Dark History - It took Sorley a long Time to Work up the Courage to Speak

Fourteen years ago

***

It took Sorley a long time to work up the courage to speak. It had been going on for months. It happened several times a week. The foster parents that were supposed to be taking care of him would take him to another house, sometimes a hotel room. There would be a man who gave money to his foster parents. Sorley used to fight, but the man would just call in Sorley’s foster father who beat him and more than once held Sorley down. When Sorley stopped fighting he would be rewarded the next day. A large TV, a gaming system, video games, a bike, one by one he was given all of the most popular toys. His classmates envied him for what he had. But Sorley took no joy in any of it.

Sorley did not think he could take it any more. He was at school during lunch and another kid exclaimed how “wicked lucky” he was. Sorley felt sick. He said he was going to the bathroom and left the school.

He knew his foster parents were not home, so he went there and found his own paperwork and after a great deal of pacing, dialing and hanging up, Sorley finally called his social worker. Even then it was hard to say why he called her. She was more concerned about why he was not at school at this time.

Finally Sorley blurted out what his foster parents were doing to him, as well as a kid could describe being trafficked.

The social worker was quiet for a long moment, then said “Don’t lie to me, Sorley. These things don’t happen to boys.”

“I’m not lying!” Sorley sobbed.

“You’re nine years old, Sorley, do you have any idea how hard it is to find a home for boys your age?” The social worker asked harshly. “And it will only get harder the older you get. Stop whining. Be a good boy. Go to school. Stop making up shit about your foster parents and be happy to have a home.” With that she hung up.

Sorley ran into the bathroom and threw up the peanut butter and jelly sandwich he had barely managed to swallow during lunch. He felt completely gutted. Not knowing what else to do, he went back to school. He had only missed half of one class, and the teacher believed he just had a stomach ache after lunch and had been in the bathroom the whole time.

Things got worse when he got home. The social worker had called his foster parents at work about Sorley’s phone call and skipping school. They were furious. He was beaten, but they were careful to not leave any marks that would not be hidden by clothes.

“No one believes you. No one will ever believe you.” His foster mother snarled in Sorley’s face. “If you ever try to tell anyone again, we will tell everyone how you fell down the stairs. People believe us, we’re upstanding citizens that have been fostering children for decades. You’re just a crack whore’s unwanted ugly bastard.”

Sorley would not try to tell anyone about it for nine years. He suffered in silence. He got into fights at school, picking fights with the school bully and other kids that were much bigger and older than himself. He mouthed off to teachers. He never did his homework, and would not do his schoolwork. He would write his small vocabulary of swear words on tests. He got detentions, suspensions, and his grades plummeted. His foster parents did not care about this, but it was a useful excuse to surrender him back into the system when their clients grew bored with him.

Sorley had hoped that his new foster parents would be better, but his hopes were quickly dashed. They lived in another part of the state, but they were just like his previous foster parents. In fact they were acquaintances of his previous foster parents. They trafficked him too. And also gave him expensive toys that he hated. The only solace Sorley had was a nearby pond where he learned to swim and skip stones. He loved the water. He could almost forget the hell he was living in when he was in the water.

He had a foster sister that he grew as close as he ever got to anyone. She was exploited too. Sorley witnessed her being abused in person once, and felt terrible that he could not stop it. She later told him that she felt bad that she could not stop them from doing what they did to him. Sorley would give her his allowance money because what he needed money could not buy, and their foster parents thought his foster sister should pay for her own period products from her allowance and it struck Sorley as unfair since he got the same allowance and did not need pads or tampons. Until one month she did not need them because she had gotten pregnant. The foster parents would not take her to a doctor. One day she started bleeding, she was already so far gone by the time Sorley found her he never knew if she was miscarrying naturally or if the foster parents hired some butcher for a back alley abortion that went wrong. She died in a lot of pain.

These foster parents also eventually returned him to the system, and Sorley was trafficked by two other sets of foster parents before he turned fourteen years old. The foster parents did not get better, they just did not have clients that wanted to abuse a child that old.

Physically the abuse had stopped, but inside it left wounds Sorley did not think could ever be healed. He did better in school grades-wise, but he still would pick fights with guys bigger than him. He was angry and nobody ever touched him that was not in violence. He kept everyone far away.