School is back in session for the year and thoughts of Elaine are creeping back in like seasonal allergies. Over the last three decades, thoughts of Elaine have shifted from sadness to thankfulness, to confusion, back to thankfulness, and then usually to acceptance at some point. I don’t blame Elaine, exactly. I blame an entirely corrupt world. But within that world, there is Elaine and the fact that I cannot ever fully recover from her memory. Elaine was our neighbor when I was a child. She lived right next door. She was also a teacher and played a role in my escape, but probably not quite the way you are thinking.

My adopted parents had a small 3-bedroom, ranch style home in the suburbs. The houses in our neighborhood were close together with only a driveway separating the homes. The neighborhood was odd, at best. It had all the diverse and traditional markers of a suburb tightly smashed in between a large and chaotic city and a small town with the highest murder and poverty rates at that time.

The house across the street had three families living in one home, one family slept on the enclosed front porch. My favorite neighbor was the veteran three houses down the street who had his entire property outfitted for international war. I felt safe there. He owned the only house on the block that had a mailbox at the end of the driveway, no one stepped foot on his property. The retired veteran would sometimes take me to the local bar with him and buy me lunch on the rare occasion that I was allowed to be outside of my adopted parents’ home. I believe he could sense I was also a war veteran in some capacity. This wasn’t a place where kids freely played outside, not if you wanted to see them at the end of the day. I watched several kids get kidnapped right in front of me as a child. Elaine lived right next door. Her husband was a steel worker, and her son was a college student at the time, and Elaine was a public school teacher until she retired in recent years.

My relationship with neighbors, or anyone outside of my adopted parents’ home was always a complicated matter. I was trained that freedom came with loyalty to my own abuse. Protecting the secrets of my adopted family was the only way to obtain freedom and I walked that fine line almost to my own demise at times. Playing this never-ending game of secrets was not appealing to me, and I often walked that line so closely that it created more problems than it solved, isolation was typically the answer to that dilemma.

I was trained to keep my adopted parents sanctioned secrets classified at all cost, including my own. This included law enforcement. If asked, I was trained to tell them I went to a specific private school and that it was a “teachers conference day.” I was given a brief summary of what “school” was like, for the rare occasion that I interacted with other school age children, I would essentially know the basics. I never saw the inside of a school building until I was in my early twenties when I registered my younger siblings. I was never truly upset about not being sent to school; I do not think I would have been a good match for the learning style that formal education provides. However, I was disturbed by the denial of education, an honest life and the ability to move without fear. Manipulation is often backed by emotional or physical abuse. The manipulation and the tactics performed in order to guarantee my “loyalty,” that is what was ultimately disturbing. Children often go through phases of discovering their own autonomy, however, in a situation like this, any autonomy was seen as a threat and instantly corrected with emotional manipulation and physical abuse.

Freedom came only with trust. But not the typical trust you form with a child who is learning boundaries and autonomy. The trust that is built in manipulative relationships is founded on trust in the abuse, trust that the abuse would be feared and trust that the abuser would be protected because of that fear. My relationship with Elaine began to break this cycle of loyalty to those who were manipulating and physically abusing me. Yet I am still highly perplexed by Elaine’s role in my life and my inability to blame her for her lack of action.

Somewhere around 7-years-old I knew a plan would need to be formed to escape the situation I was in. I decided that being able to be an effective, intelligent employee would be my first step in ensuring that I never landed back in the same place. My options at the time were limited, I did not have a computer yet and even though I read medical journals and college textbooks more times than a 3-year-old has heard “Goodnight Moon,” I still somehow felt that I would be unprepared to work in society. My adopted mother attempted to convince me of many things, depending on the day or hour. All in a day’s time I was made to believe that I was an elite scholar, wise beyond my years and that I was disabled and keeping me isolated was actually an effort to protect my own embarrassment of myself. If I pushed back on this narrative, I would be given problems to solve that were essentially unsolvable. I knew that I would need to escape this environment to know what was true and what was not true.

When I remembered that Elaine, our neighbor, was a public school teacher, I had an idea. Elaine obviously knew to some degree that the people living next door were an episode of Snapped waiting to happen, if she didn’t, she was oblivious. No one ever knew where I was when I left home, my freedom to leave started around 8-years-old and it was very limited, but it was complete freedom. No one ever knew where I was. This gave me the opportunity to start forming a plan to leave and approaching Elaine was step one. This would be incredibly risky given the fact that she lived next door to my adopted parents, but I had a feeling it would work. I asked Elaine if I could pay her to teach me a few basics. She agreed to not only do it, but to also not tell anyone else about it.

I can’t say this relationship produced what I was looking for, exactly. Elaine got so caught up on me not having memorized multiplication tables that we spent all our time on that task. But through that, it did show me that I knew plenty to “make it.” I knew more than I thought I did, and I also knew that the climate I was in would only produce storms. It was time to go soon and find out “what is real.”

I only spent a couple months going to Elaine’s house 3 times a week, in complete secrecy. But it gave me the confidence to know that at least a few of the manipulative tactics that had been used to keep me silent were complete lies. I was ready to move forward and leave the prison sentence that held me a prisoner in my own mind. I could clearly see, for the first time, that I was free. It was merely tactics imprisoning me, not a true cell and prison bars.

But why was this even possible? How did this go on for months without anyone being notified that a child was being denied an education, hiring her own teacher, and showing up in complete secrecy with taser wounds and bruises? Was this Elaine’s fault? She’s a mandated reported of child abuse, given that she was a teacher. Did she not notice? No. She noticed and even commented at times. But she never reported anything. I find blame difficult in this situation. What if she had reported the abuse?

The area I grew up in was saturated in poverty, trafficking, and the highest murder rates in the country. Schools were being over ran by gang activity and we all knew someone who was “in the system.” In areas like this, foster parents often take on foster children to supplement their income without any real motivation to properly care for the foster child. This leads to resentment and abuse in the home, or worse. This is no secret, even back then, it was no secret. The “system” was overpopulated with ill intent, exploitation, abuse, and fraud. A system that is intended to remove children from abusive environments and place them somewhere “safe.” Children with complex trauma and unseen wounds should be given a rock-solid environment once they are removed from traumatic situations. Caregivers/foster parents should be heavily trained and vetted. But this isn’t the reality in our entire country, and we are talking about poverty island. We were out there with nothing, and no one was lending a hand. Police didn’t show up and the gated communities were war zones. What if you asked for help? Your “weakness” was exploited. This is not a situation with winners and losers, just survivors in their mode. Trying to get by, trying not to die.

I know the answer to this question, and it has plagued my existence. There wasn’t a better option. Not within the community I was living in. Not within the resources that were and were not available. I know this, and Elaine knew this too. Reporting my abuse would only lead to more abuse. Both Elaine and I knew that I was able to make it out. I’m glad Elaine made a good bet. But I can’t help but wonder how many times she made a bet on a child and the child lost. Survivors of complex child abuse have carried enough weight over time, but we have to carry this burden a little further in order to see real change. The “system” has real names, departments, officials, and real change is possible. What is not possible is to expect hope to blossom in a nuclear wasteland of repetitive failure. Change will only be possible by changing the entire system itself. And I am confident that only survivors can lead this change.

I never understood why people were perplexed by my choice to leave “home” at 12-years-old. I never understood why my choice was something to even make note of. I now realize that what I did was incredibly difficult. At the time, I was too plagued by the need for something more than “survival.” I would have to wait to really see and appreciate just how impactful this choice would become. I also did not realize that few people in my situation make this choice at all. The journey after choosing to leave was not smooth or remotely delicate, but well worth it. Fear imprisons us in worse conditions than it protects us from.

This is in part the “why” of it all. This is why Jury File works on underreported missing persons cases; it’s why I don’t stop when I say “found;” it’s why I always look for “another way” when familial abuse is involved or extensive help is needed after being located; it’s why I never release specific details about cases; and it’s why I am limitless in my criteria for “helping.” Trauma is limitless, predatory abuse is bold, yet camouflaged due to our own desensitization to generational neglect and manipulation. I have worked on cases that have no “missing report” because of police involvement, I have also worked cases that require a targeted approach, regardless of the circumstances, in order to meet the end goal of providing unwavering support to victims and survivors. Regardless of who they are, who their families are, or the circumstances that brought them to where they currently are. Generational control, manipulation, and abuse leads to unimaginable outcomes. The only way to fight back against cycles of abuse and systematic failures is to approach these issues with unwavering support for victims and survivors with an open minded and creative approach. There’s a solution to the problems we are faced with. I have managed to find beautiful outcomes in the darkest places when creative solutions are embraced. It’s possible if we try.