In the days of TRIBES, when the warriors of the tribe knew that the ENEMY were on their doorsteps, the warriors would DANCE and sing, and raise ENERGY.
The purpose of this was to make enough noise that the Gods and Goddesses would hear, and come and help the tribe, protect them, from those that wished the tribes harm.
I did that about three years ago, I was dancing because I was angry, and I was hurt, everyone I had ever known and cared about, had made choices that ended up with me being sexually abused, traumatized, branded, and beaten, so that the people who abused me, would have better lives.
They used to tell me that they could see my future, and that “because you said…” whatever it was I had supposedly said, they had “permission” to abuse me, because since they knew they were going to get into trouble, it wouldn’t matter what they did to me.
To a normal person that sounds fucking insane.
To a normal person that sounds like a bunch of bullshit that white men use, in order to commit. heinous crimes against children, and get away with it, and children who are scared, traumatized, and abused will believe whatever they need to believe in order to escape the abuse, in order to make it stop. So for a lot of years I believed that they could see my future, largely because a lot of things that I used to do, were things they told me to do.
I didn’t wear underwear unless I had my period, because they told me not too, this makes it easier for rapists to get to the parts of you that they want. They convinced me that if I stayed quiet the abusers would leave me alone, but it kept happening, over and over and over again.
“Don’t eat meat” because then you bleed less, and you’ll wear your panties less, and then “daddy” can have more time with you. (EW EW EW EW EW EWWWWWWWWW)
When it happened the last time, I made the decision to d whatever I had to do, to survive, and I have chosen deliberately to keep pushing forward, but I’ve come to realize that there are a lot of people in this world who want you to KEEP being a victim, so that they can have their dreams come true.
And then when you’ve decided that you want to cut them out of your life and move on, they tell you that a) it was for your own good and b) they were always really on your side.
I’ve been speaking out about child abuse for awhile now, and I’ve decided that no matter what I am doing with my life, this is what I am going to keep doing, and I am not going to stop.
With the Taliban’s take over of Afghanistan, I am starting to realize how lucky I got. I could be, and very nearly was, murdered by white men because I did what I could to alleviate the damage caused by white, Indigenous, and Black men, who abuse children.
In my life there were plenty of women who joined in on the “fun”, choosing to put my safety and sanity at risk so that they could have a singular moment where they felt powerful, where they felt like they mattered.
The few people who tried really hard too make me feel safe and secure, were out shadowed by the men and who abused me, and now looking back all these years later, all I can think is that person, that version of myself was so small.
I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror last night, and I realized for the first time in my life, I am not that person anymore. I will never use that word to describe my former self ever again. I am Big now, and because I am Big, I can handle whatever comes my way, without having celebrities, or big powerful companies, throw me charity in an effort to apologize for crimes they never committed.
I don’t need to set my hopes on marrying a rich guy, just to secure my future, and the men who abused me, had no right to use my potential future against me, in order to get away with crimes, that they should have never been able to commit.
The men, and the women they had in their lives, did everything they can to strip me of everything I could be, to mold me into a woman that was willing to abuse other people, in order to make myself feel better. The night that I was gang-raped I was supposed to have brought someone with me, I was SUPPOSED to have provided them with a child, so that they could abuse someone else, if I HAD brought a young girl with me, it would have been her that got raped, instead of me.
Except I did not do that. I made a concentrated effort to keep all little and young people OUT of my life, so that when it happened again, because I knew it would, there wouldn’t be anyone for me to cause harm to that way, specifically, so they couldn’t use anyone against me.
These crimes were committed by men I forced myself to care about, purely because if I didn’t care about them, I would hate them, and I didn’t want to be a hateful angry person. Even though that’s exactly who I became. I was mean and horrible, I said and did horrible things, to deal with my own pain and while NOTHING I ever did compared to what THEY did, the point is, I wouldn’t have been that person, if men had kept their hands to themselves.
Too many times men slapped me, or kissed me, or shoved me up against walls, and the next time a man does that I am going to kick him in the balls, repeatedly. And I won’t care I’ll laugh.
So it was me that got GANGrapedand I am fine with that because better ME than a child, but NEVER me ever again.
I am not a little girl anymore, and I am not afraid of men with guns, or saws, I am not afraid of men who are so sick they would abuse a child, and then so afraid that they would tell her they are Hell’s Angels, and promise to cut for her arms if she says anything. Come for me, I dare you.
Almost all of the people who came to help me, have been accused of being rapists, almost all of the men who touched me have been told they were innocent, how the fuck does that work?
It works because child abuse, in order for it to be effective, in order for it to cause as much damage as possible, requires an entire community to stay silent, when they know what is happening.
Teachers, cops, lawyers, doctors, judges, and friends ALL knew what was happening too me, WHEN it was happening, and in some cases participated, and did absolutely nothing to protect me. When the truth came out, I was shamed, called a liar, and still none of my abusers are in jail or prison, save for one, who called the cops on himself, just so that he could add to his reputation of being an armchair gangster, even though he had a future for him, on a silver plate.
He walked away from that future, time and time again, because it was easier to be the neighborhood dumbass, than to choose to be the guy who made different choices and decisions, so that he could take that future and use it to fly.
So I sit here writing, thinking about all the horrible awful ways I was treated, and I keep thinking “Jesus would forgive,” and all I can ask is “why?”
I only forgive people who do the work to make sure what happened to kids like me in the past, doesn’t happen again, if you keep spitting on me, if you keep telling me that I deserved what happened to me, then I’m uninterested in having you be a part of my life. I’ve said that before and I’ll say that again.
I want to change laws so that kids running away from child abusers aren’t forced to go back, or so that kids who go to the hospital after a Tylenol 3 overdose don’t get told by nurses that WE make them sick, forcing us t believe that we can’t ask them for help.
I didn’t try t kill myself because I wanted t die, I tried to kill myself because I wanted someone to notice that something was really, REALLY fucking wrong, and that I needed help. Since no one did, I figured, the abuse continued, and it felt like a punishment from God.
I still remember my abusers feeling like they had won something, because they shoved a gun into other vagina of a four year old girl and made her to afraid to ask for help. Too many times they stood over me and stared into my eyes, conversationally bragging about what they did to me.
And when their women found out, the women attacked me, as a reminder of what would happen if I “destroyed their marriage” to speak out, I’m not sorry that when I say, if you’d rather protect your child abusing husband, in order to make yourself feel better about the fact that you’re married to a child abuser, you get what you deserve.
If your goal in life is to meet famous people so you can elevate your station in your life, while those around you are being abused, if you’re using the term “Sacrifice” when it comes to another human being, you aren’t someone that should be around children. Ever.
I am specifically thinking of the women in Afghanistan who are being targeted by the Taliban, the Taliban is not coming after me, but there are a lot of white men in this world who are angry that the details of what happened to me. Every day for the last 3 years I have been forced against my consent, to focus on every area of my life, and every single moment of abuse and trauma.
I say without my consent, because that’s what abusers do, they warp your brain so that when the memories come back all you CAN do is focus on the darkness, and when the people who “SAY” they support you, really just mean “I want every horrible detail so that I can entertain myself with your pain,” it just adds to the trauma.
I have no friends. Not in this world. All my former friends are people who benefitted, or WANTED to benefit from what was done to me, but they will scream from the roof tops that I was the “sacrifice,” so that they can say that I CHOSE to be abused so that they didn’t have to be.
I didn’t choose, I wasn’t given the option, my abusers decided for me, and if the only thing that comes out of it, if I die tomorrow, but people know what was done to me, if people know that this shit happens in Afghanistan, Seattle, Pakistan, Italy, Paris, Dubai, if I add my voice to the millions of voices screaming and begging for it to stop, then no, it still won’t have been worth it motherfucker.
NOTHING on this planet will make what we as victims of child abuse go through, worth going through that again. I wouldn’t wish that kind of evil on my worst enemy, but I sure as hell won’t wish it on myself either.
My body is covered in scars that represent that I was abused, and tattoos that remind me that I survived, I wish any one of my tattoos just meant that I was having a good time and laughing, but every single one of them is there to remind me that I survived my abusers. That I looked them in the eye and walked away no matter how much they tried to stop me.
Every single cell in my entire body, is reminded on a daily basis, that my skin did not belong to me, because it was stolen and marked up, thrown and dragged through garbage, and then returned to me stained and ripped and torn by abusers, and now you want me to think that it was for my own good? No douchbag, it was because you’re a sick, twisted, evil fuck, and there is no cure for you beyond imprisonment and death.
I don’t leave my house because I am afraid, and when I Do leave my house, I never ever go far, just in case I need to run back in quickly. I gained weight because I was tired of denying myself what I wanted in an effort to “stay pretty,” for the same people who pretended to be my friends, while allegedly selling me, to their boyfriends and his neighbors, so that they didn’t have to get abused themselves.
The law says that I should be able to take care of myself at 38 years old, but if I hadn’t been abused and tortured and branded and raped, maybe I would be able to do that, since I was, I want compensation. I want my abusers to face REAL jail time. I am talking fifty years or more. I want the damage they caused me to be represented by the loss of their freedoms, just like they stole mine.
I want to go to school God Damnit! I want to become a Cannabis Educator, and then I want to take programs on therapy, and mental health, so that I can help other victims, AND survivors, navigate the healing process in a way that ACTUALLY gives them a sense of power over their own lives, because when we’re victims of abuse, the first thing stolen is our power to fight back.
I don’t want another man touching my body until “I” decide when, where, and how, they can touch my body. I don’t want to walk into a tattoo shop and have a guy grope me or make disgusting jokes because he thinks he’s funnier than he is.
If the adrenaline rush you seek comes from raping and abusing children because you’re a pathetic impotent goof who can’t get it up for a real man or woman, then you deserve everything you get. Every last thing of what you did to kids like me is nothing short of disgusting.
You are not a hero because the victim that you chose decided to raise her voice loud enough for the REAL Angels to hear her. You aren’t a hero because you abused children and got away with it until I was strong enough to speak up, and you CERTAINLY are not a friend because you decided to stay silent in “an effort to protect our own family,” when you knew that I was drowning.
I LITERALLY had a woman get angry at me, because I decided that I did not want to kill myself so she could live longer. This is the creepy, racist, rapist, cult shit, that I had to deal with growing up, and when I came forward and told a Doctor He said that “I” sounded psychotic.
I have spent my entire life fighting child abuse, begging and screaming for anyone, in the whole world to hear me, and then when people did, I had to listen to all the lies that made me sound like I was a saint.
“Well she was the SACRIFICE.” No you piece of shit, I was a CHILD. “Well better her THAN me,” how about NO ONE? “Well it wasn’t my place,” If it takes a village to raise a child, THEN BE THE VILLAGE THAT DOESN’T RAPE CHILDREN.
It really doesn’t take much to not abuse children, but because so many people did it, and because they were so interconnected, it was hard to find any place that feels safe, that feels like in my own time and space I will be okay. There are many times I feel my body craving sexual attention, and the voice of the abusers in my head will scream until the end of time that it’s because I liked what they did to me.
The truth of it is, that the brain turns pleasure into pain so it’s less damaging to the brain, that doesn’t mean that I like it or that it feels good, it means that I’m probably lying so you don’t try to hurt me worse.
If you’re going to abuse children, you better expect that when kids like me survive you, eventually they are going to fight back. And if you’re going to stand back and watch it happen so that YOU or someone YOU love doesn’t get hurt, then you deserve what you get.
Sending all my love to all the kids who think they aren’t being heard,
Devon J Hall
Loud Mouth Brown Girl 