Bouncing back after being molested at six
DOREEN Newton has been sexually molested, raped and abused countless times, begining when she turned six years old.
As a result, she fell into a state of depression and self-destruction, turning to smoking, drinking, gunslinging, prostitution, and lesbianism in a desperate attempt to numb her pain. But all that ended three years ago when her life turned around miraculously.
“Growing up in Brown’s Town, St Ann in a small, forgotten district called Caledonia, my mother had 13 children; two of whom died. I am not close to any of my family,” the mother of two said. “My father died from we were small, and so my mother gave away some of us because she said we were too much so she could not manage.
“People encouraged her to give away some of her children. She gave away four of us — all of us girls. It was eight of us as girls,” added Newton, now aged 40.
It marked the start of her woes.
“The lady she gave me to had this brother who used to come there. And every time that man come there he would molest me. I was six. By the time I was 10 I started smoking weed. Even when I was going to primary school I was smoking. In order to get over certain things I would just smoke,” she told the Jamaica Observer last week.
“She had a niece there, but she used to treat her like royalty. Whenever she got things from foreign she would give her the new ones and give me the old ones. But I just said I was a stranger and visitor so it didn’t really matter. I just take what I got.”
Newton said that she didn’t get a chance to do much in school because by the time she got there she was too tired from having to work on the farm and feeding pigs.
“The people dem just had me as slave. It was just work, work, work. When you get little time to eat something it was a blessing,” she said. “Not even bathroom she didn’t want me to use, and I had to go downstairs; and there used to be some guys who used to smoke in the washroom and that is where I had to wash my clothes and bathe.”
When she could take it no longer, Newton dashed off to Runaway Bay.
“You had a lady who used to teach by the school and she used to say she live down Runaway Bay, and because that teacher used to be nice I just say I would like to live with somebody like that. The lady had her family, but because I was so little I didn’t know nothing ’bout that. So I just say she would take me in. I just went there and ask question and people show me her house, and the lady said ‘no’ she don’t want any children at her house,” Newton went on.
As she walked the street wondering what to do, the 10-year-old met a vendor, whom she lied by telling her that her mother had died. After hearing of this and taking her to the police station the woman decided to keep the child.
“You ever hear about jump out of frying pan jump into fire?” Newton asked. “That was even worse, because I went right into her son now, and him start the molestation to. So it was like you don’t know which way to turn.”
She said that, as a result, she developed a ‘war-like spirit’ in which she would always be fighting, involved in stabbing incidents and was angry all the time.
“I used to just live, not knowing where I was going or what I was about … nothing; no education, no nothing,” she said. “Nobody never business about me.”
She lived there for about three years, enduring physical abuse by day and sexual abuse at nights.
“Him used to go on with all sorts of things and say if I told anybody, what and what he would do. But you just thinking that you are a child and if they throw you out you have nowhere to go, so you just stay and keep quiet.”
All this time she had no contact with her mother and 10 siblings.
“So when people see you run away, they say you a worthless pickney cause you run way to go live with people in a big house. But they don’t understand that when you run away is certain things you run out of,” Newton said.
By the time she became a young teen, Newton started babysitting for someone in the community. However, despite being paid, she had to give all her earnings to the woman she was staying with because she had broken a mirror in an abandoned room for which she was being charged.
“Every single dollar the lady take it say is payment for her glass. One day the girl I was babysitting for ask how come she don’t see me buying anything for myself and I told her the lady took it, and she said I should not be paying for one glass so long, so she ask if I wanted to come live with her,” Newton recalled. “I was so happy when she said come, because I said it was better than nothing. It never too nice, but it was better because it was just me and the little baby there in the days,” she explained. “Her mother used to go and come. Her mother used to take drugs, and when the daughter not there, she used to carry man to the house.”
Newton was again taken in by another woman, but again, she claimed, she was treated like a dog. She was by then 18.
“Her children dem used to beat me for no reason at all,” she said. “She had two big daughters and their children lived there too. They beat me ‘in a season’ and ‘out of season’. You all ah walk and pickney ah kick you,” she said.
But she said that there were some Jehovah’s Witnesses living next door who realised how she was being treated and offered her food when no one else was around. One day one of the Witnesses asked Newton if she wanted to live with them and, despite the fear that she may be treated just as badly, she accepted.
“That is why I can tell you that it doesn’t matter which church you go, some people just different. I went over there and the people dem treat me good. This was the first I know of good treatment. They started teaching me to read, they did Bible study, and every little thing they tried to push me in. They made me feel like a part of the family. They insisted that I visit my mother, and even pack a bag with grocery and give me to give her.”
This was her first visit to her mother since she was six.
Newton said that she was excited when her mother gave her the telephone numbers of her sisters living in downtown Kingston, as she had always wanted to know what it would be like to have family around.
“I told myself that life must be better now because I was going among family,” she said. “It was the worst mistake of my life!” Even today I tell myself that if I had stayed with those Jehovah Witness people I would be better off. But they say you cannot fly up in God’s face, because he knows the plans he has for my life. I can testify to what people say when they say stranger treat you better than family.”
Not knowing Kingston, her mother had arranged for an elderly man, whom she said was Newton’s cousin, to take her to meet her two sisters in Kingston. When they got to Kingston the man insisted that he would not take her to meet them unless she had sex with him. They did. But instead of completing the journey, he left her stranded and went his way.
With the help of a woman she eventually found her sisters.
But after a short time living with them, Newton said that her sisters insisted that she fend for herself by ‘looking man’ as she was an adult.
“Poor dem didn’t know that I never even start living the life of a pickney yet, much less big woman,” she said. “That time I was 22, but I never feel like a big woman. I did not know how childhood stay, because I was forced to grow up.”
New in town and knowing no one else to turn to for help, she did what her sisters suggested. She soon got pregnant and was left to care for the child on her own since it wasn’t a love relationship but one based upon sex for survival.
“Everything just go downhill from there ’cause I start keep all kind of bad man company now. Mi start knock head with bad company and now mi start to carry all gun; man a run through yard throw gun give mi; mi a hide gun fi people, oh God,” she said. “Is my sister first make mi know gun ’cause mi never know nothing ’bout gun. So it just seem like mi just get in this gun business, and because mi used to smoke and dem things deh, mi just jump in it. So now mi start handle gun and start go dance and gone all ’bout now and start explore. I start to bore (pierce) up myself and start do everything now. I did not even memba that I have pickney ’cause I was saying I didn’t even done grow, so mi never know nothing ’bout pickney.”
Newton would leave her baby with her sister while she went to dance and tried to have a good time, while also working her day job at the Kingston Free zone.
“Oh God, mi used to do whole heap a robbery, mi go on robbery wid man — but that guy is now dead, his name was Alton. Mi and him used to involve, but that was his type a thing,” she explained. “So during the day now I would keep his gun and him gone ’bout him business ’cause him do all a little day work building board houses and then him come back night-time for it.”
Newton said that she even went with him on one of his robbery exploits.
“Mi never have any fear, it come like a nuh nothing. When mi downtown and see dem shoot man on the road I would just step over him and gone,” she said. “Mi see blood a run and it come like nothing, it come like it’s just a normal living to me. I am not afraid of dead body, I go in dead house and just walk ’round like it was nothing, it just come like nothing to me, nothing at all… guess is the way I grow up.”
And with all that, Newton confessed that she also lived the life of a prostitute, giving sexual favours to married men in particular, in exchange for money.
She confessed, too, of having done an abortion and also living with a woman in a lesbian relationship for years.
“I used to live with a gentleman and him used to link up this girl who worked at Fort Augusta. But I never know that the girl was a lesbian. I never know that is me she want. So she mash up mi relationship with my babyfather after she tell lie that him molest her daughter.”
Not knowing the woman’s intentions at the time, and believing that her child’s father was guilty of what he was accused of, especially having gone through similar experiences, Newton left the man and moved in with the woman.
“I never know is not true until a few years ago when the daughter same one tell me that is when she was big woman she lose her virginity,” Newton said, explaining that the man ended up doing time in prison for the alleged crime.
Today, Newton has changed her entire lifestyle and is focused on giving her two daughters the life she never had.
“I have never celebrated a Christmas or a birthday. At one point, I didn’t even know how old I was. I have never given my children a Christmas, but this year that is something I want to do.”
As a single mother working in a supermarket in Spanish Town, though, she said that she might not be able to.
“My wish would be to give my children a Christmas,” she said.
Though her life has been a tough one, Newton said that her emotional and spiritual change came three years ago when she gave her life to the Lord.
“I grew up rough,” Newton said. “But somebody invited me to church in Gordon Pen, Spanish Town, and I just decided one Sunday night that I would go. When I went into the church my head was red like fire and I was stink of rum — drunk like bat — because I just tell myself I didn’t have anything living for.”
While standing at the altar, and told by the pastor to repeat the name of Jesus, the scent of the rum that came from her mouth could drunk the congregation, she reckoned.
“I don’t know what happen that night, but my life was never the same,” Newton, who now sings on her church choir, said. “And from I made that commitment, I don’t turn back. I got messed up once in the early part when I just start, and my pastor gave it to me. Is only the belt did leave for him to go for. Him make sure tell me say, ‘Sister Newton, I see something in you that I don’t see in nobody’. My life just start from there and I started getting some ‘vision’ and just start worship God, because Him say leave everything to him…cast your cares upon him. Once your body clean he will work with your body. And I am telling you that I am holding on you to him. I am holding on, and one day, one day.”
Newton is now bent on moving on with her life and getting past all that she has been through. She feels that she is now ready to be married and be part of a committed relationship while also doing her best to protect her children from the life that she has lived.
However, Newton said that things are not easy financially as her earnings from the supermarket job not enough to meet their daily needs and those of her children. She wants to be able to give her children some of the things she never had, one of which is a Christmas they can remember … something that is foreign to her.
