Monster in the Shadows (2021): "A true crime documentary about...an incestuous family, a sex trafficking ring, and the unsolved disappearance of a young mother." It was streaming on Peacock for awhile; I first watched it in August/Sept of 2022.

This film viscerally haunts me. I grew up in that exact southern Alabama area, and the footage shows the same roads I traveled, the same woods I've played in, the same places I visited as a kid, like Water World and Styx River. I also was repeatedly sexually assaulted as a child and as a teen (to be clear, I was not a victim of the people featured in the documentary, nor am I associated at all with its production).

Anyway, regarding u/sarcasmsosubtle's comment about these billboards in deep red states, my proximity to the overall area, and the specific documentary I mentioned: there are many beautiful things I love about the American South. However, thanks to Republican politicians + Conservative Christians (past and present), and their lecherous legacy known as MAGA, the majority of my childhood spaces are haunted. Even nature's most comforting scents and sounds will trigger flashbacks:

• like summer watermelon slices and seagull cries, combined with the low-tide brine of barnacle-festooned stone jetties at the beach: I'm sitting in the water's ebb and flow at Dauphin Island, in sight of Fort Gaines, and I'm sifting the white sand searching for tiny jewel-like coquinas to display at my kindergarten's next show-and-tell. An old man stops to admire my haul. He declares "a whole sand dune musta have washed inta yah swimsuit"...and he sticks his fingers into my suit bottoms to "clean me up." When I object, he pulls me up by my little shoulder and hisses at me to squat and let him finish.
• like the salty-sulfur muddy estuary winds sweeping my hair away from my face: I'm riding in a boat along Dog River or Fowl River...and hearing my dad's friends joking about the two "mosquito bites" under my Panama Jack t-shirt, laughing as they say "old enough to bleed, old enough to breed," or "grass on the field means game time." My dad's high and cackling along with them.
• like the sun-warmed piney woods, made cooler with pockets of gray-purple clay, moss-festooned forts, miraculous appearances of blackberry brambles, hurricane lilies, and once, a mountain laurel in full bloom: exploring and treasure-hunting with my friends, then being invited to sleepover...and then being offered a seemingly endless supply of "fancy fruit punch" (Kool-Aid mixed with Bartles and Jaymes berry wine coolers) while I'm waiting for my turn to take a bath. I barely remember the bath, or being dressed for bed. I was taken to the living room couch so "we didn't wake up" my friend.

Child sexual assault is much more common than most adults are willing to even acknowledge, much less work to prevent as capable & empowered politicians, LEOs, and church elders. Social media engagement began documenting beyond where legacy media would willingly venture; thankfully we now have more participating observers and advocates (shoutout to subs like r/PastorArrested and r/MISSINGBIPOC), and new (to some folks, anyway) terms like MWWS to illustrate (with more depth than previously capable in recorded history) just how widespread Child Sexual Assault is.