Trigger warning: discussion of abuse
From primary school all the way through to matric, we all had the subject called Life Orientation/Skills. In those classes, we were taught about safety, about boundaries, and about what to do if someone hurt you, general things like self-esteem, how to deal with peer pressure and bullying, etc. We were taught that if someone touched you inappropriately, if someone made you uncomfortable, or if something happened that felt wrong, you were supposed to tell someone.
Tell a teacher….Tell an adult…Speak up. Protecting yourself meant speaking up
Me being the young, naïve girl I was, I was not aware of the dynamics that existed in my family. I grew up in a home shaped by religion, conservatism, and a very strong sense of family loyalty. In our household, some things simply were not spoken about, and some things were never supposed to leave the house…Family matters stayed in the family.
For a long time, those two lessons existed side by side in my life without me realizing how different they were…Until one day they collided.
I was still in primary school when it happened. I remember the day clearly because I was wearing my netball uniform. We had a match later that afternoon, and the period before all the netball girl where told to go change into their netball uniform, and the next period was LO.
During the LO class, we were reading a story about a girl who had been abused and raped by her uncle, and how she overcame her fear and told her mother what had happened to her. As the teacher went through the story with us, it hit home. Because something like that had already happened to me.
A few months back, we had been at a family event. It was getting late, so they decided to send all the kids home with one of the sober uncles. One of my uncles was extremely drunk and was just causing a ruckus, so they decided to send him back with us. When we got home most of the kids went to sleep, but my cousin and I stayed up to watch Tv. Then the drunk unlce came up to us and demanded that we give him the money we received that day as gifts to him so that he could buy more alcohol. When we both refused, he resorted to violence and groped us.
We were young. We were scared. And he made it very clear that we were not supposed to tell anyone.
So when I sat in that Life Orientation classroom, in my netball uniform, listening to a story about a girl abused by her uncle, I started crying. I couldn’t stop it. The story was too close to what had happened to me.
After the class I went to the office. Someone asked me why I was crying. I told them it was because something like that had happened to me before. I thought I was doing exactly what we had been taught to do in Life Orientation.
Speak up.
Tell someone.
Ask for help.
Instead, that moment became the beginning of something else….The school contacted my mother and called her in. When she arrived, she was angry. Not about what had happened to me, but about the fact that I had spoken about it at school.
To her, the problem was that I had taken a family matter outside the family. My uncle denied everything. And because my cousin who had been there with me was scared and said that nothing had happened, the situation turned against me.
And my punishment for it…was that I had to write out a letter to the teacher, saying that I lied about the whole thing. I had to sit with the same teacher I had trusted enough to speak to and tell her that I had made the whole story up.
After that, I was sent for counselling. But the counselling was not about helping me deal with the abuse. It was about dealing with the “lie” everyone believed I had told.
That moment taught me something very clearly…The lessons we learned at school did not apply inside my family.
At school, silence protected abusers…At home, silence protected the family.
Years later, something similar happened again within my family. When I tried to express that another family member was hurting me, the response did not center on what I was experiencing. Instead, the conversation once again turned toward how speaking about it might affect the family. I remember hearing concerns about embarrassment and how it would look if others knew. In that moment, it became painfully clear that the lesson I had learned as a child had never really changed: protecting the family’s image mattered more than confronting what was happening.
For many children, this kind of silence becomes a lifelong lesson. When a child learns that speaking up leads to denial, anger, or pressure to take their words back, they begin to question their own voice. They learn to measure the cost of honesty. Over time, silence starts to feel safer than truth.
This is why conversations about abuse cannot focus only on teaching children to speak up. Many schools already try to do that. Programs like Life Orientation teach young people about boundaries, safety, and the importance of telling a trusted adult when something is wrong.
But those lessons only work if the adults around them are willing to listen.
If a child finds the courage to speak and the response they receive is disbelief, punishment, or pressure to stay quiet, the message they internalize is not one of safety. The message becomes that their voice creates problems rather than solving them.
In many conservative and religious households, reputation and family loyalty carry enormous weight. Respect for elders and protecting the image of the family are treated as core values. These values can create strong communities and deep family bonds, but they can also become harmful when they are used to silence children instead of protecting them.
Respect should never mean ignoring harm…Family loyalty should never require a child to hide abuse…Faith should never demand silence in the face of suffering.
Children should never feel responsible for protecting the reputation of adults. Their safety, their wellbeing, and their voices must come first.
Breaking that silence is uncomfortable for families and communities. It forces difficult conversations and challenges long-held beliefs about privacy and loyalty. But those conversations are necessary if we truly want to create environments where children are safe.
Teaching children to speak up is important.
But teaching adults how to listen…and how to respond with protection instead of denial…is just as important.
Xoxo
Nirvana