Category Archives: abuse survivors

Minotaur

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these stories we tell

of bartering children for the status quo

are older than the Minotaur 

dark, iconic monster

who most resembles our complacency

As long as the child sent into the labyrinth is not my own

we mutter, a sotto voce offering

To the god of what it would cost to save them all

He, unlike the Minotaur, is a natty dresser

With advanced degrees and a split-level colonial

He tsk-tsks about the rising price of safety

Rams our collective shame into his artisanally-crafted

Italian briefcase

pets his children and standard

Poodle 

with the same idle indifference 

Ignoring the growing sport 

Of hunting children

In the labyrinthine

minds of men who have traded 

The suffering of this human child

For their own eternal 

Souls.

Chinese Box

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some stories hold

Such trauma

That in order to 

Tell them

You have to use a Chinese box

What, you ask, is a Chinese box?

A Chinese box is a 

Story

Within a story

Within a story

Not to be confused with 

Chinese handcuffs

(Which is a very different thing indeed)

For example:

Once there were some children who lived in an apartment with their (biological) mother and father.  They did not always eat.  Sometimes they were left alone.  The father beat the mother.

The loss was unbearable, said their foster mother.  The boy was mute.  The girl was cagey.

So small.  So damaged. So angry.

They called her bad mommy, bad mommy, bad mommy.

Because there was only the one.

One room, one closet, one subterfuge, one million wrongs

In the circuits of his mind

He tells the story of the bad mommy, who was (he says) too much drama.

As she pieces together the past she neglects the symmetry of hearts, circles, and peanut butter sandwiches among the survivors

Because, as an ordinary prophet once said–every trauma has its own story…

Within these concentric 

Chinese boxes.

Reflect the sky 

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some things remain dark

Obsidian dark

No matter how much you try to put distance between

The two of us

The video footage cannot, will not excise your presence

Obsidian dark

Is not your chicken-scratch handwriting

The horrible story I made you write down

Or the things you left out…

That so many people helped to…diminish

None more than you

The damage which will always be

dead dog on my chest

Ghosts of dogs should haunt us both

But let yours bark incessantly outside the grainy film of your transgressions

While mine 

Returns whole, resurrected even,

To the cement driveway by the old house where the children played with the water hose and the blue plastic wading pool 

Joy

They fill the screen with joy

For a moment even you could see

The way the thinnest layer of water poured out on rough cement

Reflects the sky

Reflects the light from the endless sky

Reflects the glory of this endless day we

…walk toward the sun, my one-time-child

Before the night 

Falls forever

Monsters of righteousness

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Imagine them as you will but never

Assume your scepticism will make them 

Mythological again

In the smoke of our discarded daughters 

/commerce of indifference 

Shoots craps in crowded rooms

Sweat-palmed cash for common shame

Summon  these 

Monsters of righteousness

From this fire we

have made of love.

The victims’ impact statement 

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they said they lost them 

Tossed in the trash?

Recycled?

Whatever

I see  them clearly

The shape of ordinary Syro-Phoenician

Cursed on lined paper

Wtf.

How do you lose

The story of the rape of children

In parking lots

Playgrounds

Public spaces as well as cannibalizing

The geography of “playing house” and “family?”

You should know that the state of f#cking  Texas 

Can “lose” the words we wrote 

All they want

But the story belongs forever

To the indelible

Victims’ statements.

Houston, we have a problem

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On June 1st, 2016, People magazine reported on the arrest of a single suspect in the murder of 15 year old Katen Perez, whose brutalized remains were found, not by the Houston police or the Harris County Sheriff but by Texas EquuSearch.

According to the People article the rape and murder of Karen Perez was caught on the suspect’s cellphone.

Harris Co. is not releasing the suspect’s name…wait for it…because he is a juvenile.

He should be charged as an adult, prosecuted as an adult, and his identity exposed as an adult.

For that matter, all the involved possible accomplices should also be formally charged.

For the following reasons:

If you commit a capital felony offense (a fully grown-up crime) you should have to deal with the law as an adult.

Should be enough.  But there is a chilling “because”/second reason–

For years now Texas has been quietly compensating for aggregious juvenile offenders in order to save money on their incarceration and probation.

The  laws of privacy protect the juvenile offenders, allowing them to get juvenile-only plea deals for monstrous felonies then quietly exit the system as adults with no records.

These laws do so at the expense of their former and future victims.

I watched all of this play out in real time.

My adopted son plead no contest to a minor charge.  He was never tried for hundreds of felony offenses.  He was promised no criminal record.  

His story and the stories of several other youthful felony offenders I spoke to during his year in juvenile detention align with the identity protection given to the teen who raped and murdered Karen Perez.

For years now in Texas many juvenile offenders  get far better deals than their victims.

And regrettably, more protection.

Cesya

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I am familiar with stolen

Children stolen names

Borrowed children stolen names

Borrowed stolen beautiful

Girl metonymy

Is when you

Become a face in a crowd

The crowd then becoming

You in every face

I have looked 

You in every 

Looked

Have

I 

No.

Can’t do that or you will lose

Her you never truly

Had

Only a name

Crumpled broken paper fluttering down from the blown-apart skyscrapers which once defined our empire 

Mushroom clouded elephantine weight falls to its knees

Compressed neutron star mother

Heart the size of a sugar cube 

Weight of 300 million

Cars

On my chest

As I walk through the dark

Singing off-key these borrowed breakup songs

Fierce to the teeth 

Lost until I know

You will be

Safe.

The Girl in the picture

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haunts me with her gray

Soul, robbed of light

Too young to ever choose this 

She is a ghost

Who in all other aspects

Resembles me–

Breastplate taken in battle.

Which is why I see your face before 

Me always

The iron bars invisible to all but

We two

Jailed by men with carved out hearts

I carry you, darling

Close to my own

Beg the God of air and light 

To teach us how

To fly

Away from the shadows

Where ordinary humans claw and devour 

All but unaware 

They have bartered their own

Nearly extinguished 

Eternal selves

For shreds of ashen dung

The Duggar Fiasco

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A story of a 14 or 15 year old brother deliberately, repeatedly, invasively preying sexually on his very young and helpless little sisters is a nauseating, nightmarish scenario, not a frickin’ altar call.

Yet the Duggars claim it led them all closer to God.

Perhaps the god of celebrity, self-deception, and pride, but categorically not Jesus.

I know this because I too was once horrified to find that my teenage son (adopted from foster care) had preyed on his younger siblings and their friends.

Devastating.

I wept and I sought God.

My husband reported him to CPS.

I took my babies to forensic interviews, their doctor, and a licensed therapist.

And we fought to have him incarcerated for his monstrous crimes.

I sought out every parent whose minor children had been exposed to Charles. I treated his behavior as a public health hazard.

Because it is.

I asked Jesus–how do I get through this?

His answer was calm and incisive–the Truth will set you free.

It has. No one tells you how excruciating that kind of truth and freedom can be.

I look at the Duggars’ response to their son’s crimes and marvel at the damage they have caused to their children and their own souls.

Mrs. Duggar profoundly abused the content and intention of a portion of Matthew 18 in her interview on Fox. Tragic, offensive, and ironic….because Matthew 18:6 is the verse she should be quoting–

Matthew 18:6 NIV
[6] “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.