Why We Don’t Always Report

@thediarymaster‘s entry on Believing Women, inspired me to comment and my comment was becoming an essay, so I decided to move it here.

Anyone who has followed along in my Diary has seen how sexual impropriety perpetrated against me by men in positions of trust and authority have pretty much defined my life.  When it wasn’t men in positions of trust and authority, it was my church sending strange and confusing messages.
As I’ve said before, I don’t know of a single female friend who has not experienced some sort of sexual violation in her life.

I can tell you exactly why we don’t always come forward.  I was 12.  I didn’t know if what had been done to me was really considered abuse or molestation.  I was ashamed.  I was ashamed that maybe I would be making an accusation that wasn’t accurate.  I did tell my mother, but only that I didn’t want to see him again.  There was no discussion beyond that.

One time when I was perhaps 13 years old, I had ridden my bicycle to the store.  There were three men standing in the parking lot saying things to me that made me afraid.  I went to the payphone and called my mother.  I told her I was afraid and she sent my dad to come get me.  When I got home, my mother’s friend (who is on my very short hate list) told me that I needed to learn when men are just playing.  Being afraid and saying something got me mocked.

With the years of harassment from my mother’s friend’s “husband,” when I finally tried to get my mother to intervene, she told me that I was just being a bitch and didn’t want her to have friends.

No one tells us what is worthy of reporting to the police.  I’d really like to see sexual harassment of minors made a crime as well.

And then there was this episode:  I had a student who had missed a lot of school.  She was in my fourth period, just before lunch.  When everyone had left the class, she approached me to ask if she could tell me something.  I said I’d be honored, but that I needed her to know that if I felt that what she told me indicated that she was in any kind of abusive or dangerous situation, I’d be obligated to report it.  She said she understood.

We sat down together and she told me the horrible story of why she’d missed so much school recently.  Her step-father had raped her.  She had reported it and there had been a trial and a conviction.  Now her mother was punishing her by withholding everything.  Her mother wouldn’t buy her her school supplies or gym clothes, so the student was getting into trouble at school for coming unprepared.  Her mother would take her and her younger sisters with her when she went partying and not take them home until the wee hours of the morning so that they weren’t getting enough sleep.  The environments she brought her to made it impossible for her to do homework, so she was getting into more trouble for slipping grades.
Her mother told her that this could all stop if she just admitted to the police that she had wanted to have sex with her stepfather and that she had made up the whole rape story for attention.  HER MOTHER DID THIS TO HER.*

I think we need to start with better education.  In 2018, our attitudes about sex are primitive and conflicted.

Our society sends really confusing messages about sex. Some suggest that Sex is a beautiful thing that happens between a man and woman who love each other and are joined together in marriage.

The same people who send that message also suggest that sex is dirty, naughty, and shameful if it happens before marriage.  Some have very casual attitudes about sex. It’s a thing that all animals do. It’s natural.  And some have some pretty outrageous and free attitudes.  These messages are sent through music, movies, television, literature, and daily interactions.   I think that a lot of the sexual assaults that happen by young people against other young people are part of that confusion.

Boys and girls both get conflicting messages. Somehow young men are less manly if they haven’t gotten some before they get out of high school. Young women are slutty if they admit to having been with a boy, or they’re uptight if they choose not to.  I think this leads to a lot of repressed feelings and those lead to rage. Rage leads to all kinds of bad things.

No, I don’t believe that all confused kids become rapists. I do believe that a healthier attitude about sex education that focuses less on the biology of it and more on things like what consent means and what exactly it is to sexually harass and sexually assault. I think we should start early, too. Instead of sending a kid home from 3rd grade for kissing a girl who didn’t want to be kissed, use that as an opportunity to teach children about when it’s appropriate to put your hands on another person.  Consent.

I think with healthier attitudes, communication can become more comfortable.  If young men can make bad decisions due to peer pressure, I have hope that peer pressure can cause good decisions, too.

• I did report the student’s mother to Child Protective Services.  She and her sisters were immediately removed from the home.  I didn’t hear from her for some time, but after several weeks, she called me at home (I’d given her my number).  She told me that she was in a foster home and that she was doing really well in her new school.  She was happy and just wanted to thank me.