I’m not going to castigate you for your post. Instead, what it tells me is that you are one of ‘lucky ones’ that haven’t experienced sexual abuse as a child. If you had, you would understand the turmoil it can create, that telling someone about it is complicated and not just a matter of saying words, that not reporting it immediately isn’t a sign that you are over it.
Be thankful that you don’t understand these things and can’t empathize. There are FAR too many people who can.
Fifty years ago, almost to the day, my mom and brother and I were driving to an event at the L.A. Zoo called Zoobilee. Traffic was a bit bad even then so my mom opted to get off the freeway and cut over to the valley via one of the canyon roads. She jokingly commented that she hoped we wouldn’t get murdered like those other nice people did last week.
I had had heard about the Tate murders but hadn’t quite figured out the geography at that point.
You may not remember what you had for breakfast, but I damn well guatantee you that you’d remember someone grabbing you and forcing your head between their legs, or someone grabbing you in a stall or tack room and groping and rubbing your private parts trying to shove a tounge down your throat. Big difference between remembering that and and a bowl of corn flakes.
For when you start thinking it doesn’t matter, who can even remember, or if the phrase junior whore ever floats through your mind @msrobin et al
Your link doesn’t work.
Correct link is: https://www.chronofhorse.com/article…o-chef-dequipe
I was molested from the age of 13 by my trainer. He was married to a beautiful wife and had two children. He was approximately two decades older than me. He began grooming me and my family when I was 11. I trusted him, and my parents trusted him. He became a trusted family friend, shared our dinner table, and eventually would be responsible for taking me home after lessons.
His biggest gift to me was a small horse I named Spright. Spright was my world, which he then used against me to force me to conform to his wishes. Often he exercised his power by giving my horse to someone else to ride. To this day I can remember the hurt and sadness I felt when that would happen.
One day he said, “Let’s go on a trail ride,” and at one point he pulled up and said, “Get off your horse and take down your pants.” I was a very small girl and had a history of rheumatic fever, but with horses in my life I was growing strong and healthy. I don’t think I weighed more than 65 pounds.
He couldn’t penetrate me, so he told me to get back on my horse. I did exactly what he told me to do. This included not telling anyone what had just happened. He proceeded to keep doing that until he was successful. That was my experience with sex for the first time. He continued to rape me for six more years.
People don’t understand the huge psychological effect that sexual abuse has on you. It’s like being a hostage. He abused his power, and mentally I was his puppet. No matter how many times I personally tried to move on, it was not possible. For me it was the isolation, the embarrassment, the shame. I couldn’t tell my mother. The shame and guilt of feeling that I alone had caused this horrific time in my life was overwhelming. I loved my mother so much that as an adult I still could not tell her. I know she would then have felt the same guilt and shame herself. At 13 I stopped really talking to my parents. I withdrew and became incredibly and painfully shy. I went from a happy young girl with friends who loved school, to hating school, having no friends, and not talking to my family. It was horrible.
It wasn’t until I was 45, after three failed marriages, that I was able to get the right help to be able to verbalize what took place, come to grips with it, and deal with it.
So often these are really powerful men, and I think we need to be conscious of that. Even if I had managed to come forward at 13, 14 or 15, I know I certainly would have been pushed out of the sport.
Wow. Now that’s a clear and concise statement by a really well known well connected, respected horsewoman, she was my idol when she rode a Jumper called Fleet Apple in the 70s. Telling her story took guts but bet she felt relief going public with it this past spring before the GM story broke…wonder if she figured it was going to happen in the wake of the RG situation and JW scandle and felt it was time to publically share it to support he fellow victims brave enough to come forward.
Glad she did.
Thank you @poltroon
If people are so lucky as to be unable to empathize, perhaps they can learn to sympathize.
Link didn’t work for me. I am a COTH subscriber but it said that the article didn’t exist.
For those who weren’t there, the entire point of the “Sexual Revolution” was that all the entrenched ETHICS previously enforced by church, state, and culture were thrown overboard, wholesale and with glee! Personally I don’t think that experiment has aged well at all. It’s left us with the societal mess we have today. But those were the times and people did what they did.
The more important question is under what circumstances occurrences in the context of half a century ago are relevant to the here and now. If the person is not a present (nor recent) threat, what is the point of destroying what’s left of their life for something that occurred in the distant past? Who is being “protected” if there isn’t any threat? And if that person IS deemed to be a threat, why is no one pressing charges with the law?
Again, you fail to grasp that most victims of any violent or sexual assault are well known to their assaulter.
We aren’t talking about rando hook ups.
Bullsh*t. ALL of the ethics weren’t thrown out and not ALL of the people participated and “ did what they did”. I was there and I do remember but was too busy working two jobs and going to school. As I suspect most people were.
Growing up in LA, never even heard of Woodstock until years later. We had our own summer experience at the same time and love, free or otherwise, had nothing to do with it. Peggy referred to it earlier as what she remembered from 50 years ago, me too on that, Tate, LaBianca murders that went unsolved for months. Racial tensions and rumors, Also need to remember this was the time of the asassinations and the ramping up of the Vietnam war. Then the sideshow of the Manson trial.
Don’t blame the late 60s for this, they weren’t what they are assumed to have been and are no excuse for pedophiles or bullying others into accepting bad behavior. That’s been around for centuries and swept under the rug but that rug is getting pulled back.
Seriously, thank you for pointing this out.
Why do you keep insisting it was 50 years ago?
And that raping children was an important part of 60s counter culture
I love how anti Safe Sport people say we don’t know anything and then throw out random stuff like “it’s one person from 50 years ago.” If we don’t know then why keep repeating this as fact? Oh wait they think constitutional rights apply to non-criminal penalties.
And like why would sexually abusing one child for five years, or five minutes, be cool, regardless of how long ago it was??? pitiful people.
That’s EPIC.
These people. Just make them choke on their own stupid arguments and lack of decency.
BS.
Before the sexual revolution, the “ethics” enforced by the entities you mention was largely a façade. People and children were being abused and raped and the power of those VERY institutions covered it up and kept victims quiet.
Absolutely.
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