Juliet Ibrahim shares her sexual abuse story
The discussion around sexual violence against women doesn’t seem to be ending anytime soon as more survivors are coming out to share their stories, so as to heal and also bring their perpetrators to book.
For actress Juliet Ibrahim, who recently became an author, sharing her experience with sexual violence through her book, “A Toast to Life,” was a way to heal.
The actress, during a radio interview, revealed that her experience with sexual abuse started from age 8 and they were by her granduncle, her cousins and a stranger. Sadly, none of her immediate family knew about her experiences until they recently read her book.
She said,
Yes, I have been sexually molested. I really spoke about a lot in the book and people are asking me why a toast to life. A toast to life because I’m celebrating my life and people were like, you didn’t wait till you were like 50 or 60 to write a book. You’re 33 and you’re writing a book and I’m like, it’s because I’ve gone through so much that even someone who is 60 years old has probably not experienced what I have gone through.
I’ve experienced molestation, rape and domestic violence. It’s a lot and it’s not like I only spoke about bad experiences in my book, I also spoke about good ones too.
With molestation, I have four different recounts in my book and it started from about 8 years old and that was my grand-uncle, then cousins.
With my grand-uncle, I was able to fight it off and then my cousin, who I was very close to and couple of years later was someone, a regular who bribed my nanny so that he could come into the house whenever my parents weren’t around to do whatever he wanted to do and I fought him off. I was about 14 years old at the time.
I’ve actually dealt with everything. I’ve been able to heal. Writing the book was my therapy to just let it all out. Most of the things in the book, my family found out while reading the book.
