By Shauna Jemmott

“WHY would my lover want to sexually abuse me?” Karen (not her real name) asked rhetorically.The 35-year-old decided to tell her story of survival to six other women under a sycamore tree in the East Bank countryside, last Sunday. A smart home manager, Karen is a small character on the block, inspiring other women with her life stories.
“I am a survivor of sexual cruelty!”

“I cried enough, and at the beginning of this year I stood in the inner court and declared that this is my year of laughter. Now it’s over!” she said.

“I met Alroy when I was about to end my relationship with Johnson, and after all the promiscuity from Johnson I went straight into bed with Alroy because I needed a good episode of hot and cool relaxation, if you know what I mean.”

Karen explained that she was tired of fighting with the prostitutes, watching the shop man’s wife in Johnson’s bed, being called his bad luck and his constant verbal and physical abuse.

“I felt battered in bed. I felt as a beast, and the victim of a slaughter.”

Karen was a beauty – the kind of woman any man would wish to have by his side. She has a millionaire mentality and her skin has a kind of cocoa groove.

She stands over five feet eight, has a perfect figure and made strides suitable for a catwalk. Her speech is great, personality calm, has high moral standing and a Bachelor’s Degree tag.

Alroy was a silent abuser, and at 46, he was a jealous lover. Not very handsome, he was visionless in one eye, and with a beauty like Karen by his side, his insecurities grew. Alroy was the perfect lover at first.

Johnson had deliberately stormed into the wrong part of Karen’s body during one sexual encounter after she caught him having an affair with another man’s wife. That night was her first fight with him and before the end of the night the couple, who shared two sons, had at least five battles.

The audience was attentive and tranquility prevailed as if nature made preparations for her sore confessions.

The stillness became a song. “Life: it can leave you so bitter, bitter, bitter… But you must believe it gets better, better, better…” It was her phone’s ringtone as Alroy attempted another unanswered call.

“He keeps calling, but I am stronger now.” The humiliation had become overbearing, she explained.

“When Johnson did that, it was the hardest thing I had ever endured. I screamed in a soundproof lock, as he covered my mouth and became more aggressive. I thought it was the hour of my death. He sodomised me and spent a good time while he had me say sorry for visiting his home at the wrong time.”

Johnson had asked her to stay away that day but she needed an urgent conversation and visited. She saw Sony naked in his home. Karen was accused of being wrong for visiting at that particular time, since Sony had promised Johnson hundreds of thousands from her husband’s savings just after the encounter.

“We had so many fights. Knowing that I was about to lose him made me try to reach out and love him more.” Broken by promiscuity and abuse, she decided to walk away after a last major public beating.

“One Sunday morning, Johnson slapped me over 40 times in a public place,” she disclosed.

Alroy was the man to whom she had become attracted. He told her words she needed to hear.

For months, the relationship was beautiful, but Alroy suddenly became a merciless man, handling her sadistically. He beat her sometimes while she was forced to say “I love you baby.”

Love had grown to become excessively painful, and her compelled confessions became a lie.

“Alroy began to sodomise me, and forced me to do other sexual things I once scorned. It then became the dominant thing in our sexual encounters and even though I’d put up a fight, he was too strong.”

He had assumed the position of being in total control and though she cried bitterly, helplessly, he seemed to have gained pleasure out of her pains.

With the help of a praying friend, Karen walked away.