Julie Mansfield almost had a perfectly normal childhood. Days in St. Thomas, Jamaica, were spent running barefoot across the rich soil and clay caked terrain, climbing trees to pick the sweet fruit, and playing with handmade toys with the neighborhood kids.
In retrospect, Mansfield had a childhood that was sweet and innocent, but at the age of 8 that purity was ripped away when her uncle began to sexually abuse her. For a child growing up with little access to the outside world, the concept of sex was foreign. It wasn’t exactly a conversation that was discussed between adults and prepubescent children. Despite not being able to fully comprehend the seriousness of the situation, Mansfield told her mother about the incident, but it wasn’t until the second occurrence that her mom actually took the matter to the rest of the family.
“It was bizarre and really quite confusing because I didn’t understand why I had to tell my mother more than once before she even approached her parent,” Mansfield recalls. “When she confronted them it was met with disbelief, and they called me a liar and literally threw me out the house.”
Throughout the course of her childhood, she continued to be abused by not just one, but four of the eight uncles that frequented her household. For Mansfield it was a rude awakening, and she’s not the only one. Often these children are victims of repeat offenders — predators devouring their innocence and feeding off the hopes and dreams that often are stripped from their victims. It’s not uncommon for a child to enter into a world of confusion and engage in self-destructive behaviors such as drugs and promiscuity, that in turn become morphine for painful memories.
“I don’t know how I didn’t end up on a street corner somewhere or drugged out or an alcoholic. I think there must have been some divine intervention and somebody looking out for me because I was promiscuous. I didn’t care who I slept with, and just had no self-love. I was looking for love in all of the wrong places. Anytime I had a good relationship I would sabotage it because I didn’t feel worthy and didn’t think that was how I should be treated by a guy, because all of the men in my life were just abusers,” Mansfield says.
Hurt and broken, Mansfield decided that enough was enough, and that she was no longer going to let the guilt and the shame consume her. After almost 30 years of hiding her secret from friends and family, she finally sought help through therapists, but eventually found solace in journaling. Her then husband encouraged her to publish a book, which was later titled Maybe God Was Busy, in an effort to help others going through similar situations. She was hesitant at first, until she discovered that her brother-in-law stole the innocence of her own 11-year-old daughter.
Mansfield began writing about her abuse, speaking out to the public about child sexual abuse, and even informed family members to keep their daughters away from her four uncles. When the uncles received word that Mansfield was writing a book about her experience, their response was less than apologetic.
“One actually called me up and asked me not to say anything, and I was like I cannot not say anything because then I’m complacent with you in my own abuse. When he found out that I was writing a book he sent word that he had his lawyers ready. So I sent word back saying yeah I got them too so go ahead. Another uncle said that he would get someone to come kill me. I’m still waiting for that.”
Although Mansfield has been able to cope with her own situation, she still can’t quite understand why four out of the eight uncles are known abusers. “We’re dealing with an epidemic just within the family. When I decided to turn my diary into a book, I started calling up cousins and sisters and shockingly everyone was saying it happened to them too. I had cousins who were impregnated by their own fathers,” she says.
Despite the threats and the unanswered questions, Mansfield continues to fearlessly speak out against child sexual abuse, and inspire those who have lived through such tragedy to release their pain in a less self-destructive manner. She has made it her personal mission to expose the horrors of the crime and reassign the shame and the darkness that often accompanies abuse to the predators who commit the crime. She challenges those who haven’t experienced child sexual abuse to remain sensitive to the subject, and to take any child who is brave enough to speak out about their abuse seriously.
“We need to put people’s faces, people’s experiences, and people’s pain along with those statistics to show that we’re human beings with hearts and brains and souls that matter; we’re not just numbers,” she says.
As for Mansfield, she still hasn’t quite overcome the pain of her childhood. Although she has been in healthy and loving relationships, she still struggles with the abuse.
“I still sometimes question where was God when I was going through that, and then I think, he saved me from the stripper pole and he saved me from the street corner. Maybe he’s there after all, and he was preparing me for something greater than me. I strongly believe that.”
Read more about how you can help stop child sexual abuse and neglect.
