By Fenn Hugo Jester
I was working on my artwork when it happened. Not a vague memory - a full recovery. Suddenly I was back in that car, being driven from my boarding school in Yorkshire down to Northamptonshire.
And with it came the strangest detail: buttercup syrup at the county border. There was always a sign -"You are now leaving Yorkshire"- and when we passed it, I'd be given this syrup.
Except it wasn't just buttercup syrup, was it?
The Missing Hours
School finished at 10am. Four-hour drive. Simple maths. So why did I always arrive home so late at night that I'd collapse straight into bed, couldn't even stay awake to say hello to my cat?
Where did those other six hours go?
I never questioned it. Children don't question the framework adults build around them, even when that framework makes absolutely no sense. I just knew I was exhausted. I knew my throat was sore. I told myself it was because the air in Northamptonshire was different from Yorkshire—more industrial, more metropolitan. That's why I always coughed. That's why I was so tired.
It was the air. That's what I believed.
The Other World
Here's what I remembered: a complete world. When I think about it now, there's this odd sense of recognition—like seeing an old friend, which is as disturbing as it sounds.
I was asleep but I wasn't asleep. I was there, but somewhere else entirely. The actual world felt false. Like I'd died without dying and moved into this other place.
I was a ball of light. A circle of energy. There were other circles moving around, and you had to find them and join together. The more of you there were, the safer you were. But you had to let them into you to make you bigger, stronger. It was painful sometimes—they had to poke through your membrane, this film like skin. It happened a lot from below. And from above.
Once they were in, you were okay. You were protected. But there were bad ones too, and you had to watch for them, avoid them. The bad ones came from the top mostly.
It was a two-dimensional world, but somehow circular. At the top was water. If you didn't watch the top, you'd drown. I couldn't breathe. That happened all the time—the drowning, the panic, then massive relief when you could breathe again.
I thought I was good at this. I knew the patterns, what to watch for, how to stay alive.
I remember trying to make people laugh sometimes. Not with words—I'd do a funny dance, act silly, just trying to be entertaining. I remember that.
No wonder I was always so tired.
What I Thought It Was
For years—decades, actually—I believed this was real. Not just a dream or imagination, but a genuine glimpse into something profound.
I thought this is what happens when we die.
I thought I was tapping into some universal truth, seeing what awaits us all. Because it felt like energy—pure energy—and that's what we all are underneath everything else, isn't it? I thought I'd been given this knowledge somehow, this understanding of what comes after.
And it was comforting. Genuinely comforting. I believed that if you had good energy, if you'd lived truthfully in this life, you'd be okay. You'd be brighter. You'd have bright energy and you'd survive in that world.
In some weird way, I was hopeful. I had this secret knowledge that most people don't get. I knew what was coming, and I knew I'd be alright.
What It Actually Was
But it wasn't that at all.
It was just what my brain did while I was being raped. A way to process the physical sensation of being penetrated—probably by multiple men, probably while drugged, definitely while helpless. My mind created a game I could try to win because the alternative—understanding what was actually happening to my body—would have destroyed me completely.
So I've lost that now. I don't have a sneak peek into the afterlife. I don't have this profound spiritual understanding. It wasn't enlightenment. It was just my mind's response to the physical trauma of being gang-raped as a child, god knows how many times.
That loss feels significant in a way that's hard to articulate.
The Wrapping Paper Moment
This keeps happening to me. You realize something devastating, and you think that's it, that's the worst of it. But then later—sometimes weeks or months later—you're staring at the wrapping paper and you realize there's something even more hurtful underneath. Something darker. Something that, in some ways, is worse than the main thing itself.
Over a year and a half ago, my mind finally allowed itself to unlock everything. To accept everything. That moment was catastrophic—all of it hitting at once, the full weight of understanding what had been done to me.
But it was weeks later when I realized something that stays with me constantly: I was never loved. Not by either parent. Not ever.
Not that I was loved at times and not at others. Not that they loved me but failed to protect me. I was just never loved at all. I was put in harm's way constantly. Every hug, every kiss, every Merry Christmas, every goodnight—especially the goodnights, because most of those weren't going to be good nights for me—none of those were real. None of them.
No one can say I was ever loved. You can't love a child you're picking up afterwards. Bruised. Confused. Really confused. Scared. Potentially infected with HIV. Bleeding. They never loved that child. You can't. No one can say I was ever loved.
And I remember how much I loved them. How much I yearned for their love, would do anything to try and make them proud. All of that was wasted. All of it. Because they never cared.
My mother would go on to abandon me at school. My father—who isn't actually my father—just didn't care about me. Didn't want me anywhere near him. Spent the remaining years of his life forcing me out of the family, ostracizing me from my siblings.
What Shouldn't Be Possible
There was a moment when the pain was so strong, I was genuinely dumbfounded. Why would nature, or God, or whatever creates life—why would it allow something to feel this much hurt and pain? What is the point of that? How can that even exist in reality? That was the level of pain I was feeling.
And then I realized: it's not meant to happen. It shouldn't happen. It's unnatural.
It's unnatural for parents to not love their offspring. What happened to me is the blue screen, the 404 page, does not compute. Even the ugliest, scariest, most "evil" thing on earth—whatever animal that is—still looks after their own. They still protect their own. They still have families.
And I've got nothing. I never did have.
What they did to me is unnatural. That's why it hurt so much it felt impossible. Because it is impossible in the natural order of things.
Why This Matters
I'm telling you this because we need to talk about what child abuse actually does to people. Not just the immediate trauma, but these layers underneath. The things you only discover later, when you've unwrapped the first horror and found another one waiting.
I lost my childhood. I lost my sense of self. I lost my parents' love—or rather, I discovered I never had it. And now I've lost what I thought was this profound spiritual knowledge, this comfort about death and energy and continuing on.
It keeps taking things from me, even now, decades later.
That's what abuse does. It doesn't just hurt you once and then it's over. It keeps revealing new ways it's damaged you, new things it's stolen, new losses you didn't even know you'd suffered.
And we don't talk about this. We sanitize it, euphemize it, make it palatable enough that people can hear about it without feeling uncomfortable. But that silence protects the people who do this. It isolates the people it was done to.
I'm done being quiet about it.
This happened. This happens. And if talking about it makes people uncomfortable, then good. Because discomfort is temporary. What abuse does to a child lasts forever.
If You Need Support
Survivors UK (for male survivors)
0203 598 3898 | survivorsuk.org
NAPAC (National Association for People Abused in Childhood)
0808 801 0331 | napac.org.uk
The Survivors Trust
0808 801 0818 | thesurvivorstrust.org
Samaritans (24/7)
116 123
Emergency: 999
This is part of the ECNELIS project—"silence" reversed. Because silence protects abusers and isolates survivors, and I'm done with both. Learn more at ECNELIS.com
