Portraits of stolen innocence - PHOTO

Sexual abuse of children is an uncomfortable topic that many people choose to ignore in their everyday lives, but the new book My Piece of Sky by South African photojournalist Mariella Furrer shines a spotlight on the young victims, offering an unflinching look at this global epidemic.  The 700-page volume features gut-wrenching images documenting the country's great scourge and interviews with more than a dozen survivors who had been subjected to unthinkable acts of depravity.   Furrer, who was herself molested by a stranger as a 5-year-old, writes in the book’s foreword: ‘You lose your childhood really, your innocence is snatched away, and what little is left of that once-pure child is now being transformed into a sexual being, a child with knowledge of things way before her time.’My Piece of Sky is the culmination of a decade-long journey for Furrer, which began in 2002 when she was hired by the American women’s magazine Marie Claire to take photographs for a story about infant rape in South Africa. According to a 2009 report by Solidarity Helping Hand cited by Slate, South Africa leads the world in cases of sexual abuse targeting minors, with a child being raped every three minutes.The assignment struck a chord with Furrer, and she would spend the next 10 years interviewing and photographing victims, speaking to child services case workers and law enforcement agents, and researching the subject in depth.  The result of her work is a book, now available in the U.S. at Aperture Gallery and Book Store, which features black-and-white photos, conversations, artwork and poetry documenting child sex abuse and its horrific impact on the lives of the victims, and the society at large. Susanna, Venus and Dylan are among the 17 survivors who are interviewed in the book. To protect the identities of the children, Furrer changed their names.Susanna was 8 years old when she was initiated into a satanic cult where initiation activities included sexual abuse, gang rape and bestiality. As a result of the trauma she experienced, Susanna developed dissociative identity disorder and has over 200 identities, many of whom are self-mutilators. Furrer supplemented the story with an image showing the legs of the survivor, who is now 24 years old, covered in cuts. Venus was also 8 when she was stabbed through her heart and lung, raped, sodomized, strangled and left for dead. The perpetrator was a family friend. Venus hid overnight in the bushes, unable to cry for help because of the strangulation. She managed to pull herself onto the road in the morning where she was eventually discovered by a neighbor and taken to hospital.Dylan was sexually abused from a young age by two of his male teachers. He grew up to be a prostitute and a drug addict, stole cars, lived on the streets, and was in and out of jail.(dailymail.co.uk)Bakudaily.az