"I Was S*xually Abused As A Child" - TY Bello

Popular Nigerian singer and photographer, Toyin Sokefun-Bello [aka TY Bello], has opened up on how she was s*xually abused while she was growing up.

While speaking on Accelerate TV series, ‘King Women’ TY Bello revealed that she was molested as a child and that it had a negative effect on her during her formative years. She said;

“I was sexually abused as a child and because of this, I felt like there was something ugly about me that made me encounter this. This was not the abuser’s fault, this was me. I used to see other girls as flowers and I saw myself as dirty cement, hard and ugly. I never felt beautiful, everything was wrong with me, I was hairy and it was a problem. 

“I always attributed everything that was about me to be the reason someone took advantage of me. I thought there was something wrong with me because if the others girls were like me perhaps they would be dirty like me but they were flowers. 

“When a friend told me about salvation, she told me old things would be passed away and all things will become new. It was as if God could wash away that stench and I would become a girl because I didn’t feel like a girl.”

She said she was relieved when she found out that she wasn't the only one that experienced such.

“I was shocked when I grew up and found that one out every three or four girls in my secondary school had suffered the same thing and I could tell them the same thing… that old thing can pass away.

“It was a relief to find that I was not the only one and a shock that nobody talks about it. That’s why salvation worked, I had a daddy and I was going to be a flower.”