I am not an apologist for targeted, predatory violence.
I have a different take on the coercion and assault by Harvey Weinstein’s that we are learning of today. As with other violence, I look at his face and wonder, “Who assaulted him, and got away with it?”
I did an independent survey of domestic violence while in college. I was prompted to this at learning that my childhood friend, a mother of two, had been murdered by her husband- a man I’d once worked with. A decade previous, he’d excitedly told me he’d just met my friend, and I was happy for him...
The tale in the court records is unrecognizable to me as belonging to the couple whose wedding I attended. The records also claim this man raped his own children. This man is in prison now, but he can get parole when he’s 101 years old. Their children grew up without their parents.
I learned several things in my study; two that stood out:
- That the percentage of males of all ages who are assaulted and raped is much, much higher than is reported.
That without intervention and counseling, children who are abused at home grow up to be abusers.
As adults, these children posted online (not social media) that they’d been raped by their father. A storm of replies tried to shame them, saying that was a false report fed to them by their family to say in court. I obtained a login and wrote, “Children do not lie about sexual abuse.”
I have scrolled through the online arrest records of one American State where many of my former classmates have settled. I look at the faces of the men. I read the arrest reports. Coercion. Assault. Battery. Generally, soon after- second offenses- near-copies of the first, illustrated with an even grimmer expression in the mug shot. Arrest was not a deterrent.
I see now in their mugshots, children who were once in terrible danger, at school or in their own bedrooms at home- and were never rescued. In an era when my classmates were sent to stand alone in the school’s hallways over bringing cinnamon-soaked toothpicks to class, one classmate was murdered through drunken negligence as the town looked the other way.
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I am not an apologist for targeted, predatory violence. It must be reported, it must be heard by authorities, it must be punished.
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Did someone once molest Harvey Weinstein- a someone whom Harvey couldn’t tell others had hurt him? My studies indicate Yes. This doesn’t excuse his actions.
The horror of abuse is that the abused grow up to be abusers. One can dither about “reasons why” but first, it has to stop.
I’ve called police and Child Protective Services, three times, to report three different people whom I knew were using coercion and beatings to harm children, because the adults themselves had freely told me. The premeditated abuse is a window into what was once done to done to them.
When I was 26, a man I barely knew raped me and concussed my skull with his knuckles and fists to “shut me up.” He said he’d be back to kill me if I went to the cops.
I’d grown up with “The Officer is your friend.” I went to the cops. I told them everything I knew about the man, who was well-known to them as a peripheral to the illegal drug scene. When the cops heard the name, I watched them look at my bruised face and the blood in the white of my eyeball and laugh me off. Silenced, I didn’t get to file a report.
People who’ve been assaulted know that this bro network of police erasure can happen. That’s why you are seeing “me too” today.
The voices we also need to hear from today are from men who’ve been injured, who can and will come forward. James Van Der Beek’s adding his voice both gave me hope and brought me to tears. In a culture where “Buck up/ Don’t tell/ You’re not a man if you’re assaulted, is beaten into males, James’ voice rings loud in the echo chamber of denial that men live in. Silence=Death.