Friday, August 15, 2014

Second Grader Raped On Playground During Recess

That is the headline running through my mind. Why it never even made dinner conversation or more importantly, consolation from my mother is a question I've asked myself over and over throughout these years since.
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It was recess. After lunch. A bright and sunny afternoon. Swings were flying from one side to the other almost reaching the sky and over top of the fence that the most athletically fit jumped onto landing like monkeys only a few feet away as the swings made their highest peak.
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There were kids everywhere, almost chaotically dispersed. And voices echoed in the air happy to be out in the sun on this afternoon. I don't remember the events leading up to the tragedy, but at this school I loved so well my twin sister and I were the object of reverse discrimination sometimes, being two of a few white children attending a mostly black populated elementary school.
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I was shoved and pushed up against the brick wall of our school building by about six black boys. My peers. My age group, I guess, because First, Second and Third Graders played on this particular playground and the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Graders played on another playground. I was only seven years old. They were all holding me against my will, forcing themselves on me and spurting out indecencies. Pumping back and forth on top of me violently. My clothes were never removed. But a lot more was raped from me that day than my virginity—my innocence.
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I remember the powerlessness I felt. An overwhelming disbelief dissociating myself once more of the emotional pain. I was crying frantically, taking huge gasps for air, catching my breath between screams for them to get off of me. Then from that white bright light of freedom to my quiet school room with Mrs. Goodrich sitting alone in the room in our make shift little library sectioned off and an L-shaped row of chairs where she sat, purposefully it seems, perpendicularly across from me on one of the chairs a few feet away from me as I was sobbing trying to catch my breath. And she almost antagonizingly kept staring at me while I cried hopelessly for some reassurance.
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The only thing I can remember her saying about the whole ordeal is a question pitched to me: Did he touch you on your private!?
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I can still see myself sitting there all alone, tears streaming down my face not knowing how to describe the event that just took place. And thinking back the question posed to me seems heartless. I've thought back on that isolating, lonely feeling after such a traumatic attack and have convinced myself that I've been given an assignment to be reborn again in a black male body ridden with Polio or Multiple Sclerosis because God feels I need a lifetime of hugging and lifting and caressing before I can ever move on from the emotional pain.
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The description "rape" was never used. I had no words in my vocabulary to describe what had just happened. I wanted my mother. I wanted to go home. I wanted my twin sister who was in the other classroom and who witnessed this but was unable to help me. I needed a hug and an embrace assuring me that everything was going to be alright.
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Nothing.
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Nothing more than a cold stare.
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And I don't even think a note was sent home with me to my mother. She wasn't called to the school. An event that would make headline news today was just brushed off.
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I only recently, within the past two years, brought the event up to my mother and told her what had happened and asked her if she remembered anything and she was shocked and said no, that if she would have been told there would have been hell to pay.
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I carried this and a lot of other events that happened to me on my shoulders that seemed to just get swept under the carpet. Events that developed my character into a strong but soft enduring one. I've felt that the others thought I was strong for never mentioning it and that they respected me for never bringing it up. I don't remember any of the boys' names and I don't blame them. They were my same age and I know that if that was happening to me on the playground in broad daylight I've wondered what on earth was happening to those boys at home.
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Arianna Huffington shared a quote recently that has profound meaning to me: Do not lose your inner peace for anything whatsoever, even if your whole world seems upset. —Saint Francis de Sales
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And I think of the tragic events that have taken place in Ferguson, Missouri. How many more lives are going to be taken away from us before this type of bullying execution stops? My English 110 teacher at The City College of New York, Mrs. Fitzgerald, said during a discussion in our class about police brutality when we read the famous essay by George Orwell, Shooting An Elephant, that her grade-school sons were afraid of the police. And we all agreed that if a child is afraid of the police then something is definitely wrong with our society we live in.
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I want to reach every young person before "they" do. I would have loved to try and reach Robin Williams. Jesus said: Don't let anyone rob you of your joy. I want to tell you to turn the other cheek like he did. And ask you to lay down your weapons like he bid his apostle to do who was only trying to protect him when he drew his sword and cut off one of the soldier's ears. I want to heal like Jesus did when he touched the soldier's ear and made it perfect again. I will not say "but I can't." I will still continue healing and try to heal others and be a healer. And I want to ask you to be a healer also and be a catalyst for healing instead of wielding all of us into another war. I want to reach you before the marijuana or cocaine reaches you, or before the alcohol overtakes you while you are still present. I need you. We need you.
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I want the headline to say: Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin and Robin Williams Were Resurrected Today. I want the headline to say: No One Died Today. No One Committed Suicide Today. No One Was Raped Today.

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