Why Did I Worry That My Mom Would Be Murdered on the Elementary School Playground? I Used Google Maps to Help Me Find Answers.
ALSO: WHERE ARE THE OTHER VICTIMS?
If you’ve read my previous post, then you already know that I’ve been struggling to integrate new information into a long-held personal narrative, one that is now upended.
In February, I was contacted by an investigator seeking information about my elementary school music teacher on behalf of their client who had filed suit under the New York Child Victims Act.
I graduated from elementary school in 1985, and while I’ve retained lovely memories of my 2nd grade teacher who also taught our gifted program in the 4th and 5th grades, I had only topical recollections about the rest of the faculty.
On the flip side, I’ve also carried some odd and troublesome memories from my elementary school experience, but as I explained in my last post, I was so invested in working through my father’s abuse, I never lingered over the school mysteries for long.
In my last post, I described the case of my missing underwear. Today, I want to explore the terror I suffered during first grade. I worried that my mother would be murdered. My terror was so tremendous, I was also too afraid to tell anyone about it.
Over the years, I’ve shared this bewildering story with both my husband and some close friends:
One morning, I forgot my lunchbox, a fact I realized while riding the school bus. I knew my mom would need to bring it in. This terrified me. I did not want my mom to come to the school.
I asked the teacher, Mrs. Hawkins, if I could please go to the office. What I didn’t tell the teacher: I wanted to make sure nobody murdered my mom while she was dropping off my lunch. Mrs. Hawkins denied my request because my class job that week was not errand runner. I don’t recall what my assignment was at the time—it could’ve been chalkboard eraser or line leader—but the child whose job it was to run errands that week was a boy.
When he left the room to undertake his class duty, I waited anxiously for his return, and when he showed up holding my Strawberry Shortcake themed lunchbox, I ran toward him with questions.
“Did you see my mom? Was anyone holding a gun to her head?”
I remember the boy looked at me as if I’d sprouted three heads. The other kids who were in earshot made some bewildered remarks, but the boy managed to answer my first question. He hadn’t seen my mom. It was the office lady who had handed him my lunch.
I spent the rest of the day worried that my mom would be killed. It’s very likely I even went to the nurse’s office with a stomach ache. I couldn’t wait for the day to end.
As a young adult in psychotherapy, I grappled with this memory. While lots of kids suffer from separation anxiety in early childhood, surely a fear of murder wasn’t normative. I understood that my fear was accompanied by disassociation—something had been split off from my conscious memory. I’ve always remembered this terrible occasion of the lunchbox, but I’ve never recollected where the fear came from.
In my previous attempts to make sense of things, I ultimately concluded that my fear must’ve stemmed from my father.
Let’s consider one of the scariest days of my childhood:
My father cornered my mother under the bathroom sink with a gun to her head. She had flushed his cocaine down the toilet, and he threatened to kill her for it. He closed the door to the bathroom, and I trembled on the other side of it. At one point, I picked up the rotary phone and dialed the operator.
The lady on the other end sounded kind. She kept asking, “What’s the matter, honey?”
I wanted to tell her that my father was going to kill my mother, but I couldn’t form words. I don’t recall how that conversation ended. Back then, I think I would’ve needed to supply our home address in order to get help. I doubt calls were traceable. What’s more, my father had been a police officer himself, at least through 1981 or 1982, so the times he did find himself in trouble, he also got out of it because he was an ex-cop.
The only problem with this explanation—that it was my father’s gun I feared—was that the time my father held the gun to my mom’s head happened later than first grade—I believe I was in 4th grade at that time. I could be wrong.
In therapy, I’d hoped to construct a perfect narrative, and part of my work was acceptance that I’d never have a perfect picture. My life had not been videotaped. My imperfect memory would need to be enough. I could heal despite any autobiographical holes.
Perhaps my dad had, in fact, waved a gun at some earlier point in time too, and I simply hadn’t remembered it. He became violent on drugs. I probably feared his fists and belt and gun all the way back in the 1st grade too. But the truth is that I don’t recall any physical abuse at that age—only incest. According to my recollections, the physical abuse began at around the same time the sexual abuse ended—somewhere around the 3rd grade.
But now that the music teacher has complicated my story, I’m interrogating things all over again. It’s horrible no matter what—I’m aware of that—but at the same time, I cannot stop trying to piece it all together.
When my mom brought my lunchbox to school that day, intrusive images of her murder invaded my mind’s eye with great specificity: I saw her murder happening on the playground behind the school. My elementary school had three playgrounds: a tiny one outside of the two kindergarten classrooms, the one out back for the first and second graders, and one in the front for grades third through fifth.
I had pictured Mom getting killed out on the back playground, which makes sense, as I was in first grade at the time. But if this fear had originated with my father, why did I picture her murder at school? Wouldn’t I have worried about her being killed at home? Why would bringing my lunchbox to school trigger so much terror?
Earlier last week, I woke at 2 a.m. shaking in terror. My husband, Tomer, held me in an embrace. Meanwhile, I described the playground and the exact location where I feared my mother would be shot in the head.
“The playground was down a hill. At the bottom of the hill, there were trees, but there was a clearing between the tree growth. In the space between the trees ran a fence or a gate that backed up to a road. I was terrified my mom’s body would get thrown over that fence and onto the road.”
My husband stroked my back and tried to get me to settle back to sleep, but I couldn’t rest. I went on Google maps and looked up the aerial view of my former elementary school. I wanted to see if reality aligned with my mind’s eye. And it did.
My memory of what I’d envisioned back in 1980-1981 matched the image of the playground with the here and now of 2025.
Here are some screenshots from Google maps. I’ve annotated them too.
Aerial View of My Elementary School:
Zooming in on the Back Playground:
Close-Up Aerial View of the Fence Between the Playground & the Road:
What are the implications of this memory?
If I were still working as a psychotherapist and a client presented all of this to me, I’d probably conclude that abuse had taken place at both home and at school. There are additional details about the school situation that I haven’t yet shared, and most of them also suggest dissociative symptoms indicative of child sex abuse.
While I always tried to fit this puzzle piece—my fear of Mom getting murdered at school—into the familial abuse narrative, I’m now thinking that the music teacher had used threats to ensure silence. Note that this man was not the type of child molester who charms the community. In fact, I’m not even sure he was a pedophile. Some child molesters are not.
When it comes to child sex abuse, there are different forensic profiles of people who molest. Not every child molester is a pedophile and not all pedophiles are child molesters.
A pedophile is a person whose sexual orientation involves a primary or exclusive sexual attraction to prepubescent children. Having this sexuality doesn’t in and of itself mean the person is or will become a child molester. Someone could be attracted to children but not act on it. Having impulse control helps.
When the perpetrator is a pedophile, there can be guilt. In order to overcome cognitive dissonance, pedophiles employ defenses such as rationalization—they’ll convince themselves that the sexual activity was in the child’s best interest.
The general public is far from proficient in its knowledge of child sex abuse; most people assume that child molesters are all pedophiles. The scenario people are far less knowledgable about is the child molester who is not a pedophile. Typically, they’re not aware that such perpetrators even exist.
Why would someone molest a child if they’re not a pedophile?
Drug abuse, as was the situation with my father, also puts a child at risk, as drugs can lower inhibitions and/or alter one’s reality. I have no reason to believe my father was a pedophile; in fact, all of the pornography he exposed me to was of the adult variety. I think my father was guilty of terrible crimes against me, but I do think his substance abuse was the primary cause of both the incest and the physical violence.
But pedophilia and drug use aren’t the only causes of child sexual abuse. There’s also the case of the antisocial personality disordered individual, where antisocial does NOT mean shy or introverted. Antisocial people violate others and lack remorse for their crimes. They feel no empathy for their victims. The antisocial offender sees people as objects to be used for personal gratification, and even if the antisocial offender prefers sexual activity with an adult, they’ll abuse a child if given the opportunity to do so.
Of course, it’s also possible to have some combination of the above traits. An offender could be both a pedophile and a psychopath and also dabble in drugs.
Pathology exists on a spectrum, and based on my memories and childhood symptoms, I would place the music teacher in a more sadistic category. Mr. W was not the “classic” pedophile who charmed the community. He was arrogant and pompous and not at all kind toward the children.
During the investigation, I reached out to my beloved 2nd grade teacher, and she confirmed that Mr W’s general demeanor seemed cruel toward children—she hadn’t been able to understand why he’d chosen to become a teacher.
I also spoke with another childhood friend who informed me that the school district ultimately fired the music teacher not for child abuse, but for harassment of a fellow faculty member. If true, this further supports my hypothesis that Mr W’s brand of pathology included intimidation and domination of others.
When I put everything together—including the details of the alleged abuse from the civil suit (I haven’t shared them but they are horrific), plus Mr W’s general behavior, plus my dissociative symptoms (missing underwear, etc.), plus my terror over a potential murder of my mom while she brought my lunchbox to school—a new explanation emerges. The big picture suggests that Mr W was an additional abuser in my young life.
The fragmented nature of my memory with regard to the music teacher is driving me out of my mind. I’m desperate for more clarity. And yet, as soon as I first got on the phone with the investigator, the words shot out of my mouth:
“It’s the music teacher and his victims were female. We complained about him to our mothers but they didn’t do anything.”
I stated this with utter certainty, and at the same time, could not explain how I knew all these things to be true. This is an example of what is called implicit memory.
Does it even matter if I ever figure things out with more certainty? Obviously, my childhood was full of trauma. Why should I care if more than one man abused me? If multiple men threatened to kill my mother?
I don’t know the answers to these questions. I only know that I’m suffering from immense frustration. I cannot stand the autobiographical holes. I want someone to help me fill them in.
And while I’m trying to figure out which pieces of my childhood trauma belong to my dad versus the music teacher, another question is haunting me daily:
WHERE ARE THE REST OF THE MUSIC TEACHER’S VICTIMS?
There is never just one or two victims. I highly doubt that it was only myself and the plaintiff who were abused by this man.
And so, I am left to wonder:
Where is everyone?
Surely, I cannot be the only surviving adult who became re-traumatized during the course of this investigation?
If you are out there, please message me. Let’s help each other process this.
Where are you?
Thanks for reading,
xoxo Jen xoxo
Hugs. You are extraordinary in every way. ❤️
Your writing is full of power and healing and questions that feel resonant and have implications far beyond your own healing. You are saving your child self and saving other children in the process. Interrogating our own narratives in the context of felt memory is where the truth emerges - so many survivors do not have a way to process their own trauma and you are so brave, so generous, to bring this process out into the world and make yourself so vulnerable. Thank you.