Periodically, I would visit my brothers at mother’s house to make sure they were eating and going to school. However, eventually they would begin making decisions for themselves based on survival, and I would have to figure out how to navigate high school, part-time work and living on my own. My young and naive approach would bring to life my mother’s words. Evil was waiting to devour me, and I didn’t know how to recognize it’s many faces.
For a while I stayed with my eldest sister. She and her husband were going through some things, but they always made time for us. Around the same time, I met a young man who attended college and played football with my brothers. I was always a “tom boy” so I didn’t think much of it, until it became clear that his intensions were much different than mine. I was young, inexperienced in every area of life. He was a fast talker from Philadelphia, who I would later learn use to strip at night. Before I knew it, I was being pressured into something I wasn’t prepared for, sex. I was fifteen years old, he was almost twenty. Like every situation in my life, I didn’t feel like I could say no. So I didn’t.
The tension with my sister and her husband got worse. My brother-in-law was amazing, doing the best he could to build the family, while she on the other hand was still seeing other men. It became my mother’s house all over again. Having nowhere else to go, I agreed to move in with the guy and share the expenses. And just like that, while still in high school, I was cooking, cleaning, having sex when I didn’t want to, eventually paying all of the bills and not seeing a way out.
At this point in life, I knew what rape was, it had happened to me more than once. But I didn't know about statutory rape. No one ran him off. No one said, “Shannon, he’s an adult and you’re a child.” No one said anything or did anything. No one cared.
S
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