It is easier to turn away

And so we strand victims of childhood abuse and trust they'll figure it out. Or not.

Take it from someone who knows. No one believed me, either.

But then, I only told one person, my fourth-grade teacher. I walked to her desk when the class was supposed to be quietly reading, and stammered out that my stepfather was hurting me.

I did not tell my mother because my stepfather said if I did, I would never see her again. I was 9. I believed him. The only other person I could think to tell was my teacher.

But she sent me back to my desk.

This was the mid-‘60s, and we didn’t talk about such things. Raping a child is gross. It’s ugly. Instead, we require victims of the most egregious childhood sexual abuse to deal with the pain in silent shame. Some of us do just that. Some of us don’t.

For me, it took years of therapy, a tense confrontation with the abusers, and incredible support from some of family to learn to live with a wide crack in my foundation. Both my mother and stepfather died without believing me, but in their place was a husband, a son, a brother, and an army of friends who made all the difference.

I have told this story before – multiple times – and will continue to tell it until there’s no more need, until we decide to finally come down on the side of protecting children.

Recent events show that we are far from that time. Look at the reaction to a press conference held Wednesday by survivors of child rapists Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and others. The names of those “others” are known but not to us, and Representatives Thomas Massie and Rho Khanna have been leading the charge to release the Epstein files – all of them, and not just the redacted, sanitized ones – so we can know what really happened, and so we can show the survivors that we believe them.

This while certain powerful people are pushing back, hard.

A White House official said that “helping Thomas Massie and liberal Democrats with their attention-seeking, while the DOJ is fully supporting a more comprehensive file release effort from the oversight committee, would be viewed as a very hostile act to the administration.”

Holy God. Hostile act? You want hostile acts? Rep. Nancy Mace, not known for her warm and cuddlies, ended up leaving a closed door hearing on Tuesday because she could no longer listen to the women’s stories.

But plenty of other people could, and did.

Epstein is dead, but Maxwell and a host of powerful people have relied on their own fame and high-priced attorneys to protect them but you can see the cracks spread.

Yesterday, while the women who survived unspeakable abuse answered questions from reporters, a metaphor delivered itself. The women at the mic were interrupted by a jet flyover to welcome the arrival of Poland’s president, Karol Nawrocki. While people deal with incredibly difficult crimes against them, life goes on, right? When a jet interrupted one woman– who’d been sexually abused for 10 years by Epstein (who bragged he was very good friends with Donald Trump) and Maxwell – the woman paused long enough to raise her. hand over her head and flip off the jet. fAt least, that’s what it looked like from what I saw. I hope that’s what happened.

Because yes, life goes on but these women must be heard and they must be protected and if the chips fall against powerful men (and/or powerful women), they they fall.

We will listen to these women and to the women and men and boys and girls, and everyone else who has been or is right now being victimized. It is literally the least we can do.

Release the files. All of them, every last jot and tittle.