Stories are a basis of life. Movies, TV shows, newpaper reports, books, life.. What do you tell your friends if not stories?
And here are where our stories begin.
This is a young man who has suffered discrimination, abuse, and much more. He has been waiting for a chance to share his story, and I feel it's about time it's heard. So here it is.
"Dear Mana,
Today I discovered your blog and I am so sorry for what you have been through.
I too have experienced sexual abuse. When my parents sent me to a certain school, I was physically abused nearly everyday and the sexual abuse was almost as frequent. It breaks my heart to know that other people have been through similar, or worse, situations than I have, and yet, in some sad way I feel comfort knowing that I'm not the only one.
Anyway, here's my story:
Since I have “come out of the closet” to my parents, I have been asked several times, by my mom at least, for my “story.” When first asked, I never gave her a story, because quite honestly, I didn’t really have one. Thanks to the fear shown by the both of my parents a story has sprouted from what could’ve been an average teenage boy’s life.
I left a letter in the mailbox explaining that I am gay before I set off to what would become my last Shakespearean Festival, I had hoped for the best, but expected the worst. My expectations had turned out to be correct.
I had known I was gay for several years, my earliest thought of it comes to mind when I was a mere six years old. I had no knowledge what sex was—or attraction, for that matter, and therefore it could have not been anything other than nature, unless of course you want to take the ideology of “the over-bearing mother and the absent father caused it.” In which case, my parents are to blame.
I had put months of consideration into writing that letter to my parents. I believe I had the actual letter complete in early September and I knew they wouldn’t receive it until October. The letter I received in response from them clearly wasn’t written with the same consideration or love. It was stated that I was loved in the letter, but I found no evidence therein of such. The letter was filled with only scripture references and a brief comparison of prostitution to homosexuality.
When I had returned from The Shakespearean Festival I received a hug from both of my parents. The next day, however, Dad was making sure I was certain that I knew he wasn’t homophobic, which to him meant he had no irrational fear of gay people, and Mom’s main concern was whether or not I should attend a program to make myself straight, as if that were possible. At that moment I knew I had made a mistake in telling them.
A small group of friends supported me and accepted me for who I am. They continued to show love for me and truly cared. However, a larger group of friends began to hate me. Their whole perspective of me was completely changed simply because they knew more about me. They made habit of giving me Pass Along Cards every day, and even began throwing religious pamphlets at my head. They called me names like, sinner, faggot, and homo. They told me that I was going to Hell and that God hated me. These people, who before they knew I was gay were my best friends, had now become my worst enemies. I even began receiving anonymous death threats in my locker.
As things got worse at school, things also became worse at home. Comments from Mom like, “You don’t see me telling people every time I have sex,” and Dad saying things like, “Being gay is against God’s law and God’s law super cedes any civil rights,” were spat into my face day after day after day. I was, in their eyes, against God’s law and allegedly a promiscuous gossip. In my eyes, both of them were irrationally afraid of gay people.
Because of the hatred and fear that my parents expressed towards homosexuality, I never came to them with my problems at school. I had no one to go to. I eventually just stopped using my locker all together.
As any person would, I grew depressed. My real friends noticed my usual effervescence was fading and they commented on it immeasurably. Eventually I grew suicidal, even attempting suicides under my parents’ nose, all of which were, obviously, unsuccessful.
One night—to my memory, it was the Fourth of July—I had finally come up with the plan that would be successful. I was about to carry on when I noticed a good friend of mine was online. I started chatting with her and expressing my sorrow. She said I needed to get help and made me promise I would. That night I went in tears to Mom pleading for help. She sent me to a hospital for eight days. While I was in the hospital, Mom seemed to think it would be a good idea to tell me that my greedy therapist deemed it necessary that I were to be sent to a different school: a school for kleptomaniacs, children with sexual problems, and drug addicts. Apparently homosexuality falls into one of those categories—of which I am still trying to figure out. I managed to convince her to allow me to come home.
A few weeks after I got home Mom and I got into an argument about homosexuality. She had blatantly said lesbians were disgusting people, and then completely denied it immediately afterwards. I had had it with the emotional abuse and yelled at the both of them. Dad responded by reminding me how I was against God’s law. The cops were called and the one victim of the situation was taken to a receiving facility for delinquent teens.
The first night I spent there, I decided that I should have never thought my parents could handle this. Their medieval mindset proved to me that any thing that goes against the grain of yesterday could not be shared with them. I had decided in that sleepless night to never speak with them about it again. It was something I was willing to sweep under the rug in order to go home.
The first time my parents and I met at the facility, they said I would be coming home the following Monday. I was anxiously looking forward to coming home, for my senior year of high school was starting in less than a month. When Monday came—I believe it was the third of August—two strangers showed up to take me away to the juvinial school. My own parents, when I had been nothing but painfully honest, had lied to me.
On the drive to the school, the strangers called me snooty, and a whiner after all I had said was, “There must be a mistake, my parents said they would take me home today.”
Upon arrival, I was to strip into my boxers, in the middle of a school hallway, with no privacy, to be checked for drugs. I then was given a pair of jeans and a lovely stained yellow shirt to wear. After I had finished dressing I was placed into a room where I was not allowed to speak, at all, and was forced to sit and do absolutely nothing. They called this room the Self Contained Classroom (SCC). I sat in that room for three days.
My second day in that room, I was subject to being kneed in the stomach by a staff member who then threw me to the ground. Why? Because I tripped on my flip flops—the only footwear I was allowed—during the grueling drills we were forced to do. With my stomach already upset from the drills, being kneed and thrown to the ground finally forced my dinner out of me. After spewing, this particular staff member called me a “fucking retard” and turned to the other staff members present and said “Can you believe this kid?” The other staff members showed no sympathy to the humiliation and abuse I was being subjected to. A couple even snickered.
I was given a roll of paper towels to clean the puke up. No mop, no towels, just a roll of disposable, thin, textured paper.
The eight months I was there were filled with nothing but physical, emotional, and even sexual harassment and abuse. The same staff member who kneed me my second day there became a staff that I was unfortunate enough to have to spend nearly every day with. He was what the facility called a Cottage Parent, and he was the main governing staff over me. He rarely called me by name, for he enjoyed calling me “faggot.”
There was one day when the boys of Cottage C—the cottage to which I belonged—and I were in a line walking to the cafeteria. I took a small step out of the line to dodge a puddle. The price for keeping my feet dry was to be kicked in the leg by my Cottage Parent for not walking in a straight line. The bruise from this kick was shown to my parents, but I was under strict instructions to say it was from playing soccer in PE. Though the color of the bruise has faded and disappeared, you can still to this day feel the lump left by it.
My roommate, who was a marijuana dealer, punched me every night before bed. It was no love tap—these punches often had me gasping for air. Bruises on my ribs and sides became normal to me. One night, my roommate told me that it was time for me to get a jail tattoo. I told him no, but he pulled out a ballpoint pen and a screw he had been concealing and said to me, “You can do it yourself, or I can do it for you.” I had no idea how to respond to this, “I’ll do it later,” was the best I could come up with. He laughed at this and told me that he knew that if I managed to put it off I would never do it. He then added that if I didn’t do it that night, he would rape me. In my fear I etched the first design that popped into my head onto my left knee and then smeared the ink from the pen over it. It was incredibly painful.
Needless to say, the ink from the pen didn’t stay. When I healed all I had was a scar.
I reported all these happenings to my therapist, from the abusive staff member to my psychotic roommate. The only thing I left out was the tattooing, because I knew I would be in serious trouble if anyone knew I had attempted a tattoo. My therapist told me that I needed to stop being a victim, and once I’ve done this, apparently my troubles would go away. I tried to stop being a victim, simply no one else tried to stop victimizing me.
After I had learned that Mom had blatantly invaded my privacy by reading the journal I had left at home and that a boy in my cottage had been reading the one I had been keeping at this school, I developed a code. However, the boy knew enough to harass me greatly and he started writing incredibly creepy love letters, in my name, to the boy I mentioned in my journal to be attractive. Eventually this got out of hand and the boy I had called attractive reported me to the therapist. I was called in to his office and was shouted at for a good half an hour about what sexual harassment was and how I was sexually harassing this boy. I tried to tell him that I hadn’t written any letters, but he wouldn’t believe me. I spent the next day and a half in a yellow shirt, in the SCC.
With the code I developed I felt free to write whatever I wanted in my journal, with no fear of my privacy being invaded. I began to plan out an escape. I knew that almost every weekend, the staff member that lived in the cottage with us boys—called a Live-In by the facility, whose room was just across the hall from mine, invited his girlfriend over late at night. When he would go outside to get his girlfriend, he would turn the alarm off, walk outside, walk back inside with his girlfriend, close his door, and then turn the alarm back on. I figured the time it took for him to close his door and turn his alarm back on was enough for me to run out of my bedroom and out the front door of the cottage.
When the night came I prepared very carefully. I stuffed all the clothes I had underneath my sheets and put on three pairs of socks for we had to lock up our shoes into a locked room at night. As soon as the staff closed the door behind him and his girlfriend, I sprinted through the front door. I heard the beeping of him punching the code in as I closed the door behind me.
The rest of the night is unimportant. I called Mom the next morning and shortly was found unconscious on a strangers front lawn, dehydrated.
After a brief chat with Mom, I was taken back to the school and was placed back into a yellow shirt, into the SCC. I spent three days in there this time.
Knowing I was never going to be able to run away from the place, I decided in those three days to play along, to smile and nod, and to lie.
My lying rewarded me richly. I was allowed more privileges through my lies, including participating in a play under the watchful eyes of the missionaries. I was eventually allowed to come home every weekend as well. Even staff began to leave me alone, as I had become just another soulless entity to them. I had faded into the obscurity all the other boys had been living in for months. I lied my way through each day, and it made me less human, and therefore less interesting to harass.
When my parents visited for the Scarecrow Festival in mid October, which the other boys and I labored to put together, with very minimal help from any staff, I was allowed to spend the day with them. I tried to tell them all the awful things that were happening to me. The therapist must have noticed this because he then started to follow us and eventually interrupted our conversation saying, “You’re not trying to ‘work’ your parents are you, ---?” he wore his false smile, making it seem like he was joking, but I knew that I was not going to be having a pleasant time once this was all over.
I told my parents of my roommate’s rape threats, which they wrote off as me lying to get out of the abominable place. I even tried to tell them other things that go on there, and they clearly thought I was making everything up. After that night they told my therapist of my alleged tall tales, and he told the staff member who I was unfortunate to have to deal with almost every day, and, once again, I paid dearly for telling the truth.
When my roommate punched me in the back of the head, held me down, pulled my underwear to my ankles and pulled his down as well only a few weeks later, I said nothing to no one. Luckily, his rape was unsuccessful, as night security was making heavier rounds on Cottage C, thanks to my attempt at escaping. Even luckier, room changes were made before he tried to rape me again. This time I had two roommates, which felt safer than one. That is, until one of them got angry at the other and decided that a great way at getting revenge was to ejaculate on the other kid’s face in the middle of the night.
I knew that the time for honesty would come again, but I also knew that it would be some time.
When Christmas came around, I let loose a bit of honesty, and was almost not allowed to go home for Christmas because of it. Luckily, I masterfully lied my way out of a consequence and enjoyed my Christmas away from the school.
Whether it was before or after Christmas, I can’t remember, but the plan for me to start day-program, and go home every day and only be at the school during school hours was set for the first of February. I started counting down the days with every journal entry starting with “X Days of Hell remain.” I was actually happy for the first time in what seemed like forever.
I knew that I was safe enough to slowly become more honest, but a few things—the attempted rape, for example—could not be shared until I was completely free of the school.
I started to apply for jobs so that I could earn money over the summer. I applied at about ten places nearby. One of which called me back. The conversation went something like this:
“So, we have an opening, but I just wanted to ask you about something on your application.”
“Okay,” I said.
“You wrote that you go to school at ---,” the woman on the phone stated.
“Yes?” I asked.
“Is that the one in ---?”
“Yes it is,” I answered.
“I’m sorry to say this, but we aren’t looking for someone like you.” She hung up the phone before I could say anything else. I knew that I couldn’t have that school on my diploma and decided it was important to go back to my former school. After all of this was discussed, I transferred back, shortly after I managed to get a job at the movie theater, and even went with the school choir to Disneyland. It was such great fun. However, my best friend told me when I came back that I wasn’t the same person anymore, and that she didn’t want to be around me because it depressed her—just another casualty claimed by the juvinial school.
I told my parents that she didn’t want to be friends with me anymore because of a reason I fabricated myself, knowing that arguments would occur if I had been honest.
My drama teacher noticed the difference as well. He approached me and asked why I seemed so emotionally withdrawn. I lied and said that I just didn’t get enough sleep anymore because of the long nights at the movie theater. My drama teacher, whom I spend very limited time with, noticed my changes and my own parents didn’t. In fact, if anything they seemed pleased with the changes.
Due to the fact that the juvinial school did not have the courses I needed to get enough credits to graduate high school, I attempted finishing up all the credits in that last quarter at my original high school alone. When graduation came along I was one whole credit away from graduating. Because I was in the choir that was singing at graduation, I had to watch all my friends and other fellow classmates walk to the stage in the Mariott Center and pick up their diploma while Pomp and Circumstance was played by the band.
After all my hard work, my high school education ended no better than a dropout’s.
I needed to move out. I needed to go somewhere as far from my parents as I could get. I couldn’t possibly afford living alone with only my job at the movie theater to provide for me. I started applying to other places and searching for apartments. I also looked into signing up to take the GED test, so that I could get a High School Equivalency Diploma. I hoped that with that, I would at least get somewhere in life.
I found that a near by university held GED testing every Saturday and signed up immediately. When time came to take the test, I went and sat in the testing center, making my way through each section of the test as carefully as I could. It took a total of seven hours to finish the test, and I was amongst one of the first people finished. This made me nervous, I felt like I should have taken longer.
When my results came in about two weeks later, I had passed every section, my lowest percent being 83, in the math portion. I was so proud.
My GED diploma came in the mail and I felt so overwhelmed with emotion. I loved it, because it meant my future, but I hated because it represented everything about my past that I regretted.
GED diploma in hand, I registered for a university far away from my home town, and given my high marks on the test, I was accepted and received enough financial aid to help me pay for everything.
I was so happy to move out—freedom at last. The feeling that I can finally be myself, and not have to change myself to avoid offending my parents, was marvelous. A new confidence was instilled in me right away. The change was noticeable. Before, I would look into a mirror and see a sad boy looking back at me. Now, I see a confident young man. I never knew how much life there was in me, because I was afraid to use it all. Even though there are residual effects—I constantly have nightmares about the juvinial school—I know that I’m not the worthless person everyone has tried to tell me I am. I have a future now, and it looks brighter than I could have ever anticipated."
Here is another survivor. One of the last things he said to me in the email was "I wish none of this ever happened, to either of us, but at least we may be able to gain some comfort that our stories may prevent more crimes by letting people see how disgustingly common they really are."
The actual names of people and places are taken out for this survivor's protection. Like many, he fears that speaking the truth, like so many times in his story, would have a consequence that is unjust and result in pain and suffering.
People suffer all the time, everywhere. It really isn't something that happens just on TV or in the movies. It's real, every day life. And not all of them end sadly. This survivor was able to pick up the pieces and go to the university he wanted to. If that isn't surviving, I don't know what is.
