Athoy Neil: Strength after adversity

ATHOY Neil is a strong, resilient, independent woman who has endured the worst, but used her experiences to help and motivate others.

Neil, 23, was born in Port Maria, St Mary, where she spent four years of her life before her grandmother took her to Kingston due to unfortunate circumstances.

“My biological family could not take care of me. My mother wasn’t doing a good job and my father was always on the road or busy having other children,” she told All Woman. “My grandmother took me to Kingston because she once visited and saw me playing in torn underwear that she had seen me in a few days before. When she asked my mother why she didn’t bathe me, she said my clothes were dirty. She asked her to wash them and she said she wasn’t going to wash any pickney clothes in her husband’s house. So my grandmother took me and my clothing to Kingston.”

But Neil said her grandmother became burdened with the responsibility of looking after her father’s children, so she gave up three of them for adoption. Unfortunately for Neil, she was among that number.

“It was terrifying. I loved my grandma and didn’t want to leave. But I had no say, so I cried, hollered, and almost tore down the gate. Eventually I got over it and accepted the fact they weren’t coming back for me,” she said.

Neil was adopted by her cousins and remained an only child until 2003, when her adoptive mother died and her adoptive father started having other children with his partner.

For Neil, the chance of a family was great, but what she didn’t know was that some of her most harrowing experiences were on the horizon.

“They got married, started having kids, and there were about five children in the house. But I was being abused sexually by my adoptive father,” she said.

“The abuse started at age eight — mainly fondling, then a bit of oral sex and it went on like that until I was 12. By the time I reached 12, actual penetration started and another family member joined in by then,” Neil said.

She added: “Two things that messed me up about the situation is when I was 14 and my stepmother saw what was happening, I think she was in shock. He told her that he only had oral sex with me. As a woman you would expect that she would have been more protective, but in return, she never fed me for months. I had to save up my lunch money to eat and she cooked and washed the same for him. Then when I was 16 and I was on my cycle, I thought he wouldn’t trouble me, but he got a towel, placed it on the bed, got a condom, and had sex with me just the same. I thought if he could go that far he wasn’t going to stop. He even told me that if I got married, when my husband wasn’t treating me right, I could come to him. I went to the bathroom, tried to wash it off and realised I couldn’t do anything. I looked for pills, took everything I could find, and wrote a note apologising for hurting anyone, as I was expecting not to wake up.”

But when Neil was awakened by cold water running over her, she realised her plan had failed and tried another route.

“At age 10 I’d attempted suicide. I would cut myself with bottles, knives, just hoping to die. I would tell lies that I fell on the bottles. Now, the pills didn’t work so I tried using a rope to hang myself, but when I jumped off the tree the rope was too long,” she said.

At this point Neil said she gave up on suicide and decided to speak out as she realised she was bottling everything in.

As a result she was removed from her home and placed in a girls’ institution, where she went through counselling until age 18.

Today her counsellor is still in contact with her and she said her experiences have made her develop a strength of character that she has used to overcome and in turn help other people.

“I don’t wear the badge of an abused person; I realised there must be a reason I’m around and I realised I’m going to get through this and do this by helping other people, which will in turn make me become stronger. Now I enjoy going into homes, talking to young people and mentoring them, that’s what I do,” she said.

Neil, who originally had hopes of becoming a teacher or pathologist and who once worked as a recruiting officer in human resources, is now a marketing assistant at MegaMart and holds philanthropy close to her heart.

“My passion is helping people and children and that is my weakness. I always think that if I can protect these children — the homeless, the abused — and look out for them so that they don’t have to go through the same thing I did, then I would have done a lot,” she said.

She added that this heartfelt connection came to life after she took a friend’s baby for six months as the friend feared letting her family know she was a mother.

In her spare time she enjoys music, writing poems and drumming. Also a nature lover, she holds fast to the saying, “Let the good that I can do be done now, because I may not pass this way again.”

“I’m on this journey, helping people personally and professionally,” she said.