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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72"><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal>You, too?<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Marcia J. Wick, The Write Sisters<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>June 2018<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Word Count: 1548<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Warning: Contains explicit subject matter and one four-letter-word. Also, If I publish this, it will be under a fictitious name so please consider it “confidential.”<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Thanks to you, my daughters and I now say, “Me, too.” I opened the door and invited you in, then I cried, “You, too?”<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>You were the friend of a friend of a friend who tagged along to a May Day party I had hosted. The more the merrier I thought. I called it a “Come What May” party in celebration of the future. I had survived divorce, I was managing my home, I was raising two daughters, and I was back to work following a two-year hiatus. Things were looking up…until you brought us down. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>You lingered longer than the other party-goers, noticing photos of my blond, blue-eyed daughters on the tabletop. You heard that my lawn mower was broken and you returned the very next day to repair it. You learned that I didn’t drive due to poor vision, so you offered to help us with errands. You invited us to the movies and made us dinner; you liked to cook for me and my girls. You were a small-town boy, raised on a farm, not afraid of hard work with your hands. You could fix anything be it electrical, mechanical, or plumbing. You were a college-graduate sporting an overcoat, briefcase, and two-way radio on the way to your important job as a project manager. You enjoyed music, serenading me with country love songs while you played your guitar. You consumed books and good wine with abandon, like me. You were well-groomed and well-spoken. You sat holding my hand during a visit to my parents, thanking them for sharing their loving daughter with you. A real-life Prince Charming, you were. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>You took us camping and boating and skiing; you took me dancing and dining. You courted me like a vulture circling its prey. You talked about the importance of being a Christian man. We went to church together. You gave me a necklace with a sparkling cross symbolic of Jesus. (What would he have done?)<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>That Christmas, you helped me buy a new computer for the girls. That Christmas, I was under the weather, sick as a dog with a head cold, so you offered to watch a movie with the girls and put them to bed; you suggested that I go to sleep early in hopes of feeling better the next day. The next day, after you had gone to work, my daughter woke me with an apology.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>“Mom, I hate to complain but last night…”<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>“He what?” <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>I trusted my daughter. I believed my daughter. Keeping my voice even, I thanked her for telling me what had happened and calmly sent her to the kitchen for breakfast. On high alert, my sharp mother-cat claws were twitching, but somehow I remained keenly measured with my words, not wanting my daughter to be further traumatized by witnessing her mom have a break down. Her plain words bounced around in my brain. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>“He moved my nightgown and touched me between my legs, and he took my hand and put it on his penis.”<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal> “He did?”<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>You did. While I lay sick sleeping, you lay on the floor in front of the television watching a holiday movie, helping yourself to one of my daughters. Wasn’t the love of a good woman good enough?<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>I called you at work. I hissed at you to get your things the fuck out of my house. I demanded you take responsibility and apologize to my child. In no way did I want her to fault herself for your actions. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>You did as you were told. You were contrite. You claimed it was an anomaly. You seemed remorseful. You cried. You agreed to everything I demanded. You swore you had never done anything like this before. You prayed. You offered to participate in counseling with me. I called a therapist out of the yellow pages, ashamed to tell my story, that I had invited a man into my home who then sexually molested my child. The moment I made the admission, the counselor asked if I Had reported the incident to the police. In fact, I had not. I had removed the threat from my home, but I had not wanted to subject my daughter to further stress talking to the police. The counselor explained that he was required by law to report knowledge of a sexual assault to authorities. Of course he was. I knew that myself as a public school employee, but I had failed to extrapolate that requirement to apply to my own circumstance. I began reeling from the reality that my own daughter was the victim of a sexual assault. As a mother too close to the perpetrator, I had not allowed myself to see the brutal truth of it. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>You were angry when I informed you that the counselor would not call the police if I myself reported the crime. I made the call the next day. Although my life began spiraling out of control the moment my daughter woke me into this nightmare, the disturbance gained hurricane strength after I reported the crime. They arrested you at your workplace and booked you as a felon later that day. I had assumed the detectives would accept my report along with your confession on face value, but they were not satisfied. Perhaps they presumed that mothers sometimes lie to protect the men in their lives. Perhaps they suspected that I, too, was molesting my fragile young daughters. Either way, they insisted that I and my children report to the police in person to be interviewed. They invited us to meet with an investigator at “the Childrens Advocacy Center,” a friendlier environment than the police department, they assured. The advocacy center, however, was a Hollywood façade, a storefront disguising harsh treatment inside. Like the smiling mouth on a billboard luring you into the dentist chair, we were coaxed in with promises of kindness and compassion. My girls were six- and nine-years-old when I schlepped them downtown on the bus, assuring them that caring people would listen to our story, and then we could go home for ice cream. Opening the door, we stepped into a lobby set up like a living room, toy boxes and books strewn about. The girls were presented with teddy bears and promptly whisked through a door that clicked closed behind them, barring me. We were separated without explanation or apology. I was led to a tight, windowless office and interrogated for more than an hour while I worried about their welfare. Later, I learned that my girls also had been separated from each other and held against their will in rooms with closed doors. They were filmed while stern “social workers” poking and pointing at dolls demanded crude details that their little girl minds could not conjure. I saw them cringing behind curtains and crouching behind couches when I later returned to the advocacy center, without my daughters, demanding to see the tapes. But the damage was done. For years after, I struggled to find a counselor who didn’t trigger the same type of response from my daughters.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Even after the abuse, I am ashamed to admit that I convinced myself you were a good man who deserved to be forgiven for having done something bad. My Christian values warped my thinking, compelling me to offer you compassion. I accompanied you to court and stood by your side while you confronted your demons. I told myself that you were the exception to the rule - that you had never done it before, that you would never do it again, that we alone could somehow transcend the insurmountable mountain of destruction you had caused. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>You were registered as a sex offender and began serving your sentence. You were ordered to participate in a program designed to rehabilitate people like you. But, you swore you weren’t like them. You claimed you were redeemed. You toyed with my mind and you played me against my daughters. You stole my time, commanding convoluted planning to connect without my children’s knowledge. You were forbidden from being near children, my children, any children, even your own son. Children, we realized, were everywhere - stores, libraries, parks, workplaces. We were driven underground, huddled in dark corners, haunted by the devil. We argued and blamed, shouted and cried. I drank more following our encounters. Home alone on the couch, the girls tucked safely in bed, images on the television blurring, sipping copious quantities of wine, staring at the carpet where “it” had happened, slowly I saw the truth. You, too, were a predator, after all. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Twenty years have come and gone. My daughter has forgiven me for not crushing you like a bug the moment I learned of your betrayal, but I have not yet forgiven myself for the delay, for thinking for one moment that the love of a man was worth more than the welfare of my children. My daughters and I are reluctant survivors in the “Me, too” movement, but I suggest that we point at each perpetrator and cry, “You, too?!”<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div></body></html>