ICYMI – Observations from a Child Sexual Abuse Victim about Early Intervention
[Cris Alarcon – AKA Cris Price]
I was so very sick and thought I was going to die a couple of years ago. I made a few public statements that could be seen as “Death Bed” confessions. One was that my biggest regret in life was that I did not ask for help when I was raped by a male family member when I was a little boy that lived on Woodland Drive and went to Gold Oak school…
Nothing like time in a hospital bed finding out you have an incurable disease to make one wonder about the meaning of life and the meaning of Our own life in the greater picture of mankind. This was a time of personal crisis for me and I reached out to find support in unpredicted places. One place is a local group that is formed to help local children overcome crises and help them get pointed in the right direction in life. This group of people under the banner of Resilience and they are proponents of a tool called “ACES.”
This was a thing I needed desperately, Resilience. But I found a sub-text, intervening early in a child’s life when a major trauma occurs leaving that child lost and wandering in the dark… This resonated with me… I was that exact kind of child. It was a subject I could not turn away from and methoned it in a single story I wrote of my sexual assault event. As I studied this ACES program I soon recognized how profoundly a sexual assault 45 years ago still had a great presences in nearly everything I do to this day…
Here is my view, a victim’s view, of how profound early intervention serves not just that child, but many others… Particularly future victims…
I published the story of the assault here http://inedc.com/14/why-i-fight-back-against-bullies but much is left out for many different reasons. Recently a person associated with the application of ACES in our local school system asked me to give further details of why I believed that early childhood intervention in schools is so important [if I was ready – no pressure] caveat. It is a very painful subject and much of what I left out is specific to how/why a school can be so important. So I will add that today.
Yesterday there was an arrest for a must heinous crime against a child and I will answer the question put to me many days ago, WHY it Matters So much… I am still here and I believe there is a reason and that reason may be to detail the How and Why schools should have a robust intervention program. I will give detail that professionals will see many Red Flags that today would cause action, but 45 years ago the subject was little understood and a taboo subject. Thanks to many high-profile pedifiles like Epstein and too many church clergy sexual assults of children this is a mainstream topic today.
Here is a short narrative with those Red Flags and the long-term effects that followed that I left out of my original story. Above is the link to what happend, and here is the externally visible signs that schools can see and then intervene.
Narrative: I entered school at Gold Oak in 3rd grade as a new student recently moved in from Tahoe out of the Meyer’s elementary school. I was plenty smart but by the end of the year I was deemed “too immature” and I did 2nd grade twice.
School children can be merciless so I walked… After a year of teasing and earning the nickname, “Cris Piss” as I often wore dirty clothes and smell of urine. To escape the teasing I walked from and to school for the next two years. A distance of 5 miles each way. Oft I would cut across at Gus Gutenberg’s abandon house and over the hill to Woodland drive as a shortcut.
Sundays I would go the other direction to Oak Hill Pentecostal Church and that was the first time I rode in and EDSO patrol car. It made the paper as the Youngest Devotee. He did not think it safe for me to be walking in such a place with the traffic. I was too young t be by myself he said as he drove me home.
By the time I went to Herbert Green I was sullen and mad. I watched the gym being “tilted up” with a bottle of Everclear that I drank with a friend as we watched the gym going up. I was the cause of the strict BAN on all chewing gum at Herbert Green. I was finally permanently expelled for the entire school district before I finished Ponderosa and had my 18th birthday in our Juvenile Hall. I went from there to construction in the Bay Area and then to College in SoCal. In my college days I drank to excess, was methed-up, coked-up, and trippin’ on LSD when I could. As a clever entrepreneur I never wanted for cash so I never had any incentive to steal, except for the Challenge of it…
After those wild days I came back to the place I left with two middle fingers over my back saying I will never come back here…
I did come back and worked hard to change my ways and give back to a society I had take from. I gave back by contributing in many ways including serving 5 years as the Boys & Gilrs Club Treasure and then 6 years as the Treasurer for the Foodbank of El Dorado County.
To this day, I always stand up between a child or dog at risk. Events in my life make my behavior responsive. If something does not pass the sniff test the words “Bull Shit” strongly come out of my mouth without intent, just reactively. This is a defensive mechanism I learned to survive. Some that know me know I become very aggressive when threatened. Again, reactionary learned behavior from learning early on what happens when you are submissive when your person is threatened.
But that is really the SMALL side of this story. After my [male family member] assaulted me, he raped many other children and developmentally disabled adults over the years before imprisoned for life as a person deemed to be to mentally unsound to ever be released into the public.
If somebody would have intervened when I was 6-7 years old, it is very probable that several children would not have been raped…
But I did what any normal child would do… I hid it and never talked about it until a female family member said something to my wife about my [family member] and that is when he was first pulled off the streets. One less child predator that should have been locked up long before he harmed so many lives.
I started by giving a narrative of external signs that today would raise Red Flags that something very bad is happening in a child’s life.
And then what are schools to do?
A question I encourage everyone to ask. https://www.acesconnection.com/g/el-dorado-county-ca-aces-connection
I wrote about my sexual assault as I was prompted by the suicide of popular singer Chester Bennington, and artist that was one of the few to talk about being raped by a male and the pervasive effect that had on his life. I wrote as a public message that if this has happened to you, you can still live a good life. It is OK to talk about it. It is BEST to talk about it. Not only is holding this stuff in corrosive to your soul, it limits the opportunity to stop this kind of thing from happening to others.
Today I am prompted to write as I know there are children that are desperately in need of intervention right here, right now –
Today [
209(B)(1) F KIDNAP TO COMMIT RAPE $1,000,000.00
288(A) F L&L W/CHILD UNDER 14 $100,000.00
289(B) F SEX/P FRGN OBJ/ETC:INCAPB $100,000.00
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