At the ice cream parlor, reading the local paper, Sandusky trial all over the front page.
I want to die. I just want it all to go away. Please, just let me die.

At the computer, reading and reading and reading trial coverage.
There’s no way out. Please just let me not wake up.

In the kitchen.
What if I cut my arm, would I die?

In the car.
What if I just drove into something very very fast?

In the yard.
Would the poison hurt if I drank it, or would I just die?

The bathroom.
How many pills?

In the everywhere anywhere nowhere nowhere nowhere of the hell of being a child trapped, held down, no way out. In Sandusky’s basement, where no one can hear you scream.

All those weapons, all those ways of thinking how to be dead, but somehow one thought not allowed:
How can I make him die? Or Please, God, just make him die.

Which is also what it means to be a child raped by an adult who sometimes says he loves you, sometimes opens to you a world of desperately wanted Things, a Wonderland of special privileges, sometimes threatens to kill your family.

The logic here is so simple: Something bad, wrong, awful is happening. If something bad is happening, someone must be to blame. The rapist gives gifts, is like a father (or is a father), and also terrifies you, so you can’t blame him. Ergo, the one to blame must be you. Ergo, the way out is for you to die.

Anyone who doesn’t get that, who refuses to get that, who dares ask, Why didn’t these young men stop this, or tell someone? is either a perpetrator masking crimes, or so dangerously ignorant as to be a direct threat.

In either case, I wouldn’t let anyone who asks such questions anywhere near any child. Would you?