It was the phone call that changed Lady Saw's life.

"She told me she got raped and couldn't go to the police. because you know how it go in those areas," says the 38-year-old artiste of the teenage fan who arbitrarily obtained the deejay's number and called the self-professed dancehall queen recently to share her trauma. "She said she was gonna kill herself, I told her she wouldn't see God face if she did... she asked me if I could do a song about it."

SAW... when I was writing the song I cried. I cried because some of her experiences were my own

Their conversation eventually led to the still-unnamed track, which tackles not only rape but allows 'Saw', born Marion Hall, to connect with her own ugly past - she too was raped as a young girl.

"When I was writing the song I cried. I cried because some of her experiences were my own," Saw tells Splash last evening in a telephone interview, her voice rife with emotion. "I know what it's like to live 'dung so' (a philosophical reference to the ghetto) when man used to pass you, touch and do other things too and you couldn't seh nutt'n," adds Saw before recalling the abuse-riddled situation she once called "my life".

"I could blame all this abuse on my father. he used to beat my mother to the point where she had to run away from St Mary and come to Kingston."

The abuse, she confesses, started around the time she turned 13, when she would visit her mother in town.

"I used to wash people dutty clothes. and wash big man clothes," Saw says, adding that the child labour situation left her vulnerable and therefore a prime target for paedophiles.

"Men would take advantage of me without my permission."

The song, however, which the dancehall diva will perform for the first time at Follow Di Arrow, tomorrow (March 1) at James Bond Beach in her native parish, almost never was.

"The words were so powerful, I just had to cry," Saw recalls, quoting some lyrics:

"Ask 'bout me future, but not 'bout my past/ It corrupt me mind and cripple me thoughts."

The memory of life, she says, made her scared.

"I feared the song, I was afraid to tell my story, I was like 'No, it going to cause too much attention'. I called Sly & Robbie (producers of the track) and seh delete it, but they told me the words were too powerful and that somebody who's hurting needs to hear it."

Lady Saw's words, now, make it easier to understand why sex is always the focal point of her act, always her 'kryptonite', always the stuff that puts her in charge. and hopefully now, the source of healing for many like her who've been scarred.

"It wasn't easy dealing with all this, for all those years but I've learned to let go," Saw says resolutely, "instead of making it stop me. I want to inspire women and say look what I did with this (the ordeal of rape). weh a man do yuh nuffi stop yuh."

Inspiring the female seems to be her forte these days, since last year she penned the controversial, No Less Than A Woman (Infertility) which deals with the brutal reality of childlessness and loving oneself despite the ability to reproduce.

True to her reputation as mother to all, Saw admits that she tried to visit the abused girl, only to have her muse change her mind out of the fear that her secret might be exposed.

Saw, too, understands fear and perhaps the feeling that unwarranted criticism may cause.

"I have been through so much and people can be so cruel. they say stuff about you, grudge me without even knowing my story, they see you and think you have it easy .but is not so it go."

Trousers in Denim

Cream of the 'Crop'

Cheeky's World