Talked to the investigator. She didn’t have much info to share but it does sound like my little morsels are contributing to information already known. I think she thought I’d know more than I did from being a kid on campus, but I was so little, really didn’t know much about any misdoings at that time. Was glad to hear the one guy got fired by previous headmaster after a report was made against him, and it sounds like quite a lot of info is building about him.
And phew, sounds like my dad is not someone they are investigating anything about.
Of course. You’re so meshed into the whole thing by your childhood friends, friends of your mother and father, and just by growing up at the ‘scene of the crime’. But you’re also empathetic and caring, and know that the investigation and its outcome will have effects on more than just the perpetrator/s. So I think I understand why it’s causing you anxiety, but salute you for doing the right thing. It’s easy to say, often not-so-easy to do: continue to be brave.
I got five bucks for the first person who can find a legitimately non-horrifying, caring, thoughtful, well-considered, reasonable, and honorable thing Louie Gohmert has ever said in public.
50 years ago, I had some minor surgery by a doctor who didn’t use enough local anesthetic, and told me off when I screamed. He yelled, “You’ll scare your mother!” (she was in the corridor). At some point (a follow-up appointment maybe?) the surgeon showed some anonymous doctor into the examining room, then left. The doctor proceeded to stick his hand down my pants. It took five years before I realized what it was. I wish I’d done something. Now it’s too late. They’re probably both dead. And I never got the guy’s name.
I wonder how many other kids were assaulted by that asshole, enabled by the second (I wonder if they traded places, to keep the anonymity). And this was a children’s hospital in a big city.
At least I can say it was soooooo long ago that it doesn’t seem to affect my life – I don’t know that it ever did much – but I suppose it’s one reason I’ve had problems with crappy clinicians (and I’ve had a lot)! Actually that surgeon was a much greater source of anger at the time. He was just an arrogant jerk.
Now, I have more control, and I just don’t go back to any physician who’s an asshole. All of my docs now are angels.
I’m still experiencing what it’s like to speak out. I talked with my husband a bit about the call. He wondered what the point was - all these men are so old or dead now, and the school is not going to prosecute crimes, most likely - but to me it was nice to tell someone finally after all these years, and to know I was not alone. I’ve kept silent about it for 30 years.
One of the men came on to me when I was 16 or 17. I lived across the street from him. I’d known him since I was 2 years old. I played with his children all the time. How gross. Just to say that out loud - that was gross. To know other girls had gone through it, as it was just a hazy memory, made me know I wasn’t imagining it or misremembering. And he has this really fabulous reputation, always the nicest guy; I mean, he was a really nice guy - other than the creepy come on. I look at his picture and I see a nice man, a kind man. I’m pretty sure there is a building or a field named after him. It’s super complicated. The daughters, I’m friends with them on facebook. They are the ones who will have to deal with the fallout, not him. He is dead.
This is all new to me. I tried to speak up once before when a doctor molested me a few years ago and I never heard anything back from the person I sent the email to (supposedly the appropriate person) and the doctor was still practicing.
You might start researching stuff about trauma because I was really surprised that trauma I thought had had no effect on me had - people disassociate during trauma and think it had no effect on them. Then, you start putting pieces and memories together and it’s like there’s been a big hole in your life that was having this big effect you never realized. It’s fascinating to do the work. Like archaeology of the mind.
Just having Crohn’s as a kid caused trauma on a daily basis, especially since it was so misunderstood in the 1960’s. I did a lot of disassociating, to be sure, but I’ve done a lot of work untangling it – decades’ worth.
I think what was worse than that one pedo-atrician was the primitive proctos I got (at an earlier age) with no anesthesia. And of course the whole child’s embarrassment of a disease that made you run for the boy’s room all the time.