Mary

I'm feeling quite disturbed by this story. Meredith - the only reason I thought of you when I heard this is because of foster care. Anyway, here goes...

My 14 yr old neice Sarah has a best friend, Mary, 15 yrs old. A few weeks ago, Mary's little sister came to my sister's house around 6am asking her to please call the police because her dad was beating Mary all night long. Of course my sister called. They came and put the dad in jail and took Mary out of the home. Turns out, he'd beat her with a belt for 2 hours and she had cuts all over her legs from it. Not knowing that the police would do so, Sarah gave her digital camera to the little sister to take pictures of Mary's injuries.

After my sister spoke to a detective on the phone, she explained about the camera and that Sarah was afraid to call or go down there to get it back. The detective assured her that it should be okay, so Sarah called and asked if they could come get the camera back. After the little sister said it would be okay, that they could do a drive-by pick-up, the mom got on the phone. She doesn't speak English very well (the whole family are naturalized citizens originally from Egypt) but kept asking Sarah "Why you mom call police have my daughter taken away?" Sarah simply told her she wouldn't discuss it with her (yay Sarah).

Then they drove down to get the camera. Well, here comes the mom and she started in on my sister with the same line. She ended up having to have the little sister come out and translate the conversation. Poor little thing (11 yrs old I think) was terrified. My sister's answer was simply "Because your husband was beating on her with a belt. I did what you should have done. I protected your daughter. You should be ashamed of yourself" At first the mom denied even knowing about the beating, which was a total lie because it was the mom who told the dad that Mary had been talking to a boy on the phone, knowing full well he'd beat her for it. Then she changed her story saying, "He no hurt her bad. Just a little; here (pointing to her butt)" My sister asked her to explain the cuts on her legs then. "Well, no bad. Just a little. He had to or Mary end up pregnant at 16" (Gee - if I'd know THAT'S how you get pg, I wouldn't be wasting all this time and money on infertility treatments!!!) The conversation just kept going in the same cirlces, so they took the camera and drove off.

Meanwhile, Sarah found out that the dad was threatening to shave off all Mary's hair and slice her face up and if he couldn't do it, he'd send her back to Egypt so they could do it there. He made bail and was talking about taking the whole family back to Egypt. My sister passed that info on to the detective.

As disturbing as all that is, last night put the icing on the cake. I was at my sister's for my monthly massage and Sarah was on the phone in the kitchen when we came downstairs. She's not what you could call a quiet talker so we overheard everything she said. The first thing we hear is "You went all the way?!?!?!? Ewwwwwwwww! With Kevin??!!?? Dude! You've only known him for 3 months!" So my sister went into the kitchen and quietly asked Sarah about it. She confirmed that it was Mary and that she did indeed say she went all the way. My sister asked if she had at least used protection. Sarah mouthed "probably not". My sister came back in to talk to me and said that was the only thing she didn't like about Mary, how boy-crazy she always was. Apparently her parents had something real to worry about with her, but tried to resolve it in all the wrong ways. The last thing I heard from Sarah was "NO! I do NOT want to know what it felt like" at which point my sister went back to talk to Sarah some more. As I was going out the door, I heard "I won't, mom! I'm not stoooopid!"

Oh boy oh boy oh boy. Just plain disturbing.