Me Too

This past week, Facebook has lit up with scores of women posting two words: ‘Me Too’. This is a viral project to demonstrate the extent of sexual abuse experienced by girls and women, and to show that people from all walks of life are affected by this. I think that it was sparked by the recent news about Harvey Weinstein, the lecherous and indefensible Hollywood producer who preyed upon actresses for years and has now been outed and banished from his company and the industry.

I’ve resisted joining the legions of women posting those words, and it’s caused me to stop and consider why. You see, sexual abuse, accompanied by mental, emotional, and other physical abuse permeated my entire childhood, and I experienced sexual harassment as a young professional as well.

Here’s part of the story of my childhood sexual abuse:

I’m really not sure how early that it started. One of my earliest memories is standing in my crib and eating peas and carrots. Some of the peas and carrots fell into my diaper, and I consciously thought that I was not going to say anything because my uncles were in the room with me. It may sound unbelievable to think that I can remember something that early, but I had another memory from infanthood (my mother holding me on a bus, and people commenting on my eyes) that I shared with my mother when I was 12 years old – she confirmed it and was amazed that I remembered something that far back.

The fact that I have such an early memory of not wanting my uncles to touch my diaper tells me that the sexual abuse started very early in my childhood. There were various other incidents in my early childhood, such as one occasion when I was at my grandmother’s house with my family and my cousins, and the older kids tried to get me to have sex with my cousin – we were both 4 years old; I refused and was treated as an outcast for the entire night.

The most traumatic experience for me lasted initially for three years, from the ages of 6 through 8. I remember the first night clearly; I had two sets of identical polka dot pajamas – one had blue dots, and the other had orange dots. On this particular night, I matched the top from one set with the bottom from the other.

In the middle of the night, my uncle woke me, crawled into bed with me, and raped me. This continued for the next three years; one time, I had a pair of red overalls on – he pulled them down and made me lie on the floor waiting while he took a shower, then came back and raped me on the floor. Afterward, I went to the bathroom and he opened the door while I sat on the toilet and stared at me. I was humiliated and wanted to kill myself. Meanwhile, another uncle who lived with us told me that I could get pregnant – I was six years old, the same age as the photo that accompanies this post.

My uncle constantly threatened that he would kill me if I told anyone. On several occasions, when my parents had a night out, he would wake me up in the middle of the night and swing me by my feet over the stairs, threatening to let go of me. I was terrified.

One day in the first grade, I invited my best friend, Diana, over to my house after school to show her a new set of watercolors that I had. My uncle pulled her into his room and pulled his penis out – she ran out of my house and went home. This would not be the last time that friends visiting ran out of my house for one reason or another.

Years later, it was that time when my uncle exposed himself to my friend that allowed me to provide corroborating evidence to my parents. As a kid, I was an unabashed nerd; I wore thick glasses and, whenever I had the chance, my nose was in a book. The library was my favorite place in the entire world, and it was there that I started seeing pamphlets about molestation that advised kids to tell their parents about it.

At 11 years old, I finally got enough courage to tell my parents. My uncle was living up the street with his friend Paul’s family at the time. One late night, I was sitting in the kitchen with my mother, and I just blurted it out before I lost the courage. I told her that my uncle, her brother, had raped me for three years, from the ages of 6 through 8. She responded by saying that we needed to tell my father and that he was going to be pissed. I felt a little surge of joy at the prospect of my parents actually standing up for me against my uncle. That was short lived.

My mother immediately brought my father into the room. He told me that he thought that I was lying and literally interrogated me, asking me over and over if I was making it up. I kept telling him that I was certain of what happened, but he refused to believe me. Finally, I remembered the incident where my uncle exposed himself to my friend Diana, and I told my parents that they could ask her. It was only at that point that my parents stopped the interrogation.

The next words out of my father’s mouth were to tell me that I had to accept half of the blame and that the fact that I hadn’t said anything sooner meant that I was a willing participant. My mother agreed with him, and I went to bed.

The next day, we were getting ready to go to the Kingdom Hall (my mother is a Jehovah’s Witness), and my other uncle (the one who’d told me at 6 years old that I could get pregnant) and I were downstairs waiting for my mother. He told me that he’d overheard the conversation with my parents, then proceeded to laugh. I didn’t know what to do, so I just gave a sheepish grin and didn’t say anything. I felt like such a fool.

A few days later, I was again sitting in the kitchen with my mother and I started crying. She asked me what I was crying about, and I said it was about what my uncle had done to me. She told me to shut up, and said, “When I was a kid, someone tried messing with me, but I stopped it.”

About a week later, my grandmother and other family members came over to the house and I was told to stay upstairs. I eavesdropped on the discussion; they were talking about what had happened to me, and they all decided that nothing should be done about it. In fact, my parents told me that, when my uncle came to visit, I needed to be nice to him.

A few months later, my father came to me one day and, out of the blue, told me that he thought that, “If any nigger came to the door, you’d sleep with him.” Mind you, I was still a bookworm with glasses, never had a boyfriend, etc. If anything this just demonstrates how he viewed me; I still don’t understand it.

Looking back, there were a lot of contributing factors to the atmosphere in my house. One of them: My father had a stack of pornographic magazines that he kept in his bedroom closet; everyone in the house had access to them, and I once opened my bedroom door to find a copy of ‘Hustler’ opened to the centerfold sitting there.

About 20 years ago, one of my friends who I’ve known since we were three years old was getting married. She and I had a heart to heart conversation, and she told me that she’d always been jealous of me growing up. She had a single Mom who took care of her and her brother, and they didn’t have a lot in the way of material things. Meanwhile, she saw my family living in a big house with a hot tub, driving new cars, etc and thought that I had an idyllic life.

I explained some of the things that I’d gone through growing up and told her that the old saying, ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ is true. I told her that she had an amazing mother who made sure that she and her brother were protected and taken care of and that was worth more than any material possessions.

During that conversation, she told me something that I still count as one of the best things that I’ve ever heard. She said that, when we were little and going to the Kingdom Hall, her mother told her more than once, “Alayna is the saddest little girl that I’ve ever seen.” Whenever I think of this, it brings tears to my eyes because, at that moment, I knew that, all those years ago, someone actually saw me.

There’s a song on the soundtrack for the film ‘Chicago’ called ‘Mr. Cellophane’ that perfectly describes how I felt growing up. The lyrics say, “You can look right through me, walk right by me, and never know I’m there.” For the first time, talking to my friend, I knew that someone saw me back then. I used to sit at the meetings thinking that God hated me because I was committing adultery (at 6 years old), and someone there saw me and recognized the sadness that I felt. Amazing.

About a year or so later, that same friend read a letter that my mother sent me in which she acknowledged what I’d been through and stated that she didn’t feel responsible for any of it. After reading that, my friend said that she finally understood what I’d been telling her, and that what she was most upset about was the fact that my mother didn’t do her basic job: protecting me.

All of this is to say that, yes, I too, am a survivor of sexual abuse, but the words, ‘Me Too’ don’t quite cut it for me. Rambling as this account is, it is only one snippet of what I’ve been through in my life and there is so much additional insult to injury connected to this particular story that I did not cover here – maybe at a later time.

God has blessed me with an amazing husband and three wonderful boys; I think it was his way of showing me that being male doesn’t mean being an abuser. I’ve taken the things that I’ve experienced in my life and used them as fuel to be an excellent mother to my boys, which has stopped the cycle that I was born into.

The coolest thing, and perhaps my greatest accomplishment is knowing that no girl or woman will ever write or utter the words ‘Me Too’ as a result of anything that the men currently in my life have done. In this case, God has truly taken what was meant for my harm and used it for the greater good and for that, I am thankful.

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