After my affidavit, the State of Florida finally took six of us—me, my three younger sisters, and my two younger brothers—away from Mother. It took seven years from the first abuse investigation to finally be free from harm. We were placed as wards of the State of Florida, and I was ecstatic. (My two brothers from Herman and Mother’s marriage remained in her care.)
Sadly, it didn’t last long. Less than a year later, after she completed a few mandatory parenting classes, the St. Augustine court awarded her full custody of the six of us again.
With one caveat.
She stated in one of the court documents that although she was thankful to have her children back, she regretted to inform the court she would be refusing parental rights over me. She didn’t want me. The judge allowed her to sever parental rights over me, releasing me to the State of Florida until I was eighteen.
With a single signature, the City of St. Augustine allowed Mother to choose her children. For me, this was just fine, but for everyone else, it was a gross injustice. My siblings returned to the dysfunction that I believe still haunts them. And I have never seen Mother again.
Since I had been staying with the Calhouns already, the State gave them temporary custody as a non-relative placement. I was in heaven. First Sergeant and Mrs. Calhoun gave me my own room, food whenever I wanted, new clothes, new shoes, and a new backpack. They even got me my own night-light after I had woken them up with my nightmares. They gave me everything I had ever wanted. Rides to and from school and practice were now a breeze, and I never waited for hours after school. I never had to worry if I was going to be allowed to compete in any school events. They would gladly take me, pay for my athletic equipment, and watch me as I tried my best at being an all-star athlete. In just a few months, I fell in love with them.
Having a new child in the home must have been difficult for the three Calhoun children. The Calhouns treated me to new shoes and clothing because my things were old and tattered. I worried that the children felt jealous and resented the intrusion into their family. A girl coming from nothing into a home with three other children who had always had everything was going to be difficult. Probably more difficult than anyone thought. I was so used to sharing everything with my siblings—not that we ever had much—that I never thought twice about using my new roommates’ stuff. I didn’t realize that people actually got to have their own things. We ended up having weekly family meetings about how to get along with each other.
Mrs. Calhoun took care of me with great tenderness. Soon after I moved in, she went into my closet for something, and to her surprise, she found a hoard of food I’d hidden for safekeeping. I’d grown up with locks on the fridge when there was actually food in it, and most of the time, we had to find our own way to eat. I never knew what it was like to have access to a fully stocked fridge. I swear First Sergeant and Master Chief first stole my heart by bringing an extra lunch with them to school. And they did it every single day.
So even though I was allowed to eat whenever I wanted, it didn’t translate into safe. I had yet to learn what that word meant. (I’m still learning what that word means.) It never once occurred to me that the food in their fridge or pantry would be there the next day. And this pantry! It was huge. I’d never seen a pantry so filled with food. I snuck in there, literally as a thief in the night, grabbing what I could that would keep in my closet. Finding my stash was an awakening for Mrs. Calhoun. It was a glimpse at what trauma does to a person.
That day, I bounced into the kitchen to see what she had set out for us. After-school snacks were a real thing after all! As I stuffed my face with carrots and ranch dressing, she asked to speak to me upstairs privately in her bedroom.
Dread overcame me.
With tears in her eyes, she pulled out the boxes of Fig Newtons (my favorite) and Wheat Thins (another of my favorites).
I lowered my head in shame.
Her voice was calm with empathy. “Chris, I’m not sure why you’re taking food out of the kitchen and hiding it in your room, but you don’t need to do this anymore. Okay?” Her voice filled with sadness.
Was she weeping for me? She wasn’t upset with me at all!
I’d never known such compassion. I didn’t know what to say. Grabbing her, giving her a hearty embrace, I cried, thankful for her kindness. I promised not to steal food out of the kitchen anymore. In that moment, I saw her heart. It was kind. It was good. It was brave enough to allow me to be in her home, even with all my weaknesses.
A year later, during my junior year, the state’s attorney came knocking on our door, summoning me to the St. Augustine courthouse. I had no idea what it was about, and neither did the Calhouns.
A few days later, we walked into the state’s attorney’s office and I felt a bitter breeze in the room. It was as if my body knew something bad was happening. The attorney asked us to sit down. She explained that Talmon had written a lengthy letter in which he confessed that he abused me.
What?
To this day, I have no idea why he’d confess.
Overwhelmed with questions, fear, and shame, I didn’t know how to react. My eyes welled up with uncontrollable anger, and as tears ran down my face, I shouted question after question: “What? Is he in jail? What is happening?”
The attorney said that for her to verify the legitimacy of the letter, she had to read a few parts to me. She got through one sentence before I burst into hysterical tears.
“Such disgust! How can you read this letter aloud to me? In front of Mr. Calhoun!” I continued to shout. “Why are you doing this to me?”
I was so ashamed and embarrassed and beside myself.
Is she looking at me like I had something to do with him raping me?
Why did she read the part about him saying I had said yes to all the things he did to me?
I looked at the attorney in disbelief. “I was nine years old! What is wrong with everyone? Do they really believe him?”
It was like being raped again—except people were watching.
I was a mess. She stopped after a few more sentences. She declared that she didn’t need to go any further; she had all she needed. Looking me in the eyes, she asked me what his punishment should be. Confused as to why she would ask me or why I would have the authority to give him punishment, I told her this—in these very words: “He should suffer the way I have suffered. He should go to jail for ruining my childhood.” I gasped for air between each word.
Mrs. Calhoun took me by the shoulder, leaned into me, and said, in a tone that took me aback, “You are being too emotional. Step out into the hall. We will handle this.”
It was as if she was scolding me. I felt slighted and so confused.
I’ll never forget how she sounded that day.
As Mrs. Calhoun escorted me out the door, I went numb. Unable to process what had just happened, I wept hysterically in the hallway. I feared that everyone believed it was my fault, just like Mother said.
Six years after my father’s initial reports of my having been sexually abused, my uncle had walked into the St. Augustine Police Department with a “confession” letter and turned himself in. He wrote that I had said okay to all the horrible things he did to me. He said it had only happened a few times.
Classic pedophile confession.
After hearing Talmon’s startling revelation, the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office began an investigation. I can only imagine what Herman, Mother, and my grandparents where thinking—or saying—and what all the officers, social workers, and other “expert” witnesses of Father’s custody battle thought when they heard about this “confession.”
I have no idea why he confessed, and I have no idea if anyone actually believed that I, as a child, gave him permission to do those horrible things.
The investigation quickly and quietly went away. And by quietly, I mean Talmon was told to hand over his confession letter and to write out an affidavit, which he did. The case started out as a capital sexual battery but was eventually pleaded down to a felony battery. He was given two years’ probation, community service, and less than a year in county jail for brutalizing me from the time I was nine years old to almost thirteen years old. They charged him with felony battery, as if he had gotten into a bar fight.
In Florida, a sexual crime committed by a person older than eighteen against a minor younger than twelve is considered a capital felony, with a potential sentence of life in prison, placement on the sexual offenders’ list, and a slew of other substantial punishments.
But that awful day at the state’s attorney’s office where they revictimized me, I felt they were declaring that the factual evidence of the crimes committed against me never amounted to a hill of beans.
This is what is most disturbing.
It is gross negligence like this that makes my blood boil for justice—if not for me, then for every other little girl or boy who has been ravaged by the cankers of this world without being allowed justice. Sexual perversion is a global pandemic. It spreads like the stench of death from a rotten corpse with every violent attack and every pornographic image.
This reality—this unbelievable injustice that I endured—is a big part of the reason why I’m telling my story to the world.
The next day, Mrs. Calhoun said I wouldn’t be going to school. I had to go to the doctor. I had gone to the dentist just a month before, so I assumed it would be something like another routine checkup. I got dressed, got in the car, and went with her to the doctor. We arrived at a big building. I couldn’t see any signs, so I didn’t know what type of doctor it was.
A receptionist took my ID information and wrote my name on the sign-in sheet. We then sat down in front of a coffee table filled with magazines.
“Mrs. Calhoun, what kind of doctor am I seeing?” I asked with jittery anxiety.
She said, “We’re at the OB-GYN.”
I had never heard of that before, so I shrugged my shoulders and asked her what that meant. “It’s a gynecologist, a doctor for females to check their female parts. Everything will be fine. They just need to make sure you’re healthy.” What I didn’t fully understand until later is that I had been ordered by the State of Florida to be examined in connection with the abuse by Uncle Talmon.
I was horrified.
I had never been to a gynecologist before. I didn’t even know what it was until she told me. I couldn’t believe what she was saying.
“Wait, I don’t understand. That means someone has to look at me down there?”
Her look told me yes.
“Mrs. Calhoun, please don’t do this. Please don’t let them look at me.” I began crying. “Please don’t let them look at me naked.”
I couldn’t understand why I was here. I had never had sex with a boy or even been naked in front of a boy. Don’t you only go to this type of doctor if you have sex or if you get pregnant by a boy?
When they called my name, I was weeping and scared out of my skin. Two nurses came over and directed me toward an exam room. Mrs. Calhoun followed as I begged them not to put me in that room.
“Mrs. Calhoun, please! Don’t let them do this to me. I’ll be good. I promise. I won’t steal food anymore. Please don’t do this to me!”
But Mrs. Calhoun remained quiet and calm. And unemotional.
By this time, the entire office was staring at me, peeping out of the doors and leaning over nurses’ stations. I paid no mind to them. I pleaded for my life without hesitation. Three nurses held my arms and legs as they forced me into the room with a table that looked like a death trap. Torturous-looking metal handles stuck up from the bottom of the table, like iron snares for one’s feet. A flimsy sheet of paper covered the table from top to bottom.
What in the world was this place?
My eyes scanned the room to see what clues I could pick up. A metal tray filled with needles, giant cotton swabs, and other evil-looking tools I had never seen before were lined up neatly with a box of gloves. When I saw that tray, I screamed so loud that the doctor came in and yelled at me.
“Young lady, you need to calm down right now!”
I stopped yelling, but I certainly didn’t stop crying. Mrs. Calhoun helped me take my pants off. The nurses in the room told me to sit on the table, to take off my underwear, and to cover myself with a cotton robe. Closing the door, they stepped out of the room. I began begging Mrs. Calhoun again not to make me do this. She said the state was making me do this and that I didn’t have a choice. It would be over soon. I would be okay. She helped me—while I was still crying profusely—take off my underwear and covered me in the gown they gave us. I sat on the chair that felt more like a coffin and locked my hands over my legs, holding the gown down so no one could see me.
The two nurses walked back in and asked me to lie down.
I couldn’t. I couldn’t do it.
Mrs. Calhoun and the other nurse had to physically hold me down as the other nurse pushed my bottom toward the end of the chair.
“Mrs. Calhoun, don’t you love me? Don’t let them do this! Please, please, Mrs. Calhoun, don’t make them do this to me,” I said in a deep whimper of misery. Begging for them not to make me spread my legs, I shouted, “Noooo! You’re hurting me. Stop. Please stop!”
Mrs. Calhoun didn’t say a word.
A nurse moved to the end of the chair to put my feet in the metal holsters. Mrs. Calhoun gripped my hand and held my upper body down as they called in another nurse. The four women held me down as they took a pap smear.
By the end of it all, I was groaning in deep agony while crying. By this time, Mrs. Calhoun was crying too. The nurses were doing all they could to hold back their tears. None of them wanted to make me do what they had just made me do. Apparently, the State of Florida demanded that I have an STD test done, effectually re-raping me due to the state’s attorney’s desire to verify the legitimacy of the “confession” letter and to comply with standard protocol.
It was one of the most traumatic experiences I’ve ever had.
After this painful experience, I trusted no one. I became colder than ice. I got a new nickname at school: Ice Queen. Sometimes I replay these moments in my mind. I try to understand how people could have said and done what they did. I never found a common thread, even as a grown woman. The memories feel like betrayal. How could someone do that to another human being? I was sixteen. Still just a kid. A young girl. They should have better prepared me. They should have done things differently.
Things were not the same for me at the Calhouns’ house after that. I grew further away from the family. I became their invisible fourth child, always slipping into my room as soon as I got home from school. I stopped participating in family events. I knew that when I turned eighteen, I could legally do anything I wanted. So I began to plan my great escape.
I turned eighteen the first semester of my senior year. The start of school came with numerous changes, much like every year before that. I moved out of the Calhouns’ house with the same things I came with, including my black trash bags. I moved in with one of my NJROTC friends, which kicked off my year of couch surfing. The Calhouns were very upset with me and probably unsure of why I was leaving. They even called a school meeting with the principal to convince me to come back, but I couldn’t. I loved them, but I wasn’t emotionally capable of understanding that they loved me, so I ran away.
Far away.
Isn’t that what you do when you believe someone doesn’t love you the way you love them?
Running is easy—especially when you feel you’ve been wounded. It didn’t help that my communication skills were atrocious. I didn’t have the skill set that lets a person dig deep into their feelings and share them. Cultivating that ability took me some years. I only knew how to shut off and move on. It was easier for me to be silent than to express emotion. Hence, the nicknames Miss Stone-Cold and Ice Queen.
After I ran away, I didn’t have an exact plan other than wanting to serve my country as an officer in the military. I began couch surfing while I worked on getting my driver’s license. I would drive friends’ cars to and from school, and I volunteered to be the designated driver at parties to practice my skills. No one knew I didn’t know how; they just handed over the keys. In addition to school, cross-country practice, track and field practice, and NJROTC, I worked two jobs—one at Smoothie King and one at Village Inn, a restaurant similar to IHOP. When I could, I got rides with one of the four people who became my best friends: Matt, Kendall, Buster—all of whom I met at school—or Jay, a guy I worked with at Smoothie King.
Working at Smoothie King after school and Village Inn as a waitress on weekends was enlightening. I quickly learned the meaning of a hard-earned dollar. Although I worked part-time at Firehouse Subs when I lived with the Calhouns, I never needed the money then. It was different being an adult and needing money to survive. My mind was flooded with memories of times when my sisters and I found odd jobs around the neighborhood just so we could buy groceries.
Although it was difficult on us, one of my proudest moments as a child actually arose from neglect and abandonment. Mother had been gone for almost a week, and we had no food in the house. RaeLynne was at a friend’s house, so Abbeygail and I began plotting a dinner we’d never forget. We’d saved $17.86 from babysitting neighborhood kids. We took a busted rolling suitcase with a broken zipper and walked across highway US 1 to the Winn-Dixie store.
Abbeygail was in charge of managing the money, and I looked for food that didn’t require cooking, since our electricity had been shut off. We ended up buying two Kraft Mac & Cheese boxes, three cans of tuna, a gallon of milk, a jar of peanut butter, and a loaf of bread. We were short on money, so the women working the counter covered us for thirty-five cents. We couldn’t stop smiling as we walked across the highway with our suitcase filled with food. It was like Christmas morning.
Did a car almost hit us? Sure! But did a car hit us? No, praise the Lord!
We walked home, knocked on the neighbor’s door, cooked the mac and cheese, and brought it back to our house. We added in the tuna and filled each of our plastic cups to the brim with milk. We rejoiced in silence with cheerful grins of success. It was heaven. We fed our younger brothers and sisters until they were full, and then we ate the rest. We tucked in little Brinly, Noah, Jemma, Carolina, and Christian. That night felt so good. I knew they were fed. Abbeygail and I often gave up our food for them, but that night we all got to eat.
After an almost two-year reprieve with the Calhouns, I’d forgotten the painful times of scrounging for money to buy groceries, but it all came back to me during my senior year. When I couldn’t find a ride, I’d take taxis to and from school. I wanted to graduate more than anything. I was so close! I wasn’t going to let anything keep me from walking across the platform to accept my diploma. I worked tirelessly to make sure I was at school and after-school practices.
I’m not sure how I managed it, but I was captain of the cross-country and track and field teams during this time. I also held the prized position of NJROTC community service officer for our battalion. I handled toy drives, community fund-raisers, and school fund-raisers for our national competitions. I had more work than a bee in a hive during my senior year! Somehow, between all the couch surfing and taxi rides, I managed to take the walk with my peers. I didn’t get to go to prom, but I did graduate from high school—which is basically the same thing for a girl in my situation.
During my chaotic high school career, I achieved more than ten varsity letters; twelve national first-place awards; several first-place prizes in state competitions, including a rifle competition, which was my most prized accomplishment; a few congressional awards; and countless other awards for my achievements. All I ever wanted was to serve as an officer in the military, like most of my NJROTC peers wanted to do. More than half of my class joined the military and became part of the most elite fighting force in the world. Out of that half, several went to college for ROTC or to one of the prestigious military academies.
We had all worked so hard during our four years of NJROTC for this purpose. With that in mind, I applied for the ROTC college scholarship, hoping to make my dream of becoming an officer in the military come true. Going through the process was extremely disheartening. Most of my peers, with their 4.0s and brilliant academic careers, were also applying for the three coveted spots. I knew my grades would not get me in, but I was certainly going to give it my best shot. Maybe something would happen and I’d be selected. Master Chief always told me, “You don’t know ’til you try.” He also said, “If you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying”—so there’s that!
A few days later, I was politely informed I didn’t make the cut. For a few days after that, my spirit was broken. I wanted to be an officer so badly. NJROTC was the only thing I was truly good at. I had worked for four years with that goal in view. Knowing I couldn’t afford college on my own, I wept alone in the NJROTC conference room. After I cried, I started planning my next move toward greatness. I wasn’t going to give up. I would press in and press on.
With all the opportunities to fall in with the wrong crowd in high school or to do something incredibly stupid, trouble couldn’t find me. First Sergeant Calhoun, Master Chief McFarland, and instructors like Captain Williams, Captain Young, Master Chief Duffy, and Gunny Hanson already had. Praise the Lord for that frightening day at pre-boot camp my freshman year! My life might have turned out very differently if I hadn’t had these men leading me on at every turn.
A week after I graduated, I took the driver’s test at the Department of Motor Vehicles for the third time and passed. Finally, all those times of being the designated driver paid off! With my diploma, brand-new Florida driver’s license, and a small wad of cash I had saved up over the summer, I purchased my first car—a two-door Chevy Cavalier, painted a bright yellow.
I named her “Sunny” since she so clearly deserved the name.
I was so excited. My very first car! I drove around for hours that day. When I returned to the room I was renting in a double-wide on the outskirts of town, my good mood was once again tested. The owners told me they found someone who would pay a higher rent, and therefore they had no choice but to let that person have the room. I had to leave. They were sorry, and so was I. I packed up the few things I had, cramming Sunny to the brim. I drove to the pier, where I parked to sleep for the night.
Sadness began to fill my heart, and I wept.
Mother’s words filled my mind. Shame covered me as I tried to sleep in the front seat of my car.
Maybe she was right. Maybe I won’t amount to anything.
Will I ever become a military officer?
Am I only good at cleaning?
Who is going to love me now—now that I have nothing to offer?
Lord, what am I going to do now?
Trust in the LORD with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways submit to him,
and he will make your paths straight.
Proverbs 3:5–6