Feature image via Helen H. Richardson / Getty Images
BEGIN AGAIN is a series of A+ personal essays running in the first half of November 2023 where writers were asked to explore a transition, a move, grief, a breakup, repeating patterns or breaking patterns, cycles and rebirth, remaking yourself, or laying out plans for the future while standing in the ashes of something you thought was forever. And wow, how they responded. We hope you enjoy these vulnerable, sensitive, always deep but sometimes surprisingly funny works, and we’re grateful for your support that allows us to continue to publish new work from our community. These essays and paying queer and trans writers for their work are things that are made possible by A+ members like you. Queer media isn’t free to make, and we’re now and always grateful that you’re an A+ member.
-Nico
A photo of the girl flashed on the television screen. She was 6 years old and blonde just like me. She wore a pink sweater and makeup and had a beautiful smile. The day after Christmas, her father found her dead in a basement room locked by a tiny wooden latch. The newscaster, a strange man in a black suit and a striped tie explained in a stern tone that someone had abducted the girl from her bedroom and killed her. Another photo of the girl, black and white, flashed on the screen. Her eyes glistened, her lips were dark from lipstick and her eyelashes were long and curled. While this photo remained on the screen, the newscaster explained how the girl had been killed, a violent list of events I couldn’t stand to hear. I hid in my sleeping bag, but the newscaster’s cruel list continued, and then he said a phrase I had never heard before. The newscaster said the girl had been sexually assaulted. The newscast cut to interviews with the police chief, the parents of the murdered girl, and local reporters, but I wrapped myself tightly in my sleeping bag, too afraid to continue watching. I focused on that unfamiliar phrase until the newscast ended.
It was just after New Year’s 1997, and I was sleeping over at a church friend’s house in the big city. We attended church in the city because it was the only church anywhere near us that practiced the charismatic evangelism my parents believed in. I asked my friend what sexual assault meant. He always seemed to know more than I did when it came to the terrible workings of reality, which I attributed to the dangers of city living, and his unfettered television access, a freedom unavailable to me in my rural, deeply sheltered home. It means he touched her where he wasn’t supposed to, and she didn’t want it. I wished for the sleeping bag to morph into body armor and for the room to become a fortress. My small world broke open.
Watching the breaking news of JonBenét Ramsey’s murder was the first time I attributed the words sexual assault and abuse to my situation. I connected JonBenét’s assault with her death as if the events, first one then the other, were the only possible trajectory I could experience. Since someone had assaulted me, I feared that soon someone would come to my window at night, swoop me up out of bed, and strangle me to death. My house had a dark, dingy basement room with cold concrete floors. I did not want to be found dead in it.
When I returned home, I prepared for the inevitable in hopes of preventing it. Determined to make it to my 7th birthday, the birthday JonBenét never experienced, I watched Home Alone on repeat and obsessed over transforming my bedroom into a fortress. Every night I piled Legos in front of the locked door, under the windowsill, and around my bed to form a plastic deadfall that only I could navigate in the darkness. And I made it to 7 years old. At 8, I stopped sleeping under the window in my room to avoid nighttime abductors. At ten, I took martial arts classes and formed makeshift weapons to keep under my bed. I practiced pushing through my imaginary nighttime attacker to escape quickly through the house and out the basement door.
During those years, questions poured out of me. When the neighbor boy told me that all kids pulled down their pants and played doctor, or when the boy at church said it was my time to learn what adults do, I could say no? And more importantly, they weren’t supposed to be doing this to me? Could I tell my friend about my experiences? What if my sheltering wasn’t what kept me from this terrible word my church friend had defined? What if his knowledge came from experience, like mine? Would he still be my friend if I asked him about these things, or would he see me as impure, as sinful as I knew myself to be?
My questions went unanswered, and in the end, my physical preparations all failed me. My abusers were not strangers who lurked in the night, but men and boys who were familiar to me. I would repeatedly lead them past all of my carefully placed defenses to the safety of my sanctuary. I’d keep silent.
JonBenét Ramsey’s story haunted me for years after that night in the city. I avoided her story because when I encountered it, the moment I learned of her death—the suffocating silkiness of the sleeping bag, the creak of the metal red bunk bed frame as it banged against the wall where the paint had chipped — rushed in and left me feeling ashamed and isolated.
On tabloid covers in checkout lanes, in nightly television specials, true crime videos, podcasts, and books, JonBenét Ramsey’s story, and the discourse surrounding it, still fills my daily life. While old wounds have healed and I’m no longer controlled by my past experiences, I’ve never fully examined her story. I know now that I wasn’t avoiding the who of her story, nor the what. I knew the who’s of my story, what they did, how to name it, and eventually, that it was wrong. I know now that the reason I feared JonBenét’s story was the why, a why I couldn’t examine because it might force me to encounter mine. Now, almost three decades after the first night I learned of her story, I return to her “why” in hopes that weaving our two stories together will provide insight into that question.
The Ramsey story contained the ingredients for the perfect media frenzy cocktail: parents as suspects, allegations of sexual abuse and incest, stranger danger, and above all, a large portfolio of highly sexualized beauty pageant photos. Pop culture in the U.S. heavily values images, so the beauty pageant photos of JonBenét are pivotal to the perpetuation of the Ramsey story, and thus my constant proximity to it. In the popular discourse around the widely circulated pageant photos, I find JonBenét transformed into a symbol. She represents both a vixen and a victim. Her green eyes reveal a girl forced to dress up and parade around on stage for the scrutiny and pleasure of adults. To others, those same eyes belonged to a girl who loved stage life, a girl who beckoned the lascivious gazes of adults by getting dolled up, a girl complicit in her own murder.
In one photograph from my childhood, I stand in a stuffy shoulder-padded suit and tie with my hair brushed neatly for Sunday church. Had the trajectory of my life been a linear movement from assault to death as I had feared, would the press have circulated this photo of me? How would those who view this photo interpret it? Would I simply be seen as an innocent child dressed in my Sunday best? There are photographs of me playing dress-up with my sister. In them, I wear floral-print crinoline dresses with my hair pulled into a side ponytail. Others show me dressed up as Judy Garland in my grandmother’s elegant fur coats, muffs, and lavish fascinators. I enjoyed having adults tell me how finely dressed I was. If the press circulated one of these photos from my childhood, would they have accused me of beckoning the attention of adults, of having been complicit in my abuse?
Other photos from this time show me wearing a long dirty tee, tired from playing, sitting in a pile of freshly raked leaves, or reading in a tree, or posing happily on Halloween with my cousins. These photos add context to the other photos and together form a fuller picture of my childhood, one full of mundanity. The press could have circulated any photo of JonBenét or shared additional ones next to the sensational ones for context. But she was never shown in a pile of leaves, a long dirty tee shirt, or a tree, reading. Even if she had these things, the photos would still not represent the full truths of our childhoods. I have a chance to correct this fallacy, to add context to the various photographs of my youth. JonBenét cannot add context to her story; she doesn’t hold the small gift of memory.
The widely shared beauty pageant photographs of JonBenét do not present the real girl behind the glamor, nor her stolen mundanity. These photographs present only a fantasy, a projection of a girl who never really existed. The pageant photos, and the discourse surrounding them, paint JonBenét as the ultimate symbol of the impossible, ideal standard for girls. All good children should be docile, beautiful, white, wealthy, and belonging to a doting family with enough privilege to keep their home life private from the small circles of society they inhabit.
In the discourse surrounding her case, the pageant photos of JonBenét, as symbolic cultural artifacts, do more than just present gender ideals; they hide more sinister workings. In representing standard gender ideals and the alleged loss of those ideals to strangers, her images do serious rhetorical work. Suddenly, she becomes the emblem of national anxieties: strangers coming to infiltrate the sacred privacy of homes, destroy childhood innocence, and break families apart. Images of JonBenét reinforce the idea that society must protect girls and keep them locked away from all that threatens their docility. And that includes bad children, children who are not wealthy, not white, not docile, and children who deserve only adjustment, removal, and eradication.
In other conversations around other stories like JonBenét’s, I find horror feigned at the death of a child no one knows, while the same people eagerly consume her image. Simultaneously, I find images of other living girls and women published next to dead ones, mugshots of their killers, mostly men, next to stories about the sexual violence they inflicted, surrounded by comments dissecting the crime scene images, the clothing the women were wearing, their bodies, the intimate and horrific details of the crimes. Taken together, these images blur the boundary between real-life horror and sexual fantasy.
The sheer repetition of stories like JonBenét’s and their ready consumption gives the impression that there is value in the murder and abuse of girls and women. That the discussions, arguments, and theories surrounding true crime stories focus on the lurid details of individual crimes and not on the critique of systemic socio-cultural patterns of sexual violence and femicide, nor on the failure of the criminal legal system to prevent them, tells me that men can and should get away with these crimes, as they bolster so many intersecting systems, structures, and audiences. Legislators pass laws enabling families to control children and defund social services that support them, all in the name of protecting the wealthy, white, girl body. These policies, which are part of the theater of stranger danger discourse, endanger children by isolating them in their homes, where Lego fortresses can become wine cellars, tombs. JonBenét as a symbol becomes the sacrifice used to sustain this system. Her story becomes a dark illustration of the consumption of the violence and abuse inflicted on girls and women.
I abandon the photos in hopes that the context and interpretative potential of documentaries will add depth to the discourse around JonBenét’s story. I find only the sad repetition of a tired theme. In one documentary, I find the story of the unsolvable, perfect murder mystery. Others explore the forensics surrounding the case — the ransom note, the broken basement window, the autopsy, the DNA, and the family’s financial standing. Another documentary perpetuates several family dynamic tropes, including the mommy dearest, secretive father, perfect daughter, and quiet older sibling caricatures. All of the documentaries ponder who could have killed her and how they got away with it, but never why the murder happened, or why we continue to consume media about it. In all of these documentaries, I find only the ultimate dead white girl used to induce fear and reinforce the same negative stereotypes and cultural myths that affected me as a child and continue to affect me today.
One documentary stands out from the rest. The documentary follows the casting process for a film about the Ramsey murder scandal. Denver-area actors audition for the roles of the real people involved in the case, and producers interview them about their memories and thoughts about the murder case. I was initially intrigued by the concept of the documentary because combining oral history with the casting process could create a unique approach to narrative structure and issues of voice and memory. Rather quickly, however, I find the documentary to be as exploitative as other renditions of JonBenét’s story.
In addition to being interviewed about their thoughts and memories of the Ramsey case, the producers ask the auditioning actors to reveal their negative and potentially traumatic experiences. One actor recalls the morning he found his girlfriend dead beside him in bed. An actress describes her brother’s murder in Colorado Springs. Another actress reveals that her alcoholic father abused her as a child and lodged an axe into her skull. In the most grotesque scene, the actor auditioning for a cop spends the interview discussing proper flogging and other BDSM techniques.
The auditions begin after the interviews. The Patsy actresses recreate her 911 call. The actors portraying John reenact finding JonBenét’s shrouded body. The performers’ past traumatic experiences entangle with JonBenét’s and her family’s while their emotional responses heighten the drama that unfolds for the viewers. The frantic 911 call thus summons the memories of one actress’s dead brother. Finding the blanket on the floor of the wine cellar recalls one actor’s dead girlfriend.
The auditioning children do not escape being exploited for the documentary. In one disturbing scene, the children auditioning for the role of Burke try to smash a watermelon with a baseball bat. The actors and producers speculate whether Burke could have had the strength to murder his sister. In another equally carnivalesque scene, producers have the children auditioning for the role of JonBenét parade around in a fake pageant, the same hypersexualized circumstance as the girl they portray.
The interviews and reenactments cast more ghosts into JonBenét’s story, and with them, the ghosts of the actors’ and viewers’ trauma haunt every reenactment as they weave together in an increasingly complex and disturbing narrative where consumerism, trauma, power, sex, and entertainment blend seamlessly.
In the movie depicting my childhood, which child would producers ask to portray my experiences, to parade around as the doll my abusers saw me as? Could they summon the taste of sweat, the fear, and the regret that sticks to you no matter how you shower? Could they convey the practiced calm of a steely face hiding bruised knees, trembling hands, and diaphragm spasms? Which children would act out my memory of going to the police, after a friend betrayed my confidence?
In that scene, I imagine a line of children left alone on a cold wooden bench for hours in a poorly lit hallway. I imagine someone leading them into a room where four faces stare back at them. The children stare at their laps, their throats dry, their voices quivering as they recount their stories. Will the officer — is it the BDSM cop? — act convincingly cold and unmoved as she files away the report in a cabinet? Can the actress convey disbelief in her voice when she says That’s fantastical? Your story sounds like a movie plot or a dream. Then, the other officers standing around the room would each voice their disbelief and speculation as to which film I might be referencing. After the police fail to help me, will the producers have the child go to three therapists just to be dismissed again?
When I tell my story now, I’m still often met with that officer’s unbroken demeanor that turned to disbelief, then to dismissal. What clever techniques would the documentary of my childhood abuse to convey that feeling? Would viewers buy the performances? The audience I finally told did not believe mine. They did not see me as an innocent girl; they did not see JonBenét.
Casting JonBenét reveals and perpetuates dominant cultural assumptions about gendered violence, its presentation, and performance. On a base level, the film illustrates the ways that the dominant culture does not trust victims and survivors of abuse and assault. Instead, we must collect, index, and present our experiences for audiences to speculate upon, interrogate, and interpret in hopes that they will find our testimony credible. We must allow this process to happen, and perform our parts to an acceptable standard, a standard we can never fully meet.
In the end, I wish I never examined JonBenét’s story. Fancy packaging doesn’t change what her story says to me, what I learned from that newscast when I was 6. JonBenét, in the static perfection of a beauty pageant photo, unsullied by the violence that befell her, stands as the image that all girls should embody. She was my emblem, all I wanted to be as a child, the fantasy perfection I should seek to emulate now. As a little transgender girl, the same age as she was, with the same blonde hair, wishing I could wear the clothes she was wearing, striving towards girl always felt as though I was striving towards death. Inundated with true crime stories like hers, it’s hard to feel any different.
Ultimately, JonBenét Ramsey transforms into a dark omen for what lies ahead for me. My trauma will not disappear because it is not allowed to. I, too, must remain the unwitting sacrifice to a system sustained by the performance, interpretation, and criticism of women’s bodily memory. To maintain the myth of the innocent girl, I must never begin to detangle the frightful from the quotidian, assault from affection, shame from pleasure. I cannot give up her ghost. I must remain forever haunted by JonBenét’s trauma as it entangles in the phantom traces of mine. I must perform my part.
In an old silver photo album tucked in the back pocket of a larger one, I find a photo of myself that I thought was lost. I am six years old, standing in my grandparents’ living room on the brown shag carpet in front of the old box television. I am wearing the ballerina outfit from my brother’s My Size Barbie. A pair of my father’s white Haines crew socks give the illusion of breasts inside the pink sequined leotard. My blue eyes and blonde hair shine in the light. I touch the photo as if to feel the dazzling sequin, the scratchy tulle, and the wispy pink feathers. And for a moment, I do feel that time again, my small body, my father’s socks, my unencumbered smile. What happened to the girl in this photo, that girl who looks just like me, that girl who never really existed?
An incredible piece; thank you for writing it
Wow, thank you for this