White Ribbon Day (for you little one)

 

I hate to kill your buzz, but today is the International Day to Eliminate Violence Against Women (White Ribbon Day). 

16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence is a global campaign which sees more than 130 countries taking collective action to Stop Violence Against Women.The campaign starts on 25 November, International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, and runs until 10 December, Human Rights Day. Find out what’s on and get involved, register an event or take action.

Violence against women remains the widest spread human rights abuse in the world. It is an insidious, secretive violence. It is a violence that wrongly shames its victims. It is a violence we are culturally trained to ignore. The only way to stop violence against women is to stop ignoring it.

We have to get involved no matter how we dread it - we have to be willing to intervene, to call the police, to yell “Stop!”, to inquire further with our friend when we are suspicious that something is happening to her. Because violence against women is a violence that flourishes in the awkward silence of others ignoring it.

Violence against women also intimately effects children, and this story isn’t entirely on topic but it’s fresh in my mind from last night and I’m quite sure that in this story is violence. 

While I was out celebrating the election last night, so was some man. While my toddler was happily asleep in bed with her father nearby, some man’s child was not.

I know this because I pulled up at the service station and saw a small child huddled against the wall outside. He was three, maybe four. I assumed he had a guileless mother inside paying for petrol. And, there was a woman inside paying for petrol.. only when I’d paid for mine she stopped me anxiously to ask if that child was mine.

She said she’d seen people in the park and that she’d check if they were his parents. I crouched down beside the whimpering child and searched for the words of comfort that might possibly reach a small, small child; a child too young to be comforted by strangers and logic, too young to share his name and details.

But we didn’t find his mother and if I’d known what we would find I’d have bundled him up in my car and taken him to the police. Because the woman came back from the park with a drunk and shifty-eyed man, and there was no affection towards the small child when he sighted him and there was no pause in the whimpering from the child when the man appeared. This man didn’t crouch to hug the child in relief, he didn’t bend to pick the child up knowing he must be exhausted at this time of night, and he didn’t say anything to quieten the fear in this little boy. He yanked that child along with him and stormed drunkenly back off into the darkness.

I hadn’t helped this little boy at all, I’d delivered him straight back into the nightmarish existence he’d briefly fled from. I’d expected a parent somewhere desperately calling his name, but little boys with such haunted eyes don’t have those kind of moments. His reality was so incomprehensible to me that I’d not imagined its possibility until too late. I came home and called the police.

It is White Ribbon Day and I’m wishing for you little boy that somehow you make it out of this ghoulish childhood you’ve been given, and that you make it out intact and capable of a happy, fulfilling life when you’re finally free. I’m wishing for you that somewhere in your life is someone dependable and tender and resourceful. I’m wishing for you that you don’t give up hope that someone will intervene for you if you just keep making your circumstances known to others. I’m wishing for you that you don’t learn to stop crying too soon. I wish these things for you knowing that I should probably hope for you that you calcify your heart as quickly as possible, that you grow up too soon and learn how to throw a good punch.