Dear Mr. Will...

"If the sky that we look upon
should tumble and fall,
all the mountains should crumble to the sea
I won't cry, I won't cry,
no I won't shed a tear…" 
- Ben E. King

But sometimes, not crying is hard. That's how I felt this morning when a friend posted this excerpt from Salon.com's article on an editorial by George Will in yesterday's Washington Post:

"Washington Post columnist George Will doesn’t believe the statistic that one in five women is sexually assaulted while in college. Instead he believes that liberals, feminists and other nefarious forces have conspired to turn being a rape survivor into a “coveted status that confers privileges.” As a result of this plot, “victims proliferate,” Will wrote in a weekend editorial that ran in the Washington Post and New York Post.

Further compounding the crisis of people coming forward about sexual assault to stay de rigueur is the fact that “capacious” definitions of sexual assault include forcible sexual penetration and nonconsensual sexual touching. Which is really very outrageous, according to Will. It is really very hard to understand why having your breasts or other parts of your body touched against your will should be frowned upon."

I did shed a tear. I shed more than a few of them.

This is a journalist that I have always respected -- even when I might not have agreed with his point-of-view.  When he spoke/write, I was always willing to listen. But, this…

A disclaimer:  I am digressing from my usual path in this post. If you are looking for a song, a poem -- this will not be for you. Maya Angelou once said:

"There is no greater agony
than bearing an untold story
inside of you."

This is the untold story I have borne silently -- but not today.

Dear Mr. Will -

Hot tears course down my cheeks as I write this. I am trying to understand why a man I respect - for his journalistic integrity - would write that, "being a rape victim is a coveted status that confers privileges." 

Mr. Will, do you have sisters or daughters? Have you spent the night in a rape crisis center with girls/women who want to tear the violated skin from their bodies, rather than wear it on their broken souls?

I have. And, I have been one of those girls. I am not someone who flaunts my rape victim status as a coveted medal of honor. I have spent many days praying with little girls, teens, college students, and women who have been violated sexually. I hear their hearts crying out for peace. I sit with them as they try to reconstruct a life that has been shattered by a boy/man's feeling of sexual entitlement. I have spent the night praying with a parents in hospital waiting rooms when their daughter would rather take her own life, than live it out haunted by the memory of what happened to her.

And, I was that girl.  I was sexually assaulted, by a family member, from the time I was four, until I was 19.  The photo of the sweet girl at the top of this page is me. I was not a dirty little thing with matted hair and a scrappy disposition. I was gentle, smart, helpful, and kind. I was not naughty or belligerent. I was not cunning or precocious. I was a child who was trapped by my love for my family. 

I was a child who was an easy target because I was obedient. I was threatened  with homelessness, with being taken from my family, with the violation of my younger sister - if I wouldn't cooperate.  I was threatened with violence, with my siblings security, with shaming -- if I were to "tell someone."

A tawdry secret was all I knew of childhood.  I had no point of reference for thinking of myself as innocent and pure. If someone asked me at school, "how was your weekend?" I had to lie. How could I say, "Well, if you really want to know,  I was molested, threatened, and molested again while cried hot, silent tears into my pillow so that I wouldn't wake my sisters, and have my perpetrator turn his attentions to them. Thanks for asking. How about was your weekend?" 

 No, I learned that to answer the most benign questions without fear of being placed in foster care, I must lie. And when I finally did tell someone the truth, I was called a liar.

I was accused of "wanting it" because I wore the my high school dance team uniform in front of a person I was supposed to be able to trust with my very being.  I was told that because I had breasts I was being provocative. It didn't matter that the molesting started when I was four years old. I was told that I was somehow "asking for it." Tell me Mr. Wills, was it the nightgown with the little teddy bears sprinkled over the soft flannel that made me a toddler temptress?  Or was I just an over-sensitive child that I was uncomfortable with non-consensual touching?  Was I being a drama queen when I cried myself to sleep at night, only to waken to the touch of a grown man's hands in places I began to hate.

Shopping for panties or a bra - as a girl - was torturous. I had to look at those places on my body that made me feel dirty.  I had detached from it being "me," so it felt like window-dressing someone else's object.  All I could see or feel, was a "me" that was fractured and torn in places I never let anyone see. Places I grew to hate, because those places were the problem.  Places on my body that I was told by my perpetrator -- over and over again -- made him "lose control." Going to the bathroom was terrifying because I had to touch those places where everything hurt -- my bottom hurt, my heart hurt, my mind hurt. 

I was shattered, and had no memory of a time when I was whole. We went to church twice a week. But when I tried to talk to my Sunday School teacher, she said I needed to pray for the strength to stop lying about such a good God-loving person.  She was sure that I was exaggerating.

In high school I didn't know how to set clear boundaries. There were no boundaries of privacy in my life. I didn't know that my body was "my body." And if it wasn't mine, then whose was it? The boy who told me I was pretty, smart, funny? The boy who bought my body because he bought me a ticket to the movies? The boy who threatened if I didn't "give in" I was a tease because I had smiled too winningly, and turned him on in a way he could no longer control?  You tell me Mr. Will? Do you think any girl wants to be called a tease? Do you really believe that when a girl says, "No," she really just asking for "victim status and privileges?" 

We live in a culture where a child who accuses her torturer of molestation or rape, is privately and publicly humiliated. She is often taken from the only "family" she has every known, placed in a strange setting -- foster or institutional care -- and treated like a broken plaything that doesn't even belong on the island of misfit toys. Are we surprised that she doesn't know the difference between being loved and being used -- when that is all she has ever known.

Do you think that any girl -- who has been raped -- wants to lie on a hospital bed in an emergency ward and have her most intimate space probed, prodded, examined and assessed under bright lights by a stranger? Do you think she wants to sit with a detective be asked questions about her the most intimate part of her life -- to explain why she shouldn't be seen as a "tease?"  Do you know how hard it is to be accused of being participating in a consensual sexual act when you were only being friendly, and clearly said "no." Do you think she wants to sit in front of her parents and explain why she needs to expose their entire lives -- emotionally, financially, socially -- to the horrors of a rape trial. 

Tell me sir, do you really think this is a coveted status?  What privileges are you worried that it confers?  I am baffled and hurt by what feels like a total lack of compassion and awareness.  I am perplexed by what seems to be your complete disconnect from the reality of how a woman feels after having her body used as an object and then discarded.

Dear Mr. Will, I am trying -- with all my being --  not to judge you. I want to understand why you would say such hurtful things. Perhaps the larger purpose of having you -- an intelligent journalist -- say these things is to finally get someone like me to say, "no!" To say loud and clear, "no, you cannot threaten us with shaming any longer." And to say it so  publicly -- and vigorously -- that I can't go back to pretending this is about someone else. 

I can't go back to just being the counselor, the healer, the comforter -- someone who -- without saying why, "just really understands what you are going through." I have to take responsibility for my untold story. I have to say, "no," to you, Mr. Will.  Because, Mr. Will, today you are the person I want to say, "please stop," to. I want to scream it at the top of my lungs.   

So, will you?  Will you stop? 

Mr. Will, I am begging you:  "Will you "please stop?"

Please stop, and help me understand why you would say such things. I really don't want to judge you -- I want to understand you. Maybe if I could understand why you would say these things, I'd understand other things that seem incomprehensible -- like how a grown man would think that he was entitled to put his own sexual needs above the need of a child to feel respect for herself.  Her need to feel respected by others, to grow up in a safe environment, to know what it means to be genuinely honest -- without fear of further violation and shaming.

I have learned that -- for me -- an understanding of my relationship to God has brought healing.  And an understanding of others has brought forgiveness. I have learned that purity is a power and that innocence is ever-insisting itself within the human heart. I have discovered that my experiences have only made me kinder and more compassionate. And that we all deserve to be treated with dignity and respect.

I write this with respect, compassion, and hope -- always,

But today, I also write it with great sorrow,


Kate