Navigating the #MeToo Movement
by Avery Guisinger
Growing up, I went to a small Catholic school with less than twenty classmates and only seven other girls in my grade. This tightknit community forced us girls to become closer than most elementary classmates did. We played every church sport together since kindergarten, from softball, soccer, and volleyball to basketball. One of my fondest memories was waiting outside together every day in our uniforms, waiting for our parents and grandparents to pick us up from school. Since we’ve known each other since kindergarten, by the time we were in fifth grade, we were practically sisters. So much so that every year we would all get together in December and have a Christmas party at one of our houses. We would make cookies, decorate gingerbread houses, and open our white elephant gifts from one another. We made funny videos to post on Musical.ly even though none of us were allowed to, and finally finished the night with a gossip circle in our sleeping bags and Christmas-themed pajamas.
The gossip circle started how it typically did, talking about each one of our crushes, our least favorite teachers, and ending with each one of us revealing a secret. Suddenly, it was one of my closest friends in the circle’s turn to share her secret, and the secrets quickly were no longer about lying to our parents or staying up past our bedtime watching Hannah Montana. My best friend started to tell us about something she was not quite sure how to explain. She said she had seen a video a few days ago on YouTube that talked about sexual assault.
Her words caught me off guard. I had heard the words “sexual assault” on the shows that my parents would watch in the background, but I didn't know what they meant. This was mainly due to our small Catholic school sex-education curriculum that was very filtered to fit the standard biblical beliefs. We were each given a small pamphlet after morning mass that consisted of how having, thinking, or talking about sex before you were married was extremely sinful. In no way, shape, or form should sex be a topic that we should talk about at our age. This point was enforced so strongly that sex wasn't something our teachers were even advised to discuss with us. The pamphlet’s purpose was to subtly shape sex education to fit religious values without direct discussion. The foldable pamphlet was small enough to always have in our pockets as a reminder that anything along the lines of sex was unacceptable. So sexual assault was not something covered in our small Catholic sex-ed pamphlet. She continued, saying the video she watched matched exactly what she had been going through with her grandpa–the same grandpa that would drop her off at every sporting event and pick her up every day from school in his small red truck.
At first it seemed unreal; I was never exposed to sexual assault on a peer level before. I thought this happened to people when they were older, not when we were eleven. My friends and I were full of questions but also wondered if we could somehow get in trouble for talking about what she was going through. This was because we were all raised with the same belief that sex, let alone sexual assault, was not something you spoke openly about in the church or even spoke about at all. Once we comforted our friend, though, I immediately knew that this topic was over my head and that an adult should know. The girls and I eventually expressed that we should tell the moms that were present, and my friend agreed that she wanted help. We all ran down the stairs to tell the moms, fearful because we all felt that we somehow could end up getting in trouble for talking about sexual assault. We interrupted the moms, who were watching Christmas movies in the basement, and my friend told them what she told us. Thankfully, the moms handled the situation, and the police were immediately called.
The whole situation escalated so quickly, but I remember those few hours feeling like a lifetime. I remember one particular mom trying her best to explain the complex area of sexual assault but on a level that made sense to us and our little knowledge on the topic. I remember seeing the moms' faces, and many of them began to cry and comfort my friend until the police came.
Once the police arrived, my friend had to briefly describe her experiences with her grandpa. Following her confession, all our names were taken down to set up a time to talk to the police at a later date. Once that was over, several girls were picked up while the rest of us decided to stay the night. I remember my mom picking me up the next morning and feeling like I had done something wrong. I did not know whether to tell her what my friend had been going through the past couple of years or to keep it to myself. Eventually, I broke down into tears because my fifth-grade brain was so overwhelmed by the oppressive topic of sexual assault. My parents helped break down information to my level of understanding and reassured me that it was not our fault, or my friend’s fault who came forward, and we did the right thing in that situation. My mom even said that sadly similar situations happened to her friends back when they were young, but they were too afraid to come forward, so the abuse continued. The stories from my own mother and my friends’ moms motivated me to believe these horrible situations need to be discussed to raise awareness so that we can help other struggling or potential survivors.
Later that month, our school was quickly bombarded with information about my friend's legal situation with her grandpa. My friend’s privacy was completely thrown out the window when girls in my class began to get called in for interviews with the local police during class. These interviews ultimately drew attention to the situation, making it obvious to other students that there was something going on with the girls in my grade, so it was only a matter of time before rumors spread. Once rumors got worse, our teacher had to come forward to the class. I remember kids laughing, or some even being in complete shock. This was because many of my other classmates were also underexposed and sexual abuse is a lot to throw onto a fifth-grader’s mind when sex is considered off limits. After our class found out about what my friend had been experiencing, her story spread like wildfire—first in the news, then in our church.
My friend’s grandpa was a very active member of the church. He ran the choir and was a eucharistic minister not only on Sundays, but during weekday elementary masses as well. Because he was considered a respected member of the Catholic church, I heard older parish members talking about the rumors or completely disregarding them. I also heard an older woman saying that my friend was “too young to be telling the truth” or that she was “probably just making up a story for attention.” In the weeks following, our priest would even make weird comments trying to make light of the situation in his homilies during mass. He would speak of Bible verses on lying and God “protecting us from evil.”
It did not stop there. Even during the school day, the girls in my class would get weird looks from older grades after they heard what had happened, and we had no choice but to be there for our friend. These comments and actions infuriated me because all of the girls in my class saw how painful it was for our friend to speak her truth, and these situations were exactly why she was hesitant.
Learning about my friend's experiences at such an early age is what exposed me to the topic of sexual assault and the #MeToo Movement altogether. The #MeToo Movement has opened not only the United States but the world to a new understanding of sexual assault and harassment. It was founded in 2006 but gained more widespread attention when the #MeToo hashtag took over social media a decade later. When the hashtag trended on social media, high-profile celebrities and individuals from each industry were accused with allegations. However, my friend's assault showed me that these horrible things can happen to anyone, no matter their age, gender, race, or religion. Not only that, it also doesn’t have to be a big, scary stranger to cause harm;oftentimes, it is someone close to you.
Following the events in fifth grade, no justice was served for my friend. Her grandpa did not have to spend any time in jail or do community service. All her family could do was have a restraining order put in place to protect her, because there was no evidence of abuse that examiners could find. Sexual assault is a very serious issue that I have been very hyperaware of ever since then in today's world.
I believe that the girls in my fifth-grade class and I were born into the right generation of Generation Z, the generation who stands up for one another. Generation Z is the generation that not only uses social media but uses social media as a tool to inform others and build awareness and activism for real-life issues. If it were not for my friend speaking out to us, who knows how much more abuse she would have endured. I still remember her grandpa’s red truck, picking her up from school every day.