July 25, 2007
My name is Carmen Luna Avalos, although now I go by Carmelita Gettings-Hill from former marriages. I am 43 years old, I am Latina, I am a survivor of MacLaren Hall.
My story, although not much different than so many others that are posted, is terrifying for me to go back in time to bring it all back to the surface.
I have been abused all my life in one form or another, but it began as a small child born to Efrian Avalos and Zenaida Avalos in Tijuana Mexico, I was brought to the United States as a baby with my parent's expectations that I would somehow make all of their dreams come true. I would become a doctor or lawyer or some other high status well paid career woman that would truly give them the sense of pride that they had produced a worthy human being someone who would give them a name and status among our people.
I don't know why I made them so angry all the time, I just know that I was not loved, I could not do anything right, and I was a worthless human being to them even at the young age of 3, my first memory of abuse, the memory of my dad yelling at me and kicking me down a flight of stairs. That memory haunts me and terrifies me even to this day. I have suffered post-traumatic stress disorder flashing back into the moment of time where I was abused, it is as real to me when I get those flash backs as it was the very day it happened.
I was beaten with belts, shoes, scissors and anything really that happened to be handy at the time. I was cursed at and told that I was possessed by demons as my mother chanted over me with burning weeds to exorcise the evil spirits that were with in me. At 12 I was tied to two beds crucifixion style, my mother cut off all of my hair and tried to cut my tongue out with scissors so that I could never embarrass her again, I was beaten to the point that I was "unrecognizable" . I was tied to a chair positioned at the bed where my father laid like a vegetable from suffering a stroke that it left him paralyzed, blind and with no memory of who I was, my mother screamed that it was my fault he laid there suffering because I had brought in the evil spirits and I was an evil child.
The final episode at 15 when my mother lost it in front of the movie theatre and beat me down to the ground hitting the back of my head to where I was temporarily blinded and suffered from skull fractures was the last time I lived on my beautiful Catalina Island. I was placed under 24 hour protective custody with police protection at my hospital door. I was flown by helicopter off Catalina and placed in MacLaren Hall.
I have never been so terrified in my life. The beatings at home where familiar, I seemed to have a sense of knowing when they would end. I knew my abuser. This was a whole new ball game. After hours at the LA County Sherrif's station where they took my information for the "Records" that are now lost, I was turned over to a woman whose name I never remembered nor ever saw again, she drove me to unknown territory in a huge city. I was from a small Island population of only 1900 at the time. We pulled up to the building where there were guards with guns, barbed wire on the fences and buzzers to pass each new section of the building. Sound like jail anyone? It was the end of the line for the woman who had driven me there and she was now saying good bye to me. I was stripped of all my personal belongings and processed. It immediately sunk in that this was it for me, I fell to the ground and I grabbed her ankles begging her not to leave me in that place. They whisked me away to a large bathroom like area that had tile and a hose I was humiliated as the three women, a nurse and two assistants instructed me to remove all of my clothing, they proceeded to check my ears, nose, eyes, my hair for lice and then hosed me down like a dirty, filthy animal, I was ordered to face the wall behind me and bend over as one of the attendants proceeded to search my private parts for weapons and drugs.
At the age of 15 and having been raised in an extremely sheltered environment, I had never seen or interacted with a gang member nor had I ever seen or interacted with a black person. I did not know that young kids could be so angry, mean and hateful toward one another. I did not know about street smarts or survival skills that I would soon realize was crucial to my survival.
My experience was at best, supposed to be a relief from the sufferings and wrongdoings of my own parents yet I was attacked by a gang of girls both Latina and Black, and I was raped. In a state protection agency no one heard my screams for help; no one came to my rescue.
I remember a little girl who was only 7 years old, she was in the TV room or wherever the main social gathering room was and I asked her why she was put in there. She looked up at me with the biggest black eyes bruised from head to toe and without saying a word to me she lifted up her little arms to show me the scars where her mother had burned her on the stove for not obeying her. This is the best the state could have done for this poor little traumatized girl or for me for that matter? I didn't do anything to deserve to be there and I clearly remember sobbing on my cot when it was dark and asking God "Why me Lord? What have I done God to make you mad at me for you to give me these parents and for you to punish me and put me here to suffer?" "Why did I get put in the hospital? Why did I get removed from the only home I had ever known? Why did my mom get out of jail within 7hrs with just the signature of a check to the sheriffs station? "
Today, I sleep with my TV on every night; I can't sleep without it because the silence only allows my thoughts to wander into the darkest corners of my mind. I have had many experiences where the frightful demons are pulling at my body and lifting my bed up off of the floor. The same demons that possessed my soul in MacLaren Hall. I have been in therapy off and on all of my life as money/ insurance would permit. I have been suicidal because I felt unclean, unworthy thanks to the trauma and abuse I suffered in MacHall.
Carmelita, All rights reserved.
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