A Tape Doesn’t Change a Goddamned Thing

Earlier this week, the following piece by Karrie Higgins ran on the Huffington Post’s blog platform; it was titled “Donald Trump confessed to sexual assault on tape and so did my brother, and here is what I know: a tape doesn’t change a goddamned thing.” A few hours after it went live, Huffington Post took the multi-media essay down, then later deleted Karrie’s account. She has not gotten an explanation for either action.

I saw this going down on social media. I thought her work was, as usual, masterful, and I wrote to ask if she’d like a new home for it at FGP. Full Grown People isn’t a magazine about politics. But, I believe that it is a home for work that tackles power and vulnerability, voice and dismissal—subjects that are inherently political. So, just a friendly reminder: the comment space isn’t a place to debate candidates, but if your voice has something to do with Karrie’s work, speak up! —Jennifer Niesslein, ed.

CW: sexual abuse, sexual assault, audio depicting a pedophile grooming and threatening his victim, Donald Trump audio, sexual abuse and rape apologists

If you are a victim of sexual assault in crisis, please call RAINN at 800.656.HOPE (4673).

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By Karrie Higgins

When Access Hollywood leaked a recording of Donald Trump bragging about “grabbing women by the pussy,” I felt the same empty relief I get after a good puke. Finally, a misogynist with a history of violence and rape accusations would be unmasked for the predator he is. And yet, I knew deep down: a tape doesn’t change a goddamned thing.

December, 2007: my brother, talking to a 16-year-old girl being coached by the cops:

transcript:  “Honey, I did NOT … come, oh that’s crazy. Oh, my God, oh my God, I’m just sick. I can’t believe this shit. Oh my God. This is just, this is just bizarre. I just can’t believe this. I did not touch you sexually. I, if, if, you took that way, way wrong, my God. My dear, you, I’m trying to get as honest as I can with you, I mean, that’s way wrong. It’s just, tickling you or wrastling you or grabbing you. If that, if that’s what you thought I was doing, then that was just, that’s not right, I mean, I, that was not my intention whatsoever, my God.”

He didn’t know the call was being recorded. He didn’t know anyone else would ever hear him.

“I need you to tell the truth,” the girl said, over and over, until he broke down and confessed.

Confessed on tape:

transcript: “Well what we did was wrong. Well, when we were wrastling and doing all that, it was wrong. It was inappropriate. Obviously it was very inappropriate. And I did not mean to hurt your feelings or screw your head up, for crying out loud.”

 

Imagine that played to a jury. The charge: sexual abuse in the second degree of a child under twelve, a Class B Felony in the state of Iowa, punishable by up to 25 years in prison.

Nobody could ever call me a liar again, I thought.

Now I know better.

The humiliation of a man accused is always more important than the trauma of a woman assaulted.

transcript: I don’t want your mom to hate me. [crying] This is my life. This is all I have.

___

I watch as Trump’s victims come forward, say they feel vindicated.

Jill Harth:

He grabbed me. He’s a big dude, 6 foot 3, and at the time I was waif-like. He was like, ‘I’m tired, let’s lay down.’ So in this bedroom — I hate talking about this — he went for it with the kissing, he had his hands all over me, really pressing down on me, definitely had a hard on. I had worn pants strategically. I knew better than wearing a skirt around him anymore. It was a barrier of protection …

Harth said she feels “vindicated” by the tape. “I would love to get some kind of apology from anybody in that camp.”

Temple Taggart:

Watching him relive his sexual aggressions on the video, she said in an interview on Saturday, “made me feel a lot better.”

“It was like: ‘Thank you. Now no one can say I made this up,’” she added.

I want to be happy for them, but I know what comes next.

___

___

Men in my social media feeds:

The timing is perfect. The Clintons still got it.

It’s fishy someone held onto that tape.

Crooked Hillary is trying to rig the election.

Gold diggers.

tweet by @realDonaldTrump 8 Oct 2016: The media and establishment want me out of the race so badly – I WILL NEVER DROP OUT OF THE RACE, WILL NEVER LET MY SUPPORTERS DOWN! #MAGA — Donald J. Trump

___

____

Trump campaign decal:

Google image search results showing numerous images of Calvin pissing on the name “Hillary”

___

May 1983, eight years old: six weeks after the first time I had sex with my brother, opening weekend of Return of the Jedi. A neighbor boy pitches a tent in the tall grass of his backyard, says, “Let’s play Star Wars.”

“I’ll be Princess Leia,” I say, “in the costume where her boobies show.”

I crawl into the tent. The boy unzips his pants, sticks the tip of his penis through the flap in his Superman Underoos, and pees on me.

Later, he tattles to his mother: “Karrie said boobies.”

And she tattles to my mother: “I will not have her polluting my son.”

I stuff my wet clothes in the laundry basket and don’t tattle back. I am a bad girl. Zero credibility.

___

In my hometown: Kennedy High School Principal Jason Kline forced to delete a Facebook post denouncing Trump:

To my students, but especially to the boys: I want to be sure you know. What we have learned about Donald Trump and how he speaks about and treats women is not ok. It’s not ok for a 60-year-old man, its not ok for a 13-year-old boy. It’s not ok for anyone.

The same high school where a math teacher and coach grabbed my pussy. Not just any teacher or coach, but the Cedar Rapids version of Jerry fucking Sandusky.

I can still smell his breath when he said, “I know things aren’t right at home.” My body pulled close to his. His hands down my pants, under my panties. I know things aren’t right at home. Not concern. A threat.

On the day he died, my Facebook feed flooded with eulogies. Best math teacher I ever had. Best coach ever!

Friends changed their profile pictures to his face.

His face. In my Facebook feed. The man who grabbed my pussy.

I vacillated between nausea and a low boiling rage: Look how he helped those students. Look what he did for everybody else. 

My Kennedy High School transcript, senior year:

scan from my high school transcript stating “Early Grad”

I never enrolled for the final trimester.

I went to my counselor’s office. I said, “I can’t take it anymore.”

He said, “You’re college material. This place is holding you back. Let me get this taken care of and get you out of here.”

And he did.

I remember my last day of school. It wasn’t anyone else’s last day of school. I ran my finger along the tile walls as I walked down the hall. I needed to feel them, needed to feel that I was there, because I was about to disappear, and nobody would even notice.

My mother forced me to attend graduation. I showed up in my cap & gown. Nobody said, “Where have you been?” Nobody asked. Nobody noticed. It went exactly how I knew it would. I was glad.

I never submitted my senior picture to the yearbook.

Poof! I was gone. Like I never even happened.

That’s what sexual abuse and assault do to you. That. Like you never even happened.

___

Trump endorser Senator Sessions:

The Weekly Standard: So if you grab a woman by the genitals, that’s not sexual assault?

SESSIONS: I don’t know. It’s not clear that he—how that would occur.

tweet from @karriehiggins 10 Oct 2016 “ICYMI: I had to explain the mechanics of “pussy grabbing” to a man who wants to control my uterus.”

 

___

I write my hometown paper. I tattle on that teacher.  I say, “Do you want to help me tell this story?”

___

I call my favorite high school teacher, the one who wrote get thee to a nunnery in my journal when I confessed to having the hots for Hamlet, the one who saved my life without even knowing it.

When I tell him Mr. _______ grabbed me by the pussy, he gasps. An OH SHIT YOU’RE IN TROUBLE kind of gasp. Not because he doesn’t believe me, but because that teacher is a mini Jerry goddamned Sandusky.

“The faculty all thought he was a god.”

___

Why now? Why now? Why now? People ask.

But it wasn’t just now.

July 25, 2015:

Facebook post dated July 25, 2015 by Karrie Higgins: “A widely beloved figure from my hometown died, and I am watching everyone eulogize him on Facebook, while all I can think about is this one time we were alone, and he touched me in an extremely inappropriate way, then pulled my body to him, and said right up in my face, “I know things aren’t right at home,” not like concern, but like a threat. As if to say: “You’re already a lost kid. Nobody is going to care.” I’ve been waiting 25 years to be able to tell the story, and watching all these eulogies and these heartfelt memories of him in my newsfeed is making me sick to my stomach … that queasy feeling you get when you know that — once again — you will not be believed.”

I panic about being grilled for the details. I panic about being accused of making it all up because I waited so long.

“What if I get a detail wrong?” I ask my husband.

They are going to attack my partial deafness and auditory processing disorder, accuse me of mishearing. They are going to say my bipolar makes me hysterical. Unreliable. They are going to say my memory is bad because of the seizures. They are going to say epileptics are liars. 

“It’s the same story you’ve told me since undergrad,” my husband says. He means back in the 90s, not long after the coach assaulted me. “It will be OK.”

___

What do you want? Money?

tweet from @karriehiggins 12 Oct 2016: “Regarding that high school coach/math teacher I outed for sexually assaulting me: I want his baseball field blown up by a nuclear bomb.”

___

Cedar Rapids Public Schools called the principal’s post “political.”

They are wrong, but they are also right.

tweet from @KellyannePolls (Kellyanne Conway) retweeting @HillaryClinton: “Every survivor of sexual assault deserves to be heard, believed, and supported.” Kellyanne asks: “Does that go for Juanita, Kathleen, Kathy and Paula? #girlpower @karriehiggins reply: How ya like that #girlpower now? with attached screen grab of @realDonaldTrump tweeting: “100% fabricated and made-up charges, pushed strongly by the media and the Clinton Campaign, may poison the minds of the American voter. FIX!”

My brother’s Airborne buddy:

Well how would you like to have the job of searching the internet on multiple sites if your job is to locate underage participants? That’s a real job. I had to do that once, took me a week to find the videos of the youth involved. It was with her step father and they were live on camera. He was a soldier. Not anymore. 

Your brother was the best. He was the best of the best. He ended up getting fucked over hard. Fucked over hard by a woman.

Choosing sides is always political.

___

My brother was a god, too, a sex god drag racing his GTO through the streets of Cedar Rapids before I was even born. Everybody loved him. Every girl wanted him:

___

tweet from @karriehiggins 14 Oct 2016: Because I thought (was taught) I was so ugly that nobody would believe a man would sexually assault me. #WhyWomenDontReport

My brother’s Airborne buddy, when I contact him for stories and photos, 7 years after my brother would have faced trial, if he hadn’t swallowed morphine, methadone, diazepam, gabapentin, and desmethyldiazepam, and died in the fetal position in front of his couch:

All I see in your profile pic is a skinny girl with tattoos. I mean, where are the boobies? You’ve got my cell number. I want to see what you got.

___

The Fraternal Order of Police endorses Trump. The Fraternal Order of Police endorses Trump. The Fraternal Order of Police endorses Trump.

Fraternal: of or like brothers. 

___

 

Letter from my attorney to the Poweshiek County Police: “I represent Karrie Higgins to assist her in obtaining her requested audio recording from your department. The Poweshiek County Sheriff’s Office previously asserted that it will not release the recording based on Iowa Code Section 22.7(5) allegedly in an effort to protect the victim’s confidentiality. Section 22.7(5) is inapposite where, as here, there is no expectation of confidentiality or privacy. Hawk Eye v. Jackson, 521 N.W.2d 750, 753 (1994). The telephone conversation, already made public, lacks any expectation of confidentiality. Furthermore, the victim’s identifying information, ________’s identifying information, is also already a matter of public record. Regardless, and in any event, Ms. Higgins will accept an audio copy of the conversation which redacts the victim’s speech rendering the alleged privacy concern moot. If necessary, Ms. Higgins will pay a reasonable fee to redact the recording, although we would ask that you please first provide us with an estimation of the cost.”

___

transcript: I want you to get your head squared on straight, but at the same time, I’ll be darned if I’m gonna be humiliated by some court of law.

___

 

email from the sheriff to me: “Ms. Higgins, I have shared your request with Poweshiek County Attorney Rebecca Petig and the issue was discussed at length. Ms. Petig and I share concerns with releasing the audio recording of the phone call between your brother and the victim. We feel that although the written transcript and the audio recording contain the same information, the actual recording is obviously more personal in nature and we feel that when the victim made the recorded call she would have had the expectation that the recording would not be released to the public. Additionally, we would have no control over what happened to that recording once it was released. In light of your relationship to the people involved, we would allow you to listen to the recorded call in person, here at the Poweshiek County Sheriff’s office, if you would like to arrange a time to do so. However, no recording devices would be allowed. Hopefully this provides you with an opportunity to put this matter to rest. Sincerely, Joel Vander Leest, Chief Deputy.”

 

They wanted me to surrender myself to the same jail where they locked up my brother for his last Christmas on Earth. They wanted me to submit to a grope for illicit recording devices. They wanted me to sit in an interrogation room, maybe even the same one my brother did. They wanted me to play the part of my own molester.

Protecting the other victim, they said, even though I asked for her voice to be redacted.

The police know the rules of the game: the victim guards the secrets, the victim guards the secrets, the victim guards the secrets.

___

I told them I was partially deaf, that listening once would not be enough.

I told them my epilepsy and neurological conditions make travel an undue burden, that I didn’t have the money to get to Iowa, that even if I could get there, I would be stranded at the airport with no way to get to a small-town sheriff’s office in the middle of nowhere. I can’t drive, I said.

They were violating the spirit of open records law, I said. Violating the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The sheriff never responded.

I am a disabled sexual abuse victim of a man he wanted to put behind bars for sexual abuse, and he did not respond.

___

The Fraternal Order of Police is endorsing a man who makes fun of disabilities.

___

I started to see conspiracies in the telephone call transcript.

a checkerboard of all the instances of the word “inaudible” as it appeared in the taped telephone call transcript

 

I played Mad Libs. I filled in the sentences with all the best defenses.

What did the cops not want me to know?

___

They made my play the part of my own molester:

transcript: Karrie reading the line “This is my life” from her brother’s taped police phone call transcript in three different ways (argumentative, crying, scared).

___

From the settlement in Karrie Higgins v. Poweshiek County Sheriff:

text from my settlement with the Poweshiek County Sheriff: Plaintiff in consideration of providing a copy of the redacted audio recording of Mr. Greg Higgins from 2007 does hereby release, acquit and forever discharge Poweshiek County, the Poweshiek County Sheriff’s Office and its elected officials, employees, and Chief Deputy Joel Vander Leest (hereinafter designated collectively as “the County”) and all of the County’s employees, officers, directors, agents, the Iowa Communities Assurance Pool, American Risk Pooling Consultants, Public Entity Risk Services of Iowa, together with their employees, officers and directors and all other persons, firms, corporations (hereinafter collectively designated as “Other Released Parties”) from any and all liability, injuries, or damages whatsoever for the claims alleged in the Lawsuit and any and all other causes of action she may have against the County based upon the County’s response to her request under Iowa Open Records Law pursuant to Iowa Code Chapter 22.
from my settlement with the Poweshiek County Sheriff: “Plaintiff in consideration of providing a copy of the redacted audio recording of Mr. Greg Higgins from 2007 does hereby release, acquit and forever discharge Poweshiek County, the Poweshiek County Sheriff’s Office and its elected officials, employees, and Chief Deputy Joel Vander Leest (hereinafter designated collectively as “the County”) and all of the County’s employees, officers, directors, agents, the Iowa Communities Assurance Pool, American Risk Pooling Consultants, Public Entity Risk Services of Iowa, together with their employees, officers and directors and all other persons, firms, corporations (hereinafter collectively designated as “Other Released Parties”) from any and all liability, injuries, or damages whatsoever for the claims alleged in the Lawsuit and any and all other causes of action she may have against the County based upon the County’s response to her request under Iowa Open Records Law pursuant to Iowa Code Chapter 22.”

 

Injuries and damages:

I sued the sheriff who arrested my brother.

They made me play the part of my own molester.

They made me mistrust the very same cops who should have been my heroes.

Why did the police have to become my enemy?  Why couldn’t there be one goddamned hero?

 

 ___

 

The Fraternal Order of Police STILL endorses Trump. The Fraternal Order of Police STILL endorses Trump.

___

The week of the Democratic National Convention, I got word from my attorney: the Poweshiek County Sheriff had produced the audio.

Validation. Corroboration. On its way to me via first class mail.

On the television, Hillary’s campaign theme:

It’s not my kind of music. I’m a Nirvana girl, a Prince girl, a Cure, Depeche Mode, Joy Division, Smiths girl.

A Bernie Sanders girl.

Hillary’s presidential campaign and my lawsuit victory collapsed into one event. Hillary’s theme music became my theme music, the only salve that made anything OK.

I listened to it on repeat. I bawled.

I wanted to see my brother be brave. I wanted him to let the words fall out.

___

transcript: It just, get better because I love you and I’m so sorry. It happened to me too when I was younger, but it was not right, but I’ll tell you about that another time, I mean that has nothin’ to do with what happened with me and you whatever, but I love you- and I don’t, I don’t want to destroy our family over this.

___

Just locker room talk, just locker room talk, just locker room talk. 

screen grabs of the word "just" as it appears approx. 51 times in my brother's taped phone call, arranged in a grid/graphic representation; at bottom, two larger fragments, one that says, "Fuck you, I'll just call ______ and tell her I'll just go to the God damn cops" and one that says, "And don't just fucking go and involve ..."
the word “just” as it appears approx. 51 times in my brother’s taped phone call, arranged in a grid/graphic representation; at bottom, two larger fragments, one that says, “Fuck you, I’ll just call ______ and tell her I’ll just go to the God damn cops” and one that says, “And don’t just fucking go and involve …”

The presidential election and my abuse collapse into the same event.

___

 

I can no longer distinguish between the Trump campaign and sexual abuse. I can no longer distinguish between the past and the present.

just, adj:

based on or behaving according to what is morally right and fair.

just, adv:

barely, by a little; very recently, the immediate past

I can no longer distinguish between tattling on my hometown’s Jerry Sandusky and voting for Hillary.

I am going to talk to that reporter. I am going to name names. I am going to say what I want to say. I am going to let the words fall out.

And even though I was always voting blue no matter who, even though I backed Hillary from the moment she won the nomination, #ImWithHer more than ever. I am more excited to vote for her than ever.

one of Hillary’s campaign theme songs

“You rush in where others won’t go,” my favorite high school teacher said on the phone.

I am going to rush in, and I don’t really care if nobody else believes. If Mr. Kline is going to be censored, I am going to blow up everyone’s favorite pussy-grabbing coach.

I might only have one match, but I can make an explosion. 

A tape doesn’t change a goddamned thing. A tape changes everything.

•••

KARRIE HIGGINS is a writer, magician, performance artist, ink-maker, forger, seamstress, disability activist, and rebel theologian without a faith living in Boulder, Colorado. Her writing & Intermedia art have appeared in Black Clock, DIAGRAM, The Manifest-Station, Quarter After Eight, Western Humanities Review, Rogue Agent, Deaf Poets Society, Cincinnati Review, The Los Angeles Review, LA Times, and many more. She won the 2013 Schiff Award for Prose from the Cincinnati Review and her essays have twice been notables in Best American Essays. She is too hardcore for the Huffington Post. karriehiggins.com

Read more FGP essays by Karrie Higgins.

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25 thoughts on “A Tape Doesn’t Change a Goddamned Thing”

  4. Your work is on another level, Karrie. No one shares their story with the same sharpness and determination. You leave me sorting out the pieces for months.

  10. Whoa…this is how it’s done. You are a master, Karrie. I bow down to your writing and art. You are an advocate and know how to make people FEEL things. Brava!

  12. I felt you in this piece. So powerful in your vulnerability. Women need each other to believe. We need to have each other’s backs. I believe you. I’m with you.

  13. gooooosebumps ALLL over yes yes yes thank you SOOO much for creating this piece and for having it published! I LOVE your new bio! “Too hardcore for the Huffington Post” is the BEST.

  19. Huffinton Post’s loss..this hit me hard. It made me feel sick..I teared up from memories where I can relate. I’m so sorry you went through this. Thank you for fighting and sharing.

  21. “I can no longer distinguish between the Trump campaign and sexual abuse. I can no longer distinguish between the past and the present.”

    Me too. <3

    You've just told more truth in one place than I've seen anywhere.

    Thank you, thank you.

  24. Karrie, the truth you told is powerful, and you told it so well with your words, with the videos, with your tweets, with that goddamned email from the police telling you they wouldn’t comply with the open records law, with everything you put into it all these years, because that piece didn’t write itself, it came into being the Rilke says: “Everything is gestation, and then bringing forth.”

    YOU BROUGHT IT.

    I thank FGP for publishing your piece and putting it back into the world so you can be heard and heard and heard again. I read it because a friend and fellow writer, Leslie, posted this link on our blog so that our followers can read it, too. She’d read it on HuffPo before it was taken down.

    And wow, I love the end of your bio, “She is too hardcore for the Huffington Post.” Yes, you are.

    We all saw you be brave. <3

  25. Wow, that was pieced together perfectly! Although I was nauseated while reading it, (my stomach tends to churn when I come across stories reminiscent of mine), I hung on every word. “That’s what sexual abuse and assault do to you. That. Like you never even happened.” This is me.

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