“I Thought I’d Gone Too Far”
One Man’s Journey from Sexual Trauma to Radical Redemption
The story of Michael Edward Ukus
By Debra Nathan
He was only a boy when his father left.
The memory is still vivid—the silence in the house, the unanswered letters, the way his mother quietly picked up every piece his father dropped. They had been a Christian family in Manado, Indonesia—flawed but close. Then came the distance. Then the divorce. Then the day he was called to testify in court on behalf of his mother, while his father was absent, never looking back.
“He just vanished,” he says quietly. “And something in me broke.”
As the only son, he had grown up trying to be strong. But he always felt small in his father’s eyes—too sickly, too sensitive, too soft. “I wasn’t the son he wanted,” he says. “And when he left, I started to believe I wasn’t the son anyone wanted.”
That wound - the deep, aching kind that no one sees , would become a doorway. What entered through it would take years to unravel.
Years later in a flickering dorm room on a quiet Christian university campus in Manado, Indonesia, a nineteen-year-old theology student took his first drink of Cap Tikus—a rough, local liquor known for numbing whatever hurt you couldn’t name. He was just trying to forget.
He didn’t know that night would change everything.
What followed was a violent gang rape by thirteen older students. It wasn't just an assault—it was a spiritual rupture. “That moment cracked something in me,” he says now, voice steady but distant. “It wasn’t just my body they violated. They touched something I didn’t know could break.”
For more than a year afterward, the abuse continued in silence. He was cornered, coerced, and consumed by a shame too tangled to speak aloud. He never reported it. He didn’t know how. And worse—he began to confuse his trauma with identity.
“I was disgusted at first,” he admits. “But then… I got used to it. I began to enjoy it. And that made me hate myself even more.” By the time he left college, he had stopped resisting entirely. He entered gay culture fully, eventually living as a transgender woman in Jakarta. He adopted a new persona—a “ladyboy” for hire—wearing makeup and long hair, selling his body to survive, and later working as a pimp.
“I thought I was finally free,” he says. “People accepted me. They didn’t judge. They even respected me. But inside… I was hollow.”
He spent everything he earned on drugs, sex, and club life. “The deeper I went, the more unreachable I felt. It wasn’t just that I was far from God—I thought I was unredeemable. I didn’t think I had a soul anymore.”
Behind closed doors, he wrestled with suicidal thoughts and near-overdoses. One doctor warned him that his lungs wouldn’t last another month. Deep inside he wondered if that wouldn’t be a mercy.
“I didn’t believe God could love someone like me,” he says. “I had crossed every line I knew. I felt like evil had eaten me from the inside out.”
In late 2009, he boarded a boat with his mother and stepfather to travel from Manado to Tahuna. The night was calm at first. But by 9 p.m., the sea had turned.
Waves slammed the hull like fists. Doors on the second deck blew open. Screams rose above the thunder. For eight hours, the storm howled as the boat listed left and right, water crashing in.
Passengers braced themselves to jump.
“Through the howling winds, I could hear voices rise—people around me lifting praises in worship. But for me, that voice was gone. “My mind was screaming memories. Every sin I’d ever committed was playing like a film in my mind. I thought: This is it. This is how I die.” But then—something pierced the storm.
“I felt this push in my chest to pray,” he says. “And for the first time in years, I opened my mouth.” He didn’t beg for himself. He begged for his mother. “Lord,” he prayed, “if I have to die, fine. But please let my mom live. And if You save us both, I promise I will return. I will repent. I will serve You all of my life.”
Moments later, he opened his eyes and saw something he still struggles to describe.
“Don’t be afraid, trust me”
“At the edge of the boat, there was a figure in white. He walked along the railing—one hand on the wall, one hand on the edge. He looked right at me and said, ‘Don’t be afraid. Trust Me. No one will be harmed.’”
The next morning, the storm had calmed. The boat reached the shore. And so began his second life. He cut his hair. He threw out his women’s clothing. He deleted social media accounts, changed his phone number, and disappeared from the world that had devoured him. Friends vanished. Loneliness came quickly—but so did grace.
He joined a church. Found a pastor. Began counseling. “Healing didn’t happen in a flash,” he says. “It came in layers. Confession. Tears. Prayer. And the Word of God. I had to relearn who I was.” In 2013, he enrolled in a Christian university in Bandung and graduated four years later with a degree in theology. Today, he lives as a man again. A quiet, humble one. A man who still bears scars—but also carries hope.
“I’m not perfect,” he says. “But I’m whole in ways I never was before. My identity isn’t in my past. It’s in Christ.”
When asked what the Church should know about survivors of sexual trauma and identity confusion, he doesn’t flinch.
“Don’t look at people like me with suspicion,” he says. “Don’t assume we chose this pain. Most of us were wounded before we ever made a decision.”
He pauses.
“And don’t preach at us before you sit with us. We don’t need answers. We need presence. We need people who will believe that Jesus can do the impossible.”
To those still caught in cycles of abuse, addiction, or identity confusion, he speaks with the authority of someone who has lived in the grave—and walked out. “You are not too far gone. I promise you. The devil will whisper that it’s too late. But it’s not. I thought I was beyond saving. But Jesus met me on a sinking ship in the middle of the ocean and said: “Don’t be afraid. Trust Me.”
Jesus Is Calling You Home
Maybe your story is different. Or maybe it’s heartbreakingly similar.
Maybe you've felt the same despair. The same confusion. The same weight of shame that whispers. ‘You’re too far gone.’
But Jesus is still saying the same thing today: ‘Don’t be afraid. Trust Me.’
He’s not asking you to fix yourself first. He’s calling you home.
If you're struggling with trauma, identity confusion, or just carrying a story that feels too heavy to name, we want to walk with you. Truth Fusion exists to help you reconnect with the God who sees you, knows you, weeps with you, loves you, and stil wants you to come home.
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