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[Generic Other]

270. I remember the girl

She was a cheerleader and we had been friends in junior high, but had drifted into different circles. She the popular one, me the hippie. But one night under the bleachers on the field after a game, three girls smoking cigarettes and drinking beer. She suddenly opened up to us. "They call me bang bang. They made up a song. Lightbulb Jane," she told us. I had heard the nickname before but did not know the origin. And then she confessed to what happened to her after a party. Jocks and cool guys. She had too much to drink. Half conscious. Too many guys to count. Student body officers, football players, National merit scholars...good boys all of them. And not just raped her, but used a lightbulb on her.

She cried as she told us her story. At the time, I was horrified that I was the only one she felt close enough to share this pain with because we were in fact not close at all. But she told her story, and we two who were there tried to let her know it wasn't her fault and that it didn't make her a bad person. Not once did we suggest she get any adults involved. The idea never occurred to us.

Instead, we kept her secret. I have kept it until today.

The only action I took was to beat the crap out of one of the participants when he hit on me later and bragged about it to others. And I became an advocate for rape victims. I helped women file reports including third person ones when they were unwilling to press charges but wanted the crime documented. I went to hospitals, police stations, courtrooms. Held women's hands when mostly male authorities brushed off the crimes against them.

I heard their stories. Their pain. The painful baggage they carried that they couldn't get rid of.

And now, you are an old man ready to be absolved, perhaps congratulated for your courage in admitting your youthful crime. Yet it was me who looked in that young woman's eyes, something you never did because she was unconscious. It was me who felt powerless and guilty for not doing more to help her that day under the bleachers. All I could offer was the lame comment that she was not a "slut," and that she had not done anything that justified what had happened to her.

And now you come here to DU to try to explain, to justify that long ago action on your part.

My feeling is that it is not me that you need to confess to. I cannot absolve you. No one can. And you never even had to look into those haunted eyes. I have no idea what happened to "Jane." She really never spoke to me again. The shame was too great. She left town after graduation, and I hope never looked back.

The guys who committed this act all grew up to be upstanding citizens with wives and daughters and permanently stained souls. I have zero sympathy for them.