Friday, July 01, 2005

the worst thing

Some things are so terrible that if you wrote about them as fiction you'd exceed the reader's willful suspension of disbelief. People just couldn't possibly do things like that in real life, could they?

They do.

If I hadn't met the boy myself, I might not have believed it.

The boy was a prisoner in the juvenile jail I used to work at. Those weren't the terms they used, though. He wasn't a prisoner, he was a "resident." And it wasn't a jail but a "Youth Development Center." Those euphemisms are lies, though. The "development center" was still punishment based, as if you beat someone down enough they'll somehow become better people.

But how much punishment does it take to correct what happened to this kid?

When he was younger his father nailed him to the floor. It made it easier for the father to rape his son. That isn't a figurative "nailing" but literally, his father drove nails through his hands and feet into the floor to that he couldn't stuggle, couldn't get away.

Things like that can't possibly happen though, can they? Not in real life....

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