I don’t recall all the details of being sexually assaulted either.
Lewis, A9
This is something I have rarely discussed and certainly have never written about. But since watching the Senate hearings last week with Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh, it has been constantly on my mind.
I began having thoughts again about the sexual abuse I suffered when I was five years old. It took place in the public school where I was in kindergarten, across the street from where I lived in Brooklyn.
It was 63 years ago. I am in awe of how the memory of this violation of my innocence still makes me recoil with self-loathing and horror.
I have thought about it before from time to time and then I pushed it away. This is not repressed-memory syndrome or any other such neat-and-tidy diagnosis. It has been there my whole life. Just thinking about it, though, made me so sick I could not handle the memory. So all this talk of assault and what seems believable and who should be believed during the confirmation hearings in Washington has resonated with me.
In my case it was the school janitor. It took place in the bathroom that was attached to my classroom.
He had me take off my clothes and touched me. He put me in several positions. It ended only after something must have snapped in me and I ran into my classroom stark naked screaming my head off.
I do not recall anything after that. Not what happened even a few minutes later or the next day. I do not remember whether the teacher did something or asked me questions, although I imagine she did. I do not remember talking about it with my parents. It is all a complete blank.
I have exactly two memories of kindergarten. I remember the first day of school. And I also remember that god-awful screaming that came out of my mouth one day and hearing the laughter of my little classmates while I stood there naked.
I could not tell you what the janitor looked like, except that he was white and tall. Or, at least to five-yearold me he was tall. If I were pressed for more details — the janitor’s name, the colour of the bathroom walls, whether it took place in the fall or the winter — I would be at a loss. All those details are fuzzy or non-existent. But the memory of the abuse is clear. I do not dwell on it. It dwells on me.
Over the years when I wanted to talk about it, I feared no one would believe me. I was also afraid people would laugh at me. I was afraid people would say it was no big deal and, besides, it was years ago.
Those who know me will say I am never at a loss for words. Yet about this no words would come. I could not figure out how to talk about it. It was as if I was trying to speak in a foreign language that I did not know.
One thing I do know was that not long after it happened I started going to see a psychologist after school. I went for a number of years. He and I would go for walks. In the spring I remember how we would walk over to where the Brooklyn College baseball team was training. He asked my mother to start buying me the Sporting News. I felt safer with the psychologist than anyone else during that time, even my parents.
A few years ago I asked my mother why I went to a therapist all those years. She said that I was a very unhappy boy and that she and my father did the best they could. It was clear she found the discussion unsettling, so I decided not to pressure her. I put the subject away one more time.
But after decades of not talking about it, I suddenly felt I needed to write about this now because of the comments I saw on social media concerning the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford. Many people doubted her because she could not remember every detail of the day she alleges that Brett Kavanaugh assaulted her. I get that it’s not fair to try Judge Kavanaugh with no evidence and just one person’s story from more than 30 years ago. And I have no idea who is telling the truth in this ugly battle that is playing out in such a public way.
But I do know how these kinds of allegations can be easily dismissed. Why did it take so long? Why did you not tell anyone? Are you really sure it happened? Could your memory be playing tricks on you?
Assuming she is telling the truth (and at least from what I have seen, I’m inclined to believe her) she and I have something in common. I could relate to the way she spoke about what happened. She was not seeking pity and neither am I. It seemed clear to me that it took all her strength to talk about what happened. What I believe she was doing was saying that someone had left her with a severe trauma that will never go away.
In her mind I believe she is having a day of reckoning with her alleged abuser. I wonder what that feels like.