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SPEAK THE TRUTH

Sandra P. Kapell



��I have one story to tell about child abuse. It is not about abuse I suffered as a child, but about a very dear friend of mine who abused her children. This story is about generations repeating behavior, about helping rather than judging, and about assumptions. It is a true story and the names have not been changed to protect the innocent, because there are no victims anymore.
��There are moments in our lives when one sentence is so powerful, it compels us to reexamine our very essence...the very achievements in which we take pride and believe are physical manifestations of our inner souls. Such a sentence was uttered to me and shattered me for an eternal moment.
��I live in New York City today, but was raised in a farming town in Washington State. I moved to New York City because I wanted to be a writer and experience all different types of people. Instead, I became a Legal Assistant in a mid-size law firm and met a lot of similar people. But an angel of good fortune was sitting on my shoulder and rescued me from legal oblivion. I was asked to manage an enormous case and supervise a staff of four other Legal Assistants and serve as the principle liaison for a trial team of twelve attorneys. This staff was comprised of a Dutch lawyer who was completing his LLM at Columbia Law School, a Doctoral student in Philosophy at the New School, an undergraduate student at Swarthmore (with us for the summer) and a high school dropout born and raised in Brooklyn. Marisol, the Legal Assistant from Brooklyn, and I were the only females and Marisol was the only minority (Puerto Rican).
��The case happened to be very active at the time I started, and there were several tasks which needed to be completed quickly. I didn’t have much time to get to know everyone before I started dishing out seemingly endless hours of assignments. The work required all of us to work long days and eat several meals together, breakfast, lunch and dinner, virtually every day.
��We all learned that Marisol’s husband had been away for a year and would be away for at least another year. We learned that she had two children whom she loved very much, but sometimes had trouble controlling. Her girl was six and her boy was four. Occasionally, Marisol would arrive late or leave early for various child care related reasons. None of us ever begrudged her this time because we knew she was in a difficult situation as a struggling, single mother. Occasionally, she would tell a story about one of her children misbehaving; and in order to make her point to him or her, Marisol would hit her child.
��Quite frankly, I do not recall exactly how I felt during these initial conversations because I was very busy and didn’t find Marisol’s use of more physical discipline methods than I might choose for my own children particularly offensive. Of course, I do not have children, so this may be a meaningless statement.
��In any event, we all got to know each other better over time, and one day the Doctoral student asked Marisol why she hit her children with a belt. Clearly, they had all had this conversation before without me because it was not a hostile exchange. I sat stunned while Marisol and the boys had an engaging discussion about the use of a belt on her young children. We all knew her son and understood that he was difficult to control, but we, as non-parents, did not agree with her use of the belt. She did not feel pressured to stop, nor did we feel anything was horribly wrong; we simply disagreed with her.
��Then Marisol and I started having problems communicating. She did not want to take assignments from me anymore. We had always had some trouble understanding each other, but not openly adversarial exchanges. But, as often happens when people stop communicating, Marisol lost her temper with me, and I lost my patience with her. When Marisol removed the filter between her thoughts and her talk, she told me in the plainest words possible that she hated working with and for me because I was a Daddy’s girl, who didn’t have to work for anything in my life. I was quite surprised by this accusation.
��While it was true that my father is now quite wealthy, none of the staff was aware of this. It is easy to keep a secret because I receive no financial support and, for many years, no emotional support from him. While I was growing up my mother was dirt poor, and it was she who attempted to raise me, my brother and sister. During those years she was a practicing alcoholic and drug addict and unsuccessfully attempted suicide three times. I lived in a foster home during my high school years because my mother was on welfare, living in a ten foot by fifteen foot box with a toilet and a stove which some inhumane landlord called an apartment. My brother and sister were in my father’s house, three thousand miles from me.
��I worked full time my senior year of college to pay for my own plane ticket to the east coast when I graduated. I came with $1,500 in cash and three suitcases. I found my own jobs, bought my own clothes, paid my own rent, met my own friends.
��Once I recovered from the shock of Marisol’s accusation, I told her the truth about me: everything she saw in front of her was created from my imagination. I told Marisol my story and apologized for making her feel badly about working for me, because I assumed that’s what I had done. But Marisol is an unusual woman because Marisol is honest. She apologized because she, in fact, had made an assumption about me and decided I could never understand her because of this assumption. I suppose her lack of faith in my ability to understand her made her feel stifled and condescended upon by her immediate supervisor, namely me.
��But Marisol didn’t stop with an unrequested apology, because Marisol is an extremely unusual woman. She asked tor help in recreating herself. She then told me her story. Her mother had ten children, all with different men. Marisol had no idea who her father was or what he looked like.
��Over the next few months Marisol also told me that her mother hit her frequently when she was a child. When I commented that I thought it was tragic that she was an abused child, Marisol was shocked. She never considered herself abused because Marisol’s mother hit all her siblings and she believed she probably deserved to he hit. A lot. And hard. No one ever told Marisol she was beautiful or smart or could overcome poverty. Marisol dropped out of high school, got married and had two children. Marisol didn’t particularly want children, but no one had taught her the importance of birth control. No one ever mentioned to Marisol how much work children would be either.
��Gradually, it became clear that Marisol hit her own children frequently and used a belt almost every time. The strikings were not for egregious acts, but for regular four- and six-year old acts of terror, such as wanting a specific food for dinner and complaining about who gets to watch what on television. I tried to tell Marisol that I didn’t think it was right to hit her children for minor misbehaviors. She agreed, hut didn’t know what else to do. Finally, one day she was telling a new female Legal Assistant on our team about a time, recently, when she felt she had to be firm with her son and used the belt. Hard.
��I stopped what I was doing and walked over to her desk: “If I ever hear you tell this type of a story again, I will call the Child Protection Service.” The new Legal Assistant started to laugh, but Marisol knew me far better than she. “She’s not kidding.” And silence settled into our work room.
��Maybe I was out of line. It would have been kinder and more appropriate to make such a statement in private. But, my heart could not absorb another violent story. I have said before that Marisol is unusual. She is bubbling with valor. Marisol came to me later that afternoon and asked for help. I didn’t know how to interrupt the power of her mother’s behavior on her own and change the only form of discipline she knew for children. So we sat down together with the yellow pages and started calling therapists, clinics, day care centers, the YMCA...anyone whom we thought could help and would listen. I dialed, and we used the speaker phone.
��We learned we had to relieve some of Marisol’s stresses and teach her more about young children. A primary stress factor was a lack of quality day care. Marisol needed a better babysitter, and summer was coming. We found camps and classes that she could barely afford and started enrolling the kids. We went to the bookstore and bought books on young children. Marisol learned that her children were not abnormal, or unusually high strung. She learned ways to make them laugh and still keep control. She learned that if they were active in the day and not locked in an apartment in Brooklyn, they were happier and easier to deal with at night. This little bit of knowledge empowered Marisol.
��She had her GED, hut needed more. She applied to paralegal school and was accepted. She completed her own degree and took an undiscovered interest in her children’s schoolwork. Marisol wants to be something in her own right. But she wants her children to have the world. It’s been two years since our confrontation about her children; and although we have both changed jobs, we remain son and used the belt. Hard.
��I stopped what I was doing and walked over to her desk: “If I ever hear you tell this type of a story again, I will call the Child Protection Service.” The new Legal Assistant started to laugh, but Marisol knew me far better than she. “She’s not kidding.” And silence settled into our work room.
��Maybe I was out of line. It would have been kinder and more appropriate to make such a statement in private. But, my heart could not absorb another violent story. I have said before that Marisol is unusual. She is bubbling with valor. Marisol came to me later that afternoon and asked for help. I didn’t know how to interrupt the power of her mother’s behavior on her own and change the only form of discipline she knew for children. So we sat down together with the yellow pages and started calling therapists, clinics, day care centers, the YMCA...anyone whom we thought could help and would listen. I dialed, and we used the speaker phone.
��We learned we had to relieve some of Marisol’s stresses and teach her more about young children. A primary stress factor was a lack of quality day care. Marisol needed a better babysitter, and summer was coming. We found camps and classes that she could barely afford and started enrolling the kids. We went to the bookstore and bought books on young children. Marisol learned that her children were not abnormal, or unusually high strung. She learned ways to make them laugh and still keep control. She learned that if they were active in the day and not locked in an apartment in Brooklyn, they were happier and easier to deal with at night. This little bit of knowledge empowered Marisol.
��She had her GED, hut needed more. She applied to paralegal school and was accepted. She completed her own degree and took an undiscovered interest in her children’s schoolwork. Marisol wants to be something in her own right. But she wants her children to have the world. It’s been two years since our confrontation about her children; and although we have both changed jobs, we remain very close.
��Recently I completed my Masters degree in Sociology and Education with a Public Policy emphasis at Teachers College, Columbia University. One of the courses was entitled: Social Policy for Young Children. We discussed controversial issues which adversely affect children in school. In the second class we were discussing male-female behavior and how this impacts parenting. This led to a discussion of “modelling,’’ or the process of learning behavior from our parents. My professor, Beatrice Fennimore, was arguing that unless we teach men and women to be better parents, we are passing on the same behavior to each generation.
��I raised my hand to briefly tell my story about Marisol. I said that I had supervised a women who was abused as a child and subsequently abused her own children. I then said that she did not know that this was wrong until I told her. I finished by saying how surprising to me it was that she didn’t know that child abuse was wrong and what a powerful example of modeling her behavior provided.
��A young women (white) turned to me and said in a strong, disgusted tone: “All you were doing is imposing your own class view that hitting a child is wrong onto someone else.”
��Words started pouring out of my mouth and tears welled in my eyes. My head felt overwhelmed with anger, shame, indignation. I was angry because she assumed I was from the upper middle class; I was ashamed of my actions with Marisol in a bewildering moment of insecurity; and I was indignant at her suggestion that abuse had class lines.
��In his book Death at an Early Age, Jonathan Kozel describes a segregated school in Boston where he worked as a substitute teacher in 1965. Kozel became friendly with a few of his fourth grade students outside of school time. The older, more experienced teachers, including the self-professed nonracists, warned him against such friendships because Kozel may be exposed to liability outside school or discipline problems within the classroom. Kozel comments that these warnings thinly veiled the teachers’ inability to cope with the brutal facts of their impoverished students’ lives: “Keeping a teacher from being a friend to a child enabled the teacher to deny for his own comfort the complicated nature of every person of any kind who is alive.”
��I believe the same is true of my classmate’s comment about class values. By couching her fear in a liberal notion of acceptance which skirts the issue of child abuse, she was able to avoid the painful, complicated reality of Marisol’s behavior.
��Perhaps a reader will accuse me of making an assumption about my classmate, but the swiftness of her accusation convinces me of the accuracy of my statement. I only explained a brief portion of my story to the class. If she were concerned that I was imposing my “class” values on Marisol, she would have questioned me more about the nature and extent of the alleged abuse inflicted upon Marisol’s children. She would have probed into Marisol’s reaction to my threat and my subsequent action. But even this interaction would have exposed her to more of the truth than she was prepared to cope with.
��Unlike the woman in my class, Marisol shared her assumption about my background with me and allowed me the opportunity to explain myself. She also learned that my intention was not and would never be to judge her. My only goal was and is to help her and her beautifully bright children. So Marisol and I learned together. When I called her to tell her the story of this woman’s comment, Marisol said sadly, “That wasn’t the situation at all.”



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