Kayla’s bulging file lay on an already cluttered office desk, surrounded by student absence slips, class schedules, and two empty Styrofoam cups. Kayla was about to begin classes at Clare Middle School. She was twelve years old and in the seventh grade.
The thumbnail photographs in her file depicted a happy child. Each image was of a little girl with blonde hair, blue eyes, and a crooked smile mugging for the camera. From kindergarten to seventh grade, only her gradual maturation showed—the eyes and smile remained the same. The large amount of paperwork the file contained was because Kayla was continuously moving. Her seven years of education took place in seventeen different schools.
I ask the principals of each of my schools to notify me whenever we have a new student. I always meet with the child on his or her first day to introduce myself and explain what I do as a police school liaison officer. I offer the new students help in any way that I can and let them know how they can contact me.
Kayla burst through the office door like she had attended the school for years. The two secretaries paused in their duties, a parent dropping off a student’s forgotten lunch money stared, and I put aside my normally reserved first-meeting face and did my best to stifle a laugh.
Kayla was a G.L.K. The acronym in the Clare educational system means “Goofy Looking Kid.” Her dirty blonde hair was piled high in 1970’s fashion and held in place with a large plastic clip that seemed more suited for a bag of potato chips. Hanging from her ears and around her neck was an abnormally large and gaudy set of plastic costume-jewelry. Kayla wore a low-cut flowered sundress, six-inch black high-heeled shoes that were at least three sizes too big, and a dirty-brown canvas jacket. When she walked across the terrazzo floor, she sounded like a Clydesdale on pavement and looked like a prepubescent version of the character Mrs. Wiggins from the Carol Burnett show.
She’ll never survive, I thought. The idea that in a few minutes this G.L.K. would be walking into a junior-high classroom brought only one conclusion: they’ll tear her apart! Kayla walked up to me and offered her hand.
“My name is Kayla,” she said. “Are you the principal?” I told her who I was and what I did and a little about the school. Then I offered to walk her to class. She said okay and walked behind me in silence up the stairs to her classroom. Kayla was reaching for the door when I called to her.
“Kayla,” I said, taking a moment to choose my words carefully. “If there is anything that you need help with, anything at all, you can always talk to me.”
Kayla tilted her head and gave me a silly-boy glance. “I’ll be fine, Mr. White. Don’t worry about a thing. I really am fine!” She gave me another quick smile and walked confidently into the classroom.
As I walked back downstairs, I was overcome with the feeling that there really was something special about Kayla. And I was right. Eventually, Kayla would change my life.
It had been two days—two days of worrying about Kayla and wondering why I worried about her so much. The emails from her teachers telling me that she was doing fine did nothing to placate me.
I wanted to check on her. The bell rang for a change of classes and the hallways filled in seconds with adolescent motion. I actually heard Kayla before seeing her. It was the clomp, clomp, clomp of those oversized high heels on the terrazzo floor. “Hi, Mr. White!” Kayla shouted from twenty feet away. She smiled and walked to me, still wearing the same flowered sundress, gaudy jewelry, and dirty tan coat.
“I just wanted to check on you,” I said. “How are you doing?” I looked at her eyes, searching for any sign of trouble.
“You don’t have to worry about me, Mr. White! I am doing fine. Promise!”
I looked at the throng of students milling around us. Kayla sensed my fear. “I really am doing fine,” she said. “I like this school and I am making friends!”
I looked back at her eyes. “Remember, anytime you need anything, just call. OK?”
Kayla gave her signature grin. “I know, Mr. White. You told me on my first day. Remember?” Kayla shook her head and headed off to her next class. I left the middle school, no more relieved than when I first arrived.
For the next two months, I would check on Kayla once or twice a week. Each time she would clomp up to me in those oversized shoes and wearing that same, but always clean, flowered sundress. She would say she was fine and not to worry. Each time I would tell her to contact me if she needed anything.
By the end of March, I did not need to say anything to Kayla because she’d just walk up and say, “I’m doing fine, Mr. White!” In April, I decided that she really was doing okay and discontinued my biweekly visits, although I would run into her occasionally.
Another month passed since I last checked on her. It was late in the afternoon and I decided to see her before I left for the day. When I heard Kayla clomping towards me in the hallway, she smiled and seemed more upbeat than usual.
“Mr. White!” she nearly screamed as she walked up. Before I could respond, she reached into her purse and pulled out a folded piece of notebook paper. “Here,” she said. “I wrote you a note. I colored the front myself!”
The front of the note was indeed decorative. My name was written in bold hollow script that was intricately colored with a series of gel pens. I thanked Kayla for the note and she clomped off down the hall. A school staff member came up and we began talking. I put the note in my coat pocket while we were talking and left the school shortly thereafter.
I was going on a fishing trip to my favorite trout stream. Trout camp. Spending the weekend with friends is what filled my mind as I drove home that afternoon. After a busy week in the school, it was nice to think about fishing and great times around a campfire.
A couple miles from my home is a railroad crossing. The line of already waiting cars frustrated me as I stopped and tried to hurry the train. It was while sitting there, anxious and frustrated that my departure was being delayed, that I remembered Kayla’s note and cursed myself for having forgotten about it. As I pulled out the note, I took a brief moment to enjoy the wide mix of colors and appreciate the time she took to draw this for me. I opened the note and began to read:
Dear Mr. White,
Hay, what’z sup? Not much here, just writing you a letter about me getting raped by my mom’s boyfriend. It started 3 years ago at our house in Carrollton. He would wait till my mom was gone or was asleep.
Then he would have me have sex with him. He would make me lay in the bed and take off my pants and shirt and then he would eat me out. When I tried to make him quit he wouldn’t. The last time was Tuesday. He took me to the store to get a pop and candy bar. He got me a root beer & two king-size NutRageous and then took me to the park by the river. He drank one beer after the other. He told me that since I liked the song “Back Your Ass Up”, to back my ass up, and then he made me have sex with him.
The End.
Love Kayla
The car behind me honked as I put my truck in reverse and tried to move out of the line of cars. I worked my way around traffic and raced back to the police department. You could see my tire tracks on the pavement for almost six months after that day. I worked all night and did not go home until the man that violated Kayla was in jail.
Kayla moved again at the end of the school year. I never heard from her again.
I am now known as “Sheepdog.” And it is because of this little girl, who until meeting me did not trust anyone with her pain, that I decided to dedicate my career to helping the victims of child sexual abuse.
Kayla forever changed my life.
An excerpt from the book Promise Not to Tell, by Alan L. White. For more information, visit: www.alanlwhite.com.