There is a good and bad about everything that we do whether it is personal or not, but my perception about life is to set my individual soul free and aspire to doing what is right as a living being.
Personally, I believed in the humanistic concept of life and fairness where everyone shall be treated equally regardless of their status in life even if they are at life’s advantage or disadvantages.
Growing up mostly with my grandparents, I saw my grandmother prayed three times a day and mostly during those moments she cried each time and became very emotional.
As a child, I just couldn’t understand why my grandmother would become intensely emotional during her prayer.
At one precise moment, I had the courage to ask my grandmother why she would normally cry when she prays.
She said to me (“In this family’s household, there are so many sins in this house, that’s why i’m normally crying; i want god to wash all of these sins away.”
My grandmother was a dedicated Christian, and may her soul rest in peace. (I’ll always love her dearly).
As I matured, I slowly became to realize my grandmother’s frustration in that deeply rooted darker side of our family, the reason she cried each time during her prayer for the family I cherry and admired as a child.
I came to a subtle realization that our family is like any other family.
A family that has skeleton in their closets with a black devil, or as the phraseology goes referring to someone as “snake in the grass.”
If your family has not been subjected to such immorality, I absolutely envy you and take my hat up to you, and I ask that you accept my apology for transferring this situation on you.
Both my mother and grandmother passed on with the heavy burden of securing the deepest secrete that have been truncated in the family approximately four decades.
In the Afro Centric setting, parents are over burden and degraded when one of their children become the descriptive analogy in the prior expression, yet as an educated person, I realized the initial mistake(s) that were made by our parents and other senior members who knew what was happening and could not take appropriate actions to exterminate the secret and savage the family repetition.
Either those senior members were themselves incompetent, or just decided to look the other way pretending that we’re normal family.
I have decided to encourage other families who have endured such humiliation to take a different approach to end the unfortunate situations that many other families have tolerated for so long.
I do not want this new generation family to take the same path as my of our forefathers did that resulted to destroying everyone’s life and amounted to psychological problems.
Already, there are female relatives who have reported cases of sexual allegations against another close male family member of which their parents kept secret until their demise.
Those alleged sexual assaults on immediate family members have definitely traumatized their entire family for uncountable numbers of years. The result, to this date, has been mentally catastrophic and pain inflicted.
Pragmatically, after a long soul searching, and internally debating with myself, I concluded that I will champion the call that families should no longer endorse any one psycho pathetic individual who have repeatedly engaged in acts that will hurt female family members including those who have kept it secret.
They are engaged in unlawful and harmful acts that are destroying the value a family).
If we consider ourselves as normal human beings and do not take appropriate action(s) to curtail these kinds of behaviors, it will affect our younger generation and diminish the family values indefinitely.
Perhaps, our people may conclude that I am exposing our traditional norms which most of them are so proud to defend in the name of keeping family value, but essentially, I’m convinced that these steps are part of my obligation to expose those ills and harmful traditional practices which has resulted to a negative impact on many families.
And that this should mark the beginning of doing the right thing and also protect our sisters who are constantly victimized. I feel that the perpetrators have been covered and protected in this case by everyone keeping it private and the victims are left without legal or any family protections.
In retrospect, I called one closed family member who may have known this problem for a long time, but attempted to dissuade me from taking this approach.
The fact that everyone in the family has been emotionally, psychologically, and mentally affected by only one individual’s behavior, I drew my conclusion to go public from the premise that if you’re not part of the problem, you could be part of the solution – (Prior to my narrative.
While I have enormous respect for our tradition and equally the role our parents, grand-parents and great-grand parents played in making us live up to those respectable norms for family value; I similarly hold them accountable for not taking the appropriate and resolute measures at the time to resolve these inappropriate behaviors when it initially emerged in the family.
These incidents have several years of emotional scars on our families.
Usually, when I meditate on these situations that have occurred in our families, the one question that normally comes to mind is why a devoted God fearing grandparents born sons who have brought so much disgrace to their family.
I have tried on many occasions to arrive at a reason why such thing happens or why one family member will sexually attacked another member? There could be a reason for this kind of predatory behavior.
Either the perpetrator himself may have once been molested as a child or he may have early stage of mental condition left untreated for several years and no one recognizes it. On the contrary, the perpetrator is an addict that does not realize his own mental state.
Therefore, in my opinion, both the victims and the perpetrator need medical and psychological attention. Addiction is a disease, and there are few kinds of addiction that our Liberian society does not recognize neither do they realize that these addictions could result to long term family dramatization, instability, mental anguish, prostitutions, social unrest, and many more.
Alcoholism, Drug addiction, Sexual Addiction, Gambling, Physical violence, Emotional instability are all treatable diseases, but if left untreated for a longer period of time, it tends to affect individuals with these diseases and those around them. People with those treatments issues are not real men.
Being a real man is when a person is placed in an awkward position; his level of maneuverability (reasoning) determines the manhood or levels of maturity. Psychology has taught us that every human being walking the face of the earth have two ages –
(1) The Chronological age of the person represents the number age of an individual and
(2) The Maturational age of a person represents the maturity level of an individual and those two must correlate. If they do not, it is an indication of psychological problem.
A real man is one that recognizes a female family even if he sees the split between her legs
A real man understands when a female says no
A real man does not violently penetrate a woman even if she in a vulnerable position
A real man does not sleep with his family wife
A real man does not sleep with little kids
A real man is trusted with others’ kids
A real man has female friends
A real man has control over his sexual organ
Those are few characteristics of real men
In closing, I like to reaffirm my commitment in exposing such inhumane act which has desecrated family’s norms. We call on all family leaders, religious and traditional groups to join the campaign in ensuring that people who are repeatedly involve in the practice of sexual molestation particularly against the very family they claimed to cherished, are prosecuted under the laws.
I want to emphasize that our sole interest is to see such behavior eradicated from this modern days of civilization and therefore call on families to never again choose to compromise or result to family settlement whenever cases of such occur.
This act must end now. Stop sexual molestation against your family members, stop sexual harassment against our sisters. We are tire seeing such attitudes in our society.
Finally, if you are someone who has been sexually molested or you may know someone who may have been sexually molested, please join me to appeal to the Liberian Government to legislate bills that would protect innocent children from this kind of wicked behavior.
Our societal obligations can either develop a healthy environment for our next generation or we can continue to disapprove this epidemic and turn our next generation into lasting victims.
Amos Emmanuel Gbeintor, Sr.
A US-Based Liberian
