Raven’s Trauma Was Not Shannon’s Punishment
Some abuse goes unreported because children are threatened, confused, groomed, isolated, and taught
that no one will believe them. Some abuse is never seen because the people doing the harm know how to hide
it, how to make a victim look unstable, how to turn silence into a weapon, and how to make pain look
invisible. Years later, when survivors finally understand what was done to them, they may look for
compensation, protection, support, and answers. They should not be dismissed because they are grown now.
Growing up does not erase what happened. Time does not make abuse harmless. There should always be a
way for victims to seek help, rights, safety, and legal accountability, even years later, because delayed
understanding does not mean the harm was not real.
This happened to Shannon. Raven’s trauma was not Shannon’s punishment, and Raven’s pain was not a
license to destroy a younger child. Shannon was younger than Raven and many of the other children there,
and she should have been protected. I do not care if someone has been raped, abused, bullied, embarrassed, or
talked about: you do not rape someone else. You do not turn around and choose another child as a target. You
do not make your own suffering into another person’s sentence. And if someone talks about you while you are
talking about them too, leave them alone; do not use gossip, cliques, jealousy, or pride as an excuse to plan
harm, humiliation, or abuse.
People will rationalize a person’s behavior to minimize what that person did, who that person is, or what
that person is still doing to someone else. They will say the person was hurt, confused, young, pressured,
jealous, angry, traumatized, or misunderstood. They will search for any excuse that makes the harm sound
smaller and the victim sound dramatic. But none of that will ever justify the abuse inflicted on someone else. I
do not care who the fuck you are, what the fuck happened to you, or what the fuck you are doing: you do not
abuse another person, you do not rape another person, and you do not use your story to erase the person you
harmed.
Raven, along with Tabitha Fairley, her cousin, Sydney, and others, wanted friendship, power, attention,
and control, but they did not care how anyone felt but themselves. They watched what happened to Shannon
and did not care. Shannon was five years old, and she did not truly understand what was being done around
her or to her. She was a child asking childlike questions about things she heard, things people said, and things
other children claimed were happening to them. If a child hears another child say, ‘my mother was beating on
me for no reason,’ a child’s response may be confusion: why, huh, did you fall, why would a mother do that,
or how does anyone know what really happened? Children ask questions because they are children. A child’s
confusion should never be twisted into a reason to punish, target, or abuse her.
The girls did not stop messing with Shannon. They acted as if the cruelty was normal, as if everyone was
supposed to run along with it, and as if something being wrong with Raven, Tabitha, Sydney, or anyone else
gave them permission to play in Shannon’s life. But no child should be handed an excuse that lets her abuse or
harass another child. If people can defend Raven’s feelings, Raven’s trauma, or Raven’s anger, then they must
also recognize Shannon’s fear, Shannon’s confusion, Shannon’s anger, and Shannon’s pain. You do not protect
one child and abandon another. You do not say one child deserves understanding while the other child is leftto carry the damage.
Raven and her resentful family treated surveillance, secrecy, and technology like weapons. They made it
sound as if they could see and watch people, give access to others, and then deny Shannon because they did
not want her included, protected, or believed. Shannon said no to that. No means no, even when people try to
disguise coercion as friendship, access, power, or play. No one had the right to use surveillance, intimidation,
or private information to bully a child and then search for a sick excuse to justify it. Saying, ‘this is how we
felt when someone hurt us,’ does not excuse setting Shannon up, harassing her, humiliating her, or forcing her
into a nightmare she never agreed to be part of.
Raven asked Shannon if she wanted to play with rape as part of a sick plan to mess with Shannon for real,
and Shannon’s family, witnesses, and others should have protected her instead of participating in fear,
pressure, silence, or retaliation. When people interfere with a victim’s ability to tell, threaten what will happen
if she speaks, or punish her for trying to join, report, remember, or survive, that is witness intimidation and
witness tampering. It is disgusting for anyone to say they are glad their own abuser did not have certain tools
while they sit there using power, secrecy, or technology to force harm onto another child. That is not healing.
That is not justice. That is taking rage out on a child who did nothing to them.
They sexually abused Shannon for a very long time, then tried to bury the truth under fear. They mocked
what they had done, threatened her when she tried to tell, and made her fight to explain a nightmare that no
five-year-old should ever have had to name. They wanted her words to sound too strange to believe, too
painful to repeat, and too late to matter. That is how abuse hides: it wraps itself in confusion, silence, shame,
threats, and mental torture. It teaches a child to doubt her own voice, then punishes her when she tries to use
it. Shannon tried to tell. Shannon tried to understand. Shannon tried to survive what other people were doing
to her while they worked to silence her even more.
Raven was wrong. The other children were wrong. Any adult, family member, school, or witness who
helped cover it up, ignored it, benefited from it, or protected the abusers over the child was wrong too. No
clique, cousin, reputation, secret, rationalization, or excuse matters more than the life of a child. No means no.
Stop means stop. Manipulation is not consent. Fear is not consent. Confusion is not consent. Silence forced
through threats is not consent. Shannon deserved protection then, and she deserves protection now. She
deserves support, compensation, safety, and the right to seek justice, even years later. Raven’s trauma never
gave her the right to harm Shannon, and nothing that happened to Raven could ever excuse what happened to
Shannon.
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