A young boy walked into a police station and calmly took off all his clothes in the middle of the office.
His nudity revealed a body covered with bruises, welts and burns and left the officers in shock. The boy asked them to go to his house and arrest his father. They told him he could sign a complaint.
He sadly explained that a complaint would only intensify the beatings if his father weren't arrested. He had already been hit by a meat tenderizer and locked in a closet, and his treatment paled in comparison to the cold, methodical batterings his mother received. He told police his father might even kill him.
It was 1967. The police said it was a private matter and instructed the boy to take care of it himself. The boy returned home - if you can call it that - and tried to buy a gun so he could kill his father. If he had succeeded, he would never have blossomed into a four-sport star and a Florida State football player.
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This is one of the horrific real-life stories domestic violence survivor Victor Rivers shared at the Spring of Tampa Bay's Gift of Peace breakfast Thursday. His moving, poignant speech detailed how he and his siblings overcame the difficult upbringing and broke the cycle of violence.
"The body can heal; mine has," said Rivers, a successful actor. "But the battered psyche and soul is much harder to heal."
Although he was never fully aware of the abuse his mother endured, Rivers said at one point she collapsed in the street while taking a load of clothes to the Laundromat. Doctors told her that years of beatings had left her so battered she was in God's hands. Amazingly, she survived.
Just when you thought Rivers' story couldn't get worse, he explained that when his mother was nine months' pregnant with her fifth child, his father pushed her out the back door and left her at a hotel.
When she returned, her husband had taken her four children (and everything else) and embarked on a brutal cross-country trip from Los Angeles to Miami. It took months for Rivers' mother to find her family - after the baby was born.
Eventually, Rivers challenged his father, and the abuser cowered in fear.
At 15, Rivers ran away from home. Despite a string of foster homes and participation in a gang, Rivers survived, thanks in part to a loving adoptive family and organized sports.
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Yet Rivers, who has appeared in such films as Zorro, Amistad and Hulk, did not even give the most dramatic presentation of the morning. His keynote address came after Greensboro, N.C., actor Wambui Bahati presented a part of her one-act play I Am Domestic Violence.
Bahati, another survivor, took on the persona of abuse and loudly challenged the audience not to ignore the destruction it wreaks. With the use of various coats and blouses, she then assumed the role of seven different characters to illustrate that domestic violence knows no boundaries.
"Somebody run and tell somebody," Bahati crooned. "This ain't how it's supposed to be."
* * *
Combined, the two presentations created an inescapable pain. When Rivers introduced his mother Olga, the audience gave her a standing ovation and I fought back tears.
I think Rivers and Bahati may have even made people uncomfortable by bringing life to the devastation of abuse. The raw emotions were unnerving, and hardly complemented lighthearted breakfast conversation.
But how could it?
Nearly 1,000 children and 500 adults annually seek shelter at the Spring. Untold others are living in silence, fear and denial. Nationally, 94 percent of the prison population has either witnessed or been victims of domestic abuse. Every 15 seconds, someone is a victim of domestic violence.
Considering all of that, we probably need to be uncomfortable. And angry. And sad. And moved to take action.
