Ok, sorry for a second post in a row, but perhaps you could relate this story somehow to your class? Or at least the young lady who brought back these feelings? I don’t know where you are from, so I have no idea how this would be looked upon by the parents, but maybe you could made a difference in the life of that child, if not all of them. You have a way with words, and no doubt could make a speech that would impact even the most jaded 14 year old on some level.
do please shut up. You missed the point of both my post & this thread.
Wang-Ka was beating himself up over something that cannot be changed. What happened is the past cannot be altered, the moment is irrecoverable.
But that shouldn’t be a reason to torment yourself decades later, and my words were meant to reflect that. It could just as easily have been a car accident ot a house fire that troubled him, my post would have been much the same.
If it had been the young lady posting here, I would have chosen different words.
As it stands, I also suggested that he use this eveny in his past in a positive manner–to teach an “anti-rape” class.
As for your absurd remarks about him not getting killed by those drunken swine, or your ridiculous claims of taking on more than one person at a time, I call BS on both.
Even two-on-one can be a deadly situation, and the odds of a fatal injury in a fistfight go up dramatically when extra people are added.
Your silly claims of taking on multiple opponents at one time are only worthy of immediate dismissal. They make you sound 14 years old.
So stop playing macho, & at least be constructive, if you cannot be kind.
The bad news is that this probably happened before to other young women (prior to Wang-Ka’s witnessing) attending that HS by those SCUM OF THE EARTH FB players and hangers on. The worse news is that this probably happened again to yet **MORE **young women at that HS and at the various colleges the SOTE attended after this incident.
The rotten news is that the onus is on us women to know how to get out of a potential situation like this.
The only way to pass on the information the easy way is to tell the tale.
Wang-Ka, get this story posted on a bulletin board or school newspaper! Hold an assembly and tell it live! It won’t help that poor unfortunate but maybe, just maybe, it will help that child in your classroom and maybe even shock a potential SOTE into walking away like you did.
Of course not, but at 14, sex comes with a range of various feelings, and it’s not all as black and white as hitting someone in the head. There are so many mixed messages out there about rape, including some that these guys were putting out there (“bitch wanted it,” etc.) that I can’t see how you think it would be a bad thing to clear things up a little bit by way of sex education. Quite honestly, I don’t see any way that sex education would have made this situation any worse, do you?
Ugh. There are just no words for those guys.
Thank you all very much.
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*I am no longer beating myself up over it. * I had kind of a rough year after that, though. And while I’m not tearing my heart out over it these days, it ain’t something you forget.
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*I wanted opinions. * Admittedly, the Straight Dope isn’t exactly Teen Connection, but it was a start. Does this story communicate what I wanted it to communicate, or does it seem lame, limp, stupid? You have all been quite helpful in providing me with the feedback I wanted.
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Her name wasn’t Shellie OR Sherrie. All names have been changed to protect the guilty, the innocent, and those who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. For that matter, my name isn’t really Wang-Ka. The message board rejected the first nine screen names I tried to input. My choice of screen name wasn’t courageous, it was exasperated.
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Shellie/Sherrie wasn’t the only victim. Certainly, she got it the worst, but one of the things I meant to communicate with this story was that this sort of screwed up mob scene affects EVERYONE. While I’m not tortured by it, like I might have implied in the story, I have not forgotten it, either. It still reverberates. And I still wonder if any of those guys could look himself in the mirror the next morning without saying, “You utter sonofabitch. What have you DONE?”
Maybe I shoulda leaned on that angle a little harder. This story was intended to caution more than just teenage females.
Yes, I intend to put this story to use. But I thought a little editing and feedback was in order before I tried to do anything serious with it.
You have all been most helpful. I appreciate your honesty, and your feedback very much. Thank you.
Oh…
Zenster, send me a heads-up about this thread of yours. I would be happy to read it, if you want.
And yes, “no means no” was not even a concept back then. Hell, it was the seventies. Drug and alcohol abuse were considered legitimate methods of self-expression back then, and in deep south Texas, you were simply not a MAN if you didn’t have a brewski in your hand at some point over the weekend. I believe I also mentioned, in another, funnier thread around here somewhere, that you were not a MAN if you did not obtain a gun and go out and try and kill something during dove, quail, or deer season.
I wasn’t kidding about that part.
Football Guy was telling the unvarnished truth in my story. At that time, if sixteen guys claimed they hadn’t touched her, the cops may well not have touched the case. This was a small town in south Texas. Sixteen guys, good families, cream of the crop in town, folks.
And one not-too-bright little girl whose family had only moved into town a couple years earlier.
NOWADAYS, they’d have run a rape kit, had her examined by a doctor, found ample evidence of forced entry and multiple sexual incidents over a very short time, and arrested all the bastards, me included, to investigate the situation.
Back then? Pfffft. They might have done something, but I very much think it would have been “our word against yours.” No DNA testing, remember?
um… you got a class reunion comming up anytime soon?
maybe you could print out your story and pass it around for everyone there to see?!..kindda like I know what you did THAT summer. just a thought.
Thank you for sharing this. I taught high schoolers for ten years, and while your situation might be quite different than my own in the classroom, I can tell you one thing: Those glazed, bored, I-hate-school looks would disappear in a heartbeat if your students were confronted with a story like this one, told by an eyewitness.
I’ve told similar stories to my own students. Everyone–the kids who never listen, the tough guys, the badasses, the shy girls, the ones who seem to have charmed lives–EVERY kid hears when you talk about this, whether they show it or not. And they never forget it. Textbooks and pamphlets and videos are all very well and good, but nothing speaks like the experience of someone they know and respect.
I’m sorry for your experience. You’ve learned the hard way to recognize victims. By the time I left teaching, I could spot 'em all the way from the end of the hallway, just by the clothing and carriage. It’s a hard knowledge to carry into the world sometimes.
As a rape survivor, I find it very hard to be generous to these guys, but at the same time, I know what you mean about there being more than one victim*. I worked with some pretty violent boys, often with the focus being something along the lines of “Acting on your anger (by using rape or violence against women–these were kids with a history of such behavior) is something that will affect your victim–and YOU–forever. You don’t wanna find yourself suddenly realizing as an adult that you ruined someone’s life just because you were angry or drunk, right?” I wish I could say I made a difference, but I don’t know. None of them has gone on to murder anyone, so maybe I accomplished something.
Thank you for being a teacher, and for sharing your story.
*I guess I don’t consider the guys in your story victims, exactly, but I do hope that my attacker found himself looking in that mirror and wondering what the hell he was thinking, you know? One can only hope that some of them felt enough guilt to try to make it up to the world in some small way.
Best,
karol
Wang-Ka, you don’t mention what it is you teach but I get the crazy idea that you teach English or perhaps another written art. You might want to clean up the names a bit, making her name the same all the way through, inventing last names, putting real names on a couple of the guys, and using your real first name where applicable. Then go through and put in some grammer and spelling errors. Use it as a proofreading exercise. Hopefully they will be able to put 2 and 2 together and open a dialog. Don’t bring up the subject matter yourself, let them do so.
Not that I’m actually qualified to make this suggestion but “It seems like a good idea at the time.”
Ferret Herder, you said:
And Wang Ka, you said:
I’d sure like to believe you’re right, and that at least some of these guys felt remorse afterwards, but cynical me has to doubt it. More likely they convinced themselves (and remain convinced to this day) that the bitch deserved it (“Why else would she show up at a party with a bunch of guys, if she wasn’t asking for it?”) and that it was all just a lot of boys being boys. Good fun, no big deal. I’d be surprised if any of them even remember it after all this time.
I also suspect that these guys went on to treat other women like objects. They sound like prime candidates for workplace harassers (“What, bitch, you can’t take a little joke?” grope grope) and other such forms of male slime, that never get it, never will get it, the way you do, Wang Ka, and did even at that tender age, even in such a pressured, chaotic mob rampage.
Naw, you couldn’t have stopped it. Even if you’d turned them in, as you pointed out, the milieu in that time and place would have led to nothing more than your becoming a pariah, and probably getting beaten up as soon as the thugs figured out who’d tipped off the authorities.
If you can take this memory and fashion a teaching tool from it, that will save even one girl from a similar experience, you’ll have paid the debt of conscience you feel to Sherrie.
I teach special ed and history. 
Writing is just a hobby, although I’m still trying to get a publisher interested in my book.
My wife’s used some of my other anecdotes, including a couple that can be found here at the SDMB, in class. SHE teaches English. Naturally, my real name is not on any of these, but the kids seem to get a kick out of them… which is what gave me the idea to write this experience down, and sneak it into the stack. Either that, or print out a special, expurgated edition of my book, bind the thing, and leave it lying around in my classroom… with this story included.
At least I’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that THIS time, I tried to do something.
At least one of the guys in question – the one who slammed me into the wall – was a jerk then, and I imagine he’s a jerk now. He objectified women then, and may still, for all I know. I haven’t bothered with any of my class reunions, since I live 300 miles from where I grew up, and it was the kind of town that most of us simply wanted to escape from in the first place.
…but all of them? I’d hate to think all of them just rationalized “bitch wanted it,” and got on with their lives the next morning without another thought. I really don’t think that’s so. I think at least a few of them still think about what they did that night from time to time.
At least, I don’t see how they could NOT think about it from time to time.
Can’t ALL be bastards.
I sincerely hope you’re right and I’m wrong. You were there, you knew the guys who were there, at least in passing. So you’re of course far better able to assess their likely reactions the morning, week, years after.
But they chose to participate when you chose to follow your conscience. Seems to me, your fundamental decency, that would torment you if you’d ever done something like that, is an element missing from their characters.
Again, I truly hope you’re right and I’m wrong.
When I’m optimistic, which isn’t often, I like to think that way, that maybe karma comes around. When I’m not, well, it’s not as comforting.
I’m plenty cynical, but even I don’t doubt that out of 16 or 20 boys there are at least several who are haunted by this act. You didn’t wuss out, Wang-ka, you still did the least cowardly thing of anyone in the room. You voiced some kind of objection. . .I dare say that many of the other boys there were going along with it for fear of getting their asses kicked. You certainly could’ve gotten your ass kicked for what you did do. Why did most of them do what they did? Were all these kids evil? No, just cowards.
I know lots of guys who were assholes at that age who, when matured, turned into completely different people (ie, nice people, or at least decent). Then again, I know plenty of people who are and always have been idiot jerks. My point is that there probably is a good number of those guys who are more tortured about it than you, Wang-Ka. Maybe not the next morning, but certainly several years later. And also, no doubt about it, some of them would to this day deny any wrongdoing. I don’t believe in heaven, hell, spiritual karma, etc., but I do believe that those kinds of people will get what they deserve–they tend to destroy themselves with their own actions and decisions. It might take a little bit longer for them to ruin their own lives than it took for them to ruin someone else’s, but it’ll catch up with them eventually.
I just finished reading an interesting non-fiction account of a similar story. It definitely made me think:
The Only Girl in the Car
Aaah, I shoulda known, Wang-Ka. I taught special ed too.
You’re in a good position to do some good in the world (and I have no doubt that you already have), and this experience will lead you to really make a difference with someone someday, even if it didn’t happen with the young girl in your classroom recently.
k
I’d like to stand up and say I’m morally superior to all the rest of those guys, sure. Yup, I Am Paragon. Worship me, pigs.
But the truth is… well, if I’d thought for a moment that she was willing – even while hopelessly drunk – well, I imagine I would have been in there, myself.
I don’t THINK I would have participated if she’d just been unconscious. Out cold does not equal “willing.”
…but the thing that tipped ME over was the look in her eyes. She was frickin’ terrified. How the hell am I supposed to enjoy screwing someone who’s recoiling from me in horror? I mean, giant hooters and all is good, but there are some things for which this does not compensate.
At least one of the guys was of the opinion that if you play with fire, you get burned. You walk into a party, drink some booze and shake your money maker, well, you deserve whatever you get.
And it was a mob thing. One guy led, others followed. I don’t excuse this, but I think it makes it easier to understand why people who might otherwise get moral decided to shut up and unzip their pants instead.
And, of course, there was the booze. All I had was a few beers. I was buzzing, certainly, but I was not very drunk. Some of the others were, and some of THEM had been into the hard stuff. Again, I offer this not as an excuse, but simply as a factor to be taken into consideration for understanding the circumstances of the event.
I am not a particularly brutal person. Never have been. I wasn’t really a part of the peer group in question, unlike most of the others there, which gave me some resistance to the “mob mentality.” Oh, and I wasn’t very drunk.
Not sure these factors equal “moral superiority and virtue,” or anything, but if you wanna give me credit for it, I’ll take it. I’m not proud.
Either that, or I’m just such a big whiny marshmallow that I likely couldn’t have kept an erection while merrily poking it into a frightened, brutalized, humiliated, crying teenager.
I leave that to others to judge.
I just recently watched a show on 20/20 or something like that, and two conclusions were brought out that may surprise you. First off, we are not ‘helpful people’ unless it suits a need. For instance, in the show, they had a lady with no make-up on with a car broken down on the side of the road, and no one stopped to help. I believe this, as my sister was in the mall, pregnant, and she had to push her vehicle a short distance, and no one stopped to help her. Then they put a really pretty lady by the car, and cars were actually lined up to help. They did the same thing with two ladies in a subway who dropped their papers, and one was a black lady, one a white lady. Amazing reactions. The second part was about what happens to people in group settings. The recent hazing in the states was filmed by a guy who, when he had watched it after, couldn’t believe that he didn’t do more to help the victim. It’s a totally different dynamic. So we can say we’d do this, or we’d do that, but I’d bet you really wouldn’t. We all tend to have some form of self-serving bias that is different than reality.
And yes, IMO she was the only victim.
But I do wonder where your friend was, and how the relationship was with him after.
Well, we weren’t really friends. Acquaintances would have been a good term. Technically, we grew up together, since it was a small town, but we weren’t real close or anything. He happened to invite me to a party, is all.
Afterwards, we weren’t friends. We knew each other, but that was about it. I don’t think we exchanged twenty words with each other between that night and the day I left town.
Re: the title of this thread…the Bad Guys didn’t really win. They’ve had to live with the knowledge of what they did to that poor girl, also knowing that what they did can not be undone.
As has been mentioned, they might not have felt remorse immediately after, or even the next day.
But they are all grown men now, perhaps with wives and teenage daughters of their own. And I bet they cannot look at their families without a very painful reminder of the evils they perpetrated all those years ago. And there’s not a bloody thing they can do about it.
No. They didn’t win. While there is perhaps some possibility of the young girl being able to move-on and deal with the pain of that night, I doubt the same can be said for the boys involved.
And I hope it hurts like hell.