gracebrownphoto:

ten photos from my series project unbreakable that remind me every day why i do this work and why i will never stop:

because it is our duty as humans to lessen the suffering of others, and if we can take a moment to bear witness to these words, we are able to carry the weight of them just a little bit.

—

project unbreakable is a series created in october 2011 featuring photos of sexual assault survivors holding quotes from their attacker, quotes from their friends/family regarding the abuse, or statements from themselves regarding the abuse.

(via projectunbreakable)

Source: gracebrownphoto

A Precious Gift

This evening was an evening I won’t forget.  It started like most evenings at our house, by washing up dishes and starting dinner.  While I was cooking, I was talking to Vale about my latest blog post.  I was telling him that there are so many questions I would like to ask him one day when he was ready, about his assaults, so that I could take the whole of the story in.  He asked me what I wanted to know, and so, I asked him about details.  What did he remember hearing?  or smelling?  What ritual may have been involved?  And for the first time ever, he was so candid and relaxed talking about it.  But what he told lays so heavily upon my heart.  Just for a bit of clarification, the details are lost 200 posts ago, my son was raped by two individuals.  One, Vale lived with and forced him to perform oral sex repeatedly.  This is the grandson of his former foster parents.  The second anally raped Vale.  Vale doesn’t recall who this person was, or his name.

He told me that he doesn’t recall particular sounds or smells but he does remember the tastes from the ejaculate.  I cannot begin to articulate how it feels to hear your son talk about an experience like that, especially when I particularly avoided asking about the sense of taste.  That should have never been part of his thinking, let alone his world, his memories.  A child should recall the taste of fresh strawberries, a favored ice cream flavor, hot dogs from the circus.  But never semen.  He said that he remembered an electric guitar, stuffed animals on the shelf and a game console.  These are what Vale’s offender used to ‘buy’ his silence.  I asked him if he felt that the adults in the home knew what was going on with the grandson.  He said he didn’t know about that, but he thinks that the grandson was offending the other children in the home.  Vale said, “we changed bedrooms a lot, I wasn’t the only one who slept in that room with him”.  I wonder how many other children were abused by that family member.  The family member that the foster parents denied even living there.  LIARS!

Vale then spoke briefly about his assault by the other older boy.  He calls that the chicken coop incident.  He told me he remembers little of this, except he broke the eggs that he was sent to gather, and he got in trouble for that.  Can you imagine that?  Being a small child, 6 or 7 years old, enduring a rape and being scolded for breaking eggs.

One of the saddest things that Vale said to me was that he still doesn’t think his being raped was that big of a deal.  He doesn’t think that it’s been a big impact on his life.  I asked him about his self-destructive behaviors: self harm, eating disorder, suicidal thoughts and he said that it was from having to move around a lot when he was a kid.  I mentioned to him that when we saw the doctor about his eating disorder the first thing Vale disclosed wasn’t that he had to move around a lot, he told about his sexual assaults.  I don’t desire that Vale be burdened with his sexual assault, to carry this every day in the forefront of his mind.  But I think that in order for Vale to fully heal, to look at the self-destructive mind-set that he has and see it for what it is, for him to live a full life, he has to admit to himself what a heinous crime had been committed and that it changed his life forever.  It will come, in his time, as his mind unfolds and accepts what it has contained in it.

I take everything he said and embrace it.  I take it like a snapshot, something I hold in front of my face.  I remember it all.  Where we were, what we were wearing, what we had for dinner.  It will never leave my memory.  I can’t expunge the memories from him.  I can’t undo the unmitigated evil that was perpetrated on his innocence.  But I can hold his story.  I can swallow it so it becomes part of me too.  It’s the least I can do.

Looking into those eyes…

I’m one of those people who are very empathetic.  When I hear about a hardship (or joy) that someone has gone through, I take in all the details and strive to crawl inside their skin and try to understand all the aspects of their situation.  This is not a voyeuristic exercise, when someone is suffering I feel listening and feeling is the least I can do, to try to shoulder the burden.  I truly attempt to gain understanding.  When I think about Vale’s assault, I not only think about how unjust it was, but I contemplate the searing pain, the odors and tastes, what must have been going on in his mind and even more graphic considerations: every tiny detail associated with it.  It’s some odd, and yes futile,  attempt to siphon off some of his pain and shame, and bear it myself.  So when I read the Sandusky grand jury report, the two parts of McQueary’s testimony that have stayed with me are the ‘slapping sounds’ that he heard and the fact that he locked eyes with that child.

McQueary testified that he heard rhythmic slappings which he automatically associated with sex.  Initially, before he knew that it was a child, what was he thinking? Was he amused? (hehe, someone’s gettin some) confused (now who in the world could that be?) alarmed (what is going on in here?) .  He couldn’t have expected to see what he saw in the showers and I wonder what his first thought was then.  Did that sound ever escape him?  When he heard something like it afterward, did he flashback to that moment?  Did it alter his own sex life, in that he avoided making that sound when he engaged in lovemaking?  Did he ever ask himself ‘I wonder what happened to that little boy’, or ‘did I do enough?’ or even ‘why didn’t I do more?’

But more-so, when that child looked into his eyes, what did he see in there?  Horror?  Pain?  Shame?  Relief? Pleading? Loathing? Disgust? McQueary stated in a leaked email that he did do something, although not physically, to stop the rape.  That when he left the shower area, the assault had indeed ended.  But then he walked away, and that I can not understand now matter how many different ways I spin it, how many angles I examine it from.  I know in my heart I would nor could ever ever have walked away from that little boy.  Yes the raping may have ended, but that child, that victim, was left alone with his rapist.  He was not cleaned up.  He was not comforted.  He was not assured that nothing like that would ever happen again (Dear God, did it happen again to him?).  He was not taken for medical treatment.  He was not kissed and cuddled.  He was not helped into clothing, sheltered, soothed.  He was left behind.

The day that Vale disclosed to us about him cutting himself, I remember his face, his eyes, when he told me.  He was so completely tortured in that moment, and I will never ever forget it.  I didn’t walk away from him, in fact I took a lot of time then and since then comforting him and reassuring him.  It will be a very long process in giving him the restorative love that he needs.  But his face changed my life that night.  Did that little boy’s face change McQueary’s?  Do those eyes haunt McQ’s dreams?  A year later did he think he saw them in the face of a slightly older boy?  In five years after that happened, did a teen he passed on the street look at him and forced McQ to recall  those eyes?  It’s been nearly 10 years since that night, and I wonder if McQuery looks at the faces of the young men he coaches, and sees what he saw that night.

I never saw that boy.  I can’t tell you if his eyes are blue or green or brown.  But I have to say I can’t help thinking about them.  All the time.  That and rhythmic slapping.

No, I’m not a conspiracy theorist…

I’ve got a thought, call it a speculation actually, but I’m pretty convinced that if Mike McQueary saw a little girl pressed up against a shower stall being raped, he would have moved to stop it, instead of away from it.  Now you’re free to disagree, but I’m going to present some cultural…evidence, if you’d allow me to call it that, that may change your mind.

In our American culture there are a few well-defined gender roles left.  One of them is that little girls are sweet and innocent.  Yes we have a national statistic that 1 in 4 women will experience a sexual assault of some kind in their life, where the statistic on men is 1 in 6, although many experts agree that this is probably too low.  Men are notorious for under reporting.  But we still are a nation that expects and protects the innocence of little girls, and rightfully so.  I would never want that to change, in fact I would like that thought process to extend out and grow.

However, when it comes to little boys, our ideas about them change.  They are naughty, dirty minded, narrow visioned creatures on the make.  Consider the media: how many times have you seen it portrayed that an older woman seduces a very younger male.  Not only is it acceptable but actually encouraged.  The whole ‘older woman schools the teen boy in the ways of love’ scenario has been played out in books, tv shows and movies for decades.  In fact we watched Stardust tonight with the kids, and the main male character is born from a union just like that.  Saw a Desperate Housewives promo where an older character brags to her friends that they should all get a “young one” because they have far greater stamina.  How about the whole “too hot for teacher” type of fantasy you see played in the movies?  How many of those trashy sex comedies have that very plot?  I recall one with Joan Collins ~ Homework.  Even the tagline of that movie says it all “Every young man needs a teacher”.  What about the movie Private Lessons?  It’s the ‘Cougar’ concept, and what a popular one it is.  And what is the reaction here, ‘nudge, nudge.. awww you made it with her?  You’re the MAN!’  Right?  Come on you know it is.

In any of those scenarios, could you imagine the public outcry if the seducer in the film was an older man?  That’s clearly inappropriate.  There’s no way it would be acceptable for a 35-year-old male teacher to be seducing his 16-year-old female student.  That would make audiences uncomfortable, and it should.  It’s statutory rape.  Now just so you know, I’m not completely naive, and I do know that this scenario (older man/young teen) is in media today, it’s just not nearly as prolific as the older woman/ young male teen scenario.

Interesting side note, found all kinds of Cougar type movies when I did a web search, but the only older man/girl movies were porn.. hmmm.  I would conclude that this kinda reinforces what I have been saying.  The older woman/boy plot is acceptable and more main stream, but the older man/girl plot is reserved for porn and dirty old men?

Now when this little farce is played out in real life, what is the public reaction?  When we hear that the older man preyed on the girl the public is ready to lynch that man.  And good on ya, that’s how we should react.  Unfortunately, the reaction isn’t as strong when it comes to the boys being the prey.  He’s a male, he’s strong, he should have been in control…if he had sex with her he obviously wanted it because he obtained/sustained an erection.  For crying out loud, when a male is sexually assaulted not even the FBI recognizes it as rape.  It’s clearly, unequivocally different when it comes to statutory rape of males.

You couple all of this cultural bias with the fact that sexual assault of females is far greater supported in America, meaning many organizations are out there to help girls and women who were raped, you get a far greater awareness for female sexual assault.  A woman reaching out for help is more common and is perceived as strength, at least most of the time.  But a man?  Not so much.  It is considered weakness.  He’s a man!  He should have been able to handle himself.  He doesn’t need help.  If you don’t think that this is true, talk to some male survivors and tell me what they have to say.  I already know.

Let me just take a brief minute to state that I, in no way, desire that there would be less support or awareness for female  survivors of sexual assault.  Quite the contrary, I’m very pleased that they have that, and wish it were more!  Although I am pointing out that males have far less support and awareness, I do not wish to take anything away from the support of our girls/women.  I just desire that our ideas about boys and men need to change when it comes to sexual assault.  They are just as vulnerable, the can be just as hurt, and it’s just as devastating.

Well there’s my evidence.  When Mike McQueary saw that little boy shoved up against the shower wall being anally raped by a full-grown man did he completely see a victim?  When Mike McQueary looked into that little boy’s eyes and then walked away he did so partly because of an unfair and disturbing cultural bias.  That is not to give him a speck of excuse.  He was a total creep for doing that.  But I contend if that those eyes were of a little girl, he would have come to her defense, instead of leaving her helpless.