How salvation helped TY Bello overcome her sexual abuse experience

TY Bello

Toyin Sokefun-Bello, aka TY Bello, popularly known for her contribution to the success story of Olajumoke, the bread seller turned model, in an exclusive interview she granted to Kemi Adetiba’s, King Woman series has revealed that she was sexually abused while growing up.

Here are excerpts from the interview:

“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, I never did. Everything was wrong with me. My brows were puffy and I was hairy and it was a problem. 

"I always attributed everything that was about me to be the reason why 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, they are pretty and beautiful. Nobody does that to a beautiful girl. 

"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 would wash away that cement, that stench that caused that thing to happen to me as a child. 

"Salvation would take that away and me too I can feel like a girl. When I was growing up, I didn't feel like a girl, I felt like an impostor. The girls were innocent so I always had to behave like I was innocent and I would become a girl because I didn’t feel like a girl. 

"So imagine my shocked when I grew up and found out that one out of every three or four girls that were in my school had been through 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.”

“King Women” is an interview-based series by Kemi Adetiba, featuring Nigeria’s powerful women of veteran and champion status, as they give account of how they rise to prominence.

It has had the likes of; Tara Fela-Durotoye, Taiwo Ajai-Lycett, a legendary British trained Nigerian actress in previous recordings.