• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer
Women's Legacy Project
  • Home
  • About
  • How To Curate
  • Our Collective Legacy
  • Writing Online Memoir
  • Blog
Women's Legacy Project > Blog > Reason Creek > An Innocent’s View of the Gutter

An Innocent’s View of the Gutter

Written by: womenslegacy
Published: September 26, 2018 -- Last Modified: January 7, 2020
No comments yet

I was an isolated child in a rural area.  I went to a small town high school.  It was worse than Peyton Place. Because of personal experience, I do not have any doubt that horrendous events, covered by the media and ignored by those in power in government, actually took place.  

girl hugging herself with her eyes covered by her braid.
Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

I was very sheltered in grade school and junior high school.  By the time I reached the 9th grade I was ready to reject my mother’s orchestration of my isolation.  (That is a story for other places and times.) 

By mid-sophomore year I had been raped.  I had smoked marijuana a couple times before I ended up in a local “distributor’s” room where a lot of people partied.  Without understanding what I was getting into, I ended up in his room alone.  I was raped.

Needless to say I became suspicious and introspective.  I quit partying.  I had suicidal ideations.  My physician asked my parents to take medical and psychiatric action.  It was the worst time of my life. 

I still had two years of high school left.  I talked to lots of women/girls at school, in summer college programs, and during the first year of college.  This is what I saw and heard from my very jaded viewpoint.  

  • a guidance counselor, a trusted professional who was supposed to be helping me, in whom I confided in began prepping me to be seduced through extending and shaping an inappropriate relationship by improper sharing, questions, comments and the like, throughout the last two years of high school so that when I was  18, within days of graduation, he planned to complete the seduction
  • a friend was hidden in a closet by a male friend of hers at a party and guarded her when other men at the party came to grab her and rape her, as they were doing to girl friend of hers who came to the party with her.
  •  another girl and I went to a “team” house party with a good friend, a guy.  He got disgusted by something and left.  Within a few minutes I had been guided to another room, a bedroom, by a cute guy that I did not know.  Then the guy we came to the party with, came back to the house and forcibly removed us from the rooms where we were and took us home.  I did not realize for a while that this wonderful boy had probably saved us from gang rape by his team buddies.  
  • Junior year in the summer before Senior year I went to an honors program at a university in the southern part of my state.  One of the girls, all high schoolers aged 16 and 17, who lived on my dorm’s floor had “pulled a train.”  I did not know what that meant at the time.  I now know that means she was gang raped when in an incapacitated state.
  • I remember a woman in my humanities class freshman year of college suddenly seemed depressed and withdrawn and always on the verge of tears.  “The grapevine broadcast that she had been raped in the dorm that was the closest thing to a fraternity vibe” on the campus of the religious college.  

These were not “date rapes.” they were vicious planned attacks.  So how did adults respond in this culture?  Not very well.  

There were clearly two standards in the small town.  One standard of justice is well illustrated by what happened to two women who both had abortions during high school.  One was not well connected socially, and she was kicked out of school for a year.  Another was well connected and active in  sport and cheer activities.  Nothing happened to her after she took one of those extended weekend trips to a nearby state.  (This was before abortion became legal medical procedure in all 50 states.) 

It did not take a rocket scientist to figure out that you should just keep your nose clean and get the hell out of Dodge as soon as you could.  That is what I did for the last two years of high school.  I then paired up with a guy, as much for protection as for love, though I hate to admit, from the time I was 18 until I was 30.  

There are so many other stories I could share, but these are the major ones involving people I knew well enough to know what they’d been through.  

A system of inequity protects the privileged, most often white, men from being dealt with as the criminals they are after they commit violent offenses. 

I know that one of the things that kept me from telling my family  (brothers) that someone had harmed me was that I was certain my brother recently returned from Vietnam would have killed him.  And because he was just a poor boy from a poor family that he would be caught and prosecuted for the murder.  There are many reasons that women do not speak up.

Believe the women.  

Categories: Reason CreekTags: 1970s society, believe the women, social inequity, underage assault and rape

Support Independent Bookstores - Visit IndieBound.org
Previous Post: « Slippery Slopes and Quicksand
Next Post: Bundles of Fasces »

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

CommentLuv badgeShow more posts

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Footer

Recent Posts

  • Ending, and Beginning
  • For Our Daughters
  • Stand and Write
  • Context and Little Things
  • A Month is Just a Month… as Time Goes By
  • Processing Two Very Different Deaths
  • A Dehydrated and Delusional Friend Found Wandering in 100° Heat
  • About Women’s Legacy & Hill Research
  • Privacy Policy and Terms of Use

Archives

Powered by
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter
View my Flipboard Magazine.

© 2023, Nancy Hill, Women's Legacy Project of Hill Research Services, LLC

This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish.Accept Reject Read More
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Non-necessary
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
SAVE & ACCEPT