Disclaimer

I am very careful to stick to the truth in all my blog posts, at least as best as I can recall. In this post, I will be referring to 2 fictitious organizations: Helping Youth Organization (HYO) and the Edsel Car Club. I do fully recall the names of the actual organizations, but given the sensitive nature of this post, their real names are not necessary.

Also, as you will soon read, this post deals with one individual and their actions – which are no reflection on these organizations.

Please don’t ask me to identify the real names of these organizations. I will neither confirm or deny any speculation.

On with the post …

Car Rally

It is no secret that I had some challenges in my early youth and teens. I have been open about it in the blog posts up to now and there is more to come. My earliest connection with any outside agency designed to help young people was the Helping Youth Organization (HYO). HYO gave me a place to go and meet with people who wanted to help me and others like me. My intake worker was an older man and I saw him weekly for many months. We would get together at HYO, play pool or table tennis and just talk. He simply made me feel great.

HYO held some fundraisers throughout the year and one was a car rally. The year I was involved, they jointly held the car rally with the Edsel Car Club. The Edsel was a cool, sporty car so I was very excited to be able to go for a drive in one of these gems.

Introducing Bill

This car rally started in a parking lot just outside of downtown Hamilton. Each of the kids was assigned to go with a particular driver. I was assigned to Bill (I don’t recall his name, so we will go with Bill). Bill was no more than 25 years old – a fact I didn’t notice at the time of meeting him, but it got drilled into my memory a couple of weeks later.

Bill drove a navy blue Edsel. I was in complete awe of this beautiful car. Any of my friends would be jealous of my luck that day and I certainly shared it with them later.

The car rally was a drive around the Hamilton Harbour, down the Burlington beach strip and eventually winding our way back to our starting point. Bill was a blast. We laughed and joked throughout the entire rally.

A couple of weeks after the car rally, we got a call from Bill. He said he needed to pick up some money people had pledged towards the rally. It sounded like a great idea. So I told Bill “yes” that I would be glad to go collect money – plus it meant another drive in his navy blue Edsel.

Trust is a Funny Thing

Many things can go into building trust and this situation was no different. HYO and the Edsel Car Club were firmly connected to this rally. Bill made me feel fantastic during the rally. There were no warning signs, and this occurred in the early 1970’s, when people were seemingly more trusting of others than now. Also, I was just 12 years old, at an age when my vision of trust was blinded by youth.

The Laughter

We lived in an apartment building on Fennell Ave., close to Upper Kenilworth. It was a quiet neighbourhood where I learned to play hockey and football. I learned how to jump over home-made ramps on a bicycle without getting hurt all the time. I also learned how fragile trust can be.

Bill picked me up in front of our small apartment building. Wide-eyed, I jumped into the navy blue beauty and we zoomed off. He told me we had to go to the Burlington Beach strip to pick up some money pledged for the rally. It was fine with me – it simply meant a longer drive.

Driving down the escarpment access to the lower city, we joked and laughed, picking up where we left off a couple of weeks earlier. Bill had the music turned up loud enough to enjoy its pulse, but not loud enough to drown out our voices. We made our way down Parkdale Ave., with music and laughter filling the car.

When the Laughter Stopped

We came up to a red light at the corner of Parkdale and Barton. The car was nice to sit in when idling, but it wasn’t the same as when it was in flight. We waited a moment for the light to green. As it did, Bill jumped on the gas and said, “Hang on for a ride.” As he said these words, he reached over and grabbed my private parts down below.

I froze. I had no understanding of what just happened. The music seemed to become a dull, thumping background hum.

I stopped laughing.

Bill continued to laugh and joke as he had done all along. It was like nothing had happened. His attempts at conversation with me weren’t working. My mind was frozen and spinning at the same time. I was reduced to short, punctuated answers. I just wanted him to shut up, but I was too afraid to say anything. I felt powerless.

Personal Power is a Funny Thing

There were many times when I felt unstoppable. I could get bumped off-course, but my vision never left my target. Yet there were so many other times when I seemed to have no power. The hold on me didn’t have to be in the form of physical chains, yet there was something binding. I would lose the power to say or do anything.

I would fall into a numbing, black space, deprived of all senses. No one to see, so why focus. No one to hear, so why yell. There could be people nearby, possibly in earshot, but it wouldn’t matter – the virtual darkness trumped the physical world. In that car with Bill, I had no power.

We went to some house on the Burlington Beach strip and presumably picked up some money. We drove back up Parkdale and wound our way through the mountain access to take me home. Laughing and joking from the driver’s seat. Forced smiles and short answers from the passenger’s side.

Dashed Relief

We drove up to my apartment. I felt a tingle of relief, knowing I will soon get out the car and get away from Bill – but he didn’t stop at the apartment building. He drove right past. My relief quickly evaporated as we were passing by my safety zone of home. He turned up Upper Kenilworth. Being 12 years old, I really didn’t know what he wanted. My fear shattered my ability to think clearly.

The drive between Fennell and Mohawk along Upper Kenilworth normally took a minute or two. This trip up Kenilworth took much longer. The details of every house were clearer. People cutting their grass were moving so slowly. In the front windows I could see some people moving around slowly, possibly changing the TV channel or simply getting a drink. Why can’t these people see I need help? Time was slowing down to give them a chance to see me, help me, but no one noticed. And why was time slowing down now when I desperately wanted it to speed up and make this moment disappear?

Just past Mohawk was a baseball park, a diamond carved into a previously-forgotten piece of the Hamilton Mountain. Commonly the diamond would be filled with people of all ages – some playing baseball with a passion that often surpassed ability, and others enjoying from the bleachers.

This night there was no one at the park. It was dusk, but with no car headlights and no parking lot lights turned on, it might as well have been midnight.

Innocence Lost

Bill drove into the parking lot and parked as far away from the road as he could. At this end the baseball park there were no homes – just a lot of trees. Across from the park were a few homes and they were far enough away to make this parking spot adequately private.

Fear is a Funny Thing

The line between fear and pain is blurry. It seems that fear has sometimes been the protective layer designed to help me avoid pain (I never touched that stove purposely a second time). Sometimes it helped me to react to an unfolding threat (falling backwards off the steel frame under the bleachers of a football stadium, I was able to grab a passing bar to stop my fall).

Yet many times it was simply paralyzing – a body frozen by a mind unable to move it. It is so easy for some to ask why didn’t I just jump out of the car or why didn’t I scream. The paralysis of fear made those options unavailable to me.

Bill stopped the car and turned off the engine. He turned to me with a smile, interpreting my inability to say “no” as a “yes”. Reaching over with his left hand, he grabbed me down below again. With his right hand, he grabbed my hand and pulled it towards him. Using both his hands, he unzipped his pants. For the next period of blurry time, he had me do things that no 12 year-old boy should do, see or even know about.

After he was done, he drove me home. Not much was said. He dropped me off in front of my apartment building, and that was the last I ever saw Bill.

Picking Up The Pieces

I walked up the stairs to our apartment, opened the door and started to walk down the short hallway to my room. My head down, barely looking 3 feet ahead of me. I didn’t see my mom before she asked me how it went. “It was fine,” was my simple response. I then went into my room, closed the door and sat on the edge of the bed. Then I cried.

I cried frequently for the first day or so – never in front of anyone. As the days passed, I cried less frequently. Although the tears eventually stopped falling from my eyes, the flooding of tears below the surface would continue for a long, long time.

Shame is a Funny Thing.

Like many people, I have done things that I am not too proud of, yet shame is a line that, once crossed, brings a much heavier weight. I have felt shame for things I have done and I had control over, but these have normally been isolated pockets of instantly recognized idiotic behaviour that would commonly pass.

The shame I felt for this incident with Bill haunted me for decades. After all, I went through the motions and I didn’t fight back. The shame that weighed on me was for actions done to me, not for the actions of my choosing. Surely people would see that I was just too weak or they would believe that I somehow asked for it. Shame is a product of fear, and it kept me silent.

Until this post, I only ever told 2 people about Bill.

What to do?

Parents

Help your child develop a strong voice. Give them the confidence to shout “NO” when someone like Bill comes knocking. Give the comfort so they can talk to you about anything. Don’t let your child’s haunting memories bubble for years or decades.

Teens/Youth

“No” means “no”. Plain and simple. Yell “no” as loud as you need and keep on yelling it until someone hears you. And find someone to talk to – your parents, best friend, teacher or whoever. It will make a better difference for you for now and forever.

Adults

If you were victimized as a child or youth, speak out – to one person or to many. It is hard to keep internal peace when there are internal wars waging deep within us. By opening up, you help yourself to open up, but you may helping others feel more comfortable opening up – which in turn helps to heal them.

Please share this post with others. We don’t need any more Bills like this.