Behind Closed Doors: Facing Harassment Within Family Walls
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What no one wants to Admit
It was the middle of the night when I woke up to someone grazing their face near mine, kissing me. At first I thought it was my toddler brother. I don’t know, I was still in a hazy state. It was when the hand slipped under my clothes to touch my private part that it hit me, “It’s not him.”
It was my 13 year old brother. I felt this intense disgust and fear. It took everything to keep my eyes shut to look like I’m sleeping, but I needed this to stop already. I quickly took a turn to my side which caused him to frantically move away and lay back on the sofa to pretend to be sleeping.
Then I sat up on my bed and stared at him, apparently sleeping, trying to figure out if he just did all this in his sleep. I was so disturbed and scared. My younger brother touching me like that. Did that mean… God, no, please, no. I wanted to find out what the hell had just happened. And that I am not alone in this.
So I went to the TV lounge where the laptop was. I searched about younger brothers touching or fondling older siblings at night during sleep and found stories about it on Quora. Reading some of them made me so scared because younger siblings or cousins did the same things to the person and things ended badly. Relationships destroyed, things not the same anymore.
But thankfully, I found a news article from several years ago about a man who was about to get charged for molesting his older sisters when they were children. But the sisters said that this was when they were children. The description was similar to what I had been through. When the parents came to know, they sent him to Church camp, and when he came home, the brother was sorry for what he did, he had realised what he had done was wrong and so the sisters were able to forgive and still retain their relationship. The only problem in all of this was that the news got out about this, the police was about to get involved but things had already been straightened out.
It was this story that gave me hope that I don’t have to stay silent about this. I can confront him about this without destroying our innocence, our frankness.
In the morning, I told my Ammi what happened and as expected she was shocked and worried. We didn’t have time to talk more as I had to go to college. I remember the whole time, during classes, I was just zoned out, trying very hard to not think about the night.
It was hard because you usually hear it’s the father, older brother or cousin, uncle, or grandfather. And it’s intentional. But in my case, it was my four years younger brother, who has a very innocent and submissive nature. A sensitive and caring soul.
“Oh, they all look innocent but on the inside, they have these fantasies of which they’re too scared of anyone knowing.”
All he cared about was watching videos of cats and doing karate. I had even checked that night his search history across YouTube and Google.
“Incognito mode exists, dude.”
The one thing because of which I believed this wasn’t entirely as dark as any outsider would make it out to be is because when he did those things, he was very shy and hesitant of it. As if he wasn’t sure what he was doing.
“Well, that’s because he was trying not to wake you up.”
Maybe. But I know him. He’s my friend. These were his repressed feelings.
This however did not mean that I forgave him. I was very much angry and disgusted by it.
Once I came back home from college, I met up with Ammi. She said the whole day she was disturbed by this. But she didn’t know how to handle this problem. She was scared of confronting about this with my brother because he’d be too ashamed to talk. And I knew that too. That’s part of his submissive nature. But I needed him to know somehow that what he had done was wrong. Ammi said that she’d talk about this with Abbu and that he’d somehow explain my brother.
I didn’t trust my Abbu for I felt like he won’t properly explain to him.
And I know that he didn’t get through to him. Why? Because my brother came again a few days later at night. From his own room across mine. This time, I woke up to him touching my private parts and this time I showed myself awoken to him to see how he’d react. And quickly pretended to have entered my room to go to the storage room which was in my room, pretending to get something and then quickly went out.
I told Ammi about this. She was horrified. And I was becoming distressed. Apparently, she told Abbu again, Abbu explained to him again, but he came a few days later again, but this time, I happened to wake up exactly to the sound of my bedroom door slightly opening and so I quickly sat up. It kept opening slightly more and more until he peeked in. I asked him what is it. He made up an excuse for the storage room.
I let this go. I tried to bury all of this. And I knew that this was actually unhealthy to do, that if I ignore this, it will sooner or later come back to haunt me somehow if I don’t deal with my feelings. The feelings which had become violent. I had begun to fantasise beating my brother up, scolding and shouting at him. But I knew that if he just knew that what he’d done was wrong, he’d be embarrassed and very sorry for it and would repent.
Things went well for a few months until the flashbacks and violent thoughts came back crawling. I confessed about them to Ammi and she asked me if I wanted to see a therapist for it. But what was the therapist going to tell me what I didn’t already know? I would be told to confront him about it but it would not end well; not without him being embarrassed to the point of avoiding me forever.
Several months passed and these feelings came back again and this time I was afraid I might actually bash his head. I was scared that these feelings were subtly influencing my harsh behaviour towards him.
I was watching a video on Determinism in which Robert Sapolsky was interviewed on it. That interview made me realise the validity of determinism but my only concern was then how do you deal with criminals? If we should not punish criminals, no matter how severe their crimes, with violent punishments because it was all meant to happen, then how should they be dealt with to make sure they do not harm society again?
To that, Sapolsky answered with the example of prison system of Norway, where criminals are corrected through rehabilitation for as long as needed until they have shown progress in reformation.
Therapy. Redemption. Forgiveness.
My Ammi picked me up from college after I’d given my exam paper. And I began talking with her about that video on Determinism.
“So my concern was about how would criminals be punished if they didn’t deserve to just be hanged or given a life sentence in jail or tortured in some way? And Dr. Sapolsky talked about correction centres and rehabilitattion, that they should be reformed by redeeming them. By making them understand that what they did was wrong so they willingly chose to change themselves for the better. It’s all about making sure the person no longer holds beliefs and thoughts which influence them and makes them feel justified in hurting others.”
“Hmm, yes, that makes sense,” my Ammi agreed.
“And that’s how I realised that that’s what I want from my brother. I want to see genuine guilt and to know that he’s really sorry so I can be rest assured that he won’t grow up to be a bad person.”
Ammi was silent for a while then she asked, “How do you plan to achieve this?”
“…I will become more friendly with him so that we build more trust, enough trust that one day, I will discuss this topic with him openly without him feeling attacked, and hopefully he will understand his actions as mistakes and feel sorry about them without my pressure for him to be sorry.”
And so I am waiting for that time, and it’s the only thing keeping me sane. This incident is unique in the sense that I am sure this happens much more commonly than any household would be willing to admit. Because this is a sexual harassment done out of a pubescent boy’s curiosity, not malicious intent. But talking about it feels scary out of fear of fracturing familial bonds beyond repair, an uncomfortable topic. This is exactly why sex education should be taught from a young age, even before children reach puberty. It will not cause them to become sex crazed as our society irrationally fears. On the contrary, they pretty much forget about it because it’s just not that interesting.
