To 'That' Uncle

Dear Uncle, After all that's been done you want to know how I am? Whether it's been hours, or whether years and years, shame and guilt at knowing you might be the same. If you stop reading this now you might be able to escape realizing more, but already you can never go back to the time when things were clean, trusting, honest; the link between us has been soiled. When you take away a child's innocence it can never be regained. And I now tell you about it, since you ask how I am, with the hope that you never reach for another child in that way, a way that is entirely selfish, self-gratifying, and fills the innocent with horrible fear that the things you do, or did, will be discovered.

That deep dark secret that you imposed on me when I was just a child did not let me ever be totally honest, totally innocent, totally trusting of any one at all as I grew up. No friend, no adult, nobody at all ever heard about what you did with me, to me. But my inability to tell them meant that I could never be truthful. I could never be unguarded. I could never be unashamed. I could never be innocent. I could not see sex as something special or sacred or even beautiful until I overcame the sense of it being sordid, secretive, underhanded, fearful, and lowly. You took away my chances of being ordinary, of being honest, truthful, innocent, pure, untainted, and by your selfish actions you left me to fend for myself against all adults, all friends, quite sure that I would never tell, I suppose, since in those days the shame, the consequences, were so severe that quite evidently I was unable to divest myself of the great burden of being involved in homosexual acts, a little child though I was when it was done. May such fear and degradation of innocence never be imposed on another, ever again. I beg you.

That your actions, uncle, lead me always to examine life is not directly due to you but to me. I made it my purpose. Other nieces and nephews of yours may not have escaped your clutches as they grew into adulthood; their wounds may never have healed into scars. And as I scratch at the scar of your memory now, since you ask after me, I do so for the sake of sharing with all my readers the caution to watch their children with uncles such as you. And to share with those victims of similar atrocity the sense of release of shame and guilt, and the real need to reveal the perpetrator, men like you, so that the children in contact with 'caretakers' like you might be protected. Millions upon millions.

All my readers? Yes, into perpetuity. History itself will record the wrongdoing. Children can grow to be public figures. And you have been found out. Why? Not for vengeance, but for the protection of others. Not that you now be punished, vilified, but be seen to be a danger to children. That we might help you, have compassion for your circumstances, forgive you for your inability to be other than who you are; these are the things of a mature and caring society. But the first order of any given day is that you be revealed!

If you loathe me for revealing you, for 'now' telling others, for now taking the lid off what happened, ‘so very long ago’, then think on this; that which uncles such as you do stains the very future of each child you so despoil. And not every child so abused grows up compassionate, loving, gentle, forgiving, understanding; research shows that a great many grow up to be abusers too. Or damaged. Insecure. Soiled. Shamed.

"How am I?" you ask. Pleased to get this off my chest. Hoping good may come of you.