Yes, this is a very far cry, from sweetness and light to mire and
filth, but I feel that in justice to myself I must tell this thing
as it is. I do not feel now as if this mire and filth had touched my
person. I feel today that although I have been the victim of human
fiends, although I have been more monstrously abused than any other
girl of my age or character in the world, I myself am as clean and pure
as on the day when I left that little Irish homestead 18 miles from
Belfast and came to America. One who is murdered is not a murderer, nor
is one who is outraged a person of bad character. And a clean mind soon
forgets even the most terrible episodes, the most awful happenings.
Yes, I will forget everything that has happened and become again the
girl who left Ireland such a short time ago to become a victim of
fiends.
There are things that one must try to forget, although I know in my
heart that my sleep till my dying day will be haunted by the pictures
of the demons who have worked their will upon me and who if they had
their just deserts should burn in deepest hades forever. But I will
forget, I must forget. If I do not forget I shall go mad.
They say that I have been cool, calm and collected on the witness stand
during my trial. I have been cool, calm and collected because I was
telling the truth, but the reaction from those awful hours in court
have been so terrible that I shudder even yet to think of them.
It was only the thought of the green hills, of the heather, of the
blossoms in Spring and the yellow corn at harvest time, of the cuddling
mother love, of the kindly faces which will not turn away because I
have been tortured--just the green hills, the green hills, and the
rains and the sunshine and the light and the purity--I can say no more,
but they will help me to forget, they will help me to become again the
girl who won the lace prizes in Larne and the girl who had not been
the victim of fiends. I will forget there. I could never forget here.
America has become to me a nightmare, a horror; the name stands to me
for all that is vile, horrible, unmentionable.
I am telling my story, not because I have any animus against anybody,
not because I wish to get even with anybody, not because I wish to
clear my own name, because I believe that has been cleared before the
world by the solemn edict of a jury--not because I wish to create or to
have brought forth the terrible things which were done to me.
I am telling this story in the hope of saving other girls, who like
myself may be in danger from the beastly "slavers" and a life of shame.
If I can but save a few girls from this horrible fate, if I can only
help, in some modest way, to protect womanhood from the horrors of
white slavery, I shall feel happy for laying bare my soul and giving to
the world the true story of the attempt to make a white slave out of me.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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