"Harassment Communications" ($2,500)

“The prettiest eyes have cried the most tears, and the kindest hearts have felt the most pain.”

During my nearly two decades of childhood, I lived in a reign of terror as a child slave with an abusive father. While violence was put on my Mother and my Sisters, being the only boy in the household, I was treated the worst. Later on, my Mother would tell me that raising girls was easy, because you're just supposed to love them. But when it came to raising boys, she didn't understand. She would also later tell me that she didn't remember any of the violence, when it was a routine, habitual thing. It was like she was trying to get me to forget all that happened, as if that was even possible. Or perhaps she was lying to herself. I don't know.

At the dinner table, I sat at the right hand of the father, and would get smacked, daily, for doing mundane annoyances. Sometimes I'd have my elbows on the table, or I'd drink my drink too loudly, or really any trivial thing that my abusive father would find disagreeable, would illicit anger and violence. This is the story of my first two decades of my life. It's painful to remember, but I feel, at least to a receptive audience, there's much to be gained from the pain of my youth. Sometimes, hitting me in the head wasn't good enough, he'd want to destroy my soul, as if any hint of having my own thoughts or personality that would pop up would have to smashed. Sometimes, instead of just direct violence, he'd take my cup full of Kool-Aid, and throw it in my face. So the violence was horrible, but it was much more than that. It was the humiliation, publicly and privately, and it was the jokes, and then there's the laughing. I was my abusive father's whipping boy, a scapegoat, somebody to make him feel powerful, an outlet for him to unleash his anger. He liked calling me a “wiener”, and would constantly impress his friends, his wife, my cousins, by making fun of me. It was a nightmare. A long, violent nightmare, that never stopped. I lived in constant terror, and I was ignorant to having dignity or pride in myself. I never thought to leave, or to run away, till I was 17, because I didn't realize that I was a victim, and that a different, better, life was possible.

I grew up on a tobacco farm, which has a rich history of slavery, and was constantly being ran, doing house chores, while he watched TV, doing hours of farmwork, in the blistering sun, picking tomatoes, hoeing, cutting tobacco, mowing grass at 2 in the morning, making straight A's in school, even being Valedictorian. I also played sports and was on the academic team, but none of these things mattered, and wasn't worthy of any respect or consolation. The name of the game was about power, control, domination, manipulation... in a single word, it was Oppression. It was Hell. Working in Tobacco, getting Green Tobacco Sickness, aka Nicotine Poisoning, and doing it all for no other purpose, except for being afraid. There was no pay. There was no room to be myself, or to allow my biology to unfold. My abusive father would brag about being the dictator, and he took my Mother's head, and slammed it on the Farm equipment. Around 3^rd grade, they separated, but then they got back together. He's been in jail for domestic violence. He'd abuse the pets, brag about how he likes to drown kittens, and he'd talk bad about the Gripshovers, my Mother's family. Mom never objected, or stood up for herself. In her eyes, if she took all the abuse, then that was more guarantee that she was going to Heaven. But she was complicit in the crimes. She witnessed them, and did nothing about it. And as time went on, she'd be the person who'd start the fight, and my abusive father would come in, and “protect” her by carrying on his oppression. I remember being in the bean patch, when I around 10 years old, and my abusive father got in my younger sister's face, and yelled at her, till she started to pee on herself. He then ordered her to go back to the trailer, a ½ mile away, to get herself cleaned up. My sister and I came back, and started to mock her, singing “The Yellow Brick Road”. Later on, I found a picture of my sister where she had X'd her face out, and wrote on the back, “Everybody always hated me.” So my abusive father would pretend to protect a full grown woman against children, but hitting little innocent girls he had no problem with?

There's a lot of insanity here, and he was beat up and molested as a child by his stepfather. So he's a victim himself. But he never got out. He never stood up to his oppressor, he never liberated himself, and still has a close relationship with the person who molested and abused him and his sister when he was a child. He desperately wants his oppressor's approval. I can see the big picture. We also live in a patriarchal racist culture, which hides and protects monsters like him, especially in rural Kentucky, where domestic violence, child abuse, animal abuse, elder abuse, and insanity, runs rampant. I remember some of the major incidents vividly, but since the oppression and violence was routine, it was a constant reign of terror, I internalized much of what happened, and just chalked it up to that's just how things are. I wonder if he was jealous of me because my Mother showed me love, or perhaps he was jealous of the good relationship I had with my little brother (who was born when I was 13 years old). I don't know. I think he's a dysphoric borderline case, but that's for him, and the professionals to figure out. He hasn't even to doing anything wrong, and probably won't. Ever.

Martin Luther King said that in the end, we don't remember the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. I remember my Mother just watching all of it. I remember my Mother just watching all of it, and I remember her face as she turned her head, and pretended not to see the crimes happening right before her eyes. And my sisters. And perhaps everybody was scared, so nobody did a thing. But as a young man, I wasn't being taught anything about manhood. We didn't learn to talk to each other, to cooperate, to have solidarity, to be a loving family. It was about control and obedience, and that's it. Not crying, not showing any emotion, carrying around a handkerchief, these were important milestones for my abusive father to have me cross, in order to be a man. George Carlin said that 95% of the world's problems are because of the dumb things fathers do to their sons. In fact, there isn't much about Manhood that's worth salvaging.

So while these horrible things happened to me, I believe there's much beauty that came from this tragedy. My childhood curse can be converted into an adult blessing, for myself, and the rest of the world. My abusive father is my antithesis. I have such a strong dislike of the way I was raised, I have come to the conclusion that all violence, abuse, and bullying is wrong. Any form of intimidation is wrong. If you can't convince somebody to do something, you must respect that, and walk away. I can't stand any type of Oppression, or Bullying. Self-defense, or defense of another person is the only time violence should even be considered, and even then, it doesn't have to be employed. Stop. Look. Listen. Think. Act.

So this provides a separate narrative to the one that my “criminal” report would suggest. There's several charges that have to do with my upbringing directly. There was a charge of “Filing a False Report”, but was dismissed. My Mother had told me that she got out her aggression on Kurt, my little brother, by hitting him. These sentiments bothered me, and so I called Child Services on them. This was when I was living in Florida with my oldest sister. A month later, my abusive father was friends with the Prosecutor of the town, and while I was staying at a friend's house in Cincinnati, sleeping in the attic, I was charged with Filing a False Report. It was dismissed because it wasn't false. So my abusive father made the Prosecutor drop the charges. This was in 2007.

After not getting my feet on any foundation, after 40+ jobs, and 20+ different addresses, I didn't want to burden any more friends, or family, for providing something my parents should happily have provided: Housing. So in 2009, when I was 27 years old, I moved back into the house. I was also curious to see if he was still an abusive person to my younger siblings. While things were cordial between us, he called me “wiener” again, in front of my friends. I didn't say anything to him at the time, but wanted to talk to him about it later on. So I sat down, and respectfully, addressed the issue of him calling me names I didn't like. His reaction surprised me. At first, he pretended to not have heard me, and I repeated that I didn't like to be called “wiener”. He didn't say anything, went out to his truck, and came back, taunting me, and mocking me. He was provoking a fight. I didn't like how he was treating me with contempt, but I stood my ground, and spoke up for myself, for once in my life. He then pushed me. I pushed back. He swings a flying elbow at me, while saying “Don't hit me!”, which made no sense to me, at the time, since he was the one attacking me. I punched him in his arm, and he fell down into the corner of the living room, into his golf clubs. He pulls a golf club out. He pulls it back like he's going to hit me with it. I didn't think he would, but he had the crazy eyes, and he swung at my head, as hard as he could, missing me 2 times, and nicking my ring finger on my right hand. I quickly picked up a golf club that was lying on the ground, and lifting it up like I was intending on swinging, if he was going to continue. That's when he came back to Earth, and backed up into his room. Then he calls the police, and the Prosecutor, makes up a fanatical story about him being terrorized, and how everybody in the house was scared, and was in a hostage situation. I had also called the police, but I called Carroll County police, when he called Gallatin County police, and his police came, but mine did not (the property is on the line between the two counties). It turned out that my abusive father had a videocamera in the other room, and was recording everything. At first, he refused to give it to the authorities, but they forced him to. I was sent to jail, spent the night, and then had 3 separate trials over the same 30 second tiff, of which, my abusive father tried to murder me. Marvin Gaye Sr. killed Marvin Gaye Jr. for the same reason, because his son finally stood up for himself, and pushed him down.

I pushed for Family Counseling, but my abusive father didn't want that. He got my Mom to sign a waiver, saying it's okay to get his own separate counseling, with just him and with my two younger siblings. Family counseling is a no-brainer, but my Mother was willfully duped. Half of Americans believe their parents would have benefited from therapy. The whole “Attempted Murder By Golf Club” has crystalized all that I been thinking before. My “family” watched me get assaulted at least 5,000 times (18 years, daily violence, rounded down), without thinking it was a crime, or something to be concerned about. But the day I defend myself, I'm nearly murdered, sent to jail, forced into a public trial, for some more humiliation, had a restraining order filed on me, and was facing a maximum penalty of 5 years in prison for the 4^th degree assault charge, which was dropped. Even when the counselor of the children said that the kids were not afraid of me, and did not consider me a threat, and me and my Mother testified, the Judge still sided with my abusive father. This is ironic because when I was in the house, my abusive father wasn't as tyrannical, since having another man in the house “checks” him. So, like the permanent scar on my ring finger on my left hand where the golf club nicked, now I got a permanent mark on my public record. Hate, pain, and violence is all this man knew, and my Mother has been pushing me to care for him, because “deep down inside”, he loves me. I don't believe it. I think she's been lying to me, because she's been lying to herself, and while it's easy to not think about my abusive father, it makes me sad to think about how cold and uncaring my own Mother was, for such a long time. There's been a slight change in her demeanor, and I am still in contact with her, but it still hurts. Eventually, I plea bargained down to “Harassment Communications”, not trusting the jury would listen, since my hometown had ignored my cries throughout my childhood, so I didn't expect them to change that pattern of indifference, 10 years later.

Since I had been abused during my formative years, these are wounds that will probably stay with me till the end, but that doesn't mean I have to be governed by them. I've walked into the Women's Crisis Center, got lots of great information that's set me on a path of change. I enjoyed counseling. Our friends and family counsel us on a daily basis, but actually having a professional give you insight is wonderful. When my counselor says “I believe you”, that takes a load off my shoulders, and it validates me. So while it's possible for victims of abuse to become abusers themselves, I have a compelling reason to not be a violent oppressor; moreso than a person with a regular, healthy upbringing. I can't stand any, and all, intimidation, physical or verbal, and I will always have a lifelong opposition to intimidation and bullying.. Also, being an oppressor goes against my soul, as it should with everybody, because to be an oppressor, one has to think of the victims who are exploited, as objects, and not as human beings. Oppressors dehumanizes others, which is why humanity can only come from the Oppressed.