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Barbaric YAWP Girl

~ I'm tired of being silent. I'm stepping into the light, and I'm bringing the truth with me.

Barbaric YAWP Girl

Category Archives: Vision

Rose McGowan is Storming Hollywood, and Bringing Fiery Hell with Her. I Love Her.

13 Friday Oct 2017

Posted by Christina-Marie in #ROSEARMY, bruce huntoon, Bystander Apathy, Rape Culture, Vision

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

bruce huntoon

Rose McGowan isn’t messing around. Seriously.

She’s naming and shaming the Hollywood elite who knew about Harvey Weinstein’s abuse of women, and did nothing, said nothing, stopped nothing, stood for nothing.

You want to play let’s play #ROSEARMY pic.twitter.com/uqd26Z78gc

— rose mcgowan (@rosemcgowan) October 10, 2017

 

All of you Hollywood “A-list” golden boys are LIARS. We have just begun. #ROSEARMY pic.twitter.com/r5yPL2A3bC

— rose mcgowan (@rosemcgowan) October 10, 2017

 

Donna Karan you are a DEPLORABLE Aiding and abetting is a moral crime. You are scum in a fancy dress pic.twitter.com/Vze7lnpdvj

— rose mcgowan (@rosemcgowan) October 10, 2017

 

Hey @mattdamon what’s it like to be a spineless profiteer who stays silent? pic.twitter.com/rp0OrRrpqJ

— rose mcgowan (@rosemcgowan) October 9, 2017

 

Ben Affleck Casey Affleck, how’s your morning boys?

— rose mcgowan (@rosemcgowan) October 9, 2017

 

This is the girl that was hurt by a monster. This is who you are shaming with your silence. pic.twitter.com/TrtRNiYfIT

— rose mcgowan (@rosemcgowan) October 8, 2017

 

And, you know what? She’s absolutely right.

Anyone who knows about sexual abuse and chooses to stay silent is complicit.

Everyone who knew, had “been aware of vague rumors” (HELLO, Glenn Close), who chose not to hear survivors and victims because it might endanger their business dealings… all those people are complicit.

And it reminded me so very, very much of the acquaintance — an adult in the community when I was a child molested alongside my best friends by our teacher — who privately decried the actions of that teacher after I spoke out, adding, “Somehow, I always knew you were one of the kids affected.”

At first, I felt vindicated. Someone who was around during that time, as an adult observer, knew and believed what had happened to me, and kids like me.

And then… I got angry. I got right PISSED OFF.

How many other adults “always knew?” How many, like several who messaged me privately, “had heard rumors?” How many, like several others, “can’t stand him and what he’s done, but I have to keep the peace because my (insert associate/relative/business name) (does business/is friends) with him, now.”

Well, guess what?

If you knew, and didn’t speak up for children like me… YOU WERE COMPLICIT.

If you now know, and still choose to do business with Bruce Huntoon… YOU ARE COMPLICIT. You are endorsing him as a valued member of the community, IN SPITE OF the tattered trail of children he has hurt.

If you now know, and still choose to be “buddies” with Bruce Huntoon… YOU ARE COMPLICIT.

If you now know, and still choose to “go out on the boat” with Bruce Huntoon… YOU ARE COMPLICIT.

If you now know, and still choose to defend, support, or financially contribute to Bruce Huntoon in any way… YOU ARE COMPLICIT.

Harvey Weintstein put out this S.O.S. email to his colleagues and top Hollywood players:

My board is thinking of firing me. All I’m asking is let me take a leave of absence and get into heavy therapy and counseling whether it be in a facility or somewhere else. Allow me to resurrect myself with a second chance. A lot of the allegations are false, as you know, but given therapy and counseling as other people have done, I think I’d be able to get there. If you can, I need you to send a letter to my private Gmail. The letter would only go to the board and no one else. What the board is trying to do is not only wrong but might be illegal and would destroy the company. If you could write this letter backing me getting me the help and time away I need and also stating your opposition to the board firing me, It would help me a lot. I am desperate for your help. Just give me the time to get therapy. Do not let me get fired. If the industry supports me, that is all I need. With all due respect, I need the letter today.

Maybe… maybe… maybe if everyone “fires” Bruce Huntoon (business-wise, community-wise, support-wise), he, too, will be compelled to “get into heavy therapy.”

Maybe I’m dreaming, but if Hollywood can oust a man like Harvey Weinstein from his very powerful position, and say, “We won’t do business with you, any longer, Mr. Weinstein,” by just a few vocal individuals speaking out, why can’t a community — as a whole — oust a former teacher who’s had his credentials indefinitely revoked?

Why can’t that community loudly and vocally say, “We won’t do business with you, any longer, Mr. Huntoon,” and force him to humble himself to admit the truth?

Maybe, like Harvey Weintstein hopes, “given therapy and counseling as other people have done, I think I’d be able to get there.”

Maybe, he’d be able to “get there,” wherever “there” is. I hope “there” is where Bruce Huntoon faces his victims, admits what he has done, and takes full responsibility for the pain and trauma he has caused. I hope “there” is where Bruce Huntoon gets help and therapy for what is a very serious pattern of victimizing children.

Remember… I was not abused alone. In my case, at least, there were witnesses. My friends and I were witnesses to one another’s abuse. We told what we experienced and what we witnessed to the sheriff’s office, and we told what we experienced and what we witnessed to a pastor who knows Bruce Huntoon.

Can we stop, today? Can we stop being complicit?

The lives Harvey Weinstein has harmed are not insignificant to us, as a society. And they shouldn’t be. Some of our favorite stars are telling us they’ve been hurt by his actions.

Nor, I would hope, are the former children who have been harmed by Bruce Huntoon insignificant. They might just be some of your favorite real-life people. We are telling you we’ve been hurt by his actions.

Where do you stand?

 

Dear Committee Members…

08 Wednesday Feb 2017

Posted by Christina-Marie in bruce huntoon, Justice, OSPI, Uncategorized, Vision

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

bruce huntoon, OSPI, re-victimization

Today, at 3:30pm, the Washington State House Appropriations Committee will review HB 1155 — the bill to remove the statute of limitations on felony sex crimes in Washington state.

As many readers know, last month, I testified in Olympia before the House Public Safety Committee, along with fellow survivors that I’m blessed to call friends. The bill made it out of that committee with flying colors, and was referred to Appropriations, where — frankly — all bills get sent.

SO… this is a big, important step, and farther than we got when we tried to pass this legislation last year. I’m celebrating that, for sure! BUT… we are in the middle of a massive winter storm. Mountain passes are closed without warning, or simply unsafe to travel. I will not be able to make it to Olympia to deliver my testimony in person.

However, my local representative is on the Appropriations Committee, and I talked to his legislative assistant, who assured me that if I sent my testimony by letter — along with the letters of others who would like their testimonies heard — he would ensure the committee members received them.

Humbly, this is what I am sending:

Thank you Chairman, and committee members, for considering my letter today.

Did any of you grow up in a small town? I did, too. My friends and I listened to the same music, shopped at the same stores… And, we were sexually abused by the same man.

I was 10, and in sixth grade. He’d have me work on projects for him at a computer terminal, where he would place his hands on me, rub his genitals across my back, and massage my shoulders and my breasts. When I told him to stop, he told me he was just showing me how much he appreciated me. Often, my two best friends were stationed on either side of me, and he would “appreciate” us, each in turn.

It made us feel dirty and ashamed, and eventually, one of my friends told the principal. I told my mom. My other friend told her mom. We TOLD, but it didn’t stop.

The investigation — years later — was handled through the school district, then through the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI). Even in the end, after OSPI determined he’d sexually abused children over nearly 20 years, he wasn’t charged. Even then, system failed us. We had no legal advocates, and we weren’t offered services or representation.

31 years after abusing me, he still lives in my hometown. He doesn’t have to register as a sex offender, even though OSPI revoked his teaching certificate FOR sexual abuse. He still works with children, taking youth in swimsuits out on his boat during the summer for church youth groups, and passing out candy to kids during community events.

By the time I was strong enough — through counseling and support — to tell my story again, it was too late. In 2013, the statute of limitations (SOL) was lengthened, but it was still too late for me, and my fellow victims.

Today, I blog about my experience. Last year, after testifying before the House Public Safety Committee, I used his name — Bruce Huntoon. I began receiving messages from even more of his victims who said, “It happened to me, too.” A remarkable thing happened, as a result of going public… I found my tribe. That is, we found each other. Several of us were witnesses to each other’s molestation, and as we shared our memories, it validated what we’ve always known — we didn’t remember wrong. We didn’t misunderstand. Also, we learned we weren’t alone, and there were so many more of us.

Not one of us understood the effects of the abuse — literally at the hands of our teacher — until it was too late. I mean, the school investigated, and OSPI investigated, and they surely had our protection as a priority, right? We left it in the hands of the system to protect us, and to provide justice, but it never came. We waited, ashamed, and suffering from wounds we couldn’t even identify — some that would take years to fully manifest — waiting on an arrest that would never come.

We spent years just… Trying to survive. In our twenties and thirties, maybe we gained some footing, but most of us weren’t able to connect the dots until much later. Some of us still haven’t.

I’m 41. I’m married, the mom to eight children — six of them girls. My husband… he’s supportive, but… Our marriage suffers. Our intimacy suffers. I’ve been diagnosed with PTSD as a result of what my teacher did, and I suffer from autoimmune disorders (common in sexual abuse survivors at an astonishing rate — read some of my fellow survivors’ stories… they have them, too).

Some nights, he hardly sleeps at all, because my nightmares cause me to be so restless. I wake up screaming, or I wake up afraid to move, speak, or be touched.

It may be too late for justice for me. It may be too late for some of my friends, who haven’t yet journeyed far enough to speak out. Some are battling for their lives after years of shame and stress, but several did submit letters for your consideration — one who was terrorized and harassed by this man as recently as two years ago. Add us up… I’m giving you letters from just a few. Many more are named in the Order of Revocation, which I am attaching separately. The average pedophile molests 260 children during his lifetime. How many NEVER told about this ONE man?

It may be too late for the children named, and not named, in the findings from OSPI, but please…. Don’t let it be too late for one more child.

For more about my story, visit my blog at barbaricYAWPgirl.com.

Thank you for your commitment to full consideration of HB 1155. Victims in Washington state need to know that when they are strong enough to tell, there will still be hope… and perpetrators in Washington state need to know they will never be safe from prosecution for their horrific crimes.

There is no SOL for murder in our state, and it’s no coincidence that many sexual abuse victims and advocates draw a parallel to sex crimes, calling it a “murder of the soul.” The damage of sexual abuse stays with us FOREVER. We can’t erase it, fully heal it, or make it go away. It leaves scars on our bodies, on our spirits, and on our souls. It affects our loved ones, our partners, and our children.

How can we — as a society — tolerate the idea that if a person sexually abuses a child, if that criminal can “wait it out,” or if they’ve injured, threatened, or intimidated their victims enough to prevent them from speaking out, they should be safe from prosecution?

We shouldn’t, and we won’t.

My tribe and I will keep fighting for this legislation, even if it doesn’t pass this year. We will keep telling our stories, and we will collect even more along the way. We’ll tell, over and over and over again… until we are SEEN as the survivors we are, HEARD as the survivors we are, and VICTORIOUS in protecting every other survivor that comes after us.

Please, don’t make us return next year. Rather, let us get to the important work of helping others to find their voices and to heal. We are counting on you to get HB 1155 to the House floor for a vote, where its strong bipartisan roots can take hold, and flourish into something necessary for justice, and healing for our wounded.

Very truly yours,

Christina-Marie Wright

I also had the honor, and the privilege, of including letters from several of my sister survivors, and I think they are SO INCREDIBLY FREAKING BRAVE and heroic for writing them! I’m moved to tears by the pride I have to stand alongside them, and many days, I don’t feel worthy of them.

I hate being so far away. I don’t know if my words carry the same weight on paper, as in person. I won’t be able to read the body language of the committee members. I feel like I’m resorting to scattershot advocacy… even though, deep down, I know what we have done will be enough. It will be enough for God’s plan, His justice, His time. This was my part, at this time, this moment, right now.

We’d love your prayers, y’all.

 

Here We Go Again

16 Monday Jan 2017

Posted by Christina-Marie 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 Christina-Marie 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 Christina-Marie in OSPI, Vision

≈ 1 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 Christina-Marie in Vision

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Tags

bourbon street, new orleans, sex trade, trafficking

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.

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