IMAlive is a live online network that uses instant messaging to respond to people in crisis. People need a safe place to go during moments of crisis and intense emotional pain.
Holy shit this is brilliant
OH MY GOD
this is the best thing
*bookmarks*
RAINN (Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network) also has an online hotline at http://online.rainn.org/
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» Stories of Strength: "We're gunna kill you squaw!"
“We’re gunna kill you squaw!”
Those words are forever burned into my memory as my bare feet hit the cold pavement in the middle of the night. My lungs burned. My thoughts raced. Different scenarios played out before my eyes as I ran from the swerving truck…none of which I survived in my mind. Thankfully, that night, my mind was wrong.
Twelve years old. I was twelve years old when I experienced true fear.
I had bummed a cigarette from an older neighbor in the area that day. Once I was sure everyone in the house was asleep I quietly left and began my walk up the road to clear my mind of frivolous teenage thoughts and quietly rebel against the world as I lit the rolled tobacco I was told to never touch. On my way back I was staring up at the stars in awe. The night was calm as my breathe escaped in cool puffs of air. That calmness was soon shattered by the revving of an engine slowly coming up behind me. I thought it out of place, but could have never fathomed what happened next.
Two men hung out of the rusted, lifted truck. One was hanging outside of the passenger window slamming his hand against the door. I was sure they were joking, but I started walking faster…when the high beams flew on and the engine revved, I started running. The next words echoed in my mind for years to come, “We’re gunna kill you squaw!” I started sprinting. I knew I couldn’t outrun a truck, so I started looking for side streets, something to hide in. My Mother’s advice on getting out of the path of a tornado ran through my mind. “Cut to the side. Get out of it’s path.” There was a community college up ahead. I managed to cross into the parking lot and slip between two brick walls. Suddenly the truck engine stopped. Doors slammed. I was sure right then, I wouldn’t make it back home. I was sure I was dead. I held completely still, calmed my breathing, and prayed like hell. Their footsteps drew closer, and in seconds I was grabbed by my arm and pulled into the chest of the very man I was trying to get away from. He slammed me up against the cold hard bricks. I was silent. Too afraid to scream, too afraid to cry, too afraid to move. All I could do was shake. He was older, but couldn’t have been much older than college aged now that I look back. He grabbed my throat and threw a slew of insults at me over beer stained breath. His friend was nervously laughing a few feet away. Keeping watch. The man forced his hands up my shirt, down my pants. Groping every inch of me he could. I briefly remember him saying something on how this was going to be a party tonight. As soon as he unzipped his pants I zoned out. I blocked the world out. I blocked my vision, my hearing, my sense of touch, smell, and taste. Everything. Whatever was going to happen. I didn’t want to be there for it…even if my only escape was mental. In those next seconds, his friend suddenly changed his mind. He pulled the man off of me and told him he didn’t like this area. He felt they were being watched. The man stepped back and spat at my feet. Told me I’m nothing but a prairie nigger and they’d get to me eventually…or someone like them. As they walked away I was still frozen in fear. I only snapped out of it and collapsed on the ground once their engine roared into the distance. I pulled myself together in a heap and slowly made my way home. Quietly, unnoticed, I made my way through the house, and climbed into bed. Rolling myself into the blankets as tight as possible.
The days that followed were much like the weeks that followed, and the years that followed that. I didn’t tell anyone until six years later. I was too afraid to say anything. Not afraid that I’d get into trouble, not afraid of what might happen, but afraid that once I said it, it would become a reality. As I matured I realized something though…I’m alive. They didn’t kill me that night. They didn’t break my spirit. They didn’t tarnish me. They gave me strength.
My story is light to many I have heard. Each one bearing the same message at the end though…we’re still here, and we’re fighting. It is now with my head held high I share my story, as it may reach someone who has experienced something quite similar. Maybe it will let her know, she’s not alone.
“We’re gunna kill you squaw!” Today I wrap those words in my fist and raise it in the air. This is my weapon. This is my story.
-Patricia E. Stein
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» Minn. pastor arrested for sexual assault during ‘ex-gay’ therapy
TRIGGER WARNING: DISCUSSION OF SEXUAL ASSAULT
A Minnesota pastor has been arrested for sexually assaulting two gay men while counseling them about their “homosexual tendencies.”
Charging documents released this week indicated that 55-year-old Rev. Ryan J. Muehlhauser was accused of eight felony counts of fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct on at least two men during sessions about how to “escape the gay lifestyle,” according to KARE.
Muehlhauser was a pastor at Lakeside Christian Church in Cambridge, but met the men through Outpost Ministries, which claims it was “formed over 30 years ago to meet the needs of men and women making the decision to break away from gay life.”
The first victim told authorities that Muehlhauser had “blessed” him by cupping his genitals. The pastor required the victim to arouse himself for “spiritual strength” and later instructed the man to get naked and masturbate in front of him, calling it “spiritual guidance.”
Muehlhauser told a second victim that he would “loose everything” if details of the abuse became public.
“To seek comfort and advice and to help address the pain they were experiencing only to have them experience a more horrific type of pain, sadness,” Isanti County Attorney Jeffrey Edblad said.
The alleged abuse began as early as Dec. 31, 2010 and continued until at least Oct. 31, 2012.
“You have a defendant who spends a significant amount of time working with and grooming victims, these are often cases that take place over a period of months and years. They don’t happen in a vacuum,” Edblad explained.
Muehlhauser appeared in court on Tuesday and was free pending a second hearing next month.
“As a church, we are deeply saddened by the report by certain inappropriate behaviors during counseling sessions by one of our pastors, Ryan Muehlhauser,” Lakeside Christian Church said in a statement. “At this point we do not believe that there has been any involvement with minors. We ask that if you are aware of any others that may have been abused, you immediately report that to the Isanti County Sheriff’s Department at 763-689-2141.”
Attorney Sherwood McKinnis, who is representing Muehlhauser, suggested that criminal punishment would not be necessary.
“Mr. Muehlhauser has made significant contributions to the community, he’s married and has a good and solid clergial support,” McKinnis insisted. “We can certainly expect that group of people to hold Mr. Muehlhauser accountable for his actions.”
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» IT HAPPENED TO ME: I WAS SEXUALLY ABUSED BY A DOCTOR - By Maria Mercedes Lara
TRIGGER WARNING: DISCUSSION OF SEXUAL ABUSE
Maria Menounos recently opened up about being sexually abused by two doctors, and while most fans were supportive, there were a few people out there who criticized her for not reporting the incidents to the authorities.
How could she look herself in the mirror after refusing to report the abuse? How could she let it happen to her twice? Well, I know how it feels, since I was also sexually abused by two doctors and never spoke up about it, until now.
The first incident happened at a hospital near my home in Brooklyn. I was sent to the ER after I started to feel excruciating pains in my lower abdomen. A doctor in the ER thought it may have been linked my uterus, so he brought in a gynecologist to examine me in a private room. The gyno looked but he said he couldn’t see any issues.
After the doctor was done examining me, he told me stay in the stirrups and proceeded to put his fingers inside me. My whole body froze and I immediately looked up at the ceiling. Was this part of the examination? Were we not really done? I was feeling something that was truly indescribable.
I was nervous and I felt a rush of hot anxiety sweep over me as I lay, exposed, on the examination table. I felt like my entire body was shaking, but I wasn’t moving. My wrists were tingling with feeling but I couldn’t lift them. I felt like someone had pulled all the veins and nerves out of my body and let them spill out on the dirty floor. I glanced down at the doctor and I met his eyes, and noticed that he was grinning up at me. I stared back up at the ceiling.
The second time was within a few months of the first incident. The hospital had suggested that I meet with a different doctor to try to pinpoint my issue. I found the doctor simply by Googling my New York neighborhood + gynecologist. When I called to make an appointment, they told me that all the female gynecologists were booked for the next few months, and that the only doctors available immediately were male.
I felt uneasy about it, but pushed my concerns to the back of my mind. The previous incident was an anomaly and something that wouldn’t happen again. Or at least that’s what I told myself, since I was desperate for an answer to my medical issue. I made the appointment.
My doctor was a quiet man who looked like he was only a few years older than me. I talked to him about my issues and he instructed me to lie down on the examination table. As I put my feet into the stirrups, the doctor ran a single finger down the length of my leg, from my ankle all the way to my genitals, where he began to touch me. I felt a lump form in my throat and felt that same hot, helpless feeling take me over again.
In both of these incidents I never said anything, never told the doctor to stop, never reported their actions to anyone. I didn’t exchange any words with them about it, and after it was over I changed back into my clothes and left their hospitals like nothing had happened.
Mostly I tried to forget about them. I never told my mother about them, I never told my friends, and I certainly never told my boyfriend. Instead, I shoved them down into the secret recesses of my body where I just hoped they would be forgotten.
However, I never really forgot about what happened and instead I started to feel increasingly guilty about my non-action. I was not a child or a shy teenager anymore, I was an adult woman (at the time I was 22) who had the mental capacity to know that what these men did to me was wrong.
Adding to the shame, at the time, I was working at Jezebel, a lifestyle site for women with a feminist slant. What kind of feminist was I if I didn’t report what happened to me? How could I write for smart, strong women, when I was too dumb, too shy, to speak up when these doctors hurt me? The longer I waited to speak up about what happened, the more I felt like I was going against my lady-feminist duty to fight sexual abusers.
There was nobody in my life who would have shamed me for not speaking out or, even worse, shamed me for what had happened to me. The reaction was all imagined, a constant conversation I was having with myself in my head. When I thought about the incident or was reminded of it somehow, I still felt that exposed nerve feeling. It was all too — for the lack of a better word — icky.
It’s easier to keep things hidden and secret than to speak out and lay out all your skeletons out there for the world to see. Maybe my biggest fear was that I would be viewed a victim.
How could I be the silly, goofy person that I was if I was labeled a “survivor” by society? How could I goof off with my friends about “Real Housewives,” watch trashy period pieces on Netflix Instant, and inexplicably click through dozens of photo galleries of celebrities wearing bikinis for no reason? (CoCo is my spirit animal, in case you’re wondering.) Now I know that being a victim of sexual abuse doesn’t mean you become a full-time morose pity-machine.
Nor did my fear of being seen as a victim mean that I could erase the feelings that would naturally take place. Somehow, I really thought I was special enough to be able to “fight” the emotions that take you over after you were abused. I could hide it all, I thought. No one would know about what happened or what I didn’t do.
Of course, I’m not special, and my attitude following the abuse read like it was ripped out of a textbook. I became lazy with my work, often fighting back fits of distraction. I was irritable and overly emotional, torturing my poor boyfriend with my ups and downs. At the time, I credited this all with just daily stress, but looking back I can see how a lot of it stemmed from the sexual abuse, and my dumb idea to shove it all into a secret pit in my stomach.
It isn’t that I spent all this time since the abuse huddled up on my couch, recoiling from everyone’s touch. Eventually the incidents became just things that happened to me. My mind still shuts off sometimes when I think about what happened, and I shook as I read about Maria Menounos and her experiences.
But, I’m not afraid to talk about what happened anymore.
As much as it goes against every feminist should-know-better bone in my body, I still don’t really regret that I never reported the doctors, only that I never opened up about what had happened to my friends and family. I would have gotten no closure from going through the nightmare of a trial or of filing a report with the police. It’s hard enough even typing out what happened.
The only thing that I do regret is that these men may still be abusing women. All I can do is hope that there are women out there who know better than I did.
