Last year as part of Independent Media's Don't Look Away campaign we told the story of Candice. The multimedia unit for Independent Media – Mojo (Mobile Journalism) – won second place for best use of video for their work on this piece.
This is Candice's story.
Cape Town – Listening to Candice as she tells me about the sexual abuse she was subjected to at the hands of her father and mother is disturbing for so many reasons, least of all the way she says it in such a matter-of-fact manner. As though she is talking about someone else’s experience and not her own.
It is a detached and detailed account by a young woman subjected to unimaginable cruelty in her formative years.
For the past two months, Candice, 20, has been staying at The Haven Night Shelter in Kensington, Cape Town.
She recently got herself temporary work, and is trying to find peace within herself after being robbed of her childhood from a young age.
“My dad was raping me from when I was small, both of my parents are alcoholics. When I was four I got sent by my mom to live with my aunt in Pretoria.
“My mom was blaming my dad for doing things to me, and he was blaming her.
“Everything was fine for the first six months but then my two nephews, who were six or seven years older than me, started getting me to do hand-stands, and it started out as a game at first.
“But then they started touching my private parts, then they were having sex with me. When I was 10 I told my aunt and she said I was lying and that I was tearing her family apart, so I was sent to a children’s home,” said Candice.
Her brother, who is two years younger, remained in Pretoria, and she has lost all contact with him to this day.
Some months later, Candice’s mother made contact with her, and eventually invited her to spend her holiday in a Karoo town where she had moved after separating from Candice’s dad. Candice had mixed feelings about it, but moved in with her mother and her mother’s new partner, even though her mother was still drinking excessively.
“She showed me my own room and left me to unpack, and later came and sat on the bed and wanted to hug me. I could not hug her.
“I could smell the booze on her and I just could not hug her. She started shouting and screaming at me, and I asked her fiancé to get her away from me,” Candice said.
She was taken out of school because her mother could not afford school fees and alcohol.
“My mom knew a lot of men who needed certain stuff done to them, and that is where I came in.
“My mom sold me for sex, and sometimes she would sit in to see that I did not try anything to get away from it. If I did, I would get beaten up,” Candice said.
Someone saw, and looked away.
When she turned 18 she returned to Cape Town to live with her dad and his new wife, but that didn’t work out because of constant fighting between the couple, which led to her father kicking Candice out, telling her he didn’t want anything more to do with her. Ever again.
“I thought things would be different, but they were just the same,” she said.
She got a job working at a back-packers, and one day after being shouted at like she was an animal, she decided “Enough is enough!” She went to live on the streets at Bloubergstrand. It was here where she was helped to get to The Haven.
Candice is working through her pain, using music and writing a journal. Much of it is writing letters of encouragement to herself.
“I am not planning on going back to my family, but I forgive them for what they did to me. I have to work through what they did, but it will take time. I want to get a degree in early childhood development so that I can help other children,” she said.
Candice looks forward to the day that she can find a place of her own, live independently and build a new life.
She had this to say about abuse of children: “Listen to someone when they are telling you they are being abused, especially if it’s your child.”