Art therapy to chase away demons of rape

A Kidds Beach artist drew from her own and her daughter’s experience of abuse and rape when she created a disturbing painting of a woman holding a baby surrounded by leering, grotesque men.

Eleonore Setterfield said she did the painting as a form of protest art after hearing of the gang rape and disembowelment of Western Cape teenager Anene Booysen in 2013.

“Her rape and murder disturbed me terribly and that is what triggered the painting.

“Anene is represented at the bottom of the painting.

“I had also bottled up my own emotions, so doing this was cathartic,” she said.

Setterfield, 78, who has a gallery at home and usually concentrates on painting aloes, sunflowers and other bucolic Eastern Cape scenes, wants to donate the painting to a person or organisation that could use it to counsel abused women.

“One woman saw the painting and told me ‘this has happened to me’ and said she would seek therapy. Nobody will buy it or put it in their lounge, so if it can be used in therapy and lead to healing, I would love to donate it.”

Setterfield said she had endured emotional and psychological abuse from a domineering father and had since come to the realisation that verbal abuse is as damaging as being abused physically.

“Shouting, blaming, belittling me and not giving me any choice about what or where I studied robbed me of my self-worth.”

Years later, when she found out her youngest daughter had been molested by her uncle when she was four and date-raped at a Gauteng Christian youth camp at gunpoint when she was 17, her anger flared up.

“I have held that anger for so long – that my daughter endured so much pain from the age of four,” said Setterfield who underwent rape counselling training to help others.

She went through “a tsunami of grief” when her daughter, a 47-year-old Gauteng clinical psychologist specialising in women abuse died when she had a seizure, fell into her pool and drowned last year.

“Painting keeps me sane,” Setterfield said. She hopes the painting can help women open up about their abuse.

“These things are happening all the time and they are happening to people you know.

“When a friend’s domestic helper said her daughter had been raped she said she would not report it because ‘everyone gets raped’.

“Even during the 16 days of activism for no violence against women and children campaigns, babies are being raped and brutally killed.

“There is always a lunch or a party or a lame speech, but it doesn’t change anything.”