I am not a public figure and I don’t represent anyone. Except myself.
“Where there are woman and geese there’s noise.” — Jutland proverb
I was a girl and a child. Which means that no matter who we are, when we speak no one listens.
As we see time and again, children and women are hurt, ignored, maimed, killed, forgotten. The voices of children, especially those of girls, are not only unheard, but we are told that what we say is not comprehensible.
When I was sexually molested as a young teenager, I didn’t yet know that no one in power cared or would help. So I told my mother, who was horrified and then resigned. She did seek help from my uncle, a physician, who told her that if she took legal action to protect me, any judicial experience would focus on me and not on the man who committed the crime.
My mother alerted the police in our small suburb north of Milwaukee, the Village of Fox Point. The police told her that they would not pursue charges because it was my word against his, I was a child and therefore could not be trusted with the truth, and that my reputation would be ruined if they acted.
What reputation?
The reputation of being a daughter of Eve. In a Western, Christian society and legal system such as ours, girls and women are born guilty. Guilty of being liars, cheats, sluts — or so they tell us.
So what happened? Nothing. Even though people knew. My mother; my uncle; the Man’s wife — who was my mother’s best friend — Joanne Sonstein; the police; my sister; and, I found out recently, two of my sister’s friends.
What did people do besides talk? Nothing.
The nothing that people do to victims and survivors of abuse is an accumulation of words and inactions that invalidate us and become inscribed invisibly on our selves. We learn that what we say makes no sound and what they don’t say and don’t do become tattooed forever; embedded deep below our surface where the ink-like words blacken our souls.
In late 2017 I once again approached the Village of Fox Point Police Department. The response this time was different: the police chief and the detective did believe me. It turns out that the man who did this, Stephen Sonstein, had done it before. He preyed on Katherine King, a colleague at the University of Wisconsin — Milwaukee. Because men work as well as women, she had a measure of legal protection. She sued for sexual harassment and while she won, she also lost: her job; her career; her words, as she is no longer an academic who publishes.
On the other hand, Sonstein’s words reverberate. His defense in the sexual harassment case is quoted in numerous legal articles and books because he claimed that he didn’t harass her as a colleague but, rather, as a woman. That distinction turns a colleague who might have been a man, an equal, into a woman, who is never equal. It means that his words are forever codified and hers are ephemeral sounds.
The words of a woman or about a woman are meaningless. My case, documented by childhood diary entries, interviews from family, friends, even my ex-husband, sits neglected at the Milwaukee Country District Attorney’s office. As it has since 2018.
Why? Because they don’t care enough to try. Try to do anything, try to help me, try the case, try for justice, try to give me peace. The deputy district attorney Matthew Torbenson said to me that what happened was “horrific,” but still he’s done nothing. For years. Indeed, they can’t even label me a “victim,” as that would grant me legal rights and status. Stephen Sonstein will likely die before they do anything. Hell, I expect to die before they do anything.
I sit here, watching society hurt children and women, knowing that nothing will change. Waiting for something different to happen, other than a token success or two. All of the words that I and other women speak will not be heard, listened to, made into meaning. They are sounds that signify nothing.