Reporting Them, 1

(Monday)

I googled child sexual abuse and only came across websites helping its victims. The boy wanted charges pressed, so it wasn t much help to me.
I read a short description of child sexual abuse on Wikipedia and was reminded of the terms I used to know back when I was nineteen and really started trying to get myself together: Depression (numbness), low self esteem, Disassociation. Funny how that stuff worked itself out once I started paying close attention to my own experience, putting it into my own words instead of the intimidating, overly-official ones.

It was warm with a chilly wind blowing. I wore my blue nike baseball cap like I did as a teenager: always hiding under a blue base ball cap, its brim curved and worn low.

It was a long, quiet drive, because the radio in the Jeep had stopped working.
When I walked into the county social services building, I was surprised by the bright florescent lights, and all the people and little kids. The way the room was set up the receptionist s window was immediately to my left as I walked in, but the line to it ran all the way down the center of the room, with the chairs in two groups, one on each side, each facing the line, so that as I stood in line each side of me had a separate audience.

There was a couple there about my age. They were both Caucasian, both over-weight, him in a baseball cap; the girl wore glasses and had a lazy unattractiveness about her. The little girl moving about them held their attention and seemed to be wearing on them. He s stuck, I thought to myself. He didn t get out, then started having sex, now look at him, he won t get out.

Most of the people who worked there trudged when they walked; they continuously had to walk across the waiting room to enter the other side of the building. The ones who walked quickly still had the hue of poor white trash, or fresh out of the fields black. I used to hate that I came from such a poor, rural county, because I felt like it was impossible to get that erroneous image of it off you.
The woman behind the window was large with deep brown skin and talked with a clipped southern accent, which made her seem more professional. She still moved slowly, but it was methodical.

An almost-too thin blonde woman dressed in a stylish white top and pale skirt kept looking at me. She sat on the other side of the audience from the young couple. She was attractive, and had that aristocratic-blood look about her, but if you looked around her eyes you could see she was older. She seemed out of place; and I understood why she was looking at me. I seemed out of place.
I was wearing blue Aeropostle fleece shorts and a white Hanes V-neck t-shirt that was form fitting, especially around my chest and biceps. I guess I looked like a city-kid, fresh from a gym down the street one way and a mall down the street the other way. I drove a Jeep, but it didn t look like it had ever been through mud. I still wore the Nike cap s brim low and wondered about the scars on my face, and the ones on my legs from running through planted fields and briar patches; my wrinkled-up, working-man’s hands.

There was nervousness in my legs and I tightened my abs. I used to stutter sometimes and had learned somewhere that in order to get rid of it you had to learn to tighten up a different part of your body other than your throat.
It was a long wait. When I got to the receptionist s window I felt awkward because she was on the phone. Suddenly my phone rang, and I silenced it, then it rang again, I looked at the number but didn t recognize it so I silenced it again. The phone beeped a minute later, letting me know I had a new voicemail.
_How may I help you?_ the receptionist asked. I need to talk to someone about child abuse, I replied. Turns out they were in the next building.

The next building was completely different. When I walked in there was a receptionist s window directly in front. Most of the florescent lights were off, so that the place seemed quiet and cozy. There were only five waiting chairs set against a corner and all were empty. _How can I help you?_ the woman asked. I need to talk to someone about child sexual abuse. _Okay, someone will be out in a moment._ she said.

The restroom was clean and filled with personal touches. I looked in the mirror and tried to feel normal. I remembered it was all on me now, the boy long-grown up and the Tough one long-been exhausted. I just had to do whatever was required, I told myself, I just have to get it right the first time. I adjusted the cap and pulled at the bottom of my t-shirt, smoothing it out against my body, my chest pounding.

I went back and sat down. A stout woman maybe-my age with glasses came out. For some reason she acted like a manager would at a business, being called upon by one of her employees to handle a situation with a customer. She acted the way I imagined H__ acted as a social worker. I knew that a lot of people who falsely deny coming from abuse go to work in areas of child advocacy. They self-righteously deny that they themselves come from real abuse, they take on this I m-a-good-person role and treat their charges with a fixed pity, as if to separate themselves from it, as if the abuses they were dealing with were a novelty, from a world separate from them.

_Are you here to put in a report?_ she asked.
Something like that, I said. Being from the military I had gotten used to having to go from one office to the next in order to finally be talking to the right person, so I kept it simple until she had me sitting in front of her desk in a cubicle.
The whole room was cubicles, the florescent lights still kept at a minimum and little lamps were on each desk.

_Um .. it looks like I m doing intake. So why don t you tell me what s going on?_ she said.

I gave her the jist of it: _When I was a kid social workers were around a lot; I know they kept records. I come from ten years of night rapes and need to get these people on the sexual offenders list. I figured I d start here, especially if you still had my records. I really don t know where to start. But if you had my records that would be helpful._

She asked me questions like my parents names, their date of births, which I didn t know, their address, other siblings, the year I was born, when the sexual abuse started and when it ended. Since I had the print out in my pocket and had read it
many times, I was confident with my answers.

_So you just want to see your file? I don t know if I could do that, I d have to ask my supervisor._
_It would be cool if you could go ahead and ask her._
_Let me have your cell number so I can call you if we find anything. But you know, they probably didn t practice good record keeping in the eighties._

When she said the last part I heard the laziness in it. I then noticed that she was writing the notes at the corner of the back of sheet of paper that had already been on her desk. I understood that she was just writing them to humor me, and had little intention of doing anything with them, much less keeping them.

_Oh,_ I said.

_As far as where to go from here, I d start with the police department in the area this happened. You should definitely start there._

_Okay,_ I replied, and she showed me out.

It was a long drive across the county to my home town, another poor, rural outpost only kept alive by its location against an interstate. The police department wasn t in its own building, but in a couple of rooms behind a store on its main street. It was a quiet, large room with dimmed florescent lights, maybe four desks facing the center and one cop standing, a phone to his ear. He had a mustache and that fit-but-bulky look that older guys who still have to take physical aptitude tests get.
He was oddly professional, despite looking exactly like the cops who used to chase me down whenever I managed to escape the House. Maybe he was an older version of one them.

I told him I needed to get someone on the sexual offenders list and had been told by the county social services to come here. He took notes, then caught on that I was talking about my parents and the house I grew up in. _And there was some sort of incident?_ he asked casually, as if were checking a box on a form.
_I was very violently raped pretty much nightly for ten years, from when I was a baby til at least fifth grade._ He paused for an instant, then continued.
When he looked at me in order to ask the next question he had this subtle kindness in his eye. Maybe only men can know it and exchange it only with each other: this look that doesn t pity but shows the understanding that we live in a f-cked up world.

He seemed to switch gears, as if now he understood what was going on. He stood up while pulling out his cell phone. _I just need to make sure to get you to right place, instead of them sending you from one place to another._
He seemed to have called the sheriff s departments receptionist. He spoke to her using her first name and explained that he needed her to call him back and give him the cell number for the county sexual crimes investigator. The officer took my cell phone number and said I should be getting a call. He said that social services had told me wrong and that crimes of this nature were handled at the county level. He told me I would have to drive back to the county seat and apologized that I had been steered in the wrong direction. I was only there for maybe a total of fifteen minutes before I was on the road again.