Tuesday – The Incident
Apr. 27th, 2010 04:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ninanevermore.
.
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My son’s babysitter, Kris, is a nervous sort of woman. She’s cautious beyond cautious by nature. Lately, though, she’s been in a state of high alert, due to what she calls “the incident” that happened in her subdivision a few weeks ago.
“I’m exhausted,” she told me the other day when I dropped by in the evening to retrieve my son, “You wouldn’t believe how many kids have been in and out of my house today!” She lives next to a sort of open cul-de-sac, where the road sort of bubbles out in front of the houses of her across the street neighbors. On this day, the kids were all playing in this wide spot in the road, staying toward the back where the traffic didn’t pass. Kris does not like her daughters to be outside (even her 12 year old) without her to keep an eye on them, but there were at least 7 kids at her house that day. The latch-key friends of her oldest daughter with mothers who work don’t want their daughters at home alone these days, and they’ve been hanging out at the homes of their friends who have stay-at-home moms. This will probably continue until there is an arrest, or enough time passes that people start letting down their guards again.
”I just wanted to let you know, there was a R-A-P-E on the other side of the subdivision this weekend,” she told me when I dropped my son off one Monday morning. Since my son and her 6 year old were standing there, she spelled out the word rape. It’s not a very nice word to have to explain to young children.
“Oh my God! What happened?”
She told me what she’d heard from her neighbors: a woman who lived toward the far end of the subdivision woke up in the middle of the night to find a man in her bedroom. He assaulted her repeatedly for several hours before leaving. The victim was a widow who lived alone, so she made an easy target. Whoever her assailant was (she saw his face but did not recognize him), he had probably scoped her out and knew that once he was inside her house there would be no one to interfere with his plans.
Kris, who lives with a husband and two children, is probably much safer, but she is still very much on edge. Her husband leaves for work 15 minutes before she wakes up in the morning. Before the assault, he didn’t bother to reset the security alarm on the door when he left, since she would be waking up so soon after him. Now there is a note on the front door reminding him to do so. I also suspect that the new puppy she got later that week, an energetic Australian Shepherd, is meant to grow into an upgrade to the guard dogging abilities of her 7-year-old Lhasa Apso, Missy, who is very sweet but not all that intimidating.
I live 8 miles away and there have been no incidents in my own neighborhood, but I’m a little more careful about locking the door after my husband leaves for work than I was before. I asked Kris yesterday if she’d heard anything about an arrest, and she hadn’t. The local police department come out to speak at her last neighborhood association meeting and talked to the residents about what had happened and what steps they could take to protect themselves. Kris heard that the woman was released from the hospital after a few days. Kris heard she spent the next three days holed up in her house, and finally ventured out on fourth day to visit the grocery store. The neighbors took this as a sign that she was going to be okay, though I think it’s more of a sign that she ran out of bread or milk, or that maybe the walls were starting to feel like they were closing in around her. I don’t know how long it takes to recover and be “okay” after something like that, but I’m certain it takes a hell of a lot longer than a week.
It must be a strange thing to feel compelled to seek sanctuary in a house where all sense of sanctuary has been violated. What do you do, and where do you seek shelter, once you figure out that the walls of your home are not your fortress but rather your prison once the bad guy gets inside? That the locks on your doors and windows are very good at keeping honest people out, but unfortunately those aren’t the people who are likely to cause you problems?
I’ll be honest: I’m not really sure.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * # * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
.
.
My son’s babysitter, Kris, is a nervous sort of woman. She’s cautious beyond cautious by nature. Lately, though, she’s been in a state of high alert, due to what she calls “the incident” that happened in her subdivision a few weeks ago.
“I’m exhausted,” she told me the other day when I dropped by in the evening to retrieve my son, “You wouldn’t believe how many kids have been in and out of my house today!” She lives next to a sort of open cul-de-sac, where the road sort of bubbles out in front of the houses of her across the street neighbors. On this day, the kids were all playing in this wide spot in the road, staying toward the back where the traffic didn’t pass. Kris does not like her daughters to be outside (even her 12 year old) without her to keep an eye on them, but there were at least 7 kids at her house that day. The latch-key friends of her oldest daughter with mothers who work don’t want their daughters at home alone these days, and they’ve been hanging out at the homes of their friends who have stay-at-home moms. This will probably continue until there is an arrest, or enough time passes that people start letting down their guards again.
”I just wanted to let you know, there was a R-A-P-E on the other side of the subdivision this weekend,” she told me when I dropped my son off one Monday morning. Since my son and her 6 year old were standing there, she spelled out the word rape. It’s not a very nice word to have to explain to young children.
“Oh my God! What happened?”
She told me what she’d heard from her neighbors: a woman who lived toward the far end of the subdivision woke up in the middle of the night to find a man in her bedroom. He assaulted her repeatedly for several hours before leaving. The victim was a widow who lived alone, so she made an easy target. Whoever her assailant was (she saw his face but did not recognize him), he had probably scoped her out and knew that once he was inside her house there would be no one to interfere with his plans.
Kris, who lives with a husband and two children, is probably much safer, but she is still very much on edge. Her husband leaves for work 15 minutes before she wakes up in the morning. Before the assault, he didn’t bother to reset the security alarm on the door when he left, since she would be waking up so soon after him. Now there is a note on the front door reminding him to do so. I also suspect that the new puppy she got later that week, an energetic Australian Shepherd, is meant to grow into an upgrade to the guard dogging abilities of her 7-year-old Lhasa Apso, Missy, who is very sweet but not all that intimidating.
I live 8 miles away and there have been no incidents in my own neighborhood, but I’m a little more careful about locking the door after my husband leaves for work than I was before. I asked Kris yesterday if she’d heard anything about an arrest, and she hadn’t. The local police department come out to speak at her last neighborhood association meeting and talked to the residents about what had happened and what steps they could take to protect themselves. Kris heard that the woman was released from the hospital after a few days. Kris heard she spent the next three days holed up in her house, and finally ventured out on fourth day to visit the grocery store. The neighbors took this as a sign that she was going to be okay, though I think it’s more of a sign that she ran out of bread or milk, or that maybe the walls were starting to feel like they were closing in around her. I don’t know how long it takes to recover and be “okay” after something like that, but I’m certain it takes a hell of a lot longer than a week.
It must be a strange thing to feel compelled to seek sanctuary in a house where all sense of sanctuary has been violated. What do you do, and where do you seek shelter, once you figure out that the walls of your home are not your fortress but rather your prison once the bad guy gets inside? That the locks on your doors and windows are very good at keeping honest people out, but unfortunately those aren’t the people who are likely to cause you problems?
I’ll be honest: I’m not really sure.
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no subject
Date: 2010-04-28 12:37 am (UTC)It sounds terrible but we CANNOT move. We CANNOT afford it. They and we have been here almost 6 years.
And...so far...we're semi ok. I hate knowing it though, watching their customers come by. My husband would rather we never leave the house (especially the kids) but, they played outside BEFORE we knew the neighbors occupation and they LOVE to ride bikes in the driveway etc.
It's very hard to know how to handle this.
And I know its not anywhere near as bad as what you mention about your distant neighbor.
Do be careful, Nina! I'm concerned about you now. PLEASE do keep things locked. Think about getting a new dog maybe?
no subject
Date: 2010-04-29 06:45 pm (UTC)A new dog might be a good idea. Something like a Labrador: big enough to be scary to an intruder, but sweet enough to have around a child.