‘The people I love most lost the mum they relied on and trusted’
Kate Nicholls left the UK to raise her children in exotic Botswana, but the dream was shattered when she was raped, an experience that almost tore the whole family apart...
Rape doesn’t just happen to one person. It happens to the family too: it nearly broke mine.
It’s a gloomy topic, of that there is no doubt. Perhaps one you would prefer not to read about over your morning coffee or whiling away time on a train. But families aren’t gloomy. Spoiler alert: there is a positive ending, so it’s safe to read on.
In 2004 I was raped by three men by the side of a road at knifepoint. I woke the next day, shuddering, changed and still the mother of five children. They were eight, 14, 16, 17 and 23 when it happened: my oldest daughter was living in England with her partner and their baby son. My children were all at different stages of their lives, all needy in different ways, all loving, emotionally intelligent, kind humans. Determined to prove I was not broken, I made pancakes for breakfast: a whole pile of them. The sounds of my family felt echoey and far off: I couldn’t smell my children. I put that down to shock – a pretty sensible thought. I was alive, bruised, purple fingerprints on my throat, no bones broken. Could have been much worse. Get on with it. And I did.
We lived a practical life in our tented lion research camp in the Okavango Delta, Botswana, and work had to be done. The environment was breathtaking but living in the bush is not a safari. Watching ravishing sunsets and having privileged daily encounters with wildlife was made possible by hard graft. Life went on. Lions still had to be observed, and data collected. My four youngest children still had to be homeschooled: two were preparing for university entrance exams, the others were working at their own pace. The lions and home-school kept me going for a while. The unravelling happened over time. Like ice cracking deep inside me, I fragmented. The physiological impact of profound fear changed my internal landscape. I became a stranger to myself. Disassociated from my people, I began drinking. My anger raged untamed. I was going to “get on with it”, I wasn’t going to be beaten by three men. I was omnipotent.
I was deluded.
My children, who remained unfailingly loyal, watched me unravelling. They were afraid and unprotected.
Living with someone who has post-traumatic stress disorder is bewildering, challenging, potentially dangerous and can do long-term harm. When a rape is reported, it is imperative that we consider equally the needs of the victim, and those who will support them on their recovery. It’s the family members who deal with the midnight terrors, the rages, the erratic behaviour, the violence, and the desolation: all the while loving the person who is bewildering them. Families need help.
The model is there – we don’t have to reinvent the wheel. AA and NA have supportive programmes for families and partners, and gaining a deeper understanding is helpful for all parties. Given the prevalence of sexual crime, it is shocking how few studies have been done to help us understand the collateral damage. Results so far are not surprising: families feel a lack of social support, feel vulnerable to their own anxieties and fears, and in need of education on how best to understand the victim’s needs. The studies are helpful, yet they lack nuance. Rape is a crime long shrouded in shame and secrecy: currently, women and men are speaking out, and the shroud is being lifted: I celebrate that. Using our voices is powerful, and I have used my voice to explore an aspect of rape that is rarely discussed. What about raped mothers and their children?
For raped mothers, there is an additional and longlasting layer of shame and guilt that needs to be lifted and examined. No woman wants to be a bad mother. No-one wants to hurt their children. But I did hurt my children. The people I love most in the world lost the mother they had relied on and trusted. They learned to fear me. Simply put, rape broke me and my bewildering, at times dangerous, behaviour finally snapped the umbilical bonds of trust.
I’m not ashamed that I was raped, but I am desolate that while I was healing, I hurt my children. Healing is selfish and isolating. It is a messy, Sisyphean process. It cannot be fitted to a curve: it’s not a neatly balanced equation. Healing is chaotic, muddled, ugly, visionary, enriching, disempowering, bleak, and painful. It happens in quantum time frames, each isolated from the others. My unpredictability was a desolation for my children.
My loving kids celebrated tiny steps, felt relieved when we had good days, were comforted when I seemed to be the mother they knew, and then something would trigger me, and everything would go tits up again. For me, the violation of rape was the loss of empathy. I lost my root. I couldn’t feel. That made me dangerous to my children. I broke their hearts. And it is a testament to how massive their hearts are that I am well today, and our family is powerfully bonded by love and trust: the former was never lost and the latter took time to retrieve.
Eleven years ago, I stopped drinking and focused on rebuilding trust. It’s no fun sharing the fact I hurt the people I love most in the world. But honesty is powerful. More powerful than the men who pinned me down in the sand. In time my empathy returned, my grit re-emerged, and my happiness settled back into my core. The worst part of getting better was confronting the harm I had done. Sadly, my children are not the only children to have suffered collateral damage due to sexual crime. That’s why I’m speaking out.
The secondary victims of rape are everywhere: somewhere on your road; in your classrooms, in your office, maybe sitting next to you on the bus. Across the planet, too many children are being raised by traumatised women. When I moved to Botswana in 1996, I worked for an NGO, Women Against Rape. I have seen raped mothers “getting on with it” going about their daily tasks: collecting water, cooking, going to work, raising their children: shut down and silent. Raped mothers in the Congo and in refugee camps also have no option but to carry on. Broken by brutality.
I am not saying mothers have a worse time. Of course not. That would be ludicrous. But they present a particular set of problems. The poison of rape leaks out onto their offspring. If we can break the taboo of silence, overcome shame, fear of reprisal, embarrassment, guilt, anger, revulsion and the myriad confused emotions that are stirred up by this universal crime we can do so much to help as individuals and communities. Little acts of kindness and compassion, driven by deeper understanding, are profoundly healing in the long term.
I want to end with something one of my children said to me: “Mum, I wish it hadn’t happened to you. I wish it hadn’t happened to us. But getting through it made me who I am today: and I like who I am.”
I like who he is too.
● Under the Camelthorn Tree: The Impact of Trauma on One Family by Kate Nicholls is out in paperback tomorrow (Weidenfeld and Nicholson)