A Criminal Defense Attorney in Boulder County, who was sitting near The Kindness Bus when I got back from my daily ride, questioned the sense of my mission. “Why are you doing this?” Why these two causes?” I answered that I am trying to raise awareness in men with the slogan, “Be a man, don’t raise a hand, stop Domestic Violence.” “How will that help?” he retorted. I gave an example of a man who expressed to me that by him seeing the signs on The Kindness Bicycle, it got him thinking of how he acts toward his wife when he has had a bad day. He said that it really got him thinking that he shouldn’t do what he does and how the signs can be a help to him and other men who see them. The attorney then said, “He’ll just beat his wife the next time he gets drunk.” Dumbfounded is an understatement as to my reaction. I was going to excuse myself from the conversation, but pressed on. I talked about four women dying every day in the United States due to Domestic Violence and the Childhood Sexual Abuse statistics, he dismissed them as if they were just numbers and questioned me again about why I am on my mission. I should have realized at that point that nothing I could say would make him understand what I was doing.
Undaunted, I brought up my twelve 100 mile rides to honor individuals and how I am soon going to be riding for a 12 year old female sexual abuse victim who told me, “Don’t let anyone else get hurt.”. Again, no emotion. Then something interesting happened. I used the phrase, “people who work in the industry,” as I was telling him of how a young woman I had met a couple of times, had taken her life because her parents were selling her in the sex trade business over the period of many years. I believe by my using the word “industry,” it hit a nerve with the Criminal Defense Attorney and that I was suggesting some are paid very handsomely by getting them (perpetrators) off on a technicality, enabling them to abuse again. Not having any sympathy for any of the victims in our conversation, only for my using the word “industry,” I decided it best to end our conversation. I knew from the beginning of my 10 year project, some people just don’t get it. Happily, most do.
