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Last week, I made a very last minute video called "Child Abuse Is Not A Prank Or A Joke"
and it was, in fact, about the DaddyOFive controversy.
Well, not only that.
It was also about my experience.
I’ve dealt with abuse since I was 7-years-old.
That is a very long time.
And over the years I’ve been on the Internet, I never talked about it in detail outside of Tumblr.
Last week’s video was the first time that I talked about what happened to me on my YouTube channel.
In a way, I wasn’t ready, I really wasn’t ready,
but after seeing the videos from DaddyOFive and Philip DeFranco,
I couldn’t just sit down and stay still.
When stuff like this comes to light, and some cases in the past have come to light by news and elsewhere,
people often say,
“They need to report this.”
“Why don’t they talk about this?”
“Why don’t they tell someone?”
I want to talk about why it’s so hard to talk about this kind of stuff and especially to report it.
Sometimes, people don’t believe us.
Especially if it’s the mother who is the abuser.
Because the mother is usually automatically seen as this sweet, nurturing person that could do no wrong
and will always love her child unconditionally.
Sometimes, people find out and they don’t do anything about it, or they give up.
I reported my abuse to my middle school guidance counselor when I was 12.
I remember crying my eyes out, grabbing a bunch of tissues, hyperventilating,
and trying to eat a lollipop that the counselor gave me so I would calm down.
My counselor’s solution was to write a letter to my abuser asking her to come in
and to have a conversation about what was going on.
She read the letter, yelled at me about it, and didn’t go.
She wanted absolutely nothing to do with it.
I go to my counselor again the next morning and she had no other solutions.
She didn’t want to try to do anything else, and she didn’t report it further.
To make things even worse, even though stuff like this is already really bad,
Sometimes, there are cases of people literally seeing the abuse happen in front of their eyes
and they don’t do anything about it.
Zahra Baker is the perfect example of this.
The murder of Zahra Baker was a huge case in North Carolina.
Zahra Baker was a 10-year-old girl who went through a lot.
She was diagnosed with bone cancer and as a result, lost a leg and her hearing.
Long story short, she was abused by her stepmother.
She went to school with injuries such as a black eye and
even though the family was checked up on, nothing really went through.
Now, her neighbours did see her being abused.
Her neighbours reported to the news as witnesses that they did see it happen in front of their own eyes.
But nobody did anything about it.
Nobody stepped up to try to save this child.
As a result, Zahra Baker was killed and her stepmother was guilty and is now in prison.
Sometimes, people get a little too invasive.
They start asking all of these questions.
Some of it is just genuine curiosity, but as it starts to go on and on, it almost starts to sound like judgment.
“Well, why haven’t you told anyone?”
“Did you tell your other parent or anyone else in your family?”
“Why haven’t you left?”
As if just suddenly packing up and leaving is an easy solution.
Because to one person who might ask these questions,
it doesn’t matter if you don’t have the income or the means to take care of yourself if you did leave.
But let me tell you, even if you packed and left, what happens if you end up homeless as a result?
That has and does happen.
If you don’t have family or friends to take you in, what are you going to do?
Sometimes, it’s easier to stay so you can still have a roof over your head, a bed to sleep in, and food to eat.
It isn’t as easy as people think.
I’m not the only person that this has happened to.
Zahra Baker isn’t the only person to have died as a result of child abuse.
This happens to so many kids and teenagers everyday.
Can everybody swoop in and be Superman, Superwoman, Superperson and save every child
and put them into a healthy environment?
Probably not.
It’s probably not realistic.
But it’s just so hard talking about this kind of stuff when you know that it doesn’t always work.
Sometimes, you’ll take the risk and it pays off.
Sometimes, you’ll take the risk and it turns out nobody believes you and you just feel stuck and hurt.
And sometimes, people just don’t care.
But, sometimes, things do work out and when that happens, that is a really good thing.
That’s why child abuse is so hard to talk about.
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Both links will be down below.
I upload every Mondays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.
And I will see you later. Bye.