Underinflated Balls

UPDATE!!

NATIONAL SEX TRAFFICKING STING 

nets nearly 600 arrests before 

2015 Super Bowl

"As part of the "National Day of Johns" sex trafficking sting, spearheaded by the Cook County, Ill., Sheriff's Office, police said that they captured hundreds of men and women attempting to hire prostitutes through websites such as Backpage.com and Craigslist. Police also said they rescued dozens of women who said they had been forced into prostitution…" READ MORE 

Is this still a man’s world or what? 

Why are they still talking about underinflated balls? Why? Because they’re not really talking about underinflated balls, they’re talking about money. About men making money. About men losing money.

I don’t want to talk about or hear any more about underinflated balls.

I want to talk about the under-aged sex workers men will be bringing in to Glendale, Arizona for the 2015 Super Bowl.

It’s hard to be ahead of the times on this one. The trouble with statistics is that you have to wait until after the fact to gather them. I have no stats on how many child prostitutes will be unwillingly brought into Glendale next weekend. I do have stats on previous Super Bowls, however: an estimated 10,000 women and minors were brought into Tampa, FL for sex at the 2009 Super Bowl. The numbers for actual arrests are almost comical by comparison – “One human trafficker was arrested and jailed for advertising a 14 and 18-year-old for $300 on Craigslist as a ‘Super Bowl Special’.”

            The Super Bowl may be the Las Vegas of sports events, sex, drugs, alcohol, whatever happens here, stays here, but for the young women who are forced into sex trafficking, it’s no picnic. Most of the men who pay for sex are married with the children, have good jobs and are obviously earning enough money to buy a Super Bowl ticket, travel and pay Super high hotel rates. They will return with no regrets to their wholesome lives after engaging in vacation sex with a child. The child, however, will regret each moment she is forced to have sex with anywhere from 25-50 men every day she (or he) is at the year’s most prestigious event. Makes one wonder about other events – say the political Conventions, I don’t want to single out a political party here – or any other such event you can imagine.

Good people, I have found, do not like hearing about this situation. Good people like to concentrate on the game itself, on the wholesomeness of this family sports event, on having enough snacks and booze for their friends and colleagues at their Super Bowl party. They didn’t even want to see Janet Jackson’s pink nipple - that was too shocking! So, it follows, that during the game no one wants to think about a little girl chained to a bed, shot up with heroin to keep her docile, trained to not gag by an older girl, trained by an older girl to act sultry or scared – most of the men want scared – if I go on about this, you’ll blame me for telling you. How can you say such things?

            How can you ignore them? How can you eat your snacks and enjoy the game knowing that women and children are going to be hurt afterward – for fun?

            You need to know about the damage group. The damage group is made up of the girls to whom men are allowed to do anything they want, usually involving horrible beatings and torture while performing sexual acts. In the documentary Playground by filmmaker, Libby Spears (now streaming on Netflix) about sex trafficking in the United States, one official commented that some of the acts they were seeing he couldn’t describe, against children so young, that no normal person could look at them without being disturbed. Officials blame easy access of child pornography on the internet for the increase in more extreme sexual acts. Users have become dulled by the nightmares they've witnessed there and are looking for more and more perversions.

Most people think sex trafficking is a problem found only in other countries. That’s simply not true. The United States has 100,000 to 150,000 under-aged sex workers; most of them are runaways or captives who were forced into a life of prostitution. Take the example of Debbie, an A student from a good family in Phoenix, AZ who was abducted from her driveway at age 15, held at gunpoint in a dog kennel, given dog biscuits to eat, forced to have sex with multiple men, raped by her captors for sport, stuffed into a drawer under a bed where she was found by police 40 days after her abduction. She was lucky. Most abducted children are never found.

Here is a quote from Gregg Abbot, Texas Attorney General: "The Super Bowl is one of the largest human trafficking events in the United States."

If you click on the NBC News link, the page says, “We're sorry. The text content of this page is no longer available.”

            But I found it: in a great article by USA Today’s Rick Jervis about efforts by Texas law enforcement to meet the challenges of what was expected to be going on underneath the surface glamour of the 2011 Dallas Super Bowl: "The Super Bowl is the greatest show on Earth, but it also has an ugly underbelly," Abbott said. "It's commonly known as the single largest human trafficking incident in the United States.” Ernie Allen, President of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children said, “Each year, 100,000 to 300,000 American kids, some as young as 12 years old, are exploited in the sex trade. The traffickers use the Super Bowl and other large events such as the World Cup to ply their trade. The traffickers try to seize that opportunity to do business.” Traffickers are making money by exploiting children and their co-conspirators are men, most often family men, who are literally lining up to purchase sex with a child.

            Back to underinflated balls. How appropriate. Because that is exactly the kind of balls men have who need to abuse children, who need to scare little girls, who need to force children, who need the perversion of having sex with a toddler or younger - oh, yes, it’s too awful, and too true. Maybe strong women have scared them. Maybe the media has shown them too many sexual images of girls and boys at younger at younger ages. Maybe the easy access of the internet is to blame for the increase in cruelty and perversion. Probably. The sheer number of these easily available, horrifying acts have dulled the senses of perverts who now want more and more aberrant acts performed. But, that’s no excuse. Child prostitution is as old as time. Children are easy prey for monsters. Who knows what horrors existed in ancient Rome or medieval China. It’s always, always, always the same – it’s bullying. Men who need to hurt a very small, very helpless person in order to feel large.

            Men with underinflated balls.

©PatriciaGoodwin, 2015           

What you can do:

If you suspect trafficking, CALL the National Human Trafficking Resource Center: a toll-free 24-hour hotline at 888-373-7888.

Give as much as you can:

Polaris Project

Amirah

List of Human Trafficking Organizations

Patricia Goodwin is the author of When Two Women Die, about Marblehead legends and true crime and its sequel, Dreamwater.

Dreamwater

   

    In order to write Dreamwater, the sequel to When Two Women Die, I had to follow my character, Ned Low to some very dark places. On the surface, he is the powerful, evil character we love to hate. But, Ned is more than that.

    When Ned was kidnapped at the end of When Two Women Die, I knew in my heart what would happen to him. Upon researching the time period, my suspicions were confirmed. Because I thought the most obvious position he could hold was cabin boy, a lowly servant on the ship, the first thing I did was look up the definition of cabin boy. I found this sarcastic reference on urbandictionary.com: “Often buggered by the professional sailors onboard until they get shore leave.” Buggered is a slang term for sodomy, though both terms have been used to mean other forms of sexual contact, or even loose living in general. Further research reinforced what I thought would happen. But, the clincher came from the articles (ship’s rules) of pirate Captain Bartholomew Roberts, which stated “No boy or woman to be allowed amongst them.”

    From that rule alone I knew I was right. The fact that a rule needed to be made said very clearly that the situation was real. Ned would probably have been sexually abused. I felt, in Dreamwater, Lowther would have taken Ned for himself exclusively.

    17^th Century attitudes toward sex were very different than our modern ones. We think in terms of child abuse, and rightly so. As late as the 19^th Century, however, child prostitution was rampant. Decent people will always find adult sex with a child to be abhorrent. Nevertheless, for many children in the 17^th Century adult sex may have meant survival - a very sad kind of survival. Every day, Ned wants to “slit Lowther’s throat” but he needs him to survive.

    Pirates were savages. Not followers of rules, though historians will tell you, “Oh, yes! The ship’s articles were taken very seriously.” I think historians are referring to privateers, those civilized beings that bathed, dressed in silk and played violin. A privateer was a different animal. A privateer had a license signed and sealed by royalty to commit theft and bring the spoils back to his King or Queen. If a privateer killed while committing this royal theft, the law might look the other way.

    Pirates were criminals. They had no license to steal or kill. They may have had articles but, from my research, I doubt a real pirate followed stringent rules. Even now, shipboard rules are in place to keep order, as a ship cannot sail in chaos. However, pirates were wild. They were almost constantly drunk, and often fell overboard because of it and drowned. To illustrate the bedlam that was normal on a pirate ship: the articles of the real pirate Ned Low included rules about drunkenness during the taking of a vessel, as well as rules against shooting pistols below deck. Sex between men aboard ship, where quarters were cramped and privacy nil, seems to have been a matter of convenience and mutual consent; it happened regardless of rules. The rowdy celebratory sex that occurs after successfully taking a ship in Dreamwater was a well-chronicled part of pirate revelry. Pirates’ lives were based on risk and murder, thievery and instant gratuitous pleasures that were to be grasped quickly and savored lest the chance be wasted. Death was quite literally at their door.

    In my research, I also learned this harsh truth: pirates loved to torture. Pirates were vicious. They celebrated their victories by playing with their victims in ways that rivaled the Inquisition. Every form of torture I mention in Dreamwater was documented and performed at one time or another by actual pirates or slave traders. For instance, as an adult, the pirate Ned Low really cut off and roasted the lips of a captain whose ship he had taken, and forced the man to eat them. Slave traders could be just as brutal as pirates, using torture to control their captives.

    However, Ned Low is more than a villian. He has redeeming virtues: his strength, his vulnerability and his love for women.

    In Dreamwater, Ned is taken up by the whores of Isabella as a kind of toy or mascot. Ned is also in love with Molly Treadwell. Ned Low is more sociopath than charming rogue, but his appreciation for women and especially his affection for the good and beautiful Molly Treadwell redeem him. And, yes, a part of Ned’s attraction to Molly is his desire to have power over goodness. Perhaps to defile goodness, but after doing so, he is in love. Goodness wins.

    In history, the real pirate Ned Low was a romantic. In his youth, he had been something of a playful thief back in England. He tried to go straight in Boston, where he wed his true love, Eliza Marble. The real Ned Low did not become a pirate until his beloved wife died in her second childbirth. He had already lost a son. After some trouble during which Low killed a man, he turned to piracy. Low left his daughter behind, an action about which he expressed deep regret. Sometimes, when he was lucid and not drunk, he would “weep plentifully” for his lost child.[1] Because of his own romantic experience with love, Low always asked a man if he were married before pressing him; he would only press single men on to his ship. He was known to free female prisoners.

    Loving Molly might be Ned’s redeeming virtue and Molly may essentially be a good person, but her affection for the wicked Ned proves her youthful attraction to the forbidden: Molly is not completely innocent. Like a typical pre-teen, Molly is off dabbling in things she shouldn’t – magic and romance with a bad guy. I had no intention of joining Ned with Molly. She threw her scarlet ball of yarn according to the courtship game in When Two Women Die, but when Ned’s foot came down on it, and all the girls giggled, I realized Molly loved Ned. I had intended to marry her to another character. It was clearly an instance of characters taking off in their own direction away from the author’s intention. I felt something shift in Molly and I followed her lead. I always listen to my characters and consider where they want to go. I am in charge, but after all, they are the ones who love and fear and struggle.

    I want to talk about age. In Dreamwater, Ned and Molly are very young. Because of their youth, I wanted to stress in 1995 how advanced young people can be; that is why I made Pete and Sarah very smart at only ten, and why the ghost hunters are fifteen years old.

    In the 17^th Century, there was no age of consent, as we know it, because fathers gave their consent, not girls or boys. Children were betrothed or even married at age two or three, sometimes because one parent, or both, had died. Marriage was an economic necessity of life. A partnership of survival. A classic example of early marriage is in Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet, when Juliet’s mother chides her for being unmarried and middle-aged at fourteen. Elizabeth Treadwell herself was married at fourteen. Molly Treadwell, at ten. Therefore, we do have a marriage consummation scene between eleven-year-old Ned, who has been tutored by the prostitutes of Isabella on Isla Hispaniola, and Molly, who is a ten-year-old virgin.

    Ned is also strikingly handsome. We seem to have a deep psychological need to be attracted to our villains. Some of our most popular villains are handsome. From Robert Lovelace and Alec D’urberville to Patrick Bateman and Tom Ripley, we love to hate an appealing villain. Ned is certainly good-looking. In When Two Women Die, when we first see him, I describe him thusly: “His sharp features cut a darkly handsome profile into the bright day.” Some have called Ned a hero, because of what he accomplishes in Dreamwater, but I think we have blurred the line between hero and villain. Sometimes, in our stories, our villains become our heroes.

    I want to take a minute to discuss the liberties I have taken with history. The real Ned Low, according to records, was born in London in 1690. I wanted Ned to be a character in When Two Women Die and I needed him to be at least nine years old in 1690, so I adjusted his birthplace and his age.

    There were other, more inconsequential, details I altered for my own use in When Two Women Die. I changed Edward Dimond’s house to be much simpler than historians believe because I disagree with them about the house. I think it was built much earlier than the 18^th Century, because Edward Dimond was in Marblehead before the 18^th Century. For the sake of drama and character, I wanted Ol’ Dimond to be a loner in a very small fisherman’s shack. I also made Elizabeth’s house more humble, with a ladder instead of a staircase in order to add tension and danger to events that happened on that fateful stormy night when she and the children hid from pirates in the upstairs bedroom. I changed Roger Williams’ name to “Codger Williams” for effect. By 1690 he was already dead when I needed him to ride down the road so that Rosie could throw raspberries at him. However, the real Roger Williams really did try to force the women of Salem to wear a veil over their faces and John Cotton really spoke against him. Just at a slightly earlier time. I wanted to show how attitudes were beginning subtly to shift in Salem toward the dangerous and frightening situation of the witch trials. In When Two Women Die, Rosie goes to see Ol’ Dimond to ask his psychic advice about her pregnancy. In Dreamwater, just two years later, she will be arrested for practicing witchcraft with the old seer.

    Dreamwater, like When Two Women Die, is full of magic and paranormal occurrences. Marblehead, with its simple historic homes, old winding streets and dramatic rocky shores, lends itself to mystery. Pirates are still sighted climbing over the rocks and the mysterious Englishwoman’s screams are still heard at midnight. I hid Rosie, Molly and the baby, Lena in the “Witch Cave” in Nahant, possibly a site of ancient worship, where an accused witch and her daughter actually did hide in 1692.[2] Magic and the paranormal (more normal than we realize) were ever-present in our ancestors’ lives and are still present in our own. We’d recognize these constant, daily phenomena if we only looked with open eyes and open minds.

    Of course, in Dreamwater, I have a whole set of other characters in 1995 who are also struggling to make their dreams come true: Peter Treadwell is trying to come to terms with his young wife’s sudden death, while his daughter sees and speaks to her mother’s ghost; his son Pete wants to study ghost hunting, but finds himself caught up in internet dangers; Jo Simmons just wants to enjoy her new business and her new husband, but she is being stalked; Cassandra is working very hard on understanding reality as well as she understands her psychic visions.

    We’ve learned a great deal about how to live since the 17^th Century, as you will see, when you read Dreamwater. Now we have someone to call when we are in trouble. But, we still struggle. 

    As ever, Marblehead emerges as an extraordinary place. A place of almost paranormal loveliness, a place of history, of magic, a place where people still strive, but a place where many, rich and poor, have divined how to live, how to find their dream and how to make it real.

---

[1] Edward E. Leslie, Desperate Journeys, Abandoned Souls, Houghton Mifflin, 1988, account of the captive, Philip Ashton of Marblehead, p. 95.

^[2] Robert Ellis Cahill, New England’s Ancient Mysteries, Old Salt Box, 1993, p. 32.

Patricia Goodwin is the author of When Two Women Die, about the legends of Marblehead, and Dreamwater, the sequel to When Two Women Die, about the terrifying journey of Ned Low in 1692 and the restless ghost of Beth Treadwell in 1995.

These Are My Mothers

Mama

of the soft hazel eyes

heavily lidded

soft cheek, soft lap

cooking, always cooking

cooking love cooking through me

Nona

Soft white hair, like an old Indian

Close buddy, sat close, me, I was three, on the table top

Sewing buttons to my pants leg, Nona toothless laughing at me

Bruta! Bruta!

Granma, what’s bruta?

She says you’re ugly.

Granma was always busy

"Nona bruta!" I yell in my baby voice.

Nona laughs so hard.

Granma

always working

Washing, cooking, washing, cooking

Food she grew, sublime food

Melted in my mouth and sent me to heaven on earth

Nona, Granma, Mama you were my first angels

Mama

Red curls glowing in the light

I give your red curls to my characters

Who knows if anyone will read them

Mama, soft Mama

Cooking with your coat on, as soon as you came home from work

Why did you go to work?

Never eat anything out of a factory or a can

Huge wheels of cheese and great loaves of crusty bread and whole fish

Carried from the North End

And pizza folded dripping with saucy hot pepper Granma grew

Mama’s eyes tear, “Oh, so good!”

Mama foraged in the vacant lots

Kids laughed at her

Bitter dandelions, good for your teeth

Grrrr!

St. Joan

Sunshine walking beside me to school

Once I learned how to make her laugh

All that sunshine was mine

She made me so beautiful!

Miss V

Knows the stars

Can reach backwards and forwards as a river

patient as a mountain

brave, wise

eyes open and closed

in ecstasy

Grace of the Gardens

Seed, seer, child

Throwing rainbows over the lawn

Making rainbows in the sparkling water we sprayed at night over the streetlight

Raspberries by the handfuls

Ever green grass, ever soft flowers

Ever apple tree now gone

Lima

Brown rice Mother

Miso for Ground Zero

Held my hands for so long

Diane

Brown rice Mother

Part American Indian

Giver, give, give, give

Did you become your students?

As food becomes flesh?

And most of all, daughter

My child is my mother

Teacher, woman of the world

Knower, encompasses clouds

Water, air, soil, gold, quicksilver

Alchemy, fire

All the elements, and love

Make life

These are my mothers

Who are yours?

©Patricia Goodwin 2013

Patricia Goodwin is the author of When Two Women Die, about Marblehead legends and true crime and its sequel, Dreamwater, about the Salem witch trials and the vicious 11-year-old pirate Ned Low. Holy Days is her third novel, about the sexual, psychological seduction of Gloria Wisher and her subsequent transformation. Her newest poetry books are Telling Time By Apples, And Other Poems About Life On The Remnants of Olde Humphrey Farme, illustrated by the author, and Java Love: Poems of a Coffeehouse.