Ken Williams: 25th Homeless Death and a Woman’s Story

http://www.noozhawk.com/noozhawk/article/093009_ken_williams_25th_homeless_death_and_a_womans_story/

By Ken Williams, Noozhawk Columnist

Battered wife. Homeless woman. Rape survivor. How could one person be made to endure so much?

Even though this story happened several months ago, it still lives with me daily.

It had been a brutally dry winter with every forecast rain event a no-show. Perhaps that was why the storm that actually delivered rain was jacking the emotional level of the shelter toward a manic meltdown. The shelter was crowded with all sorts of homeless: those seeking escape from the elements as well as those trying to elude the terrors of the mind, be it mental illness, the scourges of alcohol and drugs, or simply plain despair.

I had started my rounds earlier that morning on State Street, looking for a homeless woman in need of medications. With the gutters running fast and deep from a downpour, I had been unable to negotiate the leap and ended up in the middle, soaking my shoes and socks. In sarcastic humor, I looked up, thinking this was not the way to start the morning. It was an omen of a bad day. If only I had known.

At the shelter, I was trying to cut my way through the crowd of soaked bodies, fielding questions and requests left and right. Bed extensions were needed by some to prevent them from sleeping in the rain. Others needed to see a doctor or needed a referral to Social Services, or a thousand other needs that comes with being at a homeless shelter. When “Susanne” saw me, she stood up. As is her want, her eyes were flighty, quick in sight, darting up to register greeting and then fleeing. “I’ve been waiting for you,” I heard her say, along with another voice from behind asking for bed rest.

I was in a hurry and impossibly rushed, so I told the second person to come with me to the doctor’s station and thought to tell Susanne I’d see her later in the day. But something in her fleeting eyes, a darker pain than was usual, shadowed them and brought me to a quick stop.

“I need to talk to you,” she stated slowly, yet firmly.

“OK,” I replied.

“Not here,” she said. “In private.”

I really didn’t have the time, knowing that frequently her mental illness forced her into rambling, pressured and time-consuming, one-sided dialogues that tested my patience. But, again, something was off — something tragic was forcing her hand, and now mine.

“OK. Come with me,” I told both women.

Once in the doctor’s office, I quickly took care of the bed rest request and ushered that woman out the door. Turning to Susanne, I smiled and asked what could I do for her.

“I was raped,” she said.

Three words, terror words spoken simply, quietly shattered the normalcy of the morning. I tried hard not to look over to the doctor, Lynne Jahnke. I wanted to focus everything on Susanne, and I wanted her to know she now had my undivided attention. I quickly shut the door and sat down next to her, with my hand on her shoulder trying to comfort her.

What transpired next was a story straight from hell. Multiple rapes over time and distance spoke of her shame, her pain — the humiliation when she saw others witness it and do nothing to stop it.

The decision was made quickly to take her to the hospital. Walking through the shelter to my car, my mind wheeled from the assault. I remembered trying to cool passions from homeless men who threatened retaliation against the perps, telling them the police would take care of it, and of comforting homeless women who milled about in shock and fear as the rumor mills cranked into high gear about Susanne’s assault.

On our way to the hospital, we gently tried to ascertain exactly what had happened. Once there, we were put into a small room with dimmed lights, waiting for the police and the sexual assault team. For an hour, the details of the horror were injected into a stream of conscious of a damaged mind. I shuttered when she told me of the beatings and torture her husband had subjected her to, of trying to raise and protect her children in that hellhole, and how she slowly lost the grip of sanity — and now this.

How could one person be made to pay so much? I could hear her fractured soul wheeling from a lifetime of pain. A battered wife. A homeless woman. A rape survivor. But strength was present, too. She refused to allow either the rapists or her husband to steal her soul. She told me she knew she was a good person, a person of God, and that the entity stood with her, as did I and the doctor.

Walking out of the emergency room, walking out of the nightmare, I found that the weather had cleared. It was brisk and life affirming. Looking up, I saw that the purple mountains had been dusted with pristine snow. Contrasts clashed of the graciousness of nature with the dark heart of mankind. I cast a quick glance over my shoulder, looking for and thinking of the penalty that is imposed upon the mentally ill, and the cruel consequences of being born that way or simply broken by life experiences.

I asked to the silence: Has God simply walked away from a world lost in violence and hatred? Has God forsaken us as we have forsaken those afflicted with mental illness or subjected to unspeakable violence? Do we have a right to ask God not to if we continue to do so?

Postscript

“Larry,” a talented artist who died Tuesday, became the 25th homeless person to die in Santa Barbara this year. It’s noteworthy that this “transient” was born, raised and lived his entire adult life in our community. In the end, he was broken by the fastballs and sliders that life hurled his way, and he found Oak Park to be his final home. This man was talented beyond belief — such a tragic waste.

— Ken Williams has been a social worker for the homeless for the last 30 years. He is the author of China White and Shattered Dreams, A Story of the Streets.

http://www.noozhawk.com/noozhawk/article/093009_ken_williams_25th_homeless_death_and_a_womans_story/