My heart has always been warmed by the care that the designer of the freeway exit signs in Portland, Ore., took when correctly accenting the street named for the legendary founder of the United Farm Workers union: “César E Chávez Blvd” say the signs. I am a transplant to the Pacific Northwest from Central California, and I appreciate the accuracy.

I once worked at a Catholic parish that members of the Chávez family sometimes attended from La Paz, the U.F.W. headquarters about 10 miles down the road. I never met César Chávez himself, but my children went to school and made their first Communions and confirmations with Chávez grandchildren. Their parents were my casual parent-friends. I have been to Chávez quinceañeras and graduations and funerals. I was sad when I was unable to secure a ticket to the official designation of the U.F.W. headquarters as a national monument in 2012, which was attended by President Obama. 

Alas, alas. I suspect that César E Chávez Blvd in Portland will soon be renamed, along with many other streets and schools and public buildings. Officials in Delano, Calif., the site of fabled U.F.W. marches, are already considering a new name for the high school, with candidates like “Mountain View” or “El Dorado” or “Freedom.” (I note that they are not considering some other man’s name.) After three decades of celebrating César Chávez Day, California has rechristened its March 31 state holiday as Farmworkers Day. All around the country, others will refrain from celebrating him. Another national hero has fallen. 

If you are like me, your head is still spinning from the revelation of César Chávez’s grooming and sexual abuse of several teenage girls in his orbit, reported by The New York Times. Unlike the suspected perpetrators associated with Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking ring, Chávez’s fall from public grace has been swift and absolute. No one is covering up the reporting. No one is making excuses for his aberrant behavior. No one is demanding more proof. Amazingly, the women in this case are actually being believed. 

The good work over decades that Chávez and his family have done on behalf of farm workers is undeniable. Still, I imagine this taint on his name will persist in historical accounts of the movement, just next to the “Boycott Grapes” signs that document the civil rights advances of the 1960s. Our heads are spinning even more nauseatingly by the revelations made by Dolores Huerta, the co-founder and co-worker who was by Chávez’s side throughout his organizing. She did not reveal the rapes and pregnancies inflicted on her by her U.F.W. partner Chávez for fear of negating all the good that the union had accomplished for Latino workers. She kept silent for nearly 60 years, for the greater cause. Until she couldn’t. To do so would have dishonored the women who suffered as she suffered. “Lying is done with words, and also with silence,” the poet and essayist Adrienne Rich wrote. The truth, however painful and long buried, needed to be dragged into the light of day.

A personal recap: a family whose members I care about is reeling under this news, and the labor movement I strongly support is under fire, and the hero who seemed a moral giant is made small and tawdry by his own actions. We humans have always needed heroes in our midst—selfless, smart, strong, larger-than-life role models to inspire us. We look for the Gulliver among us and cling to his colossal frame. Heroes, by accomplishing what seems impossible, make us believe that we, too, can participate in reform and do more for others and contribute to a better world. When a hero fails us, when a hero is revealed to be a weakling and a sinner just like the rest of us, we are disillusioned. And too much disillusionment leads to a kind of spiritual devastation. As Jesus once noted with pity, we are “troubled and abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd” (Mt 9:36).

Many women, including myself, can find the reports of someone else enduring something we endured triggering. I know that overuse of the word “triggering” can trigger annoyance, but the feeling of tumbling backward into a traumatic memory is like a bullet fired into the soul. I was perhaps 6 when a male babysitter exposed himself and made me watch him “make the milk come out.” I never told my parents about his secret magic trick. I was 16 when a teacher finally succeeded in claiming my virginity, another thing I never told my parents. I waited to write anything about my high school years until both of my parents had died. 

At the time of my grooming, which I later realized this teacher had done before and would do again, I believed that what he and I had together was so special because I was so mature and so different from other girls my age. I believed he adored me for my coolness and artistic talent and sophistication. I believed him when he said that the world would not understand the unique bond we shared. I felt chosen, a feeling heightened by the secrecy we had to maintain. 

So I can relate to the repulsive stories in the news of Epstein and Chávez and many other powerful older men. When we are young and used in this way, we may feel that the actual sex part is weird and bad, but we soak up the flattery, the recognition of our womanly qualities that no one else sees. When the older men move on to younger fare, as they inevitably do despite their promises of love, we feel stupid. We retreat into bad places, depression, dropping out, drugs, meaningless sex, even suicide. We feel ruined. More often than not, we tell no one what happened to us. But, man, those triggers embedded in the news can still pierce us years later.

I understand Dolores Huerta wanting to protect the UFW’s accomplishments and legacy because in my small way, I was protecting my parents unto death. I didn’t want to publish long-buried stories that might hurt them or make them think they had failed me. But my experiences made me behave like a mother hawk—a mother bear, a mother lion—over my own children. My memories of what men could do, along with vivid maternal hormones, made me feel capable of murdering any man who messed with them.

We give men this power over us when we adulate and idolize them. Our heroes may be national in stature or just someone we lionize personally. Some of the men we hero-worship seem to be able to take our reverence in stride. But some use it for their personal gratification, whether sexual or otherwise, and think they can take whatever they want from us as their right. We women carry the pain until we cannot. I think of Dolores Huerta physically carrying two babies to term after being raped by Chávez and discreetly placing them with other families. I think of the enormous internal price of her silence. Mostly, I think of all the women, young and old, who continue to suffer because of the easy access and lack of accountability we afford our heroes. I think of the women who are indeed “troubled and abandoned.” 

How do we teach our children to trust in their own heroic qualities? How do we groom them to stand up for themselves? The mortal heroes with feet of clay seek out the vulnerable among us, the easiest to manipulate and abuse. Scripture clearly tells us what our job is: What we do for the least of these, we do for Christ (Mt 25:40). It’s not an answer that will speak to everyone. But it is our mission from God.

May God have mercy on César Chávez and his fellow abusers. May God have mercy on those of us who may want otherwise.

Valerie Schultz is a freelance writer, a columnist for The Bakersfield Californian and the author of Till the Moon Be No More: The Grit and Grace of Growing Older. She lives on the Oregon Coast.