Well its happened my friends. Yesterday myself and a very dear friend, a passionate advocate for the voices of those who’ve been harmed; Ms. Lisa Chilton, Legal Advocacy Director of St. Clair County Courthouse; we met with Illinois House Representative Jay Hoffman, and we introduced the proposal for the Family Terrorist Act – ‘Trecia’s Law’. (let me add here that Representative Hoffman’s career in establishing civil and just amendments to help our nation is remarkable, I am so truly honored to have been given his time and he did not rush me out 
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Friends I cannot share the depth of passion I felt in my heart as I spoke with Mr. Hoffman. I was so nervous my hands were shaking. In my inner self I needed him to hear what I was saying; how much we needed to take time and address these issues. It is so horrifying to me that in our human society we still continue to turn silent about the one thing that matters most for OUR entire existence as human beings, alive and breathing. Tell me why are we afraid to ask the children we know, “What happened sweetie?’.
“Why didn’t you get your homework done these past three months? Why do you keep going out with every guy that comes your way? Why are you afraid of your dad coming home?”
You know, four years ago all I wanted to do was just tell my own story and get it out of my gut. I had been forced, then manipulated, then tricked into silence about all the many different levels and types of harm I had suffered over some 30+ years. It was tearing me apart that my life was a whirlwind cycle of emotions, reactions, and explosions which had almost destroyed my own children. My choice to leave their father after our 2nd marriage together in trying to keep our family together, my choice in how I played out that choice caused a beginning of pain for my children that I have carried so extremely heavy in my heart and still today, now 15 years from leaving my last violent attacker, it is the greatest regret I have but I guess in some ways they were being guided in a more appropriate life pattern than I may have given. It shows in my daughters’’ lives through the choices in men they take and the type of life I see them living. This is not what I wanted for MY BABIES. This is not why I begged God to give me that one true gift. Please they may have destroyed my physical body, but please do not take away that one true miracle, the miracle of children.
My goodness how precious a gift to have a child, but also what a heavy responsibility, especially when you have never had any safe or positive form of parenting yourself. How in the world can we possibly guide them through and protect them when so many of us have been infected with this disgust and distortion of what life is SUPPOSED to be. Now I know its not guaranteed to be perfect and become rich, or any other form of happiness, but dammit it must be protected and it must be SAFE!!! If a child cannot lay down their head in a quiet, SAFE PLACE then what are we about and what have we become as human beings?
Trust me, I know how mixed up and confused it is, especially when we have been blocked by the enforced silence that has built our entire lives. How bad is it that a person, any person, will live into their 40’s before they ever even think about telling a DOCTOR about what’s happened? We say to them all our lives, for those who ever had a choice to go to a doctor, we tell them they fell and hit their head, I tripped, fell off my bike, ran into a door, and what is even worse than this; the doctor’s still are too uncomfortable to ask that one true question that can begin to change their entire lives, ‘What happened sweetie; truly you can tell me.’
What is wrong with our teachings about life when we look away from our own children being molested silently by someone. Ok, so we don’t actually see the molestation go on, but we do see changes in that child. We see behaviors in our family functions together that show how that child is evolving under that haunting thought of why so many people don’t see what’s happening and if they do why don’t they ask, ‘What happened sweetie, you alright, something going on inside you need to talk about? Is there a secret thing that someone is telling you not to tell. What is it child, what happened?
Friends, we cannot play these games with our society any longer. Please take a look around you, where has it gotten us that we just can’t be faced with that child’s voice telling us something we don’t know how to handle. What’s worse is that you are the adult and you don’t know how to begin because you’ve never spoken about things that happened to you. You know that forced silenced, you know that feeling of not being able to EVER talk about what happened. You’re 35 years old and have never faced a single moment of what happened but you’re all confused in life. You don’t know your way through, you’re just trying to make it the best possible way you can. You have you’re mouth to feed, clothe, shelter, and maybe you even need family to help you out. How in the world can you every ask that child what’s happened?
When I published ‘My Justice’ it was about finding my way through. I was in a relationship I didn’t want to somehow screw up. I was in a good job and my children were growing up, my son had started college. I could not figure out why in the world when something was good in my life, for the very first time it was relaxed and SAFE. No one was touching me when I didn’t want to be touched. No one was grabbing my throat while I slept and trapping me in a fear of possible death if I didn’t do whatever it was they needed or wanted me to do at that moment. My life was fabulous and my insides were going crazy, especially as I was writing and in my own therapy, since I had been forced by my many medical issues onto disability; I started writing to my children and I needed to explain it all to them so that maybe it would somehow change things. I prayed with all my soul that somehow it would change what happened in the lives of my grandchildren, even if its not the life of perfection that it at least be SAFE, CALM, SUPPORTIVE. God heard my prayers with every word I’ve ever written, including this one. He’s hid with me and all those times I ran to the cemetery and begged Him to just take me out, He kept me going.
No I am not a church going religious person, in fact I’m terrified inside a church only because my stepfather ensured me through every single breath he took that I was never good enough to be accepted into Heaven, that I would surely be condemned for absolutely everything I’d ever done after age 12, which by the way is when his greatest level of torture ever began; the year he took my virginity with the barrel of his favorite shotgun and ripped me apart. Hoping that I would never be able to get pregnant and reproduce, enforcing his reign of control and making sure that I never took a chance to tell another living soul about what happened in our house and how he and my mother used me on so many levels of either seduction or physical labor. He made sure I never spoke against another person who ever touched me again in my life. He made sure that I felt like I didn’t deserve to breathe so why should anyone ever give a damn about what was happening to me. What’s even worse is that throughout all the physical rot that ate away my skin, took away my smile with the layers of plaque that had been there for years because I didn’t deserve a toothbrush. I didn’t deserve to see a doctor about the infection of pus filled sores whom so many many people avoided touching me at all for a decade. How much more public than taking that disgusting rotting child to the bar and teaching her how to shake her ass so her old man could have some free beers?How much more public than knowing in your circle of co-workers that Malcolm had a young daughter he liked to bring around to all the parties and shit. You could even pay in on a half barrel plus to come to the house. No you didn’t have to worry about Mona, she’d go to the bedroom and watch TV. Think she was kind of jealous that I wanted to have ‘Trecia Ann’ host the parties, sit on their laps, dance around with them and yeah, you’d better damn well shut the hell up when they start touching you girl, it’s nothing dammit’
That was the very honest truth of my life friends for nine consecutive long years. I went to the same school day after day from fifth grade to the middle of my sophomore year, which is when everything was at its very most evil and it just kept getting more dark every day. This was the life of a child whom not a single soul in that entire community who knew and talked about all that child did, but not a single person felt I deserved being asked,
‘What happened sweetie?’
How much longer will we do this people? How many more children and teens will we ignore when we know for a fact something’s going on in their lives? No it may not be as dark as the life myself and already at least 300 others I know have lived, but what if it is? Are you willing to take the chance that it won’t be that bad?
So darlins, its’ like this; Representative Jay Hoffman is definitely passionate about changing the path of histories like our generation have suffered, exactly like so many others before us. It has been a cycle of human destruction since back in the Roman days and further. We have seen human slavery at its very worst and we fought the battle that lost the greatest number of human beings in any war as 50,000 men lay dead on the ground in the bloodiest battle ever fought in our country, the right for every single human beings right to be protected in their person. We fought battle after battle and spent billions upon billions of dollars helping rebuild other countries who have been destroyed for not protecting and respecting human life & protective rights. Yet in all of those battles friends, we still cannot look at the precious little child that sitting next to us on Christmas and say to her, ‘What’s happened sweetie, you alright?’
Now I know when I found Facebook and started a little thing called talking, at first it was to let Y’all know ‘My Justice’ was being published and then it started as much more; writing to everyone then became a source for my therapy, which I still need on some levels. You caught my voice and many of you then started in PM’s with me. You were sharing you stories and what happened, as you also needed finally to tell someone. You needed to scream and you needed to have someone hear your voice say, Dammit Listen to Me!! We started a little group together, we started many wonderful two years of talk radio broadcast’s together and we’ve written and posted, commented and connected. I see all of you there who couldn’t or didn’t quite yet feel strong enough to tell the stories and share that broken, wounded soul; you are now amazing group leaders, strong advocates, and we have all developed in astounding ways together. It’s been an amazing journey my loves and I am so grateful that you’ve been their for me and I pray that I’ve been their for you. This is how we connect together and we change the future for our kids in our own special little way. We share through the internet and all the way around the world just how many injustices there are in our human society, and you know what; many have become devoted and strong in this mission, but others a few, they’ve become more focused on the fame of being the one than being able to be the one that make a true change, starting with your very own family and circle of friends. That’s how we make the greatest change my friends, we become strong enough to ask that child what happened.
Now my dears, is the part where I go back to praying. The next step Lisa is seeing if she can arrange a meeting with the Illinois State’s Attorney, Brendon Kelly to see how his office can help better address or even if its worth it, to create mandates to implement action on the Family Terrorist Act – ‘Trecia’s Law’. Representative Jay Hoffman was very open to conversation, supportive and listening to the needs I wanted to make sure we address in healthcare, education, and most importantly all three of us agreed on – empower and teach our children that it’s alright to tell someone about the secrets someone is forcing you to keep. It doesn’t matter if its Mom, Dad, Step Parents, Boyfriends or Girlfriends, even the kid next door. You have the HUMAN RIGHT TO BE PROTECTED IN YOUR PERSON!!! Not one single person has the right to even put a finger on you in a sexual or harming manner. You have the right to always be safe!!!! This should be strongest in our great country of America than anywhere else in the world. It’s what our country was founded for, so that no matter who you are you had the right to live &* breathe in being just who you were born to be, and that you do NOT have the right to lay a harmful finger on any other person. You are not better than or more deserving than that person next door or down the street. You may be more powerful than that child, but so what. How strong do you have to be to never lay a harmful finger on a three week old baby, or a six year old child, or a twenty year old mother, or a thirty year old man. Not one person isn’t given the protection of their person, because the United Nation’s Global Committee have written in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
This Christmas Eve is so important to me. In a spiritual manner I am praying stronger than I’ve ever prayed before, and being more open in spirit than I’ve been since first finding my courage to speak up, tell my secrets, tell My Justice. This amendment we are asking our American Governing Person’s to review is how we can begin change in our own communities, within our own neighborhoods, and especially within our own families and ask that child, ‘What happened sweetie?’
So in my spiritual self I pray to God in Heaven above, if there is a way we can give back the importance of love and protection in our human society, please this is your chance to help us God, help us be strong enough and knowledgeable enough to teach our children that it is wrong for these harms to come to them. Teach them that if it is hurting them it should never ever be a secret, no matter if its actually them who is being hurt or if a friend at school or cousin Jimmy said something or did something that made them uncomfortable. Our Creator did not say that we are just born to procreate, but born to love each other in a spiritual respect of who we are as people. We cannot and should not ever allow the destruction of a human being on any level, but I promise you friends, if a child or a person is living with someone who is indeed their ‘Family Terrorist’ you WILL see the signs of change and trauma on that precious soul, no matter how old or young, we cannot ignore the dangers of those within our neighbors home any longer. See something, Say something – you have the adult duty to never turn away from the knowledge within your gut that something is most definitely wrong. You have the duty to your friend, your neighbor, even your own grandchildren, to make sure that they have a chance to know a safe life and lay down with their inner self in peace.
This Christmas I’ll be thinking of all of you. I’ll be hoping this writing or someone’s voice, or a person’s need will reach your heart and you will be the one to create that change in the most important place in the world, the love of your very own family.
Bless You, sweeties. Have a beautiful Merry Christmas and I’ll be waiting to hear back from the staff of House Rep Jay Hoffman after our New Year reigns in loves.
Here’s sending Magical Merry Christmas Wishes to each and everyone of you, be the change you want to see, be the one strong to ask that child –
WHO LOVES YA BABY?
Smooches y’all
Patricia A McKnight
Proposer: Family Terrorist Act – ‘Trecia Ann’s Law’ for the child she was whom so many left to suffer at the hands of her own true ‘Family Terrorists’.
Copywrited; Butterfly Dreams Abuse Recovery
Author: ‘My Justice’ Get your copy today
