was it really
Hemingway who wrote
The apocryphally short
Story about baby shoes
Never worn?
Could be a tutu
In any condition
Little girl gone
We don’t know by what vehicle
Age or demise
Matters that she is gone
And with her
All we knew
Of innocence
sigh
They are all so…
Cute
Lost between loves
What makes a human
Jettison a cat?
Their faces so lovable
How can we
Let them go?
then
Keep their flat glossy
Images so
Egyptian gods (of them)
Emblazoned on our internet
Flat ghosts
Of souls we
Refuse to keep.
What if
Words in a bottle were
Worlds in a bottle
What if
You and I
Were strangers in a room
Filled with people
Just as broken as me
What if
There really was
A connection between
Calvary and cavalry
And one could be used
To summon the other
What if you had a child
You loved very much
Who would be raised by
One kind of
Monster or another?
What would you do
To save her?
What would you
Do to bring her Home
?
The case shocked when it was first reported–a man sought help for his daughter who was being sexually assaulted in a Brooklyn park.
The story began to break into pieces within a week of its appearance. The victim was consenting? The victim had been having sex with her father!?
Ugh.
Most of us are done by this point in the story. Too much creepy.
The young woman refused to “do court” and the charges against all of her sexual partners fell apart.
Which leaves several salient questions–
How safe and child-friendly are parks in Brooklyn?
Why were no lesser charges pursued against any of the principals? Public lewdness? Indecency? Incest?
And last–(the one which concerns me the most) what will become of these people?
Especially the young woman.
The explanation of her behavior includes a life of foster care and group homes, a fundamental disconnection from her biological family–a father who could be called predatory at best.
With no more pieces of a biography than that I would hazard that she has attachment disorder, a syndrome caused by neglect and a lack of attachment bonding in babies and young children.
The question of what happens to the adult victims of attachment disorder plagues me because my adopted children have it.
None of us may want to face what happened in that park that night, but we should all question what will happen to her?
How do you teach a woman her own worth or the value of a father who protects his daughter instead of exploiting her?
And what of the men in this story? Each put a biological function of his anatomy over the last shred of his humanity.
My adopted daughter complains that I am not to be trusted because I judge people for things like this.
I would argue that one can only trust those who are willing to judge these things.
It ain’t love if you don’t keep all the little girls (lost or otherwise)…
Safe
At night
In the parks of Brooklyn.
I am haunted by the grief caused by the murder of a girl.
I am not convinced Sarah is. She seems to have an almost Capote-esque crush on the alleged the murderer.
Understandable. Why would he talk to her if she did not establish rapport? But in establishing a cozy rapport with the alleged killer she may have jettisoned her objectivity and an accurate métier for the humanity of Hae Min Lee.
Sarah says she read Hae’s diaries. She has surely interviewed dozens of her classmates. She should be able to paint a better picture of this young woman who…
Believed rather recklessly in love
Made good grades
Had a solid plan for her future
Played lacrosse and helped the wrestling team
And left a hole in the heart of her community.
If you cannot conjure up the living girl, you cannot comprehend either the depth of her loss or the demand for justice.
A life was taken. What good is clever reporting if the one who lost the most is but a cartoonish shadow of the young woman who was Hae Min Lee?
This article is appalling. It outlines a story of date rape, aggression, child abandonment, and political bullying perpetrated by one of our nation’s presidents. The story was aired and well-documented before his election.
Yet none of the story is found on his Wikipedia page.
I think it is time to speak bluntly about a man who appears to have fooled a lot of people but who was a predator and a liar.
And a textbook example of a sexual predator who hides his crimes and brutalizes his victims.
If Cleveland can have fooled us all, what predators do you know who appear honest and trustworthy, even though they are decidedly not?
For years I labored under the illusion that child sexual abuse was rare and that the victims could find help, even if their parents were indifferent or the abusers.
Wrong and wrong.
More than half of all children are victims of sexual assault before they reach the age of 18.
Most if not all of us have known and/or been groomed by a sexual predator.
And yet…
The pressure to not talk about the known sexual predators among us is so strong that I frequently write posts and then refrain from publishing them.
I am an old woman and a mouthy one at that, but I have been told explicitly to shut up and shunned implicitly for speaking out against child sexual abuse.
The pressuring is convincing and effacing.
Imagine what it would do to a child.
He used structures, barriers, doorways, linens, athletic equipment to hide his aggressions.
And lies. So many lies.
This comes back to haunt me. I try to keep it in a mental suitcase because my grief over his aggression is still so intense.
Last night I had a dream that I saw a giant tire being pulled on a barge in front of me. I knew exactly what it meant.
I used to take children to play tennis. Right next to the tennis courts the football team had giant tires they used for strength training.
Charles used the tires to hide his broken actions, distorting play schema with devastating effect.
The elliptical nature of my description is for you, not me. I know too well what he did to hurt people with ordinary things.
I wish there was closure. I don’t really believe in it. Instead I think my unconscious mind will continue to bring to the fore these devastating symbols of lost innocence.
Barriers–he uses them to deceive and harm children, yet has no legal obstacle, tag or minder alerting others to his past.
It is one thing to not know how a predator isolates and subdues his prey. It is another entirely to know, and simply look away.
I sat on the beat up couch and told my mil the story that had just unfolded with heartbreaking force–years of sexual abuse perpetrated by our adopted son Charles. Stopped as soon as it was uncovered but not soon enough to obviate years of damage and pain.
She looked stunned (of course) and managed something about God blessing our family.
At the time I thought, does she see what I cannot?
God has blessed me. God has blessed my family. But she did not know what she was talking about. She was a woman on the mainland of “normal” and I was drifting in the dinghy of “messed up life.”
Attachment disorder will do that to ya. It will put you out to sea with issues so devastating that Richard Parker starts to look like a tabby cat.
Love, if you hear adults, professionals, “experts,” tell you things that do not make sense, learn from my lonely voice.
Your children all have an equal right to live in peace, safety, and love. If one of those children threatens the safety of the others…
Yell loud at anyone who will listen. And don’t stop until you get the help you need.
You have a right to live free from the constant threat of harm.
And so do your wee ones.
There are only a couple people I have ever met who I have wanted to actually kick.
I say a couple in case I am missing someone.
The one person I know I wanted to kick was my adopted son after I found out he had molested children.
We took him in.
We cared for him.
He violated children.
How do you get past that?
You don’t.
You go through it, and it changes you.
I did not kick him. No one did. In fact, very, very, few people confronted him at all.
It is hard to confront evil.
The other day I was standing in a beautiful place surrounded by people I admired, listening to the blast of a radio station–the foulest, most misogynistic rap I have ever heard.
How could someone write, “sing,” produce, edit, air, or listen to such explicit “music?”
Outside of hell. Each “song” seemed to be reminiscent of the soundtrack of hell.
Literal hell.
I was once chided for objecting to a hip-hop song with lyrics about infanticide- my fault for listening to the words in the first place?
As though it were a moral ideal to simply avoid the existence of evil.
I write all of this because it is worth pondering what exactly Jay-Z did to incite his sister-in-law’s wrath.
I have lots of family members who are real weenies but I don’t want to kick them.
You want to kick someone when they really hurt someone you love.
Do you love Adrianna Waller? Do you even know her story?
Can you face the pain she faced alone? A helpless baby.
Can you face the man who tortured her to death? Or the inevitable waves of pain, grief, and anger his actions unleashed in the lives of every single person who had to live past his aggression?
Can you reckon with his unrepentant soul?
Can you factor in the role of pornography in his premeditated rape of a baby? Or the pain and confusion of her agonizing death?
I cannot.
For the first month after I found out that my adopted son had molested children I cried. I yelled, ranted, grieved.
I will never even be able to reckon with his unrepentant soul.
And so far, his victims have survived his evil–scarred but whole. Lonely and aggrieved, but alive.
If we cannot face evil, how can we begin to overcome it?
And if we do not overcome it: what good do we do?
Carrying Light 