With many, emerging triumphantly from a painful past is more often than not insurmountable.

In fact, it does take divine intervention to exorcise demons of a past whose memories could still slice the heart into bits.

With an unprecedented awakening, it has been established that the fragility of childhood requires, rather, demands closer parental attention. Childhood being a crucial, decisive stage in the development of an individual character can only be ignored at the peril of the victim.

The world over, ACU-cases are replete. In Africa, ACU-situations are notably predominant among children in Refugee-camps; in Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camps; child-soldiers; street children; slum children and among a majority of children in destitute households. Talking about HIV/AIDS orphans and children of single mothers or in the care of stepmothers would be like talking about yet another category of ACU-situations. One can’t simply cite CEDS [Children in Especially Difficult Situations] without having at the same time referred to yet another category of children falling within the ACU-description.

Denitz was the topic on everyone’s lips. She was beautiful to the core – at least in everyone else’s eyes. To them she was as spotless as they could possibly come. They waxed lyrical and almost exhausted all the known superlatives there are to describe a lady so haunting in her irresistible beauty. They were smitten!

However, little did they know that  behind that veneer of beauty and grace existed “ugliness” that only she was aware of. Beneath her poetry-in-motion beauty was a simmering insecurity and discomfort that battered her ego into self-resentment and low self-esteem. She felt she wasn’t worth anybody’s love and attention.