“As I reached the other side of the river, it started raining and the God-sent water washed away all the dirt that was on my body.”

I am 25 years old and I have three daughters who are under seven years old. My life has always been full of difficulties. I did not know my father during my childhood and lived with my mother and her partner. My mother had two sons from her partner. I witnessed my mother getting beaten. She was even threatened to be beheaded by the man I used to call father. We were all living with the mother of my step-father. She did not like me at all. I slept in the kitchen where there were rats. My mother had to stay quiet as we had nowhere else to go. When my mother was not home, the woman hit me hard. I was so traumatised that I, very often, wet my bed.

One day, there was a flood. My step-father was completely drunk and he took my step-brothers to the river. They nearly drowned. After this incident my mother decided to leave my step-father. But he prevented her from taking my step-brothers. She took only me along with her. She soon went into the vicious circle of alcohol. She started to hook up with men and brought me along with her. These men tried to touch me when my mother fell asleep. I shouted with all my force trying to wake up my mother. Later she got another partner. They robbed supermarkets at night. One day, my mother’s partner tried to sexually abuse me.

I did not know why but my mother used to dress me like a boy. One day when I was about five years old, she sent me to fetch papers from her partner’s place. Walking alone in the street, I passed by a shop and an unknown man called me, pretending to know my mother. He said that he would take me to fetch some sugar cane for my mother. Tempted by the sugar cane, I followed the man on a long road leading to a sugar cane field. When we were at some distance in the sugar cane field, the man ordered me to remove my pants and underwear. I refused and started crying. He managed to remove my clothes and was about to rape me when an idea flashed in my mind. I shouted and told him that there were people as well as the police around. He immediately turned around to look.

I quickly kicked him off and ran for my life. I had no choice but to cross a black river full of garbage. I do not know how I survived this ordeal at an early age of five. As soon as I reached the other side of the river, it started raining and the God-sent water washed away all the dirt that was on my body. When I got back home, I did not have the courage to tell my mother what had happened. I knew she would not believe me as she never did. I just told her that I could not get the papers she requested. She was wild with me.

After some time, we went to stay with my mother’s friends. One day my mother went to the nightclub with her friends, leaving me alone with an unknown man. I went out onto the roads and started looking for her, crying and asking every passing person if they had seen my mother. Fortunately, I came across one of my cousins, who took me to my aunt’s place. As the latter could not take care of me, she took me to the police station and I was sent to a children’s shelter. The carers and my little friends did their best to distract me from thinking about my lost mother. The sorrows and pains were too tough to bear and I could not get over the sense of being abandoned by my own mother.

After five long years at the shelter, my mother, finally, came to visit me. She came a few times and then stopped completely. I moved back and forth between shelters. After several years my mother came to visit me again. She told me that she was going to take me home this time. I jumped with joy and waited for her. She never came. All my hopes turned into despair. I became violent and started to rebel. I turned my frustrations on my carers and the other children at the shelter. I became verbally and physically violent towards the others. I hit them and was finally referred to the psychiatric hospital for treatment. The drugs given to me made me feel sleepy and confused instead of dulling down my anger.

I was sent to the Rehabilitation Youth Center and I kept asking myself what I did to deserve all this. Every weekend, my friends got visits from their relatives who brought them clothes and gifts. No one visited me. On special occasions like Christmas and other festivities I borrowed clothes from my friends. I asked a visiting social worker if she knew about my biological father. I thought she would never revert to me; but one day she told me that she met my uncle in prison and got some information about my father.

My father finally came to visit me. I saw him for the first time and could not stop crying while hugging him. This was the best day of my life, filled with hopes and love. When I turned 18 years old, he took me to his home where he had a wife and three sons. All my hopes and ambitions were vanished. My father prevented me from going out. He told me I would end up like my mother if I went out. I insisted on going out behind his back and he would constantly insult me for that. When I met my first partner, I started rebelling even more against my father and he would react rashly.

I left my father’s house to go to my mother’s little house in the woods. Sometime later, I learned that I was three months pregnant. My boyfriend took me to live at his mother’s place. There, his mother and neighbours gossiped that my baby was not from my boyfriend but from one of my previous affairs because my belly was too big for 3 months of pregnancy. I later learned that I was pregnant with twins. I was stressed because I did not know how I would provide for two children in my precarious situation. My partner listened to bad rumours about me bearing someone else’s baby and hit me violently. He threw away all the baby clothes that I had bought.

I went to a shelter for women, where I prematurely gave birth to my twins at six months of pregnancy. When I went back to live with my partner, he tried to physically assault me when I was breastfeeding. I dodged the blow but my partner’s fist went straight to my premature baby’s face, hurting her badly. My mother-in-law prevented me from reporting the case to the police as she did not want her son to get into trouble. My babies and I had to suffer in silence. I finally moved, once again, from shelter to shelter before hearing about Safe Haven Halfway Home. I immediately took the bus to come to Saint Pierre, with my luggage and carrying my two baby girls in my arms. It was such a relief for me to be there at that moment. Unfortunately, my anger issues resulted in my expulsion from the shelter.

I went back to my partner and we were unexpectedly living a happy life for some months. It was the life that I had always dreamed of, with a loving husband and children. I found out I was pregnant again and we had to move back into his mother’s house, where abuse and rumours became a living hell. My partner’s brother was a drug addict and one day I caught one of my babies playing with one of his used syringes. Everyone treated me like I was a slave. I had to work, cook, clean while they did nothing in their own house. I decided to leave my partner and I asked the manager of SHHH to take me back.

I recently learned that my partner went back to the mother of his first child and I felt heartbroken. I was submerged by a feeling of guilt for having left him; for having denied my children of having a father. I know the loneliness of growing up without a father. I tried to end my life by taking lots of medicines at the same time. Fortunately, the staff of SHHH came to my rescue. They helped me to recover physically, and motivated me to move forward with my life. I am well surrounded and taken care of. My hope is to get rid of all the miseries I have been through.

My aim in life is to buy a house for my children and myself. I want my children to have a place of their own. I will teach them not to let anything break their bonding. I want my children to have a good life, a life that I did not get the chance to have. A life full of care, love and affection.