There were adults in that swimming pool. Couldn’t they tell the difference between the shrieks of kids playing and the\u00a0shriek of abject terror from a small girl being chased by a teenage boy?<\/p>\n
Why did they ignore my cries for help?<\/p>\n
And some part of me knew that if they didn’t respond while it was happening, those adults wouldn’t listen to my complaints later.<\/p>\n
They weren’t paying attention.<\/p>\n
They were chatting, socializing, laughing. His dad, my dad, other relatives. Not strangers who might have hesitated to intervene. A sharp word from any one of them would have put a stop to it.<\/p>\n
His grin was so scary. I wasn’t even 10 years old; I didn’t understand the kind of greed in\u00a0his expression. I didn’t recognize lust in that form. I thought sex was for making babies.<\/p>\n
I kept trying to get away from him. I ran and swam as fast as I could, the water was so heavy against my legs, and his legs were longer and he was faster and I tried to escape and sometimes I did, but usually he cornered me at one edge of the pool, caught me and grabbed me.<\/p>\n
I couldn’t testify in court as to what parts of me he grabbed. It was a blur of fear and pain and confusion and panic.<\/p>\n
He grabbed where I didn’t want to be grabbed and I couldn’t make him stop.<\/p>\n
I don’t know how it stopped. Maybe a\u00a0volleyball game started up and I swam for\u00a0cover. Maybe I got faster at swimming and better at avoiding the edge of the pool. Maybe my screaming finally kept him away for fear that an adult would pay closer attention.<\/p>\n
Even now it makes me anxious to think about it. Being chased, not able to get away, screaming, his arms reaching to grab me. And then the groping.<\/p>\n
I don’t know how many times it happened, but it feels\u00a0like dozens. I can’t distinguish the memory replays from the reality. They all feel the same.<\/p>\n
There were always adults in that pool.<\/p>\n
Why didn’t they stop him?<\/p>\n
I am stronger now. When I scream, I will be heard.<\/p>\n
Today’s penny is a 1968 – the year that the adults weren’t paying attention to me in the pool.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There were adults in that swimming pool. Couldn’t they tell the difference between the shrieks of kids playing and the\u00a0shriek of abject terror from a small girl being chased by a teenage boy? Why did they ignore my cries for help? And some part of me knew that if they didn’t respond while it was … read more At the edge of the pool<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9432,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[320],"tags":[162,1261,1262,813],"class_list":["post-9427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-shelter","tag-162","tag-groping","tag-sexual-assault","tag-swimming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9427"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9427\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9439,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9427\/revisions\/9439"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}