Speaking of Hate Speach. Sticks and Stone may break our bones but it's those Loaded Words that wound us all the most...

 Before any of us dare break the Silence and begin to talk openly airing our side of the issue we need to find ways to refer to each other that don't further inflame the lynch mob.  

I’m assuming the common ground we all advocate for is effective intervention and prevention? Or, at least, more kindness and less cruelty in word and deed all round? 
and perhaps less collateral damage for wives, mothers, and families to deal with.   

We need to find new language (instead of just repeating the indelible labels such as Predator, Monster, Dangerous Sexual Psychopath.  All of these indelible labels carry old baggage that only serves to inflame and re-energize lynch mobs,  prosecutors, and the unthinking public. I believe we need to move from once a ("perpetrator")...forever a ( #$%^&) language that benefits no one and extinguishes hope.   

Otherwise if we keep pounding each other with what sometimes amounts to hate speech, how will we move from punitive to restorative justice and work together reach our goal of preventing harm/ collateral damage to all concerned?   


I’m concerned that the #MeToo movement, while it does break the silence,  seems so into vengeance (#Time’s Up) etc. I’m glad women and men (and even children) are feeling powerful enough to speak up, break the silence but if we are only going to use old labels, scream at each other from across the prison yard and play hurtful Gotcha! in family gatherings, I doubt we  will usher in the change we need to actually make a difference in our lives going forward. 

Imagine if  Larry Nasser, the coach for the girls Olympic Gymnastic team (who told the court he too had been molested as a child) had been more able/ motivated / felt safe enough to raise his hand as a little boy and say he had been molested. What if he had not been shamed into silence? What if he had asked for help and actually received real help before (or shortly after) he began to act?  How many girls, how much harm would have been prevented not only to the girls but to himself? 

Instead, years later, we saw  50 girls molested, weeping and enraged as they testified at what was a Public Spectacle more than a real exercise injustice. Then the judge took the opportunity to pile on. Punishment is not justice and it avails us nothing. It neither heals nor does it prevent.

Nasser will never see the light of day and those girls will forever be labeled "victim." In my judgment, Not a good outcome for either “side.” So they have 'saved' his "victims" and thrown him into the sh*t pile forever marked Predator. If he ever sees a parole board they will prbably just put him into some "Civil Commitment Facility." marked dangerous sexual psychopaths. 

As far as I'm concerned the 900,000 names currently listed on this country's Registry is a testimony to the sad fact that current methods have failed 900,000 times.  But until we can sit down and openly speak to each other in non-inflammatory terms, until I feel safe enough to speak aloud,  Restorative Justice and recovery will remain beyond anyone's reach.  

As some of you may remember, I have been writing a memoir tracing child sexual abuse down through 4 generations of my own family from pioneer times to the present.

I finally got it written. Now I'm in the process of getting 'blurbs' (recommendations) for the back cover and making final decisions like which title to use.  

The title has morphed as I wrote and edited (and then corrected) the book which is a family saga tracing child sexual abuse through 4 generations of my family from Pioneer Days the present.  

At first, I thought the title should be Treated Like a Girl since both boys and girls in my family were molested and some went on to molest others in succeeding generations. 
Then I tried  A Sex Offender's Wife, A Daughter's Life, A Mother's Voice Speaking Out.

Then a beta reader who read the memoir (version 2000000) suggested The Sex Offender's Legacy, Silenced Lives and I settled on that.  However every time law enforcement knocks on my door, I am treated to yet another personal experience of how wounding indelible labels are. The newer label "Sex Offender at least seems to carry less baggage. But how much collateral damage is done because we as a group, even those advocating for fairness and change have not found language to speak to each other human-being-to-human-being across the great divide that is the Sex Offender Registry?  Because who knows what we are referring to when we say "registrant" or even "offender?"  

In any case,   The title of my completed memoir (I haven't yet loaded it onto Create Space) is SILENCED LIVES, the Sex Offender's Legacy.