It's also unlikely they would have possessed the power or ability to help.

When I was around 18, I was dropped off at a facility in what I was told was Phoenix, Arizona.

I went down a few flights (we had gone in through the roof entrance near the parking structure) and was brought to see a woman who was in a huge amount of distress. She had asked to see me specifically (we shared a history, although I didn't put that together at the time) before she would submit to further torture.

She was in a small locked medical observation room, frail, trapped in the bed, hair all out of sorts, and couldn't speak enough English for me to properly understand her.

I had been living with a DoD scientist working in medical research. The first time both her and I had met the scientist, 15 years prior to that, we had been together.

DoD researchers doesn't have to meet ethics standards, that's in the books, just in case you think they're being good and ethical little things that go by the book, in a way they are...the book says they don't need to be ethical.

I only spent a few minutes with the woman that day, and then I was shipped out of there.

I never spoke of it for decades.

There was nothing I could do and I felt powerless.

If I had told someone there was a human locked in a DoD facility, I would have been shipped off to the loony bin.

I didn't have the firepower or ability to break her out myself.

I was in a society that would rather pretend those things "can't exist" and so I didn't feel I could find actual support in speaking about it or helping her.

So, I let one of the only good souls I had met in my life perish in a locked facility with no one to come to save her.

And I remained silenced for my own false self preservation.

This is the reality of society and structure we live in. And why, when it comes down to it, no one will be there to save us. I couldn't even save one woman.