Bill Cosby at the "Sex, Lies and Older Guys" forum.
The girls filed into the public atrium -- a three-story, hollow, impersonal room -- to discuss some of the most intimate things in their lives: being raped, having sex with strangers, dating men a decade older than their adolescent selves. Three dozen or so brave parents sat in the seats set up behind and beside them, some braced for what they would hear, some resigned to what they already seemed to know.
The girls then broke into smaller groups and regathered in surrounding classrooms to talk privately about things that would later break my heart; things the public wouldn’t believe; things the media doesn’t have time for, particularly in Detroit, where investigations of government corruption have pre-empted everything but sunrises.
When the girls came out an hour later, a spokeswoman for each group took the stage to "report out" on their words and challenges.
Take a breath:
Many girls who were 13 to 16 years old were having sex and have had anywhere from 10 to 15 sexual partners -- most they don’t know by name.
Some girls in that same age group are "dating" men as old as 30 because the men can give them things -- love, money, presents -- that their parents cannot.
They talked about girls who are being raped and feeling powerless to do anything afterward, blocked by a sexual irrevolution that has made feelings irrelevant and intercourse the new dating. They feel that these encounters are their fault, and they are ashamed to tell anyone. They are not seeing doctors. And some are getting pregnant.
Forum for dark secrets
The revelations from the Neighborhood Service Organization’s historic summit on girls and sexual attitudes, a forum called "Sex, Lies and Older Guys," drew hundreds of preteens and teens to Wayne County Community College on Saturday, where they spent the equivalent of a school day pouring out their feelings and hearing from trained psychologists about what to do with their problems.
They also heard from Bill Cosby, who came to town at their invitation because many of them don’t have fathers in their lives. The activist and entertainer pulled no punches.
"I keep hearing it takes a village. No! No! No! That’s the problem with the village -- the ‘it’ part. Who makes up the ‘it?’ ”
Days later, my head reels from the things I heard. I have never felt more frightened for our children than while learning what passes for normal life for teenagers now. With vulgar music making objects of girls and gangsters of boys, with teen fashion being designed by seeming pedophiles -- and with standards for behavior being set by veejays on a half-dozen TV stations, a few dozen radio stations and thousands of Web sites -- it’s no wonder our children don’t know where to turn or how to act.
And sadly, increasingly for many girls, as some said Saturday, they are not turning to their families.
One of the forum’s planners was V’Lecea Hunter, an 18-year-old prep school graduate who was raped at 16 by an older guy who used to watch her through the bathroom window of her mother’s house. She never told her mother. And if she hadn’t eventually told her grandmother, she never would have received medical attention.
She spoke Saturday, brilliantly, about the fact that it is never too late to change your life:
"What do you want out of life, and what do you have to do so that you can achieve that goal? Think about all of the mistakes that you have done and how you can overcome them. Is it possible? Is it possible to make mistakes and still turn out to be a great, smart, determined, financially stable, loving, caring, and enjoyable person?
“Can you put your past behind and move on? Can you accept the fact that you may have a child, been a part of a gang, smoked marijuana, been in and out of jail, have the street mentality, lost, confused, lonely, no family to fall on, or sexually assaulted? Well, I’m here to tell you today to MOVE ON!
"Move on with your life because focusing on the negative will not get you to the positive. As Booker T. Washington stated, ‘Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.’ "
Listen to role-model dad
When you’re talking about families where a mother feels her boyfriend is more important than her daughter, and then the boyfriend comes to believe the daughter is very important ... When you’re talking about families where the predators sleep in the next room -- and mom knows ... When you’re talking about girls who said Saturday that they have sex because it’s the popular thing to do ... then we’re not talking enough about what raising children in the new century actually means.
Cosby urged the women in the room to take back their lives -- and their children.
"Listen to me, mothers and potential mothers, that’s your child. The school does not raise your child," he said to cries of "That’s right!"
"Find a way to find out how to help your child get what he or she needs," he said. "You can’t keep excusing. You’ve got these intellectual panhandlers feeding you excuses ... single mother, poor children. ... Find out about your children because the signs are that people don’t care about your children.
“At 11:30 at night, on a school night, boys riding around on the bikes, and you’ve got to say to yourself, ‘Wait a minute!’ And then when the mayor says from now on, after 9:30, we will pick up any child, and people get mad -- ‘You can’t tell me what to do with my child!’ -- and the mayor says, ‘Look, lady, we’re just trying to save the taxpayers some money. … We’re talking about responsibility.’ "
With a warning to the youngest girls in the room, Cosby made clear to every girl that there is always an alternative to what’s popular -- and that sex, the right way, is worth waiting for.
"If you’re 13, 14, 15 and you have sex, this is not gourmet stuff," he said. "Nobody’s buying you a bottle of wine and candlelight and putting some romantic music on. No, you’re in the clothes closet or down near the dryer or dishwasher saying, ‘Hurry up before my mother comes home.’ That’s why you don’t know the boy’s name.
"Now let me tell you the pitiful part. The child you’re now pregnant with? Neither you nor Peewee are pleased with having this child. ... If you never dreamt of having this child, how are you going to think lovingly of raising it?"
At that point, he said, the girl is "knocked up" and her "beautiful mind is knocked off the right track" -- "and your mother wants to knock your block off."
Cosby told the girls why teens were having less sex when he was coming up.
"In my time, it wasn’t a perfect time, but it was tough trying to get some," he said. "Women interviewed you: ‘What high school did you graduate from?’ ‘Well, right now? Uh,’ ’No, good-bye.’ "
Cosby, as well as the psychologists and social workers and peer educators the girls met all day, had two unified messages: One, it’s time for increased peer pressure, pressuring one another to be cleaner, kinder, focused on education and abstaining from sex. And the second is to not mistake popular for right.
"Who are you inside? If the wrong peers tell you, ‘You think you’re somebody."
Cosby said tell them: "Yes! Yes!"
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