ROOTED RENEGADE

With all the media buzzing the hashtags #whyididntreport I poured out one of my own. Often times people get it twisted as to why men and women don’t report crimes against that occur against them. A gross lack of acceptance of victims and automatic assumptions is the very reason reporting of crimes goes undone. It becomes a he said / she said, what can you prove, where you drunk / high, blame game that often times gets swept under a rug of condemnation. Shame and guilt get carried around like a overflowing backpack on the shoulders never being laid down because it is a hush hush don’t talk about it kind of society. Sex isn’t taboo to talk about anymore as long as it is about celebrities threesomes, half naked or almost naked pictures on the front cover of magazines, teaching today’s youth as well as adults that as long as you can flaunt it like them then it is yours for the taking so it shouldn’t be wrong to talk to anyone whatever way you want too. Just do it like they do and it is okay. No harm no foul because Cardi B or whoever said so in a magazine article or in a rap song. You want to cheat on your husband or wife, sell drugs, watch porn all day, partake in human trafficking, beat your kids and spouse, etc…today’s music readily talks about it and our youth readily listens. Most of today’s magazines blast crap on the front covers like semi-pornograhic material and just about any gas station you walk into advertises it all by the front counters as well as liquor shots nowadays and clerks who probably have children of their own most likely don’t think twice about it!

Many survivors of any type of abuse, whether it is from childhood sexual trauma, domestic violence, human trafficking, labor trafficking, etc, do not report due to the stigma placed on them by society. They are rejected and labeled before they ever have the chance to open their mouths and begin the process of reporting. Every where they look there is social acceptance of what they are experiencing not to mention the emotional manipulation they are experiencing at the hands of those abusing them which makes it even harder to report. The emotional aspects they suffer within their own minds only compound the reasons they don’t while they are in the midst of the abuse. It is not until someone is away from their abuser and begin to go through a rigorous healing process do they learn that it is okay to talk about. Even then some still don’t tell on the ones who hurt them for a very long time if ever. There are so many challenges a person has to overcome mentally and emotionally when it comes to speaking out against an abuser and education in these areas is key in order for people to stop pointing fingers and automatically assuming someone is lying when they come out years later with their truth.

I wonder how many who point the finger, the Pharisees with the stones in their hands, would actually be able to throw it at those who are finally able to stand up against those who find their voice and learn to speak because they found their courage and strength? I wonder how many times in their own lives they struggled to speak up about something themselves only to find they had no voice of their own and remained silent? Or how many of these people who are quick to say a person is lying because they did not report the crimes against them right away were actually there when it happened? I know I for one know what it is like to not be able to report right away. I know exactly what it is like to not be able to speak and have no voice. To be voiceless and powerless and feel so broken and worthless that even if I had the words to speak they would not come. To be so scared to tell anyone that I would be judged, no one would believe me, I would be ridiculed, abandoned, and the one time I tried to tell when I was a child no one helped me anyway so as I got older what was the point.

#whyididntreport is why many don’t report. Society, people we think we love or we do love, our abusers, what we grow up knowing, family, friends, stigmas, mental and emotional bondage, law enforcement, churches, etc. There are many reasons why I didn’t and people don’t report. Let’s break the stigma by helping others not shaming them!

@B3autifullyR3deemed2018