She was twelve and I'll never forget her.
She was twelve - mentally challenged from an impoverished family with parents who were mediocre caregivers at best. She lived in a rundown trailer surrounded by hard dirt and rocks. You've seen her home before - in movies, described in books, on the news. The kind of place looked down on - where the dregs of society gathered - the eyesore, the blight on the otherwise perfect place to live.
You've probably seen her or someone like her - playing outside, in the dirt, on a sunny day - while traveling along the highway to a better destination.
She was twelve and she lived in the kind of place that at night becomes a who's who of the best of the best. In the dark - you're not only protected by the absence of light, you're also granted the sweet relief of denial. If no one (that matters) sees you, then it didn't happen. You were never there. You don't even see the little girl playing on the floor, up way past her bedtime.
What mattered was where you went next. To the people who did matter. The people who would whoop your coming and the bounty you brought them. The high school weekend party - where the best of the best gathered, away from parents, away from judgment, and away from the unknown names and faces of classmates who didn't matter anyway. Well, unless you need someone to pick-on come Monday. The desire to feel better about yourself after a weekend of denial can be strong - and the pimply-faced dweeb in first period is handy.
She was twelve and mentally challenged. A neglected child from not simply the other side of the tracks - that's where the black kids lived - but a child from the wrong side of life, period.
This medium-sized southern town was a lesson in social stratification. If you were ready to learn. Textbook case. Lines so tightly drawn you could almost see them. You could definitely feel them.
The black community was literally across the train tracks, where the pollutants of racism and industry kept a check on the lives of those who resided beyond the depot - lives that were too often shortened and diminished by both.
A place for everything and everyone - and everyone in their place. That was the town I lived in for far too long.
Across the tracks and through the main thoroughfare one would find themselves traveling the vista and strata of low to upper middle class to the stratosphere of impossibility. With every block passed there was a delineation of modest homes to stately old mansions of old money to the grandiose lake houses of new. All expressing a quantifiable proof of income - of worth.
She was twelve and mentally challenged and she ran away. One day she simply left out, walking up the trash strewn dirt drive to the highway, alone and heading nowhere. Anywhere. Out. Away.
One Monday sitting in a throw-away class for Seniors designed for nothing more than raising that all important grade point average - a group of boys were discussing their weekend.
Together they stood, in a circle of testosterone, happily, almost joyously, telling their tales of conquest. Loudly they replayed, without a care in the world, how they each had a turn.
She was twelve, mentally challenged, and a run-away. She was picked up by a group of boys in a white van. They promised to take her home.
I sat there in shock. Not believing what I was hearing. I already knew what I was going to do.
A popular athlete walks into class and takes a seat. The rapists turn to him and want to know if he "got a piece?".
The young African-American man gave them a look of scorn and said, "Y'all can get away with shit like that. We'd get lynched".
The rapists wondered if that was a "No".
They said he'd have a second chance since the girl was being held in a van at a strip mall parking lot.
No one "across the tracks" was dumb enough or depraved enough to join in on the gang rape - it came out later. Though a few best of the best parents desperately tried to make it seem as if there just had to be some involvement by black students. Because a black man raping a white girl would dwarf the involvement of their precious white boy. Because that's how racism works and everyone knew it.
The teacher entered the room, everyone took their seats, and when she got to my name during roll call, I asked to be excused.
She was twelve, mentally challenged, and being driven all over town for boys to take a turn.
She was twelve, a victim of gang rape, and currently being held hostage in a locked van.
I went to a teacher I trusted. She was relatively new and I mistakenly thought she had not been infected by the blindness that permeated the school.
A school where students were placed in college prep courses dependent on their parent's income more so than ability. A school where being black got you automatically placed in lower level classes unless you somehow showed exceptional promise. Emphasis on exception. An exception determined by the begrudging allowances of racism.
They did the same with poor whites. If they didn't know your parents then they weren't part of their social circle, so who are you? Never discount the brutality of classism for diminishing opportunity.
That same teacher would later be part of the harassment against me in retaliation for speaking up.
She was twelve and alone and afraid. She was bleeding from the multiple rapes as well as the kitchen utensils that were used to penetrate her.
I called the police. Told them everything I heard, who said it, and all the other names that came up during the recitation of "boys being boys".
They found the girl.
The next day the local paper had the story. The lede was how a white trash little girl, who was mentally retarded and neglected by her drug dealing parents, had run away only to be raped by some boys.
No, they didn't actually call her white trash but they may as well have done so. They did call her mentally retarded and neglected by parents with past drug charges, and who lived in a rundown trailer on a dirt road.
About the boys?
Well, they were "good boys" from "good families" and everyone was shocked.
Boys and men from middle school to high school to recent high school graduates.
All. Taking. A. Turn.
At school a few days the same teacher I thought I could trust wanted to get our "feelings" on the subject. She looked away from me when I caught her eye.
My fellow classmates said:
"She asked for it."
"They shouldn't have to have their lives ruined because of this."
"They are good boys from good families."
"Her parents should have been watching her."
"She's retarded. She won't remember anyway."
"She's not from a good family."
"They are just kids."
"They did nothing wrong".
"She didn't say No."
"She didn't try to get away."
Just some of the horrible things the best of the best had to say about the kidnapping and gang rape of a little girl.
I spoke up.
I said - " I don't care if she had a welcome mat between her legs - she was raped - and I hope the first boy had a raging case of herpes and that every boy after was infected."
I bore the genuinely shocked and dirty looks with relish.
I wasn't wishing harm on the little girl. I was angry over what happened to her and wanted the boys and men involved to pay. Because I knew the "good families" in town were against her and that meant justice was against her too.
But that's not what angered my classmates. It was the harm I was wishing on the rapists that bothered them.
The school and town played the whole thing down and went about in the same comforting denial as always - but still always attacking the victim.
I won't bore you with the abuse and harassment I took the rest of the school year because it was worth it. The real threat of a lawsuit helped to curtail a good deal of it. Even the principal was involved in the harassment and the quickest to realize how a lawsuit would open it all up again.
Of the three dozen or so boys and men who raped the little girl, only 4 went to trial.
None got jail time.
One was allowed to join the military as punishment.
The little girl and her family were forced to move away.
If you've read this far, thank you. I hope you'll indulge me a few seconds more.
High school was decades ago for me but I will never forget my senior year and not for the fond memories that stay with a lot of people.
Even after all those years have gone by - today, in the here and now - society has changed some but not enough.
Women and girls are attacked for reporting sexual assault. Even when they don't report it but the whole town knows or the whole school knows, they are harassed and abused. They are attacked without mercy. Vicious assaults against them as a person. They are made to be seen (and feel) as less than the dirt they played in on sunny days.
It has to stop. Please.
= new reply since forum marked as read
All I can say is thank you.... Speechless and horrified.
Both for the girl and for you. Thank you, Solly Mack.
...in their place via fear. Fear and shame, no matter how deeply suppressed.
You spoke out.
Oh, Solly.
Thank you for sharing, Solly.
(One of the first things that sprang to mind was Steubenville)
I'm glad you shared this story, as painful and horrifying and disgraceful as it is.
What's far worse is that it's the kind of story STILL being told now (as I have the TV on in the background, hearing about what some old farts are already saying about Professor Ford).
Are we EVER gonna get beyond this?
We need more.
Well written and heartbreaking.
Thank you for standing up for this girl when no one else would.
Thank you for what you did. 
For your courage then, and now.
For doing what you could.
We must do the same: What we can!
horrific situation you became a hero of.
