Hearing of September 27th, 2018

Yesterday there was a Senate hearing to determine the credibility of two people--Christine Ford, a female psychological researcher and college instructor and Brett Kavenaugh, a highly respected male federal judge who is aspiring to a lifetime position on our Supreme Court.  I watched the entire hearing, beginning to end.  I will admit, however, to moments of distraction during the long introduction by Kavenaugh.

 Which of the two did I find more credible?  Christine Ford.  Why?  For one thing, because she presented as an ordinary person who had survived a horrendous trauma.  Her memory, she admitted, had holes in it, she did not present a seamless account of her life and the event in question, and she had taken a lie detector test and had been determined to be telling the truth regarding her ordeal.  Kavenaugh, on the other hand, prefaced his part in the hearing by presenting himself as a person of high moral fiber, virtue, and work ethic, not given to drinking beer to the point of blacking out, and certainly not given to treating women with anything but highest respect.   

Yes, Judge Kavenaugh painted a picture of himself as a person of highest virtue, a devoted husband and father of girls, and a devout practitioner of his religious faith.  How could anyone not believe him?  He presented himself as an almost- flawless human being.  The problem for me, however, was that he went too far in his use of rhetorical devices.  He attempted to garner his audience's sympathy by relating something one of his little girls said during her prayer time, something like "Let's pray for 'the woman.'"  Did I get warm fuzzies from that??  No!  I recognized his appeal to my emotions as a ploy to get me on board his boat.  I preferred to swim!  So, no, Brett Kavenaugh did not come across to me as being more believable than Christine Ford.  Try as he might, Brett Kavenaugh could not sell me the Brooklyn Bridge.

What is it that stands out as being most haunting in yesterday's debaucle?  Christine Ford's reference to the laughter, the loud laughter of the boys who watched her suffer.  Why does her talk of laughter haunt me?  Because buried as deeply in my brain as in hers, I hear the laughter, too.  And the laughter I hear is the same laughter she heard, the laughter of a victimizer at his victim as she suffers.  I'll never, ever forget that sound!  Problem was that I was stuck--my tormenter was the person I was married to and lived with.  I couldn't escape, at least that's what I thought at the time.  Later, when I discovered he was victimizing our child, she and I both escaped.  Until then, however, I was stuck. 

Christine Ford said something about being afraid she would be accidentally killed as she was being tormented and abused.  I wasn't afraid of being killed because I didn't have time to fear death.  I was asleep until I wasn't asleep.  Then I screamed.  Each time I screamed, he laughed!  He thought it was hilarious to wake me by attmpting to rape me with our male dog.  He didn't succeed, but he enjoyed trying.  Each time he tried and I screamed, he laughed.  Why did I let that happen?  Yes, it was, of course, my fault--not his fault.  In those days, whatever bad happened was always my fault. That was a given. 

As in many cases of domestic abuse, my abuser isolated me.  I had just one close friend, and she was a female Episcopal priest.  I could talk to her with ease, for the most part.  But I simply could not bring myself to ask her if what my husband so clearly enjoyed doing to me was "ordinary."  Did most husbands do that to their wives?  Did most husbands use their dogs as a source of sexual pleasure?  Yes, there was that, too.  I just could not ask her about this.  It was too terrible.  Until I became desperate.  Then I finally asked her.

My friend was not really shocked by my question.  She said that during her internship in pastoral work, she had spent time working as a chaplain in one of the big prisons in our state.  Plenty of guys behind bars had "bestiality" written in their files.  She said she thought it was a felony.  No, she wasn't shocked at the topic.  She was, however, shocked that I was being victimized by my husband.  She said that if I had not told her, she never would have known anything like that was going on in my life.  She assured me that my husband's behavior was not typical or "ordinary."  I needed to get help, she said.  I was already seeing a therapist for depression, so I needed to tell her about my husband's behavior.  I did.  Telling my therapist and my friend helped me understand that perhaps my husband had a flaw or two in his psychological makeup--maybe I was less flawed than I had thought.  Was that possible?

Shortly after this experience, I found myself awakening to the possibility that not every bad thing that happened in our household was my fault.  As a dear friend of mine often said, "With awareness comes change."  So true.  I gained confidence and courage. Thus, when I caught my husband abusing our daughter, I reported him to the police and filed for divorce.  I've been on my own since 1981, about the time when Christine went through her trauma.  The experience has been behind me for all these years, but like Christine, I'll hear the laughter for the rest of my life.  It's there for a lifetime.  We'll never forget.