I meant to write a book review when I was finished with Michelle's story. Instead I ended up with a great deal of heartsick disappointment and rage pouring out of my pen and embodying a scathing social commentary. Here are my thoughts:
There is so much to learn from this tragedy.
First, and maybe most important, we can learn what Violent
Risk Assessment analysts tell us (and chastise us for) already: that the number
one reason why violence is so prevalent is because average people underreact to warning signs and
worrisome behaviors of those who eventually act out violently. And by
underreact, what the experts mean is that we essentially do nothing. And they are right. We see things that are hinky, but we
excuse these oddities away. Or we’re out-and-out confronted by an incident or
behavior, yet we choose not to believe that our brother, cousin, friend, or son
could possibly be dangerous or
destructive—sometimes denying it to the point where we get so defensive and angry
we victim-blame, and re-write the event to paint the victim as the villain.
Sound crazy? It is, yet what is even nuttier is when we are not personally connected
to the threat-maker / law-breaker in any way and yet we still do nothing and instead offer a haughty, disaffected little shrug.
Say asinine things like “Boys will be boys” to what too often (and tragically)
turn out to be outrageously obvious precursors to depravity and/or violence.
Why do we do this?
A few reasons. First, and most obvious, we ignore red flags because
we are desensitized to violence. I recall once having a conversation with a literary
agent who told me that a fiction novel damn sure better have something more compelling
than a mere murder because “people don’t care about dead bodies.” He was sadly,
and maybe even shockingly, correct. We’re saturated with violence from every
vantage point we seek. So much that it has to be over the top before we do much
more than blink.
But our indifference wells from a place even more insidious than
desensitization. There’s a toughness associated with the unflappable or
disaffected and so we seek to adopt that persona ourselves. No one wants to
look like Chicken Little, and people are embarrassed to even think they may appear hysterical. So what
do they do when they see things that are glaringly disturbing? Well,
internally, they are alarmed. It is
highly likely that they are even deeply troubled. But externally? Here, they shrug. They write it off. They reframe
the incident or incidences into something more mutable and palatable because
the fact of the matter is this: they don’t want to be the one who is seen as
pushing the ‘panic button’. They don’t want to tattle. There is a
responsibility and a label that goes with being the whistle-blower and the grim
reality is that we, as a culture, do tend
to persecute the reporter more than we hang the perpetrator, and so no one
wants to be ‘that guy’. Therefore we shut up, and internally hope, fervently,
that both what we are seeing and our instincts are wrong.
Beyond that, and most obviously, we turn a blind eye because
we don’t want to believe what our
eyes and guts are telling us, and we certainly don’t want to get involved.
Violence and depravity are ugly and unnerving and besides—isn’t it more helpful
to focus on the positive instead of dwelling on the negative? Isn’t that what
all the self-help gurus are saying these days? And they must be right. ’Cause people are
generally more good than evil, aren’t they? Well, aren’t they? Please….?
Usually. But not always. ’Cause here’s the other thing we
need to learn from this tragedy: monsters are real. Oh, sorry—does that sound too
hysterical? Okay. Try this: people can be monstrous. And what’s more, monstrous
things know no geographical limitations. Atrocities can happen anywhere—in
Michelle’s case, the monstrosity happened right next door to a good man who (hallelujah!)
finally said something.
We too need to start saying something. We need to pay
attention. When we are confronted with incidents that we have to explain away,
here’s a crazy thought: let’s not explain
it away. Let’s take it at face value (even though it might hurt) and consider
what we really might be dealing with. Also, when something’s off kilter, when
your spidey-sense tingles, when your gut makes that queasy pitch….you need to talk
about it. You need to tell someone. Your silence could kill someone, and isn’t
that a hell of a lot worse than maybe (just maybe) being a Chicken Little? And
here’s a prediction: When you do decide
to confide in someone, share the things you’ve seen that are hinky? You will be
shocked at how relieved the person you disclose to is to also share that they feel the same way (and might even know more
pieces to the puzzle than you). From there, don’t stop talking. Tell
authorities. Keep telling authorities
until somebody listens because, sadly, law enforcement are disaffected too and
they fall into the same wells as we do in terms of underreacting.
Yet how many people may still be embracing their lives on
this planet if someone had not been afraid of overreacting?
Let me tell you a story: in my community we once had a
quasi-homeless woman who would float between here, Edmonton, and Vancouver in
an unholy trinity of sex-trade locales. Her timelines for each region were
loose, but reasonably predictable….until at one point she just stopped showing
up. At all. Months passed. She didn’t surface. People noticed, but, like
Michelle’s absence in Finding Me, no
one cared that she was gone. I daresay some were even relieved. But then was
found dead, a murder that had occurred right under their noses and “How could that be?!” they cried.
Seriously? Why couldn’t it happen here? Why couldn’t it
happen anywhere? How, in our quest to
look worldly and disaffected, can we instead look only colossally naïve?
And how can we be so heartless? A few paragraphs prior, I made mention of
victim-blaming. In Michelle’s recount of her ordeal, victim-blaming was a theme
underscoring her entire story. Because of where Michelle came from and what
Michelle was, no one looked real hard—or at all—when she vanished. Why? Because
her absence and presumed-dead status had
to be a result of her own shitty life and choices, hadn’t it?
I need to be careful not to get into rant-overload mode
here, but….if there is one things that grinds every one of my gears, it is
victim blaming. So let me make this abundantly, crystal, unmistakably clear:
when someone is the victim of rape, murder, kidnapping, vandalism, or verbal
abuse, and the crime they have endured is NOT the result of another party’s
self-defense, then IT DOES NOT FUCKING WELL MATTER where they came from, if
they have a home, if they are male, female, gay, straight, trans, or asexual, how
they were dressed (or not dressed), what god they worship, what hue their skin
might be, what they do for a living OR
ANY COMBINATION THEREOF. When someone is violently attacked in any manner,
ESPECIALLY when there is a power differential placing the perpetrator at a
physical, financial, psychological, or emotional advantage over the victim,
then it is never—EVER—the victim’s fault, and we should ALWAYS take the side of
the oppressed and not the oppressor.
Always.
Without fail.
And we need to be both vocal and vigilant in doing so, and
we need to shame those who are not.
We clear there? Victim-blaming casts you in the same lot as
the perp. And yes, that includes victim-blaming over the little things too. So
please consider that the next time the phrase ‘Boys will be boys’ falls out of
your mouth. Know that you are a total asshat for saying such a stupid thing.
Moving on: Michelle’s history and home life (if we can even
call it that) was nightmarish. Transient, impoverished, and neglected, she was
also sexually abused from the time she was small, the effects of which remain so
profound that her voice is stunted at the emotional age she was at when the
molestation began (count, for example, how many times she refers to her body,
in a way that is simultaneously childlike and dissociative as ‘my little body’).
Michelle was, horrifically yet truthfully, ‘the perfect victim’: unloved,
unsupervised, unnoticed and then….gone. Presumed dead. Unpursued. Because here
is yet one more thing we need to learn, and we need to learn it well: Predators
go where vulnerable people are. Perpetrators take full advantage of the
aforementioned set of benefits which place them in a position which is
psychologically, financially, physically, or emotionally superior to their
victim because believe me, they are fully aware of the ‘weak links’ amongst
them. As victimizers, that’s their job
and they have honed their skills well. So even if we remain determined not to
blow the whistle on their behaviors (which in retrospect of any crime are
always glaring and many), then we had better start doing a far better job of
looking after the most vulnerable among us. That means our homeless and
disenfranchised. It means our children. And yes, sadly, it still means our
women (and as a woman it pains me to note that, yet it is true; women remain far
more likely to be victims of violence than men). Looking after our vulnerable
also means we need to start holding those in their midst to a higher standard.
Does that mean every coach, teacher, social worker, parent, church leader, and
therapist is plotting some sort of secret perversion and violence? Of course
not. What it does mean, though, is that perpetrators put themselves in
positions of trust over victims—and that we might not like that, but we’d
better accept it. And we’d better be prepared to do something about the
breaches of trust we see when they happen.
Lastly, we need to learn to communicate with each other. This
is direct reference to the admonishment to speak up from above, but it needs to
be repeated, and repeated, and repeated until it is so ingrained in our psyche
that it is second nature. Stop dismissing outrageousness. Stop thinking that
just because you know someone, and
because you think they’re a ‘good guy’
or a ‘good kid’ that they could not possibly
do something heinous. In other words? Get over yourself. Currently, the
community where I live has a group of professionals trying to ratify a Violent
Threat Risk Assessment agreement which, in a nutshell, would allow all human
services professionals to share information and make a help-plan about and for anyone
who is exhibiting what’s known in the field of violence to be ‘worrisome
behaviors’. The point of this initiative is twofold: first, and obviously, it
is to protect the person or persons at whom any threat or violence is directed.
Second, it is to intervene in the life of the threat maker, perhaps dismantle plans
of violence and ascertain support and help for that individual.
Shockingly, there are people opposed to this plan. “It is
intrusive!” cry some. “It seems like gossiping!” cluck the sanctimonious
tongues of others. “It’s all hocus-pocus!” snort of the egos in the crowd, the
cowboys who think they alone can swagger in and handle it all without
consultation from others (especially meddlesome, pseudo-science head-shrinkers
like *me*).
Wonder what Michelle Knight would think of someone shooting
down the possibility of a team of professionals sharing information about the
worrisome behaviors of one Ariel Castro? Wonder how she’d feel about having 11
years of her life back? Wonder how intact her psyche would be if she’d never
been violently tortured and raped, over and over and over? Wonder if she would have
cherished every moment she would have had with the beloved little boy she
called ‘Huggy-Bear’, the child she never saw again after she was kidnapped and
shackled for what would have felt like a lifetime?
I wonder how much every one of us could make a difference if
we stopped accepting the outrageous and instead started being accountable for
what we see, hear, gloss over, and cover up? I wonder how much violence and
depravity we could stop in its tracks if we just got the hell over ourselves
and SAID SOMETHING.
