I'm watching a Netflix original film titled The Keepers (thanks, Nina). It's a true story, told in 7 gripping episodes, of women who are investigating the murder of one of their favorite teachers in 1969, a Nun at their Catholic school in Baltimore. What unfolds is a heart-wrenching story of their quest for truth that exposed the systematic abuse by the school chaplain and other men, of students during the late 60s and early 70s. The brave souls who stepped forward shared corroborating experiences then suffered re-abuse as their stories were doubted and dismissed by the diocese, the police and the state attorney in charge of sexual crimes.
Systematic. That's a key word.
Sexual abusers work systems, manipulate as a means to protect themselves and use blame and threats against their victims. The system can be a country, a business, a government, a municipality, a fraternity, a religion, a family. Vulnerable people have been abused throughout time and across organizations of people, be they vast in population or nuclear. Sexual abusers are everywhere.
I want to be done blaming myself. I have lived small and quiet. I'm not sure what's next, but there will be knitting involved.
I want to be done blaming myself. I have lived small and quiet. I'm not sure what's next, but there will be knitting involved.
[pictured: the washcloth I finished this morning]
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