***Trigger Warning – mentions grooming as it pertains to sexual abuse of a child/teenager
The Instructor
The instructor was now gone from the picture of my life, but the ramifications of what he had done to me still lingered on in the recesses of my mind. He was in jail but not for crimes against me. His crimes against me were not even reported – mainly because no one believed me. For whatever reason, my accusations against the instructor sounded far-fetched because the instructor was well-respected and loved within the community. It was much too fathomable to believe that he had a dark side even though he was sitting inside of a jail cell for the double life he led that most people did not even know about.
Yet, my willingness to finally speak about what he did not want ever to be mentioned had now surfaced during what his family viewed as a dark time in his life. According to them, I was making things worse for him because he was supposedly fighting for his life and his freedom. Accusations of sexual abuse would not be a good look for him even if only considered to be a rumor, but the accusations were far from rumors since I was the one who came forward, and I was his target and victim.
Instead, my accusations were considered to be lies. I was immediately attacked by a family of enablers, and because of my reputation as a weirdo within the community, I was believed to be a troubled young teenager with bouts of instability. Supporters of the instructor actually made me out to be crazy.
Preparation For A Confrontation
The mother of the instructor had called a meeting with my father and me. She wanted to hear the details from my point of view. According to her son (the instructor), I had a crush on him, and perhaps I was imagining a love affair of which he spurned away from. From the instructor’s mother’s view, I was a jilted and rejected love-scorned teenager who could not have her way. The instructor’s mother made me out to be what one of her relatives termed as “hot in the pants for an older man”.
If anyone knew of my character, they would know that the instructor’s accusations of me were ludicrous. I was a loner, an introvert, autistic, and a homebody. I rarely went anywhere outside of my family unit. Even with my family, I stayed within my own little cocoon – my own little world. I moved to the beat of no specific instrument. I just played by myself. I did not even fancy boys enough to fancy a man. My only crushes on men were of celebrities who did not even know I existed. Sure, those crushes were older, but they were untouchable and in an imaginary playing field.
I was ashamed to admit that the instructor had stirred emotions up within me. He did love bomb me with loads of attention. He always complimented me, and I was admittedly flattered. Yet, he exploited my fondness of him and turned it into something dirty and as a tool that he could use against me. I did not like that he crossed my boundaries. I did not like his touches. I did not like his threats. I did not like being treated like I was owned by him. I did not like how he mistreated my brother and made a play for my sister as if to set her up for his grooming.
Even worse, I did not like the anxiety I felt whenever I had to figure out how to avoid the instructor. I did not like the sick feeling I always had whenever it was time for martial arts. I was suffering PTSD, and I did not like any of it. It was a complex type of PTSD because my body was already walking through a maze from a traumatic sexual assault from years earlier, even though my brain had buried those events. My life was hard, and getting any sleep over it or having peace was even harder. Yet, no one thought about my suffering at all. No one even cared.
Yet, these adults – especially the instructor’s mother – wanted to go for the jugular and attack my character as well as the simple things about me. To her, I was some harlot who was robbing her son of his life even though he had made a mess of his own life himself. Instead of holding him accountable, this woman vilified him, denied his actions against me even existed, and made me out to be some dirty sleaze even though I was still very much an innocent teenager who was nowhere near being a woman but already a survivor of a violent sexual assault from at age nine.
The Confrontation
My father told me that if all that I said was true, then I simply needed to speak the truth. I could tell by his behavior that he was fearful and concerned about the entire ordeal. The instructor’s mother was a prominent figure within the community. I had always perceived her to be extremely mean and bossy. Although she was not a member of the church I attended, I had seen her at social functions and gatherings. She always seemed to be the controlling leader telling other adults what they should do.
The instructor’s mother was the strong widowed matriarch of her family. She seemingly ruled her household with an iron fist. She had several children, and with the exception of one child, they were all adults. The youngest child was the sister of the instructor whom I had told what had happened to me. Since that time, the sister was not happy with me, and I had only returned to martial arts one time since to hear her talking to others loudly about how I was such a liar and how I was attempting to ruin her brother’s life. She was my brother’s age, 11, but she talked of such adultlike issues as if she were an adult herself.
Nevertheless, when my father and I arrived to the home of the instructor’s mother, only my father was greeted and welcomed, and only he was offered a place to sit. I stood, feeling like the outcast that I already was, until the instructor’s mother finally permitted me a seat. She immediately jumped to the matter at hand, and instead of addressing my father, she immediately began addressing me.
I could not even remember all that the instructor’s mother said to me because she said so much, but she was very angry and visibly upset. She claimed that I had caused her and her family nothing but additional undue pressure and stress when they were already going through it with the instructor’s arrest. She asked me what I thought about it, and I tried to be careful with my words, but I finally answered and said, “His being in jail is not my fault. Imagine the pressure and stress I felt when he was doing what he was doing to me.”
Silence. A registered facial expression of anger. Rage. Raised voice. The instructor’s mother leaned upward in her seat and looked at me with mean and unrelenting eyes that said, “How dare you speak like that to me in my house!”
“Little girl! If you don’t stop your lying about my son in my house!” the instructor’s mother shouted.
I stared back at her feeling a bit uncomfortable with her reaction and very unsettled within my own emotions. I leaned back to look at my father who was not saying a word. He had his head down as if to be in a state of thought. I turned to my other side to see a glimpse of the sister, who hated my guts, standing behind her mother in a hallway with a smirk on her face. I had not thought about how my father and me were in enemy territory in that moment until I realized that we were as I felt the rage of the instructor’s mother as heated energy coming towards me. I instantly thought “My father has literally brought me before the lion to be torn from limb to limb.”
The instructor’s mother bellowed onward and ranted and raved about many things. Her emotions were all over the place. She told my father how she was so sick, and that the situation with me was not helping matters. She claimed that her health had declined since my awful accusations, and she simply did not know what to do. She claimed that I was causing her family such embarrassment and hardship, and she was unhappy about that.
I was confused, however. I understood that no one wants to be shamed for the things that they do, but her son was not a child. Her son was a grown man. Her son was a married man. Her son was a father with his own children – a son who was a year younger than his youngest sister and the same age as my younger sister. It was all so baffling to me and so dysfunctional. The instructor’s mother chimed on that I had only come forth at the worst possible time. What better time could there have been, though?
All I could think was that the woman’s son, the instructor, would be okay, but she went on and on about how terrible it had been for her. She even cried because she was so emotional. I actually felt bad for her. She told me that she could literally never forgive me for what I had done to her family and done to her son. Because of me, she claimed that her family was ruined, and I had tainted the final days of her life with her family because I had cast a stain upon them that they would never be able to remove. The only thing that would make her forgive me is if I recanted what I said about her son. I was quiet.
The air of the woman’s home was suffocating to me, and I wanted to leave. Because I did not respond, the mother told my father and me that we had to leave. She told my father that I was no longer welcomed in her home, and she never wanted to see me again. Because of me, she claimed that I had turned the last days of her life into bitter darkness. I looked at her and thought inwardly, “Lady, you are the darkness.”
In retrospect, the words of this woman were meant to specifically gaslight and shame me. She accomplished at least that much. I left with my father feeling dejected and as if I was the most horrible and lowliest person in the world. It amazes me now how the spotlight was taken off of the sins of her son and placed upon me. I was scapegoated in the worst way. I was accused of basically having seduced her son despite the fact that I was 14 and he was 28. I was accused of basically laying a trap for her son to destroy her son’s legacy and his marriage.
The instructor’s mother gave me power that I have never known a child or teenager to have, and it amazed me that I was the one who ended up feeling powerless in the end by the time I had left her home. I could do nothing more than take what she said to me as if her words were supposed to ring true and be music to my ears. Her words were not pleasant for me at all. She basically banished me from existence all while my father stood as a silent witness. Her audience was her family who were in other rooms in the house quietly listening, but once my father and me were outside, we saw a quaint gathering of other neighbors actively doing “things” in their yards.
There was no honor for me within the community, but there was honor for the predator.
Continue reading for more in the next post.
My Voice Unchained 