So today I was working at one of the shelters I work at, the one known as SAFE, or Salvation Army Female Emergency shelter, and a woman was brought in by the police from the hospital, a woman who had been raped. She was a young, very pretty, African-American woman, probably sixteen or seventeen at the most. It seemed somehow ironic to me, that mere days after decorating the shelter with posters declaring April, "Sexual Assault Awareness Month," that we'd have a rape victim in. I guess people who rape people don't know about "Sexual Assault Awareness Month," and it isn't like they'd give it up for a month or something if they did know...
I've seen a lot of women/girls right after they've been raped in my lifetime, partially because of the line of work I'm in, and also partially because lots of women and girls are raped in our culture, 1 out of 3, according to statistics. I actually think it is more like 2 out of 3, since most rapes go unreported. I know in my family, we've had more rapes then our "statistical share..." I have two sisters, one of whom has been date raped, and another who was gang-raped at a party, and also raped by one individual at another party. I was at that party, but passed out; I feel guilty to this day that I wasn't there to protect her; right after the rape she woke me up and shoved her hand in my face (it had cum on it,) and yelled hysterically, "Look what he did to me! Look what he did!"
The girl who came into the shelter today wasn't yelling or screaming. She was acting more the way the other rape victims I've been around have acted; shaking a little, unable to talk, clutching her belly. In fact, she reminded me of the four-yr old I once saw while sleeping over at a friend's house in high school; her sister had just discovered that her boyfriend had raped her four year old daughter, and so she'd brought the little girl to her parent's house, my friend's house. (I still don't understand why she didn't take the little girl straight to the hospital, which is eventually what the little girl's grandmother did.) The little girl was shaking so hard, sitting on my friend's bed, curled into a ball, that the whole bed was shaking. She was a tiny little blond thing, weighing probably no more then sixty pounds...
So I don't understand how rape is possible; even after seeing both sisters go through it, even after helping countless women cope, but especially after seeing that little four-yr old...I just can't understand how or why someone could stick a full-grown penis into a four -yr old...
And today, watching the girl at the shelter, just sit, hour after hour, clutching her belly, not crying, but periodicily shaking her head "no" as though thinking "No, this can't be happening to me," or maybe "I clearly said no..." whatever she was thinking, she was pretty much unable to talk with anyone else except to ask for some water. She had been very clearly violated in an extremely powerful and unforgivable way. And to top it off, one of the social workers I was working with made light of it, by yelling to the residents of the shelter, who where staring at her: "She's freaked out...it's totally normal...!" I was thinking "jeezus, how would you feel if you'd just been raped and had someone yell, "oh that's normal?"'
Rape doesn't have to be normal...in fact, some tribes have no word for rape...
Love ya,
Carrot
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