FACE TO FACE WITH MY ABUSER

The internet makes tracing people so easy these days. Actually maybe it makes it too easy.

When I was online the other evening and playing the game of 'where are they now?' I found myself in a couple of keystrokes coming face to face with the family 'friend' who had molested me when I was seven years old.

Yes, I was wondering what had become of him and curious enough to make a search, but I hadn't expected to hit on picture of him just-like-that.

I'm 45 and in the overall scheme things I wouldn't say the incident was hugely traumatic but I did feel a terrible tightening in my stomach on seeing this face after nearly forty years.

More significantly though, the incident is undoubtedly key to the suppression of my homosexuality for so many years. It was the revelation of it to an older brother that had me sworn to silence and implicated as being gay - a consequence of which, I was assured, would be my father ejecting me from the house.

For God's sake, I was barely eleven at the time and that was some heavy wrap to be hit with at such a tender age. I recall exactly the spot where I was, the time of the day, the coat on a hook in the hall, and the deep feeling of shame welling up inside me. Memories indelibly burnt into my psyche.

The molestation had been a walk in the park by comparison to this treatment being meted on me - and yes, I have often speculated on what treatment my brother might also have been subjected to be so keen to turn the tables on me.

As for my abuser. I don't view him with particular malice. The extent of his molestation was no worse than him making me lie on him in his flat and embrace him while he put his hands down my trousers and fondled my arse. At least, as far as I can recall.

What does trouble me though is the total abuse of trust he engaged in, both of me and of my parents who would have trusted him utterly.

To drive me to his flat in a premeditated act, knowing exactly what he had in mind to do. To have the presence of mind to close his curtains to conceal his despicable deed. To have exploited a child's innocence and lack of suspicion. To have engaged in an act that was so wrong, wrong, wrong.

Whatever, in his picture he's looking positively relaxed and untroubled, but what about other children that he might have similarly abused? Did it at any stage go beyond hands down the trousers?

I dread to think. SM/LG