Lynne Moss-Sharman
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well. here goes. I am almost finished my social work degree. one more month of placement at the emergency shelter/hostel. all the kids. god. all the kids. i designed a follow-up to intake form because so many people were falling through the cracks (on the basic level of needing immediate health care, not having boots, etc.) and when i asked this guy if he needed help with ID he told me yep. i tore it all up to get out of my 50 mile probation radius etc etc. he had been in penetentiary for sexual assault on male and female children and adolescents. so i had to report him. as a survivor it was a very strange feeling bringing food to this guy who hadn't eaten in two days, had hitchhiked a couple of hundred miles in running shoes with his newly shaved head (disguise) and see how far gone he is emotionally ... two years ago i would have yelled "heeyah...die swine" ... now at this point in my therapy and healing journey (plus some direct experience) i felt compassion for what must have been done to him as a little child in order to end up being so far gone in his psyche ... and now he is being driven from town to town because nobody wants him in their community. the irony? there are so many well dressed, well fixed politically pedophiles running thunder bay and every other city ... and they will never be brought to court, put in jail, let alone penetentiary for raping kids. never. it is easy for the police and the media and the public to bloodhound one very damaged man (so damaged he can't even be stealthy now) and symbolically exorcise child rape from their community ... while hundreds of kids are victimized day here. i am so numb. the runaways. the throwaway kids. we get usa kids escaping from the psychiatric system. we are not crazy they say. and they tell me their stories. no you're not crazy, i tell them, and then what? where can they go? we need another underground. not the squats and the bands of squeegee children ... a healing and protective underground. i am so numb, really. i have learned more in three months than i did in four years in university. i feel so naive about so many things. yesterday i got a call from the surgery ward -- a young girl had given the shelter's number for help -- she was coming out of anaesthetic from an abortion -- and didn't have any way of getting back to her godforsaken apartment -- so off i go -- and these girl children, babies in teenage bodies, wearing oversize post abortion disposable diapers and their blue cotton blood stained hospital gowns open at the back ... and i just wanted to gather them up and tend to them ... how are you not supposed to feel all this? why is there so much silence about how much child abuse that has gone on, that goes on? 90% of the people who end up at the shelter are victims of child abuse ... from age 14 to 68 ... and people have the nerve to call them "the homeless". MARCH 15, 1997
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