"I'm not ashamed of saying that 'Okay, I was abused.'" Lokesh Pawar is a survivor, and he wears that badge proudly to help others everywhere.
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00:00I was first sexually abused at the age of six, and it happened at several occasions,
00:06I think for the next seven to eight years.
00:20He would take me inside, manipulate me to go with him, and he would abuse me.
00:27He would ask me to perform oral sex on him.
00:29He would ask me to, he would penetrate me sexually, and he would do things to me that
00:35probably a six-year-old shouldn't be exposed to and harmed in a way that it just causes
00:39a lot of, I think, damage to the mind, to the head, to the body, to the soul.
00:59It just, it was a course that I knew that, okay, if he's coming to me, I exactly knew
01:09what was going to happen.
01:11It was a process that was built in my mind.
01:13When you practice something for a while, you sort of get into, grow into the skin of it.
01:19And you're doing this, and you start doing the same thing again and again, because you
01:22don't realize, because there's nobody telling you that, okay, this is not how it's to be
01:26done.
01:27There's another way that you should react to this.
01:28Whenever he would come to me, he would only normally start manipulating me into talks,
01:32tell me, you know what, can you just come, let's go to the bazaar, or let's go here and
01:35there, you know, come hang out with me.
01:38And that's how the process started.
01:39For me to understand for so many years that, okay, this is exactly what was happening with
01:43me, I had to bear a lot of it, come to a stage where I could see no examples of such things
01:53or such thought around me.
01:56And then realize that, okay, this is different, this is not common.
02:18I spoke with my parents first at age 19, 19 and a half, 19.
02:25Their first reaction was, they cried.
02:28And they cried for hours about it.
02:29So they apologized to me that they weren't and could not be there for me when probably
02:34I needed them the most.
02:37And above all, I think there was a great amount of angst, there was a great amount of anger
02:43within them as parents.
02:45And the day I spoke with my parents, I felt as if I'd done something really, really big.
02:51And I'd taken this huge weight off my shoulders.
02:56And that I felt very normal, I felt like, okay, I was fine.
03:02Above all, I think what made me feel fine about myself was the fact that my parents
03:06understood the depth and they understood that this was a real problem.
03:13There are cases where people, where parents deny it completely, or they are in denial
03:19of something like this.
03:21If you're watching this video as a parent, I think you should start having a conversation
03:25with your child.
03:26Make them believe that you can be trusted upon so that tomorrow, if your child is going
03:31through something like this, they can come to you and say that, okay, something happened
03:36with me.
03:37How do you think I should deal with it?
03:43I had read multiple stories about female abuse, female rape, female sexual abuse, and I was
04:13there, but I hadn't really read anything about male abuse.
04:17All I could relate with was the fact that the incidents, that the experiences were similar.
04:24What happened with a girl was exactly similar with what had happened with me.
04:30People who are abusers are living right around and they're probably, they're right with you
04:45somewhere that you probably, these are people that you know.
04:48These are people that have lived with you for years because they've monitored your behavior.
04:54They've monitored how you react to certain things.
04:56They've monitored who you love the most, who you trust the most, how you are with things,
05:00how you react.
05:01How a thief will monitor your movements to probably do what he wants to do is exactly
05:07how an abuser will also think and monitor your movements, your lifestyle, your life,
05:13your behavior to certain things, your character, and ultimately will take small steps to probably
05:20take the bigger ultimate step that he wants to take.
05:26I've been gifted with this life and I want to do something about it.
05:44I want to grow bigger and be proud of what I've done.
05:47I think that ambition has led me to be where I am and every single day that I was getting
05:53out of it to see myself getting closer to my ambition has helped me heal in many, many
06:01ways.
06:02And apart from that, I think the support that my family has given me, my brother, my mother
06:08and my father is beyond, I cannot, it's inexpressible, honestly, it's, I cannot even explain how
06:16nice it feels, how lucky I am.
06:40I wear it as a badge and I'm happy to wear it, I don't, I'm not ashamed of saying that,
06:44okay, I was abused because I don't think it's my fault.
06:49So why should I be ashamed about it?
06:51I'm not wrong.
06:53There was, there is no fault of mine in this at all.
06:56I think that is what we as victims and survivors need to be told, that it is not our fault
07:01because we always live in that shame that, okay, it's probably something's wrong with
07:04me and that it is not your mistake.
07:07And the world is a lot kinder than you think.
07:10There are people that will support you.
07:12And even if they do not support you, you can stand for yourself and you should stand for
07:16yourself because ultimately this is your fight.
07:19People will show light, people will show hope.