08.07.07
Violations
I have been violated.. It sucks. I have never known this feeling. I don’t know how to explain it. And yet, perhaps it is on a simple scale as compared with what many have been through in life.
My ATM card was cloned. If you don’t know what that is – well, imagine that the crooks put a special reader inside a normal bank or other ATM. You can’t see it and the ATM machine works like normal. You put your card in – get your money and leave. But, when you put your card in, the crooks reader got your mag stripe info and your pin. Poof – clone and they go on a field day to get money from ATMs around the city or the country.
Is it on the level if identity theft? No. They got a good chunk of money – for 4 days – before the bank notified me. And yes, I will get my money back, but the criminals will most likely get away with it. I was not the only one. At least 9 other people who bank at my branch had this done as well, and it looks like, according to my sources, this is something that happened recently on a nationwide scale for the bank in question. I am sure they will make good on giving everyone their money back, but it is not about that.
They stole from me – and I was not even there to stop them. I was not hit on the head and had my purse stolen – I was not robbed where I might have seen the criminal and been able to report it. It was a crime that I will most likely never know who did it. In my case, they took money from at least 4 places in and around Chicago and it infuriates me to know how unlikely it is they will be caught!
So now I wait. I will get my money back. Things will get back to normal, but I sit around and wonder – what else?
Last year, I was mugged walking home – from of all places, Church! Ok, I should not have been walking at 1 am but it was such a nice evening so I walked there at 7pm, and well, was not thinking of the lateness of my return journey. I don’t remember much. I felt a sharp pain and saw a bright flash (most likely from being hit) and then I was looking up at a couple of people who had seen it and rushed to me. I was taken to the hospital for observation overnight and went home the next day. $200 had been removed from my purse, but at least my cards were still there – my Tarot cards – which mean a lot to me.
The day after I came home, I rested – felt the bump on my head and took my pain meds. But I had been violated. So close to my own home – only 3 blocks – and I did not understand what I did to deserve it. For weeks I thought how stupid I was to walk home and yet I was angry, because only 7 blocks from my home I should be able to! The emotions were mixed. The same as now. 
No physical harm came to me this time. I did not wake up in a hospital or anything so dramatic, but it still leaves a sickly feeling all over you – as though you are dirty in some way – a way you can’t explain.
I could not even begin to understand what it might be to be raped – it is has never happened. I can, I think, understand a small part of the feelings that come with it. The anger, followed by hatred of the criminals. The frustration – and fear and perhaps most of all, the feeling that makes you wonder, “Was I to blame some how?”
Rape is 1000 times more than the emotional turmoil of having money taken from you, but there are many crimes in this world that leave us feeling “violated” in so many ways. Each in a way unique to the crime. There are no pills to take – no pain meds that take it away, and I doubt anything like anti-depressants or the like would take it away either. You are left to think and contemplate what you have been through – in your own way – finding some way to accept it and not blame yourself. Especially in the horrible crime of rape, where so many times, they try to blame you for “asking for it.” What a horrible way to portray a victim of such a terrible crime! I never understood that. I wonder – I just wonder – if a man could be raped by a woman, would that defense no longer hold water? Would a defense attorney say that the man was “asking for it” based on his clothes or the way he walked or how he looked? It is unlikely that this will hold water if the tables were turned.
In a few days, or perhaps a week, I will get over these feelings. I will move on with my life. North Halsted Market Days is this weekend. I will be out with friends and my camera – and hopefully all these feelings will fade. But do they ever fully go away, or some day, in another instance, will the feelings of “violations” return?
I don’t know..
Kat