Many, many more.
This morning, the algorithm of my browser at work that suggests news stories to me brought up the most recent PSNI statement on the riots in Ballymena. The PSNI chief had been to visit the girl whose sexual assault is being used as the 'reason' for these riots. The PSNI chief said her family was horrified at the riots. Said the girl has been re-traumatised by the scenes. Do I trust absolutely anything said at a press conference held by the PSNI? No. But for the first time, it hit me. That somewhere in Ballymena, there is a girl who has been navigating the ever-broken justice system as riots that claim to be in her name happen around her. Somewhere, there is a family reeling from a vigil they organised being co-opted by out-and-out racists and turned into pogroms against the migrant community in the area.
She's five years younger than I was when I was assaulted. I remember the look of pity in another woman's eyes when I told her I had been assaulted when I was eighteen, "that's too young," she had said just above her breath.
Last summer, during the riots, it felt like my sexual assault sat on top of my skin. Another friend had flagged a potential crowd heading there, and when one particular man responded he'd be there shortly, I felt I had to leave. I felt odd and selfish leaving, but the coast was clear. I did loops of the Lisburn Road in my running gear and squatted in doorways to catch my breath whenever I was caught off guard by police sirens blazing by. I felt selfish that the most violating personal violence I had ever experienced was at the front of my mind during a time of such mass violence towards so many.
I hope this girl is being protected and reassured that her speaking up did not cause the pain and harm that other children in the community have suffered. Survivors of sexual assault, victims, or whatever we're supposed to be calling ourselves these days, must carry that unnameable burden for the rest of our lives. The last thing this girl needs is to be surrounded by more violence from boys and girls her own age who are being emboldened to inflict as much harm as possible on those who don’t look or sound like them.
I'm terrible at reading comments on articles about the riots at work. Especially the comments I get on the outdated browser we use. Hundreds and hundreds of comments about out-of-control immigration. I regularly laugh with a co-worker from London about how white Belfast is.
I was an immigrant to Ireland when I was four years old. An extremely white, extremely blonde, extremely Irish-looking immigrant. The only thing that's ever given me away is my extremely silly accent. We came to Ireland for many reasons - the artist's tax break my Dad got for his screenwriting work, and initially just for a year or two. My parents owned a home in Hexams but we were renters here at first. Then Ireland became home, my parents bought a house in 2007, and the crash trapped us in negative equity in the place we'd already chosen to stay. I moved to Belfast when I was eighteen, only planning to stay and study before immigrating out of Ireland. But I stayed. I’m twenty-four now. I feel I’ve done more of my growing up in Belfast than I ever did in Dublin.
During the riots last summer, when moving a friend out of their house on the Donegall Pass, they asked me: "Are you not scared too? You're an immigrant as well." I laughed it off. They don't care about immigrants like me. They don't care about white girls whose classmates used to curl my ringlets around their fingers, affectionately teasing that my hair was like something straight out of an Irish dancing competition. My mother, when she still had a visa to live in Ireland, used to regularly forget about her appointments; the guards in Balbriggan used to laugh it off, catch her up on the stamps she missed with no question.
As I've grown up, I've realised why my parents didn't want me to grow up in the US. We never lived there—we visited, sure, but the majority of my life has been spent this side of the Atlantic. My mother lived through numerous riots, wildfires and other disasters growing up in LA. My dad witnessed a mass shooting on the same block as his apartment during his one year in New York for his master's. He also went to school briefly in some southern state, and on his first day of school there,he discovered the KKK recruiting on the high school lawn. As affairs currently stand, it's clear why they kept me away from America, and I've become more and more grateful they did. It was painful to grow up with no extended family in the land of everyone having a million cousins. It's painful still as my grandparents get older—not only the distance but the current death rattle of the empire hates cunts like me. England, where I was born, was never really home either. But Ireland was. Dad said he loved leaving to visit the family in LA, but when he saw Dublin airport, he could breathe again. Ireland has always been my home, but because I live in the six counties, I'm denied citizenship. The bitter irony: the got-fuck-all agreement never imagined anyone would want to come here, want to build a life here.
My parents have left Ireland now. My dad shaking his head, saying 'this isn't the country we moved to', repeats in my head whenever riots flare up. Whenever I look to a future of staying here, of these riots repeating year after year, I play it again in my head. I remember the worry in my dad's voice when I tell him I had been at that first counter last summer, when I told him I had fallen after a firework was thrown into the counter.
Yesterday, on the phone with a friend who was with me at that first counter demo, running around with a Sharpie writing lawyers' numbers on friends' arms as the violence we were about to face became evident, she asked why no one was there to counter in Ballymena after the first night. And I didn't know. I didn't have an easy answer. Was it too far? No. Was everyone who was out on the street last summer still reeling? Possibly. Was there anything being organised? Other than a rally coming days late and nowhere near the violence or the communities affected, no. I thought about it for the rest of the night. To stand against those people who claim they are 'rising up' because of what happened to that girl. To stand against those who claim to care about the violation that comes with every sexual assault.
What if a counter demo stood there reading out a list of all the women in the North who have been killed or raped by men that they never rioted for? Women who were assaulted and killed by British and Irish men. By men who were their husbands, their sons, their boyfriends, their partners, their neighbours. Is throwing a brick into a yoga class going to undo the damage that comes to the fabric of people's lives. Is setting alight a lesuire centre where children are learning to swim inside going to repar the fabric of whatever is left of the social contract?
How much harder have these people made it for sexual assault survivors to come forward, all while claiming they're rioting to protect women and children? How much safer have women been on the street since Monday night? How are any of us to feel safe when just down the road from us, there are rows of streets with posters in the window declaring "LOCALS LIVE HERE"? How are any of us supposed to live with ourselves when we have done nothing materially to oppose this? That we did not organise fast enough. That we left it to the PSNI to 'sort out'. We decided those people were far away enough that it wasn't any of our business. We have failed every family, burnt out, every person who had a slur or a threat thrown at them on the street this week. We failed our neighbours.
We have failed that girl.
We have failed yet another girl.