Memoirs of A Healer/Clinical Social Worker: Autobiography of Bruce Whealton

Chapter 8: Assaulted!

During and just before my senior year in college, as an undergraduate at Georgia Tech (as opposed to my later graduate studies), I was assaulted with some shocking news.

Let me fill in a few tidbits that will be important to consider later. Just before I started my senior year in college, I got a call from my sister. She reported that she had been assaulted by both of our parents. She was extremely emotional and distraught. She was about 19 and had started going to a community college in Florida after graduating from high school.

Let's back up a bit. After I started at Georgia Tech, my father got laid off and then got a job in Florida. Carrie, my brother John, and my parents relocated to Hobe Sound Florida from Connecticut. This was a long-distance move of 1300 miles. Carrie was still in high school when this happened.

I got the call as I was starting my senior year at Georgia Tech. I was glad to be someone with whom she felt she could share this news. She described what she and her friend had discussed. I knew which friend she meant as she described the matter. To be honest, I didn't know this girl that was friends with Carrie, but I can remember it was the friend that was incredibly sexy. I'm just saying this to fill in the most minimal of cues.

Obviously, by now, dear reader, you understand that I am not shallow, but I do notice things. I had some conversation via email with Carrie last year in 2020 about this and at first, it sounded like she was going to tell me she forgot it. So, I blurted out, "you had talked to your friend who was that sexy girl."

Anyway, back to 1988. Carrie was attacked but she said they didn't call the police. She and her friend had decided when they are talking after she was attacked by both our parents that "next time they would have to call the police." Instead, she moved.

We used to fight growing up but then we got closer to each other. The fact that she told me something so emotional never left my memory over all these decades.

They had said "Next time." Yes, there would be a "next time." We had been abused growing up.

Sadly, Carrie NEVER had a meaningful relationship in her life! I cannot give you the name of one single guy who she ever mentioned in over fifty years!    

I remember not knowing how to act around our parents when I came there for Christmas and before the next quarter at Georgia Tech. If I was too friendly with Mom and Dad, would Carrie think that I condoned what was done to her? She definitely knew that I knew this was so wrong!

My brother had an easier time because he was 5 foot eleven and could stand up to our father.

There are other things that I remember about that time period that might have indirectly created problems between my parents and me.

I started feeling good about myself because of the support I was getting at school/college from both my counselor and some very good friends, Thomas and Jo Lee. I don't have clear memories of what I shared but just that I discussed the various forms of abuse with both of them.

Anyway, when my parents came to my graduation, Thomas and Jo-Lee were there as well. I had not told my parents that I had needed to reach out to friends for support. The way in which I grew in self-esteem made me feel so much better about myself. I had self-compassion. As such, I felt the confidence and comfort to share my experiences with my good friends.

At my graduation, Jo Lee made the most effort to be cordial with my parents. She had her "feelings" though about the things that happened to me which they caused and about me having been hurt. For my friend Thomas, it was much harder to act friendly and cordial because of what he knew. He was a much quieter person than Jo Lee. So, what was interesting was that after graduation, my mother said that she got along fine with Thomas, but she didn't feel comfortable talking with Jo- Lee.

If she only knew how much more intensely Thomas felt toward them, she would have been even more shocked. Obviously, she picked up on the tension, and put two and two together. However, her way of dealing with it was to deny, deny, deny among those who had been present like my siblings and me. I am NOT saying that the topic of abuse was ever broached at all by any of us. Thomas, Jo-Lee, my parents, and I had tried to find things to talk about, but you could sense the tension.

In terms of her denial as a coping mechanism, I began to realize she even fooled herself into forgetting things.

It was against this backdrop that I moved in with my parents after graduation without realizing or considering the tension that would characterize our very strained relationship during the next two years, and a few months before I moved on to live on my own when I got a job in a new city - Wilmington, North Carolina.

In the next chapter, I will begin to discuss this next chapter of my life. The next chapter would be a life full of far greater joy, love, and success than I had already known.