[Editor’s note: the following post may be triggering. Sexual assault, violence, teen suicide. Please reach out to a trusted friend or counselor if you need to talk. If you do not have someone, please consider contacting us for a referral. We share these stories to get clarity on a path forward to healing and wholeness. I pray it will help you get closer to the truth than before.]
When I was 13, I told my BFF about a boy sexually assaulting me daily for several weeks on the bus ride home from our christian school. My friend was a boy I’d known since I was 3. We were very close and I knew him well.
As soon as I told him, he found and grabbed the boy, shoved him against a chalkboard, punching the wall behind his head. He threatened him if I was ever hurt again, he would kill him.
A day after that, my friend got suspended for punching the chalkboard.
No one knew why he did it. Everyone thought my friend was just angry and violent. He was. He was livid. But he told me that when the principal asked why he was mad, he just said because that other kid is an a*hole! We were 13. We had no idea what to do. So my friend got the day off from school.
I was relieved for a couple days, but not even a full week later, the boy on the bus punched me, pulled my hair, twisted my arm and called me a bunch of names that I cannot even type.
I did NOT tell my friend that happened. I didn’t want him to go to jail. I knew he would kill that boy. I had no doubt in my mind. When he asked if anything happened again, I said no.
Less than two years later, my friend took his own life. My secret went to the grave with him. I could not have put words to it then as a 15 year old (what 15-year-old could?) but I’ve recognized since that I would struggle to feel safe for the rest of my life without him. He left this life because he thought nothing would ever change, nothing would ever help him, no one would ever love him enough.
Friends, this is the dynamic we fight, 35 years later. We’re still fighting “bullies”… but the wrong ones. We’re still struggling to be free of the shame and blame game. We still cower under the pressure to keep everyone safe, even those who hate us, out of fear for the ones who love us.
Who is willing to be my friend? Who among us will risk whatever punishment comes to stand up to abuse and hate? Or are people waiting for it to become “really” bad?
What if my friend just said, oh that sucks? What if he just blamed me for it all? Thank God he didn’t, even though he easily could have, given the evangelical environment in which we were raised. He could have easily asked me what I did to deserve it or if I was leading this boy on or was I wearing our school uniform in a sexy way.
This post is not even largely about being sexually assaulted per se.
It’s about how we have treated people like my BFF as the bullies, how we flip the script and recast all the characters in the wrong light. It’s about how many in positions of authority and power bypass the actual issues -the actual threats to our collective integrity and dignity- and go straight to keeping appearances. God forbid someone uses a bad word. God forbid someone gets angry enough to punch a wall. God forbid that we ask more questions or consider what would cause such a violent reaction from a 13-year-old boy?
I look back on the whole incident now with such horror. I’m a mom of two precious girls now. I live with a lot of fear. I know what could and does happen to hundreds of thousands of girls and women around the country, around the world. I shudder to think of it. Don’t you?
So when allegations come up in our circles, in our congregations, I am always dumbfounded that more walls aren’t being punched. I wait for the time someone, anyone, takes those abusers aside and threaten them, instead of letting actual bullies just walk away. The actual bullies who punch girls. The ones who don’t get suspended or even a stern talking to from anyone resembling authority.
We have learned quite a lot since 1986. Or have we? I can’t help but wonder sometimes. Have I been living in some distorted bubble that allows me to see things that so few in my life see?
But it isn’t until we start talking out loud that we get to find corroborating evidence. We start to see the patterns. We compare notes. We find that the things that gave us so many sleepless nights or dark dreams are plaguing the nights of others too.
Enter more bullies. The real ones this time. The ones that suspend the friend who stood up for us. The ones who suggest that whatever happened, we keep it under wraps. The ones who don’t want to know what is behind any curtain.
But those who stand closest to the bullies get blood on their hands. They become shields to bullies, even though they may do “nothing.” The inaction is as much an indictment as attempts to hold us back from getting justice.
We’re in the time now where multiple explanations compete for “greatest threat” designation. I’ve said it before and it bears repeating, it’s all smoke and mirrors. It’s all a show. It’s all deflecting the public’s gaze from the real bullying, from the real abuses, the real behaviors that have no place on God’s payroll.
God himself outlined the threat to his people. It was always bullies. It was always those in positions of authority abusing and sinning against his precious children. He also had nothing but harsh words against these men who used their power and privilege to oppress and crush those they were called to nurture and protect.
Looking back to look ahead
I’ve spent way too much time researching and thinking through the events of my life during those years. I have since learned that it all matters. It’s all showing up again. My wrestling with authority figures. My distrust. My insecurity and fear. I was not safe. I knew it even before I could put words to it.
But I know the words now. And I see the patterns now. There are more resources at our fingertips. We have more words that we didn’t in the 80s. We understand so much more of trauma and human mind. There are more paths opening up to us in getting healing and justice. We do that work now and we get labelled bullies. But I’ll be the right kind of bully any day all day.
And as long as I can, I want to offer us all clarity and a chance to punch some walls.
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Asking For Me 