Innocence Betrayed

Chapter 1

THE SECRET is to know yourself.

You’re lost to the world if you don’t recognize who you are. Self-awareness builds confidence, which ultimately develops your identity.

Face it, she told herself. You can be strong.

The eighteen-year-old girl forced her eyes open. Colours in various shapes danced across her vision like in a kaleidoscope as she tried to concentrate on the book in front of her.

“There are various definitions that can be associated with this topic. But the point…”

She could hear the teacher’s voice coming from somewhere at the front of the classroom. However, she could not concentrate. She had deliberately chosen the desk at the back of the classroom because she knew it would be difficult to listen.

“Clea, are you paying attention?” The teacher’s soft voice reached up to her.

Clea looked up at the older woman and faintly nodded her head.

“Good,” Mrs Henry said before continuing from where she had left off.

“Child abuse is an act of physical, sexual or emotional mistreatment or neglect of a child or children by a parent or a guardian which results in injury or serious harm. There are various reasons that can develop such behaviour, even amongst the most rational of humans.”

Clea clutched the desk tightly with her hands, the ragged wooden edges cutting lightly into her palm but she did not let go. Instead, she clutched it even harder, as if letting it go would end her life. She desperately wished for an escape from the torturous lesson that they were studying.

“There are various reasons why people indulge themselves into these horrendous acts. The reasons or causes may vary from environmental, social and mental to family dynamic and upbringing.” The teacher’s soft voice resonated in the room full of teenagers.

Clea’s eyes went out of focus as the teacher proceeded with her lecture on child abuse. A slight headache formed in her head making her feel dizzy. She wanted nothing more than to flee from there.

“…of all this, almost ten percent of children suffer from emotional and sexual abuse. Although the number of such cases is decreasing, there is no doubt…”

Clea rested her head on the desk, her cheek pressed tightly to the open textbook. She closed her eyes and concentrated on her breathing.

In and out…in and out…

She chanted the mantra slowly in her head, repeating the two words again and again. This was her form of escape; escape into a world which was not so cruel, which served justice and which rewarded its people with peace. She managed to completely drown out the teacher’s voice as she entered into a world of her own where she need not listen to the gruesome acts of ill humans.

She had always dreamed of a place which was free and absolute, where people passed each other with happy thoughts and good intentions, with no trace of evil in the world. Ever since she was a child, Clea had always searched for an escape, from her thoughts and from the world. She wanted to create a world of her own where she could modify her own thoughts and turn her weak self into someone powerful. But then she realised that the world is perfect, as it could ever be. It is the manner and the comportment of the humans that deem it otherwise.

She could imagine all the beautiful things in the world which she had yet to stumble upon, where she laughed and played of her own free will, where she never got judged, where she could never be called by those names which were reserved for the other, useless sections of humans.