Reply #99: I know what you mean.

[Lyric]

When I was 12, I was staying the night with my friend S******. She had moved in with her Dad because her Mom's boyfriend had been making creepy, inappropriate comments to her and her mother refused to believe her. We were up past "bedtime", giggling in the bedroom, and her Dad came home from work and heard us. He proceeded (right in front of me) to drag S****** out of the bedroom by her hair, strip her to her underwear, and beat her for fifteen minutes with a wet leather belt. I started crying and wound up running back across the neighborhood to our trailer in the middle of the night, completely terrified of what I'd seen. I told my Mom and Dad, but they didn't seem to believe me that it was a awful as it really was, and they didn't do anything except forbid me from going over there whenever her Dad was home. S****** wound up moving out to go live with her Mom, and then wound up being raped by her Mom's boyfriend after all.

I'm still in touch with S****** today, but we've never spoken about that stuff. I don't even know what to say. I still blame myself a little; like I should have called the police myself. But I was only 12. I didn't know the police would listen to me, especially since S****** had begged me not to tell anyone.

I tell my son now that if he sees ANYTHING like that at one of HIS friends' homes, he needs to tell me ASAP and I absolutely promise him that I will believe him and get the authorities involved.