated Black people. My brother even said that he thought I was the most racist person he’d ever met.

It wasn’t until a few years ago that my whole mindset changed. God helped me find a new church, one that was multi-racial. I joined the men’s group and found myself giving hugs and handshakes to other Black men — something I never saw myself doing.

It took me thirty years to forgive the Black man who raped me. I honestly thought that forgiving him would fully heal me, especially after all the steps I’d taken in relationships with Black men in my church. But I was wrong.

Every time I go to my mom’s house, I have to pass the place where he raped me. All those images and feelings come rushing back. I could drive four miles out of the way to visit her instead; I still have to consciously go that direction to avoid the pain.

So, what do I have to do to be completely healed? I guess some deep trauma remains, even all these decades later.

The only thing that comes to mind is for this experience to help me better know the power of God. Asking Him to heal me from the inside out is the only solution. Even if I asked Him for complete healing, what proof do I have that He’d actually do it for me? We all know that God doesn’t always give us what we want when we pray. He gives us what we need.

What in the world could I still need after all these years?

Maybe just writing about this experience will add to my healing, or perhaps someone else may start to heal from their own assault or abuse.

Maybe you’ve held onto unforgiveness for decades like me. We have to forgive to heal; otherwise, the pain will only continue to fester.

Sometimes I wonder whether I’d have hated all white people if my rapist had been white; only God knows. Ultimately, my rape, my dismissal from multiple churches, my time in prison, and my multiple health issues have all happened for a reason, making me the person I am today.

I am not perfect by any means, but I am willing to grow closer with God despite whatever comes next.

For I will restore health to you, and your wounds I will heal, declares the LORD…

Jeremiah 30:17a (ESV)

If you feel so bold to share so, did you experience assault or abuse as a child? Do you struggle or refuse to forgive someone?

About the Author

  • First of all, thank you for courageously sharing your story. May God continue to work His transformative healing upon your life. Second, your defense-mechanism of being walled against all Black people, resembles the general tendency of boys (of any race or ethnicity) to put up a wall to protect their heart from all boys or men, if they have been hurt or just felt alienated from their dad or male role-models, which then can be sexualized in early puberty among guys with SSA. You gradually found healing in restoring part of your Black identity , just like we also find healing in restoring broken masculinity.

  • >