Trae
The first time I was sexually assaulted, I was nine. I had no sexual awareness at all about myself. I wasn’t in puberty. I was a naive, happy, skinny little kid…. I was walking down the street in a busy downtown area just around the corner to where my mother was working. We were going shopping that afternoon. But at that moment I was alone. I suddenly felt a hand cup me and 2 large meaty fingers glide from back to front of my female parts between my legs. And I froze, cold. I wasn’t sure what to do and I started to cry. I sometimes think I remember the man’s face. But I don’t. I only remember the older, weathered looking man a few feet in front of me walking in the opposite direction who yelled, “Hey!” and ran after the man who assaulted me. No one stopped. Not a man or a woman, to console me or asked to escort me to safety. I was left standing in shock in the middle of a moving crowd. It’s like no one else even saw what happened. Maybe no one else did. So finally I walked on to my destination, confused and upset. …when I related what happened to my mom, she got hysterical. It totally freaked her out. But then, I was told my shorts were too tight. In retrospect, I think she didn’t know how to react at that moment. It was a lot for her to deal with and embarrassing. It was right then and there I learned to shut up about things like that. And I buried the whole incident. I normalized it for myself. So when it happened again (differently), I got angry but accepted it as ‘part of life’. It took me years to understand that this kind of behavior wasn’t normal or ok.