Yesterday I arrived home from a holiday. Ten minutes home and the phone rang. News about my dear friend Cherie. Cherie had suffered a severe heart attack whilst out at Bingo with her girlfriend. She was rushed to hospital, but had a second heart attack a few hours later and died. Cold. Clear cut. Sudden. Completely without warning. The FINALITY of it all echoed and jarred in my ears. My soul froze.

Why, you ask? This happens every day. Yes, it does. But my friend Cherie was something special. Really special. Not the person you would see in the street and have your heart flutter over. Oh, no, you would probably have dropped your eyes to avoid looking at the downcast, drooped shoulders, the baggy clothes, always clean but somehow shabby even the day after they had been bought. Hair dishevelled and covering her eyes. Only one tooth on the upper jaw, right in the front. Never any makeup. Sneakers were her only footwear.

Had Cherie spoken you may have noticed a slight speech impediment. She would have made no eye contact. Probably would have rushed away as soon as she possibly could, spoken the minimum. You would most likely have thought her to be rude, as she puffed on her cigarette.

If you had asked Cherie what she thought of God she would have almost barked at you, “Don’t tell me there’s a God. I won’t have a bar of any God. If there was a God why would I be the way I am!!!”.

Now she has died. I tried to tell her that there was indeed a God who loved her; that the man Jesus was not just any man, but a Person who loved her. She would never listen. She’d tell me to shut up. Freeze me out.

And now she is dead. So where is she??? My precious friend Cherie??? Is she in Hell? Let me tell you her story, and you attempt to walk in her shoes for a time – if you dare.

Cherie was dumped at the steps of an orphanage in a large town. Her parents only wanted sons. They actually had seven children, the first a girl, then a boy, followed by five more girls. Cherie was the second youngest in the family. The parents (I feel like saying ‘child-bearers’ as to me they were no parents), deposited their first baby girl at this orphanage when about three months old. Cherie could never understand how parents could behave like this.

They kept the boy. That is what they wanted. A son and heir. Gave him a very good life.

After that, as each successive daughter was born, each was dumped at the orphange steps somewhere between six weeks and three months old. Cherie was six weeks old,the youngest age of any of them. The orphanage provided for the six little girls, placing them all on adoption lists after all the legal work of trying to trace their parents failed. But in ‘their wisdom’, they decided it best to never tell the children that they were in fact sisters. Cherie found that very hard to bear. She felt it would have helped her to gain a sense of belonging.

Every week, people would come to the city-based orphanage to ‘pick out a baby’ to adopt. Cherie was a difficult baby. She never fed well. She was not a good sleeper. So the prospective parents always overlooked her. She remembered when about two years old that folk thought she wasn’t “pretty enough”. Prospective parents, if they wanted a girl, wanted a pretty one, a dainty little girl with blonde curls and dancing blue eyes. So Cherie’s dark, thick, staright hair, her dull slate eyes, bulky build and shy disposition meant that week after week she was overlooked. Cherie always wished she has been beautiful, so that she would have been adopted sooner.

One time, however, when she was nearly three, a family decided to choose her. They said she would do for what they wanted. When she was placed in their car, she discovered that she had an older brother in her new family, who had also been adopted. They treated him wonderfully.

Cherie was chosen by this family for the sole purpose of abuse. Her mother beat her, tied her hands behind her back, her feet together and her knees locked with fencing wire, and then would tie her to a chair. Cherie knows of no reason why. She was frequently tied up in the henhouse, and forced to stay there all day, amongst the odour and filth of the chooks, who would peck at her legs and bare feet till they bled. At mealtimes her brother would be fed steak, while she would be forced to eat dog faeces!! Cherie would never overcome her fear of many smells, places, wire,and had many triggers to pain of unbelievable magnitude.

The adoptive father sexually abused Cherie. Began to rape her at about eight years old, and if she refused he would punch her in the face. Consequently, over time, she had all her teeth, apart from that front central one, wrenched out of her mouth. He told her school teachers she was dumb, because she did not speak clearly. I suspect that not having any teeth was probably the reason why!!! But the teachers believed him, and placed her in the ‘dunces’ seat, and treated her that way. In those days teachers often did not individually assess children, and consequently, with large class sizes and strict discipline the little Cherie was constantly overlooked, and treated as a ‘dunce’, until she believed she truly was one. Cherie hated schoolteachers. She never forgot the horrendous treatment she received at school.

At fourteen Cherie became pregnant with her adoptive father’s child. She desperately wanted to keep her baby; to run away and begin a life of her own. But the father forced her to have an illegal abortion at a shoddy run-down joint somewhere in the inner suburbs. He said it was because she was too dumb to raise a child! Cherie never was able to come to terms with losing this baby – the first love object which had ever been truly ‘hers’.

Eventually Cherie left that house – I would never call it a home – and made a life for herself. But she feared to have another child while her parents were alive, in case they talked another doctor into aborting that baby too, because she was so dumb – you see by this time she believed their lies.

When she was almost forty, her parents had finally died, so Cherie decided it was safe to have a baby, without the fear of having a termination forced upon her. She had a little boy, Jeremy. She adored Jeremy. She was the best Mum any little boy could ever have. She loved him like no other Mum I have ever known.

She decided to trace her natural origins, and showing just how intelligent she really was, she negotiated all kinds of legal red tape until she was indeed able to discover her natural sisters and brother. One of her sisters lived overseas, and was just eleven months older than Cherie. Two years ago Cherie and Jeremy visited her sister and spent two glorious months catching up, sharing stories of their life (together but unknown to each other) at the same orphanage, and of their adoptive family situations.

Cherie found that ALL of her sisters had been placed in loving homes except for her. The one from overseas had an especially beautiful adoptive family. This actually sharpened Cherie’s pain. Why did her adoptive parents choose her? Why did they treat her the way they did? What did she do to get all this trauma and abuse? All she ever wanted was love.

She found that love through giving her own love to Jeremy. When she died this week, Jeremy who is just in Grade Six in Primary School, searched through Cherie’s mobile phone directory and personally rang all her friends to tell them his Mummy had died!!! She was only fifty-one, but the stress her heart and her body has been through was probably just too much. What will happen to Jeremy I do not know. My heart bleeds for him.

Now my traditional fundamental evangelical upbringing would have me believe that Cherie is now condemned to Hell! I find that so difficult! For the first time in my life, I feel I should plead with God for her soul. I have never been taught to pray for the souls of dead people, but somehow I feel the need to implore God to be merciful, to remember all that Cherie has endured, and to judge her fairly and with compassion. So as you pray today, will you please pray with me, to our most merciful, wise and wonderful God, for His incredible compassion to fall upon my friend Cherie? She was an innocent victim in an horrendous life of suffering and torture – mentally, sexually and physically and intellectually.

One of the joys of being an abuse survivor is that I am privileged to know Cherie, and many like her. It is a great honor that God has allowed me to journey with Cherie, and I count her as one of the greatest examples of survival anywhere.Please, if you believe it possible, pray that God will see Cherie in all her pain, her courage and her determination to survive. Pray the the Lord will find a VERY special place of love for her. And also pray for Jeremy. His life will never be easy. What will happen to him I have no idea. He needs all of our prayers now, and in the years ahead.

(C). 2004. Christine. M. Jones.