Sexual Assault is Always Confusing
When I was six, a strange man sat down next to me while I watched my older brother’s Little League practice on the playground at El Dorado School. The man put his hand inside my shorts and inside my underwear and felt me up. It didn’t hurt.
I was sitting on the ground with my legs straight out in front of me. The man asked, “Is that better?” He looked like a mental patient from the nearby state hospital. …
At overnight camp one summer, a male counselor I had never met lifted my long hair to his nose, smelled it, sighed that my hair smelled good, and asked if I had just washed it. Duh, I had not washed my hair. It was summer camp! I was about eleven.
I was not used to anyone smelling my hair, not even relatives. I assumed this guy twice my age was a friend of my family’s. This did not make sense, but it was all I could come up with.
A few other campers witnessed the hair sniffing, and they stared…
Robyn Fass Wang
Robyn Fass Wang is an attorney and mother in the SF Bay Area. She has written for The Guardian.
