I’m one of the lucky women. I’m 61 years old and have never been an outright victim of sexual assault. When I look back at my life, I realize this has very little to do with me. I may have been protected by my own lack of social expertise and opportunities. I had friends, but I was not particularly popular. I didn’t date in high school—not by choice either. I used to stand in front of the mirror and try to figure out why no one would ask me to a school dance. Less attractive girls went, but not me. Also I didn’t get invited to many parties, especially mixed gender parties. I didn’t drink which of course meant the kids I associated with didn’t drink either—that might have been a bit of a protection too. I’m grateful now. But then… not so much.
And I was so trusting! I was taught to be scared of the bogey man, but not the kid wearing a football jersey, not the church leader with the suit and tie, not the relative, not school teacher, and not the boy next door. But looking at these shocking statistics, I dodged a bullet. I nightly checked for the bogey man under my bed well into my teen years, but that’s the least likely place for a predator to be.
Once when I was a little girl, I was walking home from the swimming pool with my friend Geri. We always cut through the park and school yard by Scera Elementary School. I don’t know how old I was, maybe 8 or 9. Geri, though was a good two years older than me and ever so much wiser. She had a handful of older sisters and I always trusted that she knew more than I did about pretty much everything. This day as we walked through the school yard we were all alone except for a man standing against the school wall. He started walking toward us, but I can’t recollect if he was saying anything. Geri shouted RUN, and she started running. So naturally I ran too. When we got through the playground and to the street, she slowed down. I asked her why we were running. “Didn’t you see that man? He had his (not sure what she called it) out of his pants.” The man had been walking toward two very young girls with his man parts out. He had a big smile on his face, too or more likely a leer. If my older and wiser friend hadn’t told me to run, I shudder to think what could have happened. OK, he happened to be the exact kind of bogey man I’d been warned about. An adult man in a school yard during the summer??? But it didn’t strike me as unusual and I’m sure I went home assuming that he hadn’t even known had exposed himself to us. I never said a thing to my parents about it, but I never forgot it either. It was one of those things that I would only come to understand much later in life. The memory was etched in my mind like a string of other events that didn’t seem quite right. I knew nothing of sexual assault and unless I’d seen him carrying a knife, I wouldn’t have worried. I was terribly naive.
This year has been eye-opening and disheartening and gut-wrenching. To see the long line of famous and powerful men fall one by one because of the total lack of respect for women is something I never expected to see. Naive. Somehow, I stayed in that bubble of belief that we’d know who the bad guys are. That’d we’d know how to keep out of dangerous situations. That we’d see them lurking in the shadows of empty streets carrying knives and guns, not wearing suits, not the family men who read their kids and grandkids stories at night.
NAIVE Mormon girl might have been stamped on my forehead when I eventually went two hours north of home to university. I loved everything about college life. I lived off-campus, but just barely. During the first year or two I was there, there had been a violent rapist. He’d raped three women in a few weeks time and until he was caught, I was terrified. We all were. We were warned and triple warned to not walk alone at night on campus. Believe me, I heeded those warnings. Near our all-girls apartment, there was an all guys apartment. I often stopped there. I’d finally learned how to talk to guys. I felt right at home and completely safe. These were all returned Mormon missionaries. I’d play the now archaic video games pong and battleships with them. I’d visit. I’d laugh. I’d eat snacks. Well, one night one of the guys in the apartment, maybe even two of them forced me down on the living room sofa and held me down and tried to kiss me. I think I was laughing and dodging the kiss by turning my head. I still believe it was all in fun—however inappropriate—but realize now that it could have turned at any moment into something not in fun and something much more inappropriate. So anyway, I was doing everything I could to get away, but the guys were so much stronger. Suddenly another guy friend in the apartment grabbed hold of my ankles and whipped out from beneath the guy and then held me way above his head until it was safe to put me down.
During this Kavanaugh mess I have cried and my heart is absolutely broken to see men whom I thought were respectful care nothing about women and the very huge problem of sexual violence. So yesterday, I asked the guy who saved me that night long ago from the unwanted advances, if he’d remembered the incident and if so why he’d pulled me out from under the guy. What had prompted him? He said he did and it because I didn’t look like I wanted it. He just reacted instinctively. It wasn’t too hard to find my accidental hero because I married him. Good guy through and through. I am one of the lucky ones. I only wish every woman could be as lucky as I am.
