From time to time, I hear, “You should write a book”, and things of that nature. The thing of it is, I’ve tried. Writing about abuse is hard. Reading about it is harder. Think about it… who the Hell wants to read something that is going to bring it back for them? Writing this piece has proven to be an exercise in futility because my thoughts have been all over the place.
My memory is eidetic and as such, I either forget right away or I never forget and what I don’t forget are pristine details of things that happened as far back as the age of two or three. This means that I remember details of being abused including how I felt at the time and the feelings will replay as if it just happened and these thoughts are not pensive by any means. They just come. No rhyme or reason. For example: I’ll be petting my dog and the thought, “When that man hit me in the head with the heel of his boot, I should have punched him in the face instead of cowering” and then I will realize I’ve got my dog by his collar, holding onto him for dear life. Also, had I punched that man in the face, I’d probably be dead now.
So here’s the back story on the situation. I have a brother and two sisters, all older than me, all abused. My mother was married to their father until October 1969 when he was killed in an automobile accident. One of them filed for divorce in June 1969. It is interesting (to me) that nine months to the day later, my sister, their third child was born. My middle sister is the only in that family with black hair. Could it be possible that my brother was his only child? Anyway. I digress. My mother soon married her first husband’s cousin aka my father. So… are my (half) siblings really my cousins? Wow.
I’m not sure how old I was at the time. I couldn’t have been very old when my father, a Marine, sustained a gunshot wound to the head. My mother maintains he was cleaning and repairing a loaded shotgun. His family maintains my brother shot him. It was no secret that my father was not a nice guy. He was 21 years old (barely), he only married my mother because his mother made him because she was pregnant with me, and he went from being a single guy to being the father/step-father to four children. I was 25 years old when I had my first kid and I couldn’t handle it. Imagine what a 21 year old man with four children was feeling.
Every single scenario that I’ve run through my head including forensic investigation type scenarios, brings me to the realization that there is no way in Hell he would have been cleaning or repairing a loaded weapon. The trajectory of the bullet from a horizontal plane wouldn’t have hit him in the forehead unless the barrel was at a point blank range in which case, his head would have come clean off. That’s also the first rule in the handbook of “How to be a Military Dude”– you simply don’t clean or repair weapons while they’re loaded.
That leaves one other option. My brother had to have shot him but in all fairness, I will never believe he took it upon himself to do it. He was prompted to do it and I’m sure that prompting came from my mother. Okay, so her first husband is dead. The military sent her money each month for his dependents to the tune of about $600 for each child. Plan A could have been for my father to get his butt shot off in Vietnam. When that plan fell through, Plan B was afoot and that was to shoot him or have him shot. Well that backfired, pun intended. He didn’t die. So while he was laying in the hospital, my mother was out gallivanting around with her new boyfriend, our stepfather, her third husband.
Whether or not my brother shot him is completely irrelevant. What kind of life did he live even being accused of such a thing? And if he did do it, my mother never got him the help he would have needed to weather that storm and my step-dad abused him, all added up and everything we’ve all gone through, how much do you think he likes me? I’ll give you a hint. We haven’t spoken since 1990.
I have to be very careful here because it is easy for me to slip into my own form of victim blaming when it comes to my biological siblings. They have their reasons for not liking me and most of it is rooted in the fact that had my mother never married my father, I wouldn’t be here. Somehow, that’s all my fault. But whatever.
My mom and step-dad were married in June 1974 which would have been a few months before my oldest sister turned nine years old. My middle sister and I started being molested and raped when we were nine years old. Simple deduction dictates that must mean my oldest sister was being molested and raped from the beginning of that marriage. My mother also seemed to know which one of us he wanted to rape on any given day. She is not a psychic so riddle me this, how did she know which one of us he wanted to rape if they didn’t discuss it first?
Along with those rapes came physical abuse and straight up psychological torture. The game was, we never knew when we would be beaten but we always knew at least one of us was going to get raped. It happened every day. When I was in 5th grade, I went to school with hickies on my neck. My teacher, Mrs. Edwards, made a comment that they looked like hickies and in my mind, I was thinking, “well that’s because they are hickies”, but out loud, I made up some bullshit story. If that got reported, no social worker ever came to my house. No one ever questioned me about it.
Sixth grade, I told a girl about it. She thought it was wildly funny and could not possibly be true. She even said she went home and told her mom and her mom said things like that don’t happen. Seventh grade was awful. That’s when I started getting things taken away for not getting into bed with my step-dad. I would fight him and as the result, whatever thing was my favorite at the moment like my boom box or walk man (old school ipod), would be taken away. I wasn’t allowed to wash my hair. Most of my clothes had holes in them. My mother wasn’t making any money off of me so she really didn’t like spending her money on me. I was brutally made fun of in school. Eighth grade, I made the awful mistake of telling someone else whom I thought was a friend and somehow that got turned around to me having an affair with my step-dad.
I found out about that via a third party who was given a letter. In it was that little detail and that third party showed me the letter. What made me the most angry about it was that my mother accused me of having an affair with her husband… when I was ten years old. Another time when I was about 16 years old, as she was leaving the house, she made some snide comment like, “you two behave yourselves”. Like that was totally my doing. I’m getting angry thinking about that shit. This is what I mean by abuse being hard to write about.
One time, my step-dad had an ‘almost’ heart attack. My middle sister ran up in that hospital and didn’t ask how he was feeling or anything. She told him I washed my hair that morning. Like seriously, what was he supposed to do? Jump off the hospital bed and beat the shit out of me? Stupid bitch.
So I will fast forward to the night of March 31, 1989. I went out with a man I met when he came into the store at which I was working. I knew I was in trouble when I walked out the door so when he asked me about a curfew, I was like pffft, I don’t have a curfew. I got home at 2am.
That’s when the fight started.
My step-dad said I had until noon to get out. Then he said I had to leave right then and there. Then he said I had to be gone by the time he got home from work which was about 12:30 or so. Bright and early at 7am, there was my sister and my mother dragging me out of bed because “that’s what you get for staying out all night”. Sometimes it’s hard for me to feel sorry for my sister. She was on their side when it suited her, she was treated badly in a different way. Also, she had a baby in 1987. She and her child’s father made a pact that if she ever got pregnant, she would just lie and say it was my step-dad’s kid. And that she did. Two things: what kind of a piece of shit do you have to be to deny the existence of your own child before you ever create it? What kind of mother do you have to be to listen to those words come out of your child’s mouth and not kill your husband?
I had all my stuff packed up and ready to go but when I got into my car, it wouldn’t start. My step-dad removed the spark plugs in it. So I had to move all my crap back in the house. When he got home and found out I was home, he said to get my stuff, he was just going to go dump me off somewhere. The fact that I walked into my room to get my stuff, sent my sister over the edge and she beat me up right then and there. And so the fight resumed and went on until almost 5pm and the only reason it stopped was because my neighbor called the police.
That’s when I reported it. Everything. Physical abuse. Sexual Abuse. Everything. The social worker involved in the 1987 baby daddy scandal was on the phone and asked me if “that stuff in 1987” was true. At that point, all I knew was my sister told us “papa got her pregnant” so that’s what we believed so yes, I told the lady on the phone that it was true.
My neighbor looked me right in the eye and said, “I’m going to tell them everything”, and I just nodded. She sat right next to me and held my hand as we both told that story. Monday came with a male investigator and a female social worker showing up at my school. The investigator filled up a yellow legal pad with my statement and at the end, asked me what I wanted him to do with it. So already, there it was. He offered to throw it away and make it be gone. No one seemed particularly interested in doing anything about it but my thing was, I didn’t feel like doing it either but I literally just told my life story and I was going to be damned if they were just going to throw it in the trash.
Tuesday, April 4, 1989. That same investigator dude and social worker showed back up at my school.
His opening statement to me was, “I guess you weren’t lying. He admitted to it. Admitted to everything and we arrested him” and my world sunk further.
“You thought I was lying? Why did you think that? Is that why you asked me to throw it away?”
I don’t remember either of their names but I recall thinking he looked a lot like my Sunday School bus driver from the old days and she was pregnant and had white hair. My exact thought in that moment was, “Gosh, how did such a bitch get a man to lay in the bed and make babies with her?”– I instantly hated them both.
And so the fun began. From April to December, there were a series of court dates and I was largely kept in the dark about what was happening. I only had to go to court when they needed me to testify. I was raked over the coals by that stupid defense attorney, Vernon Keene I believe his name was. He would ask questions, I would answer them, and then he would reword the same questions and ask them again. I was seen as combative because I would say, “You just asked me that. I just answered it”
At some point, the Prosecutor Stuart Sullivan III said to me that IF that man went to jail, the sentencing guidelines for which he was charged were 2-10 years and he would probably serve the lower end and with time served and good time rules, he probably wouldn’t serve a whole six months. Six months for raping three children and brutally beating the shit out of the fourth kid. But wait, here’s why he was only charged and in court for raping and beating me…
My brother refused to testify. His wife knew about it as far back as 1984 when she was pregnant with my niece. They were living with us and I told her when she asked me why step-dad was in a bad mood. There was a bad snow storm and they didn’t cancel school until we were on the bus on the way to school but he wanted my sister to stay home with him so he could rape her all day. She refused but then we went right back home anyway and he couldn’t figure out a way to rape her with my sister in law there. The tension was thick that day and that’s why she asked me. She also refused to testify. Side note: If my dad was so awful that my brother had to shoot him, why didn’t he shoot my step-dad? He sure would have deserved it. Couldn’t get away with it twice? Asking for a friend.
My oldest sister’s exact words were, “You don’t take your family to court for things like this”. She told me in that same conversation that she once tried to turn him in but my mom and step-dad paid her to drop the charges. Sweet. So not only did she not testify in her own case, she didn’t tell anyone else, just left us there to suffer more abuse, and she got paid. I mean, she is only my half sister and wasn’t a big fan of me so I can see why she would have left me there but why didn’t she or my brother at least try to help the middle sister? She refused to testify in this case and was unsuccessful in getting me to drop the charges.
My middle sister, remember she told everybody my step-dad was her kid’s father, damn sure wasn’t going to testify and she told me she would kill me if I mentioned her name in court. I mean how would that have gone? She was 17 when she had that kid and she was 18 at the time of the court thing. All I could think was they were going to take her kid away from her which would have most certainly gotten me killed but how was it that baby’s fault and why did his home have to be disrupted because of his ignorant mother? Anyway. The question did come up, “If it’s so bad in that house, why is your sister still living there?” and because of that, I had no answer. I could have very simply stated because they have a baby together, why would he throw her out? Why would she testify against her meal ticket?
So I was the only witness to the abuse in court. Even though he admitted to it, he was still allowed to recant his confession. They made me out to be some lying rebellious teenager. Exactly what did I gain from that? I had a home, a family, a job, a car, paid my own insurance, and had a money in the bank. Not a substantial amount but it was a lot to me. I went from that to no home, no car, no job,no family, nothing. So when that prosecutor told me it was very likely he wouldn’t even be convicted, I said to Hell with this bullshit. He was not convicted and did not spend a single day in jail.
It has been 29 years since that ordeal and not a day goes by that some stupid thought doesn’t run through my head about it. Back in 2008, I found one of my nieces on MySpace and we talked. She remembered me but her younger sister was born in 1989 so she didn’t know me, my nephew, the one born in 1987, didn’t remember me and so he asked his mother and apparently she flew into a rage. My niece wanted to confront her dad about it and I warned her against it and whatever they talked about, prompted her to set up a whole new MySpace account. Assuming that was easier than deleting me. So I deleted my younger niece (her younger sister) and my nephew and haven’t spoken to them since then.
I have three regrets:
1. Taking that man to court.
2. Not killing that man when I had the means and opportunity.
3. Thinking my family would stand by me.
So here’s the thing: It doesn’t matter if you report it or not. Nobody’s going to believe you and your life will be an absolute living Hell if you do report it. It will be a living Hell if you don’t report it. But you need to report it if for no other reason than to have it on paper so when someone goes digging into the perpetrator’s background, they will see it. Consider this, if you even thought your neighbor was a rapist or a child molester, would you go hang out with that person? Leave your children with that person? It’s not like your neighbor is going to announce it to the world, “Oh hey, nice to meet you, I’m a rapist/child molester, want some coffee?” Yeah. No. That ain’t gonna happen. And if you were none the wiser and something happened to you, your children, or someone you know, wouldn’t you at least be a little bit mad at the person who could have reported it but didn’t? Engage in some good old fashioned victim blaming? These are rhetorical questions devised to make you think about it.
For the duncebats in the back of the room, riddle me this… Why do you hands down believe all the accusations against Bill Cosby? Gerald Sandusky? Every single person who comes out against Catholic Priests? But not Christine Blasey Ford? Is that because it doesn’t suit you? Incidentally, because I brought up Sandusky, how about that Joe Paterno dude? If he hadn’t died from lung cancer, he was going to prison along with those other Penn State officials for failing to report the abuse. Shall I take you back to that one time at band camp when I told my sister in law? When I told that friend who told her mom? When I told that other friend who turned the abuse into an affair? Could they be convicted for failing to report it? Again, asking for a friend. What are you mad at? It seems like every single time some allegation of sexual misconduct comes up, there are people who think it’s all about money. There are people who believe it without a doubt. And there are people who will not believe it no matter what.
I don’t think anybody who has ever survived a sexual attack would bring it up for shits and giggles. Or fame and notoriety. What does this woman serve to gain out of this situation? Maybe she just wants the public to be made aware of what kind of person is about to be nominated to the Supreme Court? You think? If she was lying, you can rest completely assured that she wouldn’t have survived the first round of questioning because they would have tripped her up and ripped her to shreds. Investigators and Prosecutors are good at that.
So please, if you don’t believe her, then sit down and go about your life and be grateful. My Sweet Lord, be EVER so grateful that you’ve never had to go through the pain of a sexual attack and pray that it never happens to any person you know. You are not the type of person a victim needs around them so be very clear about it so they can tell you to fuck off with the quickness.
Others of you who do believe this woman, help to raise awareness. Teach your boys how to be respectful to all humans and boys can be sexually assaulted too. Teach your girls that they matter in this man’s world and they don’t have to be silent if something happens to them. Above all else, teach your boys and your girls that you will stand by them no matter what. If you’re any kind of a father or a mother, you would do at least that.
Just an FYI: When my step-dad dies, he is qualified to be buried in the Arlington National Cemetery. I don’t believe he deserves to be laid to rest among heroes and I will protest it until they rescind the offer. Be ready for that shit storm.
That is all.
jerisquared 