my life without me….

One of the ways C masked his enthusiasm for abusing his very little sisters was by acting like the opportunity to watch movies while I ran to the store was a major enticement to watch the kids.  I never left him alone with a child who could not tell on him, so I thought if he was mean or obnoxious they would let me know.  It did not occur to me that it was weird that he always took my calls to check on the kids and only after it was too late did I realize what a destructive con artist he is.

He liked the Passion of the Christ and I assumed that it was less for a spiritual uplift and more for the uncomfortable violence.  Still believe this.  The other Bible story he seemed to like for the incipient violence was the story of John the Baptist.  I figured and he verified that he was more drawn to beheadings than sermons.  Blech.

When I asked God about the relative dearth of direct confrontations about child sexual abuse my gaze was directed toward this story–

a forthright, outspoke prophet gets dragged to prison for confronting a grossly corrupt monarch who has stolen his brother’s wife and is living with her openly (incest)

said wife is angry at said prophet and convinces her young, adolescent? daughter to do a dance that is so suggestive that her stepfather promises her whatever she wants (yuck, and then yuck again)

she asks for the head of the prophet and gets it

This is a deeply, deeply troubling illegal, barbaric and pornographic story and Herod’s behavior and choices are wildlly out of bounds

Why?  John asks before his death and I think most survivors ask this too.  I know I did.  I asked God how I could have had a rich, detailed and amazing conversation with Him for thirty years and He did not tell me that my little ones were being abused in my own house and other places?  I felt like a fool that I had been deceived, but I know Go’sd had not.  Why so long?  Why so devastating?  I knew I needed answers not just for myself but for C’s victims.

The words that I have to respond to that grief are too many and nuanced for a blog.  But I see things, my children and husband see our lives in a defined before and after, just as I see the story of the murder of a man God loved differently now.  I see the great tragedy of a girl seduced into murdering the one man in the story who might have guarded her innocence and dignity. I believe Herod was a very bad man.  He came to a very bad end as well…

April is kicking my butt.  I knew that many people who had spent time researching the holocaust or other human atrocities (rape of Nanking) suffered emotionally as a result.  I am finding this is true for me also.  I made a commitment to spend a month focusing on public stories about sexual assault and it has been emotionally exhausting.

There is so much pain in the world and the knowledge that all sexual assault is angry and unnecessary makes the pain worse.  All sexual assault is the result of deliberate and egregious wrong-doing. 

The Bible talks about “the years the locusts have devoured” 

Tonight I want to look at the biblical Joseph, son of Jacob.  Joseph is one of only a few men identified in the Bible as victims of sexual assault.  Potiphar’s wife attempted to sexually assault Joseph and then wrongly accused him of rape.  But he was not just the victim in this story, he was the victim of attempted murder, kidnapping, slavery, and the scars of his mother’s death and his sister’s rape.  Joseph was wounded and wrongly accused.

Christians would say he is a “type” of Christ– a character whose story and issues echo the life of Jesus.

When the triumph of his story becomes evident the Egyptians call him savior in their language.

I want the living survivors of all sexual assault to know that God is a God who can heal us, who can return what the locusts have devoured.  Demand this of His Father’s heart, His abiding love.

www.telegraph.co.uk/…/Etan-Patz…for-milk–carton–boy.html

if link doesnt work type “milk carton boy” into search engine

Salient points of this article:

6 year old boy died because he wanted to walk to the school bus by himself

if they won the lawsuit there must have been salient proof that Ramos was involved

and not only would a conviction in this little boy’s case have saved the victim Ramos was sent to prison for in PA,

how many others?

and last of all.  This Ramos fella will be out in November.

Doubt he will have sufficient supervision…

tragic.

More war violence.

My point is simple:  when the Japanese army systematically eviscerated a continent during WWII they did not do it for love or even like.

Rape, sexual assault, any non-consensual sexual act is an act of anger and aggression.  Sexual predators are not misguided children, they are people who knowingly violate the most basic categories of protection and they, like the Japanese in WWII, act out of anger,entitlement and cruelty wiith no empathy for their victims.

And as a grumpy post-script I would add that they never apologized in any meaningful manner.  And by that I mean in truth, humility and reparations.

I first read about this story in a book on the Khans.  Ogedei was supposed to be Genghis’ favorite son.  If you read his bio on Wikipedia he sounds like a reasonably interesting alcoholic/benevolent dictator.  Until you get to the elliptical part about the little girls. (who were victims of “war violence…)

The story goes like this: Ogedei wants to humiliate a tribe so he rounds up 4000 girls from 7 to 15 years old and their male relatives.  Then he subjects all the girls to war violence for the rest of the day (in front of their brothers and fathers)

Then he sells the ones who survive off as concubines and prostitutes.

War violence.  Hell of a euphemism.

These stories haunt me, and just as with the book I feel an obsessive need to apologize for reminding people of them.  Blame George Santayana for this. 

And sometimes when the darkness encroaches my story and stories worse than mine I feel compelled to speak out loud the foundational Christian idea that Jesus took all the darkness all the pain for these little girls, for their families, for my little girls, for my little family.

How could He?  How hopeless I would be without Him.

Everybody knows this story, right?  Terrible and bat the same time I applaud Jaycee for speaking and writing about her abuse.

Clearly the system failed Jaycee.

Worse still, our experience with the system (of justice) strongly suggests that thousands upon thousands of identified sexual predators are thrown back into unsuspecting communities every day–no parole officer, no sex offender registration, no public record; without these things it is harder to sue when a sex offender strikes again.

And even more importantly, children are not safe.

Was just a teenager when Thomas Jefferson initiated a sexual relationship with her.  She was his slave.  There is no way to construe this as a consensual liaison.  He didn’t even free his children by her (two ran, the others were freed by his daughter, their half-sister/cousin).

By today’s standards for sexual assault and consent,  established by the FBI, Thomas Jefferson would be a rapist and a pedophile.