Under Grumpa's Hat

There are cries that the world never truly hears. They echo in courtrooms, in locked rooms of power, and in the quiet spaces where survivors sit alone, wondering if truth will ever matter more than money. One of those cries belongs to her—a woman whose pain was not born from war or accident, but from betrayal. Betrayal by those who once smiled for cameras and shook hands with the very people who used her. Her voice is not one of vengeance, but of exhaustion, of someone who has carried a wound too long while the world looked away.

Some nights, I still wake up with that same tightness in my chest. It isn’t fear anymore, not exactly. It’s something heavier, something that sits in the bones. A mix of anger, grief, and the unshakable knowledge that the world doesn’t care about people like me.

I was a child when it happened. Too young to understand why men with so much power wanted to hurt someone so small. They called it opportunity, luxury, kindness. I didn’t have the words for manipulation back then. I only knew that saying no didn’t matter, and crying made it worse.

They told us to stay quiet. Threats wrapped in charm, money, and promises. We were disposable, easy to erase. And for years, that’s exactly what the world did.

Then came the news, years later, that one of them, one of those men, was now a leader. Smiling for cameras, shaking hands, cheered by crowds who called him a man of integrity. I remember staring at the television, my stomach twisting, my heart pounding so hard I thought it might split. The same face that haunted my sleep now representing everything this country claims to stand for.

How do you explain that kind of betrayal? It isn’t only what he did to me, or to us. It’s what the system continues to do. Every official who refuses to open those files, every politician who changes the subject, every person who says “that’s the past, move on.” It feels like they’re all taking turns spitting on our scars.

Justice is supposed to be blind, but somehow she always sees money. She sees power. She never sees us. We were children, yet they still find ways to make it our fault. They call us liars, attention seekers, broken things. As if being broken wasn’t something they did to us.

There are moments when I wonder why I survived. I thought healing would mean peace, but peace doesn’t come when truth is buried. You start to see how corruption runs deeper than the crimes themselves. It’s in the smiles of those who protect predators because they share the same circles, the same secrets. It’s in the silence of those too afraid to speak because they know what happens to people who try.

Sometimes I walk by children laughing, carefree, untouched by darkness. I feel happy for them, but I also ache. Because I remember what it was like before. Before the pretending, before the guilt that wasn’t mine, before the system taught me that truth doesn’t matter if it threatens the powerful.

The files still sit locked away, protected like treasure. But they’re not hiding gold, they’re hiding rot. Every sealed name is another reminder that our lives meant less than their reputations.

If anyone ever asks me what injustice feels like, I’ll tell them this: it feels like being told your pain is inconvenient. It feels like the world asking you to forgive people who never even said sorry.

And still, I speak. Even if my voice shakes, even if they never listen. Because silence is what they wanted, and silence is what keeps them safe.

The call for justice must not fade. Those files hold more than names: they hold accountability, truth, and the chance to heal what power tried to bury. The distractions will come, loud and frequent, but they must be ignored. This is not politics. This is about children who never had a choice. They are our daughters. Until every truth is brought to light, the world remains complicit in their silence.