So proud of you for this. Nobody else stepping up is the reason we as women get scared when dealing with strange men. Because she like this be happening and nobody wants to say anything and even when somebody does the attacker usually gets hosyile for not getting what they want. That shit is scary. And you know a black man is in more danger for getting involved than a white man. Because of our fucked up society - if he had been a white man that defended himself against a child predator, he would never have been cuffed. To the men out there, please do something if you see something, it is never wrong to stand up for a child who may not have a voice to speak for themselves.
“And I think the thing that terrifies me most is that one day, you’ll be the story I’ll tell my daughter, when she’s curled up in bed, wrapped in blankets and heartbreak, when she hasn’t eaten anything in days but the voicemails he left her, when she hasn’t been able to sleep because the goodbye that broke her shatters her bones all over again every time she closes her fucking eyes. And I’ll climb into bed with her and she’ll lay her head on my lap and I’ll try to brush him out of her hair and her tears will soak through my shirt and I’ll tell her about the boy I met when I was sixteen, who sat next to me in math class, who I fell in love with after two weeks, who saved me, who fucking destroyed me. And I’ll tell her about how it hurt. It hurt so badly it almost killed me. It hurt so badly my mother stopped going to work so she could stay home and make sure I didn’t take too many pills. And then I’ll tell her about how it got better. How it stopped hurting. How I stopped bleeding. My mother went back to work. I got out of bed. But I won’t tell her that sometimes I still have dreams about you and can hardly breathe the next day or about the pictures of you I have hidden in the attic.”