Hmmm…

Was listening to the story about the kids who were shipped from Britain to Australia (as well as other places too according to some accounts I read), austensibly to “give them a better life”. However, their lives were anything but “better” in their new environments as in many cases they were neglected and abused.

And based on some of my recent blogging regarding my attendance at a school for the blind, this really struck a cord with me. I began thinking about what happens when adults have pretty much no supervision, and no attachment to the kids in their care. And what happens if said adults see kids as “charity cases” or “dregs on society”, and there’s no oversight, and they can pretty much do what they want with impunity. What happens then?

I used to hear stories that some parents would drop their kids at ISB in the fall, and not pick them up until either holidays or when the school closed for summer. So yes, you had parents who probably saw the school as a dumping ground, a place to get their “disabled child”/”blind child” off of their hands. But not every parent was like that. My parents will still tell stories of how much my mother cried that first week she sent me to school. And how hard it was to have to put your kindergarten-aged child on the bus every week, to feel like you were sending them away. And what happens when a parent is say in a far-flung place like Evansville, whichis like 5 hours from Indy, how do they know that something isn’t happening to thier child if their child isn’t able to, or doesn’t, tell them? And what can a parent who’s so far away that travel to the school is difficult, do in a situation where their child is being maltreated?

I’m not saying abuse was rife at the school I attended. However, I’m just thinking, how much higher the possibility of abuse can be when you’re taking care of kids that aren’t your own, that you have no vested interest in, that you have no proper training to care for. I mean, while the teachers were trained to teach the blind, the houseparents weren’t. I remember a houseparent telling me, when I inquired as to what kind of training they received, that all they had to do to be considered for the job was to take a basic test from the state, and that was it. And the job was a low-paying job, considered to be a menial one. Which unfortunately you could tell, because while there were hardly any minority teachers, many of the houseparents, as well as the cleaning staff and the people who worked in the dining room, were African-American.

So you have what’s considered to be a “menial” job, where you’re working with kids who are either blind, or blind and have other severe disabilities, and this is supposed to be a “menial” job, one that is low-paying, and yet you’re supposed to “continue the learning process” and teach these kids things like independent living skills, etc. Yeah, OK. I always thought that houseparents should have as much training as the teachers, or at least more than just a “basic test from the state”, which to my knowledge didn’t focus on anything blindness specific, especially if the “learning process” was supposed to continue after the school day ended. And maybe that has changed since I left, I don’t know.

So anyway… Again, I ask the question, how much more is the potential for abuse of kids that are placed in the care of people who do not have a vested interest in the kids’ well-being and who consider their job to be menial or “drudge work”? Look at these kids in Australia, when they tried to tell their stories as kids, they were locked up, beaten, isolated… Alhamdulillah that didn’t happen to me. And it’s unfortunate that these kids, now grown up, had to wait decades for a prime minister to give an apology and an “oh this will never happen again” kinda statement (what good will that do now, after lives are already damaged/ruined).

I seem to be blogging a lot about abuse lately, and not quiet sure why. But there seems to be a general theme that runs through things like this, that when allegations are first made, people attempt to shush the people making the allegations, they’re called liars, slanderers of good people, maybe they’re beaten, but whatever the case, the attempt is made to silence them. And maybe a few months or years go by and then maybe either society changes or something so explosive happens that the allegations are brought out again, and only this time, they’re found to be true, or at least credible, and then what then? By then, the damage is already done, and probably more people have been abused since the initial allegations were made originally.

What bothers me is our need to cover up, at the expense of other people’s lives and well-being. Because we want to save face, because we don’t want to look bad. Because we don’t want to believe the people we admired, or looked up to, or held in high regard could be capable of such things, or at least knowing about such things and doing nothing about it. And what about the truth? What about keeping people, in many cases very vulnerable people, from harm? What about protecting them and nurturing them, and making sure that they have the best you have to offer?

Do you know I woke up, on a Monday morning, early, well, Chloe woke me up at almost 5 AM, and I started thinking about all of this, and after taking her out and praying Fajr, I just had to get this down. Because I just had to.

I don’t know why I keep going back over this. “What’s wrong with me?” I find myself asking. I’m 34 years old, I should be over it shouldn’t I? I mean, I proved the nay-sayers wrong, the ones who said I’d not survive, not make it in the “real world”. I didn’t just end up sitting at home collecting SSI. I became a “productive member of society”, they would call it. I work full time, I have a house, a wonderful husband. By all accounts I’ve supposedly “succeeded”. Yet and still, I feel like something’s missing. Where is my apology, for the houseparent who on my first night at school, because I didn’t know how to bathe in the way she thought I should, pulled me out of the community shower where the other kids were, took me back to the bathroom in the houseparent’s office, and then yelled and lectured me, while the shampoo she’d given me to wash my hair with was running into my eyes and I was crying. I was scared to put my head under the water, because I was scared of water back then. I was five then, had just turned five that May and it was September when I entered school. I was crying because the soap was running into my eyes and I was scared to put my head under the water to rinse it out with. See, at home my mom I guess knew this and she let me take a bath, and when she’d wash my hair, she’d do it in the kitchen sink. I was still scared of the water but she’d talk me through it, tell me she wasn’t going to hurt me, that she was right there and nothing would happen to me. She’d tell me that if I didn’t cry and let her wash my hair, it’d get done quicker and she’d fix my hair afterword, that she’d tell me a story, give me a treat or let me play with the dog before going to bed.

Oh no, not this sharp-voiced seemingly mean to me, houseparent. To her I was just a big baby! I was just being incorrigible, a smart eleck, someone who just didn’t want to do what they were told. And I remember after I’d finished my shower, sitting in the chair next to my bed, and listening to her tell me what a bad person I was, this was my first night at the school, I’d not ever started classes yet. But I was being punished, all of the other kids would get snakcs at night, and get to watch TV, but not me, because I’d been bad! I’d have to sit back there on my chair until I could tell her why I was being so bad. But I remember thinking that I wasn’t bad, I was just scared of water! And I didn’t get into trouble after all really, she just stood there and yelled at me until she got tired I guess and sent me to bed. I remember sitting on my chair and listening to her yelling at me, I wasn’t crying anymore, I was too tired by then. And hearing the kids in the lounge up the hall, and hearing the TV. I remember wishing my mom knew about this, but by the time the week ended and I’d gone home, I guess I’d either forgotten about the whole thing, or I just couldn’t communicate it to her properly to let her know what had happened. Because I’m sure if I had said something, she’d have done something about it.
But again, why am I even talking about this so many years later? Is it because I still feel the sting of it? Because I still remember how scared I was, how awful I felt? How I felt accused of being a “bad girl” when I’d done nothing wrong? Is it because I felt like I got no closure or justice out of it?

I don’t know, but it bothers me when people have said to me to “just get over it”, it was a “long time ago, why are you still even thinking about it now?” Because it’s affected my life, I’m thinking. Because I’ve had issues of self-doubt, lack of self-esteem, etc., that I feel were a direct result of that experience. Yet, I’m not supposed to talk about it. I’m supposed to be grateful for the education which I received, supposed to be thankful for the people who taught me, etc. And in many cases I am. But this doesn’t minimize, discount, take away from, the bad things I went through either. And I think that’s what I want, some kind of recognition from someone other than myself and my family that some bad things did happen to me, and perhaps not enough was done about it. And that as much of an attempt as possible will be made to insure that no other child will have to go through what I went through, to be told I’m nothing, that no one cares about me, that I talk to much, laugh too loud, that I’m weird because I may not want to do things that they think I should be doing, or to play in ways that they think I should be playing. To be told that they are the only ones telling me the truth, and that everyone else is just telling me what they think I want to hear, because they don’t want to hurt my feelings. Now how do you think that affects my ability to trust and build meaningful relationships with people? Do you know to this very day, when I meet people, I still wonder in the back of my mind, if they’re talking to me because they like me, or is it because they feel obligated to, or they’re talking to me out of pity because I’m blind. Because all I can think about is “they’re only telling you what they think you want to hear, ’cause they don’t want to hurt your feelings”. “I’m the only one who cares about you enough to tell you the truth”.

So I get sensitive about myself, about how outgoing I am, how much I like to talk, I get defensive because I’ve been told that I talk to much, that I talk about stupid things that no one else cares about. And then I’m afraid to talk, but I just can’t help myself because that’s my personality, that’s who I am. And then I kick myself, ask myself why I did that, because “they probably don’t care anyway”.
It’s really any wonder I think, that I’ve done as well as I have, with all of this stuff occasionally running through my head. However, I think most of the time, my strong will has won the day, Mashallah. The part of me that my parents instilled in me that said no one was going to keep me down, that said I was just as good as anyone else, that said that I could and would be successful despite what “they” said.

And here I am. Still standing, still productive, and doing the best that I can. And I imagine that these adults, who once were children, in Australia are probably doing the same thing. And Inshallah, they now have closure. And maybe they can begin to move on and put the unsorted and/or broken pieces of their lives back together.

Maybe one day I’ll be able to do the same.