UNAUTHORIZED VERSION

by Julie Steiner

“Choir Boys 2” by Christina Clare

• Charles Spencer says he was sexually and physically abused at elite boy’s boarding school (The Independent, March 12, 2024)

• Former Mormon bishop highlighted in AP investigation arrested on felony child sex abuse charges (AP, March 13,  2024)

• Nearly 500 victims of church sex abuse in France have received financial compensation (AP, March 14, 2024)

• Quiet on Set Uncovers Abuse Allegations at Nickelodeon, Raises Deeper Issues (Vanity Fair, March 14, 2024)

• Middlesex County jury awards $25 million in 'horrific' foster child sexual abuse case (MyCentralJersey.com, March 15, 2024)

• Victims of Catholic nuns rely on each other after being overlooked in the clergy sex abuse crisis (AP, March 16, 2024)

“There is no sorrow, pain, or woe…
no suffering He did not know,”
we used to sing. That’s how I knew
the Christ Child was molested, too.

Confused, afraid, and mortified,
He told His mom—who said He lied.
Since mine refused to understand,
I knew He’d known that, too, firsthand.

Each time He said or acted out
what children shouldn’t know about,
she spanked the young Emmanuel
and told Him He was bound for Hell.

That filthy-minded, foul-mouthed kid
reformed, because of what she did.
For decades, she’d congratulate
herself for having laced Him strait.

“I disciplined Him out of it,”
that saint would brag, while He’d just sit—
impassive, passive—and endure
her calling clobbering a cure.

(What “cured” us was we’d moved away
from those who’d made us frequent prey
on seeing no one took our word
for anything we said occurred.)

The current lyrics for that hymn
leave nothing fuzzy, nothing dim,
and nothing to be taken wrong
by snarky teens, who’d say the song

skipped birth pangs, menstrual cramps, and such.
But how I’d sung it was as much
support as victims might derive
back then, for having dared survive.

Let others sing the new, improved,
and ambiguity-removed
text. I can’t. I can’t unknow
the words I needed, long ago.

Julie Steiner is a pseudonym in San Diego, California. Besides The New Verse News, the venues in which Julie's poetry has appeared include the Able Muse Review, Rattle, Light, and The Asses of Parnassus.

CALENDAR GIRLS

by Julie Steiner

St. Agnes, stained-glass window in the parish church of St. George in Fritzdorf, Germany.

The head of an independent enquiry investigating church child abuse in France said Tuesday that there might have been up to 10,000 victims since 1950. Jean-Marc Sauve, head of a commission set up by the Catholic church, said that a previous estimate in June last year of 3,000 victims "is certainly an underestimate. It's possible that the figure is at least 10,000," he added at a press conference where he delivered an update on the commission's work. A hotline set up in June 2019 for victims and witnesses to report abuse received 6,500 calls in the first 17 months of operation. "The big question for us is 'how many victims came forward'? Is it 25 percent? 10 percent, 5 percent or less?," Sauve told reporters. —France24, March 2, 2021

January: Agnes—her name means “Chaste One”—
holds a lamb (a pun on the Latin agnus).
Note the flowing streams of her hair, which hid her
     twelve-year-old body,

naked, on parade to a Roman brothel.
Note the sword employed when her would-be rapists—
like the flames lit later—refused to touch her.
     Notice the palm branch,

signifying martyrdom. Note her crimson
robe, another emblem of Christian martyrs.
Patron saint of victims of rape, Saint Agnes,
     ora pro nobis.

*

February: Agatha—Greek for “Good Girl”—
bears her severed breasts on a plate, serenely.
Tortured for her chastity. Never raped, though.
     Virgin and martyr.

Spared the degradation of rape’s defilement,
though she died a sexual sadist’s plaything.
Lesson: God won’t tolerate rape’s pollution
     tainting a Good Girl.

*

Skip ahead. Miss May is Antonia Mesina.
Head and face smashed in in the nineteen-thirties.
Age sixteen when brained by a thwarted rapist.
     I was a teen, too,

when the Pope beatified her. Another
virgin-martyr patron of rape survivors.
Verified as virgo intacta—something
     ever-so-private;

something that her modesty wanted shielded;
something she had given her life defending;
something that her coroners broadcast widely.
     Waved in our faces,

alleluia. See how the Lord protects His
favored ones from genital violation?
Doctors’ probings proved that she’d kept her hymen.
     Proved she was holy.

*

Moving on: Maria Goretti, farmgirl.
Miss July. In 1902, a neighbor
stabbed her fourteen times when he failed to rape her.
     She was eleven.

How had I offended the Lord at less than
half her age—allowed to be raped, not murdered?
Even in my innocence, I was guilty.
     I was unworthy.

God withheld divine intervention, proving
I was not an Agatha, nor an Agnes.
I’d deserved what happened to me, like other
     rape-punished children.

*

Pray for us. And pray for a Church whose members
help abusers stigmatize rape’s survivors,
though Augustine’s City of God said virgins
     raped are still virgins.

Pray for us. And pray for a Church more heartless
now than when Aquinas affirmed that raped nuns—
even those impregnated—still are virgins:
     mind over matter.

Pray for us. And pray that our Church recalls that
Miss December—virgin and martyr Lucy—
claimed a second heavenly crown would honor
     those who’d been ravished.

How it would have helped me, to hear that virtue
wasn’t something stored in a telltale membrane
someone else’s lust could destroy, forever
     leaving you lesser.

How it would have helped, to have heard this message:
Virtue—male or female—cannot be graded
pass/fail, based on criminals’ choice to harm you.
     (Gruesome injustice!)

How it would have helped, to have heard Survival
isn’t proof of sinfulness. Share your burden.
Minus that, the upshot was Hold your tongue, or
     all will condemn you.

Rapists want the world to despise their victims.
Shame buys silence. Shout! Let the Church proclaim this:
Rape indeed does happen to blameless people.
     Calendar, update.

Author's references:

Stanza 13: Augustine, City of God, Book I (Chapters 16 and 18).

https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120101.htm

Stanzas 14 and 15: Thomas Aquinas (with Fra Rainaldo da Piperno), Summa Theologicae, Supplement, Question 96, Article 5, Reply to Objection 4.

https://www.newadvent.org/summa/5096.htm#article5

Julie Steiner is a pseudonym in San Diego. Besides TheNewVerse.News, the venues in which her poetry has appeared include the Able Muse Review, Rattle, Light, and the Asses of Parnassus.

PARADISE THEATER 1936

by Marie G. Fochios

Photograph by Erik Ravelo from his 2013 sequence “Los Intocables” (“The Untouchables") featuring a variety of issues plaguing children around the world. “The right to childhood should be protected,” Ravelo writes.

Movie house where splicing comes unglued
And the malignant image
Repeats itself again and again and again
Indecent as a pistol shot penetrating,
Entering a random target.

Fumbling, he grabs the child’s hand,
Pressing down.
Only the darkness and the voices and the shadows
Conceal the agony
The hardening into a freeze frame.
Encrypted for life
Until . . .
#MeToo

Marie  G. Fochios lives in New York City and taught in the New York public school system for over 30 years. She studied poetry at The New School with Pearl London.

UNTITLED AMERICA

by Scott Jessop

Pantalone

evicted the widow and roasted her children     his giant proboscis gleeful his lips smacking as lovers parted as he slithered into the marshlands of stories taradiddles flowing from his cup whetting tongues of hopeful ears and disappeared in darkness and memories of cultural gray matter dumping grounds     Cry for our villains     the Joker had an abusive father Lex Luthor was unloved   Dracula was only defending his home   the cop who murders innocent Black boys on empty streets cares for his sick father   the boy stole cigars you know   the terrorist is disaffected    the racists had his cattle confiscated by jackbooted government agents wearing black designer Hollywood costumes    hear the sirens City of Compton nine bullets the investigation was closed before it opened     our poisoned food employs fracking geo-techs belching coal soot to keep Kentucky happy while polar ice caps burn in the San Gabriel Mountains above jungles of Starbucks and trees of In and Outs    but we must understand why the father beat his daughter to forgive the priest who raped his son    why the cop shot that unarmed boy and the 19 bodies in the backyard    Because our hero is a serial killer or meth dealer or convict or Drax the Destroyer    because Hitler made the trains run on time and Mussolini did it for the glory of Italy and Franco did it for himself  and the Glenda mistreated the Wicked Witch
          vigilantes walked through Roman streets with fasces beating Black boys in hoodies with candy in their pockets and Batman is a vigilante and TV cops shoot but cut to commercial before Castle sees the body and the Badoon invade    the panel shows collapsed buildings but the streets are clean   as the Towers fell I saw no bodies    General Zod wiped out half of Metropolis but no bodies were seen    a blood-free massacre as all our massacres are because Marcellus Wallace is cool and Coke is the real thing (never mind the diabetes) I want my

archetypes

sympathy is for the devil and forgiveness is mine sayeth the Lord.
Man plants evil.
           Waters it    weeds the garden and hoes the row    stories myths teach us the night and day of morality so we can see it in the diminishing sun of twilight    the hero understands the hero is compassionate and God-like in his forgiveness    but knows that evil is not marginalized or homogenized or realized    Evil is not ambiguous.

Malus malo est

Pantalone


Image: Pantalone costume design  by Serge Sudeikin (1925) for Stravinsky’s Petrushka at the Metropolitan Opera, NY. Image source: WikiArt


Scott Jessop lives in the 135-year old, haunted Midland Railroad station in Manitou Springs, Colorado with his daughter, Kathleen and his cat, Jack Kerouac. He is a corporate video and TV commercial producer, poet, spoken word performer, and Pushcart Prize nominee for Penduline Press for his short story "Mephisto".

NIZHONI, A YOUNG NAVAJO

by William Roland Rozar

Image source: Indian Children's Program

                                 April is Child Abuse Prevention Month 
                                        --Navajo-Hopi Observer, April 22, 2014


  This is my poem
                              This is my song
    I beat it on my drum
    My father beats me everyday
    He says it will make me strong
    And that someday I will pass my strength
    On to my children
    Who I will make strong.
                              But I just hurt,
    All the time,
                              And want to run away
    To leave and never return,
                              That also hurts,
    I must find a place
                                Where no one
    Can touch me.
                                This is my song
    I beat it on my drum.


William Roland Rozar is a poet who lives and writes in Eugene, Oregon.