This is the fourth in a series of interviews with children who have been rescued by the Child Care and Protection Agency of the Ministry of Human Services being published in recognition of Child Protection Week.
“I know America Street like the back ah me hand. Is there I grow up,” were the first words out of *Brian’s mouth when he was asked about his early life. He barely remembers sitting in a classroom and learning how to read and write, everything he knows he learned on the streets.
The streets, specifically a section of America Street, were where Brian begged and did favours to survive; and where he contracted HIV. He reveals his status readily and in a matter-of-fact way.
Brian frequently tells people that he is living with HIV. He is not ashamed of it because he did not knowingly contract the disease; he was sexually abused by a so-called benefactor. Given everything he has endured in his young life he sees it as just another struggle.
With a pair of full eyes staring into nowhere and a tendency to remain silent except when he was asked a question, Brian sat down for the interview. He seemed reluctant. He had agreed to do it earlier but was apparently having second thoughts. For a few minutes he sat staring then said: “I ain’t frighten to do this miss. I thinking what to say.”
Finally, he got it together and in his mind’s eye, headed back to America Street to relive his past.
Because he felt he could no longer endure the pressure of a home where constant slaps, kicks and cuffs greeted him since he first learned how to walk, Brian decided at age ten to run away. He was too young to understand why the blows were so constant, but old enough to figure out he was not being treated right so he fled his home in south Georgetown and ended up on America Street. His mother searched for him and a few times she managed to take him back home, but he always returned to the streets. As he got older he started to realize that his family saw him as rebel and an outcast, and remembers vividly an uncle who declared one day that he was “hopeless”.
On the streets he was not labelled anything but a runaway and he was comfortable with that. At nights he slept on cardboard near a confectionary store with a few others boys and during the day he trudged through the town begging to survive. He saw his mother a few times, but would hide from her. Whenever he saw a face he recognized he would hide.
Asked about his father, Brian said he never met him and his mother has never mentioned a word of the man. He said that sometimes when people would meet him on the streets begging and ask him about his mother he would tell them she was dead.
On a good day Brain would beg and make $1,000 which he said comfortably covered his needs, on other days he got nothing. It was on one of those rough days that he started talking with his abuser, a man he called ‘Car Man’ and for a box of food the man sexually assaulted him. “Sometimes he would come and buy me food then ask for sex,” Brian said bowing his head. “I couldn’t say no cause he gave me food. He had a business somewhere in the area.” He remained silent for a bit then started talking again; recalling that the man took advantage of him on countless occasions. Still, he preferred America Street to home.
He suffered on the road for years, but the streets also comforted him and in all the pain he grew into a teenager conscious of life and exposed to much more than adults who are living carelessly. Brian said that after a while ‘Car Man’ stopped showing up, but he was unaware his abuser had died.
Two years ago, Brian was hanging around a city school while classes were in session and someone called the Ministry of Human Services to report that a child was in the area wandering. He was so busy liming, he did not even notice the officers creeping up on him and a few hours later he was in child care and in the custody of the state. He resented the detention and recalled sitting down for hours thinking of how he could go back to America Street, but as time passed the place grew on him.
He is now 16 years old and in school receiving technical training. He lives at the ministry’s Child Centre with around 60 other children and is beginning to open up and trust people again. Brian sees his mother occasionally and is also learning to love her because for most of his life he barely paid her any attention. A part of him blames her for beating him mercilessly as a child, so bad that he ended up at the hospital one time, but he admits to loving her. “She is my mother,” he said smiling.
Perhaps when he is older Brian will fully understand that his mother struggled to carry and raise him as her child because she too was a victim of horrific abuse that resulted in his conception. She is still battling to overcome her own pain.
Of all the training sessions he has had so far, Brian said, he loves masonry. He is planning to take up the trade after he leaves the training school and while he is contemplating going back home there is a bit of hesitation. But he confesses that he is looking forward to connecting with his family again.
Brian has had it rough, but he has emerged a fighter with the help of the ministry. He passes America Street today feeling strange every time he walks by the spot where he spent four years of his life.
*The name of the child has been changed to protect his identity.
