Louis C.K.'s 'SNL' Monologue About Child Molestation Leads to Uproar

[fadedrose]

63. I wasn't appalled

When I was somewhere from 5-7, there was a house in another row of homes behind ours. All us kids were told "don't go by Christmas' house or he might grab you." Never went there but Lewis CK's story reminded me of it. He made it sound funny, but his experiences must have been common a long time ago.

Stuff like this was tolerated by people when they thought somebody was "crazy" and they let them alone as long as "they" let "us" alone. We moved, and I don't know if Christmas was an abuser or not...this was in the early forties.

There was another house we played at nearby, and a grandfather of one of our playmates, did certain things that we were afraid to mention to our parents...and there must have been 5 or 6 little girls involved. Someone in charge of him must have sensed something because usually a head would appear at the window, and the old man would act real innocent....this is the first time I have ever mentioned it anywhere to anyone. I do recall that several of us were preparing for First Holy Communion and the nuns had told us to not let anyone touch you. To a 5-year old, that made little sense.

We stopped going there without being told, and didn't talk about it to each other, didn't tell anybody and it wasn't funny and we really didn't understand what was going on. No "real" damage was done except for a 70-year old memory..

There wasn't the fuss about child abuse, male or female, because unless a person ran around with a hammer or hatchet killing people, there was no place for sexual deviates to be kept and families who knew must have been ashamed.

It wasn't till maybe the 70-80's that this stuff started to be made public by victims who were abused by those in authority, and not by the neighborhood Christmas.