Category Archives: Vision

Here We Go Again

16 Monday Jan 2017

Posted by in Justice, Vision

≈ Leave a comment

(Cross-posted from Facebook)

Y’all, I could use some strength right now. 
Tomorrow, I’ll be in Olympia, testifying again for the Washington State House Public Safety Committee. The goal is to end the statute of limitations on sex crimes in Washington state. 
I have lost friends since going public with my story — friends who really meant a lot to me. 
I have had people question the authenticity of my story, and even suggest that the claims by over a dozen people who were sexually abused by the man who abused me (we were all children at the time) are part of some elaborate “witch hunt,” and made up. 
I’ve been having very vivid dreams of people trying to stop me from testifying tomorrow… I woke several times last night from nightmares. 
I KNOW this is my calling. I KNOW my advocacy for women includes this very difficult work. I KNOW our stories need to be told. 
As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
I need all your positive energies in the coming weeks. Please, rally with me and pray that the testimonies given by me and my fellow survivors will be HEARD, clearly. Pray that the committee will, as they did last year, vote to move forward with this needed legislation. 
Above all, please pray that once it gets out of committee, it receives the support of both the House and Senate, and becomes law in Washington. 
Sexual predators need to know they will NEVER be safe from prosecution in our state.

Before I Lose My Nerve

31 Sunday Jan 2016

Posted by in Justice, OSPI, Vision

≈ 1 Comment

I’m asking all of you to hold me accountable. There’s this thing — this very big thing — on my “bucket list.”

I keep an online bucket list at wakeuplist.com, and it contains all sorts of seemingly mundane, but important-to-me tasks, along with pie-in-the-sky dreams and aspirations.

Of all of them, none is more meaningful than this one:

IMG_2438.PNG

Remove the criminal Statute of Limitations on childhood sexual abuse in my state.

Here’s why it matters, for people like me:

The “old” statutes required that a person like me, who has been a victim of childhood sexual abuse, had only until her/his 21st birthday to report the abuse, and have a chance at prosecution of their abuser.

Of course, there were exceptions.

What if the person didn’t remember until after that, because they’d repressed it? Well, they’d have until three years after they remembered, in that case.

What if they remembered, but they didn’t understand how it affected them (in intimacy, child-rearing, mental health or other ways) until much later?

Well, they’d have until three years after they understood to bring their story forward.

None of these exceptions helped me, personally, and they didn’t help the students who were molested alongside me, because many of us fought to survive through our twenties, and spent our thirties trying to gain some footing, and — if we figured out how deeply our abuse affected us — we spent years trying to get our lives together, and by the time we even had time to think, “You know, that man shouldn’t be walking the streets, free to reoffend…” It was too late.

In 2013, the law changed in our state to sort of provide a catch-all, built-in, extra time padding, which allowed charges to be brought until the victim’s 30th birthday.

Progress, for sure, but again… Too late.

So, now… Now, there is a bill, sponsored by Representative Griffey and others in Washington state, which would remove the statute of limitations on (among other crimes) childhood sexual abuse.

On Tuesday morning, it goes before the House Public Safety Committee.

I will be there to testify.

I will be there to speak, for three minutes, about my story, and the stories of others who experienced abuse, literally at the hands of our teacher.

The Capitol is right across the street from the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI). The committee members — if they chose to do so — could walk across the street, ask for the file on my teacher, and read for themselves what he is affirmed to have done.

I will use his name.

I will not offer him anonymity.

I will testify in the most effective way I know how, and I will pray.

I will pray this bill gets out of committee, and I will pray it gets bi-partisan support and becomes law.

I will pray those voting see the TRUE cost of not passing the bill, and not worry that passing it will create an expensive, legal free-for-all judicial overload.

And then… I will celebrate the bill’s passage. I will check this item off my bucket list, and I will thank God for the vision he has provided.

I just thought I should tell you all, before I chicken out.

Please pray for me, and for the brave souls who will join me on Tuesday.

We have a lot of work to do.

My Abuser is Like Lord Voldemort

30 Saturday Jan 2016

Posted by in OSPI, Vision

≈ Leave a comment

He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named

You-Know-Who

The Dark Lord…

I must confess. I’ve never read the Harry Potter books. (I watched the movies, though! Surely, that must count for something?)

With my greatest apologies to J.K. Rowling, I have to admit that I never understood the reluctance of the characters in the Potter movie franchise to say the name of Lord Voldemort.

What’s the big deal? Why won’t anyone say his name?

For the Death Eaters, maybe it’s a form of reverence, like how my Jewish friends won’t say or write “God” in full.

But for everyone else? What gives?

As Professor Minerva McGonagall points out in Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows: Part 2, “…his name is Voldemort, so you might as well use it. He’s going to try to kill you, either way.”

It’s unreasonable that a name would have so much power.

Except… It’s not. It’s not really unreasonable that a single name can hold the power of destruction.

My abuser has “code names,” too, and I didn’t really think about it until tonight.

My abuser, for starters.

The man who hurt me.

HIM. (As in, “I had a nightmare about HIM last night.”)

That #*^!?*% ?%^~*#! (Mr. Wright’s name for him.)

Not saying his name doesn’t change what he did.

Keeping silent about who he is (although many have contacted me to say they know exactly who he is, based upon details — some are fellow victims, some are community members who “knew, even back then,” and some are people who associate with him now) doesn’t change my struggles and fears.

Protecting his name, when it seems “everyone” already knows, and there are public documents affirming that he sexually abused children… What purpose does it serve?

We live in a world gone wild for sensationalism. Why not just have it out? Why not plaster his name across social media, and the interwebs?

On Tuesday, I will say it.

I will say it out loud, and I will say it to a group of people who need to hear it. I will say it to people who can — if so inclined, literally walk across the street, pull out a file, and verify the truth.

“His name is _____ _______, so you might as well use it. He’s going to haunt you, either way.”

What We Can’t Unsee

10 Friday Apr 2015

Posted by in Vision

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

Back in November, Mr. Wright and I traveled to New Orleans for a conference related to his business. Although we were there in a professional capacity, we still made time for a little bit of fun and sightseeing, along with meeting up with a fabulous friend from my college.

Let me tell you about Bourbon Street…

If you love live music, you’ll enjoy taking in the local bands at various venues. If you love loud crowds and people watching, and are amused by the antics of the intoxicated, Bourbon Street was made for you. If you enjoy the freedom of carrying an adult beverage down the street while you stroll, you can’t go wrong on Bourbon Street.

However, Bourbon Street offers more.

It offers no shortage of “gentlemen’s” clubs, boasting everything from “live love acts” to dancers who are “barely legal.”

I defy you to walk the full length of the strip without either being solicited for “company” or witnessing someone being solicited for the same.

As a side note, the first time I visited New Orleans with Mr. Wright, we accidentally got off the main road — something we’d been advised by locals not to do, for safety reasons — and got a little bit turned around. Teetering on my not-sensible stilettos about five paces behind my husband on some weird alley-like side street, I listened with intrigue as a curvy woman in a Spandex dress murmured, “There’s comfort inside, Darlin'” to Mr. Wright from her doorway, illuminated by a red light. (Yes, really, a red light.)

“No thanks,” he said, and kept walking. I slowed as I passed the doorway, and my husband had to turn around and drag me away by the arm.

“She said COMFORT,” I insisted. “Maybe she meant a foot massage? These shoes are killing me!”

All joking aside, there is no denying the sex trade is alive and well in New Orleans. I watched, saddened, as business colleagues of my husband wandered into strip clubs or walked down the street with confident arms around the waists of women who clearly were not their wives.

It’s the same “what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” mentality that rolls off the tongues of those behaving badly while traveling. And, by “badly,” I mean in ways that don’t edify their relationships, their hearts, or their spirits.

What happens in Vegas, or New Orleans, or anywhere else, does not stay there. It remains in the hearts and minds of the convicted, and it does not stay hidden from God.

Anyway, back to my point (and I do have one)…

Once we have recognized our own wounds, and given ourselves permission to process our history, and denounced the power of our abuse by breaking our silences, we see things differently.

We see others who are suffering, and we see them in a much different way than the general population sees them.

We see a special type of pain and coping that the “untrained” heart does not see.

We truly see the victims of bondage and abuse, and we cannot unsee them.

What’s more, many of them know we see them, and those victims will react in one of two ways. They may retreat, due to hopeless resignation, bitterness, or a misguided belief in “deserving” the abuse. They will look away, walk away, or otherwise remove themselves from our empathy. Others will silently acknowledge what they know we know with a pleading look that says, “Help me.”

As we passed the club advertising “love acts,” two women in skimpy lingerie lingering in the doorway caught my eye. One was animatedly engaged with a small group of men crowded around the entrance, while the other stood nearby, completely silent. I made eye contact with her briefly, and saw her suffering. I locked gazes with her for a moment longer than was necessary or comfortable, and offered her a smile.

She responded by looking down in shame and silence.

How I wish I’d taken the time to turn around, go back, and pray with her. I still regret not doing so.

It was getting later, and clubs were starting to wind down for the evening. A woman in a tank top and athletic pants, who we’d seen approach several different men during the course of the evening, talked to yet another, asking in thinly-veiled desperation, “Are you feeling lonely tonight, Sugar? Could you use some company?” When he declined, she said, “Alright… you have a good night, Honey,” and attempted a smile.

That’s when I saw the bruising her makeup didn’t full hide.

It was the end of the night, and she was probably going to have to tell a pimp that she hadn’t met her “quota” for the day.

We can’t unsee them, as heart-wrenching as it is.

Sometimes, I think, “Lord, haven’t I seen enough? I can’t save them all, so WHY? Why unveil my eyes in THIS way, to THIS issue, to THIS pain?”

I can look away, but I can’t unsee.

I stumbled across this verse, and it didn’t seem profoundly relevant to me, at first:

Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering. (Hebrews 13:3, New International Version)

But something in it made me want to dig deeper, looking at different versions of the same verse…

New Living Translation:

Remember those in prison, as if you were there yourself. Remember also those being mistreated, as if you felt their pain in your own bodies.

New English Translation (a.k.a. the NET Bible):

Remember those in prison as though you were in prison with them, and those ill-treated as though you too felt their torment.

King James:

Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them; and them which suffer adversity, as being yourselves also in the body.

Aha! These different versions, together, formed a cohesive picture for me. I can’t unsee the bondage, lest I forget it. I can’t unsee the suffering, lest I become indifferent to it.

Maybe I can’t SAVE them all, but I can be a VOICE for them all. God has given me the gift of true sight when it comes to these special daughters and sons of His… and He has given me a YAWP to speak for them.