Bo­bie-Lee Dixon

Four­ty-one-year-old Cami­ka Mc Letchie holds a bach­e­lors in psy­chol­o­gy from the Uni­ver­si­ty of St An­drews and is now about to do her mas­ters at the Caribbean Nazarene Col­lage in San­ta Cruz.

A clin­i­cal ther­a­pist by pro­fes­sion, it is not a sur­prise she has de­cid­ed to study and work in this field.

Her life ex­pe­ri­ences at­tract­ed her to this vo­ca­tion be­cause, she said, she need­ed to help those be­ing held cap­tive by mas­ters of abuse.

The moth­er of sev­en strug­gled for most of her life with abuse. She was raped twice as a teenag­er by peo­ple she trust­ed. When she fi­nal­ly thought she'd met her "knight in shin­ing ar­mour" in her hus­band, that turned in­to a night­mare as he abused her phys­i­cal­ly and sex­u­al­ly for their 14 years of mar­riage.

For Mc Letchie, many were the years she thought she was re­spon­si­ble for all the abuse she en­dured.

"I used to think that I was do­ing some­thing to make this hap­pen to me and in some way maybe I de­served it," she told the T&T Guardian.

She nev­er told any­one about the sex­u­al vi­o­la­tions by both rapists in her youth. In­stead she grew a ha­tred for men that in the end on­ly af­fect­ed her more than she thought her "right­eous anger" would have helped.

"I want­ed to hurt men the way they hurt me. I thought I could, so I be­came very flir­ta­tious...promis­cu­ous even."

At St Georges Col­lege, where she spent her sec­ondary school years, she moved from be­ing a very qui­et stu­dent to an un­con­trol­lable re­bel­lious teen. To this day Mc Letchie said she still won­ders why none of the teach­ers tried to find out what was go­ing on, par­tic­u­lar­ly be­cause of the ex­treme tran­si­tion.

"They nev­er asked me. I was too ashamed to talk about it, but I was scream­ing out for help, through my ac­tions, and no-one heard," Mc Letchie ex­plained.

She con­tin­ued, "I got a lot of sta­t­ic in school be­cause peo­ple start­ed to say things about me and some of my teach­ers told me to my face such bad things that it fur­ther dam­aged my self-es­teem."

She said her then math teacher even called her a whore in front of the en­tire class and told her that she would amount to noth­ing.

"This re­al­ly hurt me. And I would skip math class just to avoid be­ing em­bar­rassed. On the out­side I would seem tough. I would an­swer back the teacher; but in­side, I was dy­ing with the re­al­i­ty of what was hap­pen­ing to me."

Mc Letchie said she just want­ed to die and prayed many times to God to take her life. She at­tempt­ed sev­er­al times to take her own life but each time she said she just could not go through with it.

To ease her pain, Mc Letchie be­gan writ­ing po­et­ry and spo­ken word. "It was my on­ly way to talk freely about the truth.

"I re­mem­ber one of the po­ems was so sad that the school's guid­ance coun­selor asked my moth­er if every­thing was okay, and of course my moth­er be­ing obliv­i­ous to what hap­pened, said yes."

To­ward the end of school, Mc Letchie at­tained the ti­tle of po­et of the year–a com­pe­ti­tion held at the school.

And de­spite the tu­mul­tuous years, she grad­u­at­ed with six O' lev­el sub­jects–maths in­clud­ed– with good grades (ones and twos).

A lit­tle over a year af­ter sec­ondary school, Mc Letchie met her for­mer hus­band. Fooled by his seem­ing­ly car­ing ways at first, she fell for his charm, on­ly to re­gret it in the years that fol­lowed.

"I thought he was my knight in shin­ing ar­mour. He looked out for me; made sure I was safe. He was seem­ing­ly over-car­ing." Mc Letchie be­came preg­nant at 19 and af­ter six years of dat­ing, they be­came mar­ried, and stayed mar­ried for 14 years.

Dur­ing the courtship be­fore the mar­riage, though, Mc Letchie ad­mit­ted there was a lot of ver­bal and emo­tion­al abuse. She al­so ex­pe­ri­enced phys­i­cal and sex­u­al abuse.

"I con­tin­u­al­ly tried to fix things. I con­tin­u­al­ly took the blame. I felt, again, I was the one caus­ing it.

"I kept telling my­self maybe I should not have an­swered him like that or asked him any­thing."

It was while do­ing one of the cours­es for her BSc, ti­tled: Fam­i­ly Vi­o­lence Across the Life Span, that she fi­nal­ly came to terms that she was in fact the vic­tim and not the per­pe­tra­tor.

"The lec­tur­er was dis­cussing the traits of a per­pe­tra­tor and those of the vic­tim and what an abu­sive re­la­tion­ship looks like. And that's when it re­al­ly hit me," said Mc Letchie.

When she de­cid­ed to end the mar­riage, it was not easy, Mc Letchie dis­closed. She had to file a re­strain­ing or­der as her hus­band would threat­en her and stalk her.

While she would have rather moved out of the home she shared with her hus­band, she stopped sleep­ing in their bed­room and even con­tact­ed a shel­ter, but they could not take her with all sev­en chil­dren.

"There were times I would wake up and see him sit­ting in a chair hold­ing a knife and just look­ing at me. I was afraid. But through the years and hav­ing no one else, I de­vel­oped a re­la­tion­ship with God. So I learned to trust Him and put my faith in Him and be­lieve that what I was go­ing through and had gone through all these years would soon be over, and there was some good rea­son for all of this hap­pen­ing to me," said Mc Letchie.

It's been three years since her di­vorce was fi­nalised and she gained full cus­tody of their chil­dren

Mc Letchie said once the di­vorce was over, she tried to pull her fam­i­ly to­geth­er. But it was chal­leng­ing at first. Her chil­dren, hav­ing wit­nessed the abuse for so long, de­vel­oped cer­tain be­hav­iour­al pat­terns. Her el­dest son be­came very an­gry. And as Mc Letchie says, she be­lieves they blamed her. She says:

"My chil­dren are bet­ter now be­cause I con­tin­ued work­ing with them and they are all do­ing so well, but by the grace of God."

Mc Letchie is in the process of writ­ing her first book based on her life. She hopes that through each chap­ter, oth­ers will be freed. Soon she will cel­e­brate the launch of her NGO called Rise: Woman Re­dis­cov­er your Strength. It will be in sup­port of vic­tims of abuse.

Asked what she took away from her life ex­pe­ri­ence, Mc Letchie said: "There is no ex­cuse for abuse. With the help of God I have for­giv­en those who hurt me, and that's the on­ly way I could have been healed."