Broken Childhood Essay

474 Words2 Pages
A Broken Childhood: A True Story of Abuse is author Lydia Ola Taiwo's account of the physical, mental, and emotional abuse she suffered at the hands of her parents from five to twelve-years-old. As a young girl, Lydia is loved and cared for by other caregivers during her childhood, but the abuse by her parents, mainly her mother, overshadows most of what was positive in the girl's life. Like many survivors of abuse, Lydia still struggles to understand the reasons why her parents hurt her. Born in Camberwell, London to parents of Nigerian descent, Lydia was sent to live in a foster home as an infant. This was a common practice among the Nigerian community at the time, allowing young parents to work and attend school without having to provide and pay for childcare. Lydia discovered later in her childhood that she has a younger sister who was also placed in a foster care home. At the age of five, Lydia's parents abruptly removed her from her loving foster home to live with them in a small, one-room apartment where she slept on the couch. The abuse began immediately. Lydia was left alone in the apartment often and when her parents were home very little was said to her that did not involve a command or a verbal lashing. The author writes extensively about the chores she was required to complete from a very young age including caring for her younger sister and brother, household chores, and meal preparation. Lydia is explicit in her descriptions of the injuries she acquired as a result of the physical abuse she endured: major head injuries, broken teeth, and scars all over her body from being lashed with an electrical cable that are still visible today. Lydia's accounts of her childhood are horrific and inspire anger in the reader. Even though the author expresses her on rage towards her parents, she also writes about the long journey to forgiveness: "There was a
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