Rising Stars: Meet Simone Dill of Los Angeles, South Central

Today we’d like to introduce you to Simone Dill.

Hi Simone, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Well, where do I begin…
I was born in Pasadena and raised in South Central Los Angeles. At the age of two, I was placed in foster care due to my mother being a drug addict and my father being absent and in and out of prison. My grandfather and grandmother raised me. Throughout school, I was told I was academically advanced and had a certain gift that should be nurtured. I continued to excel in school despite everything going on at the time- going back and forth to children’s court, social worker visits, etc.

Fast forward to the end of elementary, I was about eight years old, the social worker had come to visit us and unfortunately, while she was there, there was a sting operation going on at the house next door. One of my grandfather’s neighborhood friends was getting arrested for selling drugs, and he begin to imply that there were drugs at our house (which there wasn’t, and the search they conducted proved that), but Because the social worker was there, and an automatic visit from the police deemed the house unsafe for us to stay and we were taken away. For a year me and my older sister stayed at our maternal grandmother’s house in Altadena (which her house later burned down in the recent fires). After that, we were moved to our other grandmother’s house for another year. It was during this time, my biological grandfather would ciome over to take care of us and clean up the house for our grandmother. He would often stay late into the night lingering. I never understood why until one night, me and my sister were sleeping in the same bed and I could feel him enter the space and sit on the bed. I pretended to be sleep while I listen to what I would later learn was him molesting my sister. I could hear him performing oral sex on her and fingering her. He continued to sexual abuse and molest her everyday for years before he started on me. I often would accidentally walk in on him having sex with her. My grandmother- his wife- would be gone at work because she was the breadwinner, he was on SSI and disability, so he couldn’t really contribute like that. He hustled and sold cars on the side and other odd jobs he could find to make money under te table. My sister is three years older that me, so I watched him rape her from the time I was 8 years old, to the time he began to rape and molest me at the age 11.

My abuse started the second week of 6th grade at John Muir Middle School on slauson and vermont. I had just gotten my first period and he was asking me to do something like wash the dished or take out the trash and i forgot to do it that day, so the next day he kept implying that I would get a new punishment for not doing my chores. He coined the term the “ultimate trio” which at the time i didnt know what he meant, but the next morning when my mother left for work at 4 am, I found out. He came into the room and lifted up the covers to my waist, my face still covered up and he proceeded to finger me. Then I went to the bathroom and cried and cried and then he took me to school. the next couple months the abuse contnued everyday. Then one day he graduated to penial penetration and stole my virginity. For the next three years he continued to rape and molest me every morning before school and sometimes at night. Anytime my mother left the house really. He would be verbally abusive as well, and if i ever tried to say no or fight him off of me, he would beat me with a belt on the side with the buckle, slap me, or do other manipulative tactics such as preventing me from going to field trips at school, going over family memebers houses for family celebrations, or in pimp mentality, saying that my debt to him was getting depper and that I owed him more sex to work off my punishments. When it was time for me to culminate from middle school, the school wasn’t going to let me participate in the 8th grade activities because I had too many tardies over the years that had translated into too many unsatisfactory grades due to being tardy in the mornings because I was being raped everday before I was brought to school. Often times not even having enough time to clean myself, and obviosuly not told the proper things to do for self care after sexual intercourse. I had my first OB/GYN visit at the age 12 because I had gotten a UTI and a yeast infection, no one seemed to wonder how or why. It was made to seem as if I was doing things on my own cognizance with other boys at my school. The abuse continued until I was 14.

For years after the abuse stopped, throughout high school, there was violence and constant arguing over various issues, I was responsible for getting myself to school because who wants their rapist driving them to school anymore. I continued to excel in high school making the elite honor roll all four years and being the school ambassador for the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation representatives that visited our school, participating in many activities, going to the HBCU and Northern cali college tours, even earning a scholaship to go to an acting and modeling school while in high school. I also, played varsity volleyball, volunteered in the community service group, and many other things. Even til this day, when you google my high school, there is a picture of the renaming ceremony with the CEO and co-founder of the charter disctrict, other community memebers and myself! I knew that education was going to be the way that I escaped the atrocities of my past traumas. i used school as an escape. I was the first student in my school’s ten year history to be accepteed into the University of California at berkeley.

While at Berkeley, I faced many revelations about my trauma and abuse. In my sophmore year, I got really ill and was rushed to the hospital at 4am with a blood pressure of 88/55 and a heartrate of 177. My body was essentially shutting down from a throat infection that had gotten worse and closed my throat. i hadn’t eaten for a week before that, and so I lost 30 pounds in 5 days. Whan I got there i was rushed into an emergency procedure to open up my throat and airways and placed on an ekg to check my vitals and everythng else. That semester I was clasified as a disabled student where I had to undergo intensive therapy and psychiatric care. I was diagnosed with PTSD and depressive anxiety disorder. I later learned that my throat chakra had been blocked because I was not expressing my abuse and telling my truth and my story. I pretended for a long time that those things that happened to me never happened. I had stolkholm in a sense. Going through therapy I was trying to maintain a fake relationship with my abuser grandfather to keep the peace. (there was a time when I was 14, where I gave my mother a note about the abuse and thats how it stopped-but thats another part of the story that is a bit longer. I was manipulated into not pressing charges initially. But through therapy, I learned that I needed to advocate for myself even more.

It waasn’t until I went to grad school the first time (I have two masters degrees) at Columbia University in the City of New York, where my therapist there helped me throuhg many transformations and important moments of growth and realizations. When COVID happened, I went back to the Bay area to continue everything online. My therapist would always remind me that when I first went to her I told her that I was trying to heal through my traumas while still maintaining a relationship with my abuser and allowing him access to me. And she helped me realize how that woulc continue to affect me if I didn’t live in my purpose.

In 2019, I went down to Berkeley PD and filed charges against my grandfather.My case was still in the statue of limitations because the laws changed for rape. I had seen psychiatrists in HS and made reports before, was a ward of the state my entire life, but no one noticed or did anything, but the records of me reporting and crying for help eventually came full circle helping the detective in her investigation. I manifested in the time in the bay area, before I moved to LA to joing TFA in 2021, the inception of Pure At Heart Entertainment, LLC. a mutilmedia literary and visual arts company I founded to show people the many ways to use art to heal from trauma. I also auditioned for Community Literature LA, the organization that would help me get my start in the poetry community in LA and also write and workshop my first poetry collection. I remember writing all my goals and objectives for the next five years on a giant post it on my wall and mapped out everything I wanted to do with my writing and poetry. I remeber I was going to self publish a short collection of 25 poems on a word document, but a trusted friend read my work and told me that I had real potential and that my writing really resonated with them and I shoud take time to perfect and refine my work and put adn actual book together. Which I took that and continued to build an entire brand and career on the stregnth of my newly realized potential.

When I moved back to LA, in 2021, the case for my grandfather began and I also started the teacher credentially program for TFA and the Masters of education program at LMU. The past five years of my life have been a real life episode of Law and Order SVU. I have been going through the court investigation, had to stop talking to my family, and I get manic in a moment and I outed all of this on Facebook in a video that went so viral it couldn’t be deleted, but the detective used it in their investigation as well, there was a lot of detail of the abuse that was included in that video. I just remember being in LA going through so much trying to balance working full time, being a former foster youth who was in an on-going investigation for being raped, trying to jump start my career as a writer, poet, and spoken word artists. Doubting myself because I have two degrees in film and media studies but ended up being a teacher for my career because it is more practical and allows me to take care of myself while I balance everything else. I have been homeless at times because people I trusted who did some sort of manipulation to have me there only to be toxic and have me leave. I slept on couches and floors while I figured things out. I was able to get my first apartment in the end of 2021.

My first poetry collection was published my World Stage Press here in Inglewood, Ca. My second collection was published my an Indian company called Bookleaf Publishing. My poetry explores the living sensations inside of our bodies that explicate the traumas that have been experienced, it tells a journey of triumph and return to your innate glory in the face of terror. There is a level of sensuality because there was so much therapy that needed to be done to allow me to connect with myself or others in any intimate way. People don’t often realize that many things a person had to go through to heal those parts of the body and mind after being raped as a adolescent, but also being raped again as a 17 year olde interning at BET Networks for the first time as a freshman at Cal Berkeley, or as a mid-twenty something where I was raped with a knife to my neck by some man. I was in an abusive relationship where there were so many things that happened that I haven’t even began to talk about in detail, but I got knocked upside my head a couple times. I work past all this trauma on a daily basis. My poetry not only has helped me learn how to channel the things sent to destroy me into manifestations set to renew me and ultimately bring me closer to God’s purpose for my life.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
No there were many obstacles along the way. Outside of working through my childhood trauma, there were many things to come up in life during the course of my healing process that often added new layers to the healing. For example, my sophomore year at Cal, I think my energetic body system began to react to the trauma I was currently holding inside. This was the moment before I began telling my story, going to intensive therapy, and working on releasing the traumas that bound me to a detrimental depression. I used to work in sports media in video production, which during this time, I began training with the strength coaches and conditioning, eventually helping me start being a personal trainer on the side. I had been working out and training for months and reached a peak weight and progress. During the end of spring ball, I began to feel really ill. I went to the university health center to get checked out, but they sent me home with a diagnosis that I just had a cold or it was allergies. For a week I couldn’t eat, or really move from the spot on the couch. All of my muscles were sore, and it was really hard to breath. About the 5th day of this condition, I was rushed to the hospital at 4am. I couldn’t sleep that night and my body had begun to shut down. My muscles ached so bad It hurt to touch my skin. The nerves in my skin had turned against me making the slightly touch excruciating. Because my throat had closed up, I hadn’t eaten anything in the past week but a go-gurt, in which I didn’t even finish all of it, I probably took a sip of it a day. Once I got to the hospital, they rushed me to the back because the pain was so bad I couldn’t sit up straight. When they checked my vitals they had discovered that my blood pressure was 98/55 and dropping and my heart rate was 177, and essentially my body had begun to shut down and my heart was the main organ keeping me alive in the moment. They were suprised I hadn’t gone into shock yet. They rushed me to the back and ran the EKG machine on me and began to run an emergency procedure to cut a airway in my throat. I realized that because I had not began to speak about my traumas, my traumas had began to infect my body. My throat chakra was completely blocked and I needed to do the spiritual work to unblock them and get healthy. After this ordeal, it took me weeks to recover, I lost 32 pounds in one week, I went from 160 something to 132 pounds. I was registered as a disabled student the next semester and required to go through intensive therapy as well as body dysmorphia counseling because I had developed that due to the drastic change in my body composition. I was diagnosed with Depressive Anxiety Disorder and PTSD. This would be the catalyst to me being in therapy for the next decade. Through therapy, I was able to work through a lot of the traumas I was facing and some of the stolkholm syndrome I developed for my immediately family consequently. In the spring of 2019, I had moved back to the Bay to complete my first masters degree from Columbia University. Due to covid, It was now virtual. When I first started with my therapist in New York, I told her I wanted to be able to work on releasing and healing my trauma in order to be happy, but I still wanted to maintain a relationship with my abuser, my paternal biological grandfather. Through therapy, I was able to realize that that connection and guilt I felt to protect him from prosecution was in fact manipulation, a consequence of urban poverty and generational curses of silence. In July of 2019 I walked into Berkeley PD and filed charges against my grandfather for raping and molesting me when was 10-14. This turned into a 4-year investigation where he was charged and sentenced to 14-years in prison for the crimes. In that I had to be interrogated in court for the indictment hearing, where I was asked about what happened in detail in front of my abuser. To say these thing out loud into a microphone was an experience I always dreaded. Back in high school, when I was 14, gave my mother (grandmother) a letter explaining what was happening to me and my sister and she dealt with the abuse her own way. Her and my aunt (my grandfather’s cousin) conducted their own investigations and would ask me questions insinuating that I was seducing him or something, but even though the abuse stopped because I said something, he was allowed to come back to the home and we pretended to be a family for the next few years until I graduated high school and undergrad and went to this moment. I say all this to say, that in that moment when I thought justice would be serve then, by me telling someone, was discouraged through instilling a fear in me of “sending my grandfather to jail would ruin my life and the family and bring embarrassment to the family.” I always dreaded going through that process because I was always afraid of the outcome and the shame it would bring me, but doing it just made me realize how strong I was. How I had to go through something like this all alone. No one around me was there the day I had to take the stand, and I walked out that court room an entirely different person.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
LOL, what don’t I do…
I started my journey in sports media and team relations as a video production and recruitment assistant for Cal Football at Berkeley. Here I developed many skills in sports production from shooting and editing practice and game film, to producing, shooting, and editing short narrative segments for social media and other uses, to organizing official visits, prospective player information, assisting with the director of recruitment (who later became the first female business manager in the NFL) with any other task she had. I traveled with the team and became an integral part of the media department. This lead me to be recommended to work in production for Pac-12 Networks, Oakland Raiders, and the Oakland Athletics. I internship for BET Networks and work as the Second Assistant Camera for the Keyshia Cole reality show. I graduated with a BA in film and media studies and was admitted to Columbia University in the City of New York, School of the Arts, film program where I served as a Multimedia Assitant for the sports communication department. I interned for Crystalship Artist, a talent agency for a couple years while there, and was a part of the incepting cohort of Black Film Space, a nonprofit for screenwriters and filmmakers. After graduating with my masters in film from Columbia, I auditioned for Community Literature LA, a publishing writers workshop for poets in Los Angeles, were I became apart of the season nine cohort of writers. Through this program, I began my professional career as a poet/spoken word artists/author. I joined Teach for America during this transition to LA, so that I could simultaneously have a career that gives back to the community, while I worked on building my brand and career. Also, during this time, I started Pure At Heart Entertainment, LLC., a multimedia literary and visual arts company dedicated to helping people heal from generation poverty and sexual violence through filming and Creative writing. There is a specific focus on enlightenment, helping people learn the tools needed to reach their fullest potential, inspire of adversities they face. I am a two-time published author, of two poetry collections and I am currently writing the third and fourth installations of the “sensations” series. I am an event producer and creator, I started the Poetry After Dark Los Angeles poetry feature and open mic live showcase, an event for a night of sacral healing and liberation through poetry, a place for words to live unfiltered and free, and for people to understand the power of the erotic and how we can continue to transform traumatic energies into creative manifestations to achieve all that we want in life. The name of the company is based on Matthew 5:8, “Blessed are the pure at heart, for they shall see God.” Ultimately, I hope to help people heal ad return to the beautiful spirits God called them to be, it is based on the writings of Audre Lord, bell hooks, Kimberly Crenshaw, and Octavia Bulter. Its about making sure you are always moving with good intetions and with a our heart. Just because others are one way, doesn’t;t mean we have to be that way to, in spite of what we have gone through. I currently am working on many projects, while working on my 5th year as a credentialed ELA middle school instructor. I finished my second masters degree from LMU in Urban Education with a concentration in Educational Policy and Administration. I aim to blend all of my expertise, training, and experience, to create a multi million dollar corporation that not only represents artists and promotes literacy and visual arts, but also offers creative outlets for youth, to release trauma and discovers themselves. I’m sure I do more things, but this is what I can remember …

Can you tell us more about what you were like growing up?
Growing up as a younger baby, I was told that I was always quiet and observant. I don’t remember being too rowdy or hard to handle. I knew from a young age I was academically gifted. I always scored proficient and advanced on the test, and being told by teachers all my life that I was a star student and extremely gifted helped me to be more engaged and intentional about school. I was a straight A student my entire life, volunteering for many school groups such as community service, cooking class, and varsity volleyball in high school. I did hip hop dance (and my teacher eventually became Marvin on Power Book II.- actor London Brown). I was the student ambassador for my high school and represented the school during the investor process to acquire technology for all students and develop more equitable resources for low-income students. I did concurrent enrollment in high school, where I took community college courses while in high school. I also attended Barbizon in Hollywood and DTLA, during my freshman and sophomore years where I studied acting and modeling for two years. I’ve always had a passion for acting and modeling and performance arts in general. I always imagined myself using my gifts to inspire people to be greater than themselves, to use this method of storytelling to illustrate testimony and triumph, and to literally embody God’s favor in motion. I’ve always been writer and had a gift for expressing deep revelations through my writing and connecting to people in a way that is palpable and unprecedented. I started writing poetry when I was 16 years old, in my creative writing class. That was the first time I wrote a poem, and developed a short collection called “Sunshine After the Storm”. This short collection talked about all of the experices I was faceing being a foster child, having parents who were not present due to incarceration and drugs, ad dealing with the aftermaths of my own abuse while I was still experiencing it. Outside of that, I was raised by my gradparents, so I like to say I have a very old soul, I have the cultural knowledge of someone born in the 70’s, raised in the 80’s, and became an adult in the 90’s lol. With that said I love music and film. I love music and always looked for ways to be involved in music. I was in the orchestra for five years where I played the violin, and the band for three years where I played the alto saxophone. My mother (gradmother who raised me) is a director of music for two church’s and has been a professional pianists for over 50 years. Due to that, I was in the choir my entire life, and served as the youth choir director for a couple years. Growing up I was sheltered to a certain extent, raised the old school way, church, home , and school. Most times, if we had fun one day we couldn’t have fun the next. Or “what happens in this house, stays in this house.”

Pricing:

• Sensations Vol. 1 $20
• Sensations Vol. 2 $11.99
• Poetry After Dark LA Events $20

Contact Info:

• Website: https://pureatheartent.org
• Instagram: likeninasimone (main page), pureatheartent (business page), micsandmuses (events page)
• Facebook: Pure At Heart Ent, LLC. or Simone Dill
• Youtube: Pure At Heart, Ent. LLC.

Image Credits
Sheldon Botler (purple background pic and me on stage in black dress)

James Davis Wilson (Picture of me with nude background, and black and white photo)