More people saying #MeToo
Having more people share their #MeToo stories is adding to the rallying call for non-acceptance of abuse and harassment, as well as public and legal consequences.
#MeToo: We were three new teachers. Our principal regularly dropped by our classrooms and snapped the backs of our bras.
The final straw came when I served on a promotion committee with him. At the first meeting, he stood up and read a poem to the other members (all men) about my breasts.
After much deliberation, a few days later I approached him and asked for his wife’s contacts. He asked why.
I said that I thought she’d be very interested in reading his poem about my breasts. He turned red, and walked away. He didn’t bother any of us again.
#MeToo: I was 18, having started working as a bank teller. The bank manager, late 30s, would walk from his office to the coffee room, behind the tellers.
Passing by me, his hand would brush my bottom, soon more forcefully, then brush up between my legs. Most times I never saw him coming.
Once, when a Brinks cash delivery arrived, the manager insisted he count it with me, not the accountant, behind a locked cage door.
As we worked he kept rubbing my leg, saying inappropriate things.
Finally, I went to the caged door and called to someone for a washroom-break replacement.
Then, after the company Christmas party, he announced that I had to stay and clean up and he’d help me. My heart froze. The bank doors to the mall were closed and were locked.
He poured himself another drink and talked about how he was once in bed with one of his tellers.
I ran for the locked mall doors. I had a key and got out. When I arrived 45 minutes later at my underground parking garage, there he was. He knew where I lived.
I ran to my apartment, and straight to my roommate’s room, telling her and her boyfriend I needed their help. The manager had caught the door and was now in the living room.
My roommate’s boyfriend scared him back out the door.
Back at work on Monday, he still walked up and brushed his hand against me. I went to our accountant and asked for a transfer to another branch.
Unfortunately, my manager chose the transfer to one managed by his friend, who had me working overtime, alone in an unguarded bank, from closing until midnight several days a week. After a few weeks, I quit.
I’m 57 now and have only ever told this to my then boyfriend, now my husband. #MeToo: For many years, I thought that being molested as a child was my fault.
We were a large family, rather isolated — me, the second youngest, with six older siblings. We slept three to a bed.
It never occurred to my parents or other family that one adolescent brother was molesting me almost nightly from about age six or seven. I coped by pretending I was asleep. By day I was called nasty names and sometimes physically hit. There was an attempted rape on a rock pile and other places when I was just old enough to be sent out to work in the field with my brother.
Throughout my adolescent and teenage years, I was made to feel ugly and dirty. All this “conditioning” had a profound effect on my adult life relationships. I’m 78 now.