I heard folks whispering "the President is coming". I assumed they meant the President of the underwear factory. I was wrong. I watched in horror as the fire truck rolled to a stop, and Secret Service helped then President Gerald Ford as he stepped down to the pavement.
My father was excitedly tugging on my arm, half dragging me through the wall of Secret Service agents, to talk with President Ford. I looked around nervously as my father made the necessary arrangements with Ford to prostitute me to him later that evening. VanderJagt, who never missed a parade it seemed, was signing autographs. As he smiled at me, someone roughly grabbed my arm. Nervous and startled, I screamed.
The crowd laughed as a Keystone Cop threw me in the jail, scolding me for not wearing my red flannel underwear when I was talking to the President. I was trying to be inconspicuous in hopes no one would see me with the likes of Ford, but then, they did not know him as I did. The Keystone Cop rattled on and on about "how lucky" I was until my father paid my bail and I was released from the cell.
That night, I wore my Catholic uniform as instructed and went into a dissociative trance as my father drove me to the local National Guard Armory where I was prostituted to Ford. Ford took me into an empty room, pushed me down on the wooden floor as he unzipped his pants and said, "Pray on this". Then he brutally, sexually assaulted me. Afterward, my memory was compartmentalized through use of high voltage. I was then carried out to the car where I lay in the back seat, muscles contracted, stunned, in pain, and unable to move.
When we got back to Muskegon, my father sent me to the beach as always, to let the repetition of crashing waves against the beach "wash my mind free of memory" while I watched the sun set. I was totally locked into the belief that truly there was "no place to run," not even to the President of the United States.
I remember that the "sane" part of "me"-my innate personality-seemed to die after seeing Ford as President. I recall walking up the steps of Catholic Central High School one morning, reaching for the door, and crying uncontrollably. I cried myself into a heap at the top of the stairs. I did not even know why I was crying. As an MPD, I rarely cried at all. But I was still sobbing hours later when school let out. Someone found me, but I do not recall to this day ever leaving the school steps.
I never really experienced "emotion" after that day until I was rescued, deprogrammed and reintegrated in 1988. Now all of my brain was functioning through a wide variety of memory compartments, also known as multiple personalities, with no part of me left "free" of abuse. Now it was as though I had "no place to run," not even in my brain. This drove me out of my mind which is exactly what my abusers needed for total control.
