The View from a Drawbridge

These are very triggering times, boys and girls. And they should be. They should be. Because Trump’s piss-poor attitude about Christine Blasey Ford is just a reflection of our general cultural ignorance regarding the subject of sexual assault and abuse.

One of the most outrageous things to come out of Trump’s pie-hole (and let’s admit that that bar is already set pretty freakin’ low) is, “Why didn’t somebody call the FBI 36 years ago?”

Um… because the FBI doesn’t deal with the abuse of traumatized teenagers? Because 36 years ago, nobody gave a shit about girls being sexually assaulted? Because to this day, it’s an uphill battle to get justice in these situations?

Gee, I dunno. Why on earth didn’t she report Kavanaugh 36 years ago?

Let me jump on the bandwagon with the thousands of others out there who are attempting to patiently explain #WhyIDidntReport.

Forty-Three years ago, when I was 11 years old, my stepfather began sexually abusing me. This went on for two years, until, at age 13, I broke a board across his knee and told him that if he ever touched me again, I’d kill him. And he knew I meant it. I knew I meant it. I’ve never been so certain of anything in my entire life. He never touched me again.

That was the closest I ever came to justice. Other than that, he got off scot-free. And he didn’t do me the courtesy of dying until I was 27, so I could have reported. But I didn’t. Here are some of the millions of reasons why:

• I was a good girl, taught to respect my elders. He was the adult in the situation, so even though what he was doing felt awful, to my young mind, it must be right. Right?

• I was 21 years old before it occurred to me that what he did wasn’t my fault. No one ever told me that. (It’s not your fault, either, by the way.)

• I was afraid that if I spoke up, I’d be taken away from my mother and thrown into foster care, where the abuse would continue, this time by strangers.

• I didn’t want to bother anyone. It’s not polite to rock the boat.

• I was afraid that if my stepfather went to jail, we would become even poorer than we already were, and we were living in a tent at the time.

• I didn’t want my mother to get into trouble.

• Because I was just a kid, ill equipped to take on the whole world.

• I didn’t want the world to know my humiliation.

• I didn’t understand how the law worked.

• I saw on TV how women who went to court about these things where treated like whores and emotionally abused by the defense lawyers.

• I was shy.

• I had such low self-esteem I didn’t think I deserved justice.

• I didn’t want to think about it.

• I wanted it all to go away.

• When I told my mother, she said I was “making too much of it.”

• When I told his adult son, he didn’t do anything.

• When I told a counselor at school, he didn’t do anything.

• I was all alone in this.

• Most of my female friends had been abused at some point, too. They didn’t report, either.

• Because as time wore on, I knew I was less and less credible.

• Because it would be my word against his, and he was a white male.

• Because attitudes like Trumps are the rule, not the exception, and because of that, we get Supreme Court Judges like Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh.

I could go on and on. But if you are the kind of ignorant asshole who doesn’t feel that all of the above is enough, then there’s no convincing you. So I’m done.

A big thanks to StoryCorps for inspiring this blog and my first book. http://amzn.to/2mlPVh5