Broken : The Most Shocking Childhood Story Ever Told

by Shy Keenan

I’m not a victim: this word only describes what happened to me; it doesn’t define me. Nor am I a survivor: this almost suggests I’m over it, when this isn’t true either.

I always felt as though I was watching a movie of my life rather than living my life.

I had always felt that I was naughty, dirty, bad, but the horrible was such an everyday part of my life that I was starting to feel like a ‘pervert-maker’. One look at me and everyone from policemen to priests just lost their minds.

I asked myself the same question and the voice in my head suddenly answered: because you were born into a bunch of perverted nutters who sexually abused you because they wanted to and because they could. Because my childhood had been so painful, I felt there ought to be a bigger, more complicated, scientific explanation, but the hard truth is that perverts abuse children because they want to and because they can. They will lie to, separate, divide and conquer everyone they touch, smashing human beings into broken, frightened fragments, leaving them isolated and alone. Some victims will always remain sad shadows of the people they really wanted to be, while others stand and try to fight back. I

I’m sometimes asked if I’m stronger because of what happened to me. My childhood abusers don’t own any part of my survival. I’m not stronger because of them or what they did to me, I’m stronger despite them and because of me.

This vile messenger claimed my child porn smile looked real enough to him and that he was off to have a good night with it! It was then that I realised the full impact of those pictures taken of me. Once taken, it’s like a crime that never stops being committed, a crime that helps another crime be committed, a crime that never lets you forget you were the victim of it.