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DEAR MR. PRESIDENT.

I decided not to write this letter to you.

God forbid, it might be fake news. Even worse, I might be writing it to draw attention to myself.

So, I’m not writing this letter to you.

Thus, I’m not telling you that you don’t have a clue as to what really happened in that bedroom years ago between your Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and Dr. Christine Blasey Ford.

I’m not asking you why you doubt her recollection of the events and not his.

I’m not asking whether you have any idea what she went through.

What her family went through. If they knew.

What her mother had to deal with. If she knew.

I’m not telling you that there would’ve been no point in her mother making a huge fuss at the time.

I’m not telling you it only would’ve made things worse for Miss Blasey.

Teachers and parents could only protect her up to a point.

The rest of the time she’d have had to face the ridicule and gossip by herself. Quite likely, even so-called friends shunned her.

No, Mr. President. I’m not telling you these things.

You wouldn’t believe me anyway if I told you I was the mother of such a girl once upon a time.

I’m not going to tell you that she was drugged and raped. Or that she came to me in tears asking, “Mom, if I’ve been anally raped, would I know? Because everyone walking past me at school whispers ‘anal sex, anal sex.”

I’m not going to tell you about finding her in her bathroom, a pathetic little bundle on the floor, cutting herself with a razor blade.

I’m not going to tell you about sitting in my car in front of this small elite private college prep school and forcing my weeping fourteen-year old daughter to get out and face the school day.

I’m not going to tell you that I approached her favorite male teacher to follow up on the rumors even though she begged me not to. She said it would only make things worse.

She was right.  Which I discovered when I sat watching soccer practice and some boys seated close by on the grass, not knowing who I was, would chant, “Number seventeen, number seventeen,” as she ran past. The number on her soccer jersey.

We were new in town. Where we’d moved from she had lots of friends, boys and girls. Everyone was always at everyone else’s house. When she wanted to visit some boys, she’d met at this new school in this new town, I drove her there. Met the father. The mother was ill. Told him who I was. That my daughter was visiting.

No problem. The next time she wanted to visit I hesitated, but another girl was going with her. And she was lonely. Missing her old school and her friends.

The other mom picked up her daughter but left mine behind. When I called to say I’m going to get the girls, I was told she’d already collected her daughter.

The rest is history.

The parents were there. Much later I was told that no one allowed their girls to go to that house. I wish I’d had that warning before.  

I’m not going to tell you how I changed her school three times. But the rumors followed. Or how we weathered the inevitable experimentation with drugs. And how, by the Grace of God and many prayers from me, she found her niche. Found self-confidence in modeling. Found direction. Graduated. Got a Bright Futures Scholarship. Loved Anthropology and teaching thirteen-year-old little girls the basics of modeling.

I ‘m not going to tell you that she died in a hail of bullets in a dirty parking lot. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Somewhere she would not have been, had she not been raped by a boy and his friends four years before.

I don’t know where he is today. Or what he’s doing. I do know that if his name came up in a high-profile issue, I would be hard-pressed not to tell my story.

No, I won’t tell you these things because it’s not what you want to hear.

On a parting note, I’m not a raging feminist. I questioned last year whether Me Too is turning into a witch hunt. (Read: “ME TOO” TURNING INTO A WITCH HUNT?)

But I’m tired of women not being given the same consideration as men.

Then again, as I said Mr. President, I’m not writing this letter to you.

 

Photo by Kat Jayne from Pexels

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