Wednesday, August 11, 2004
I claim to be a Christian. I believe in praising our Lord even in our darkest moments. For I know it is during these moments that this Lord is there for us the most. Tonight, I face this spiritual junction. There is a war within as I try to bring myself to pray for this man. I feel no comfort from the Spirit of the Almighty.
I cannot sleep tonight. I toss and I turn. I close my eyes… instead of thinking about prayers, or hugging my special someone goodnight… I continue to dwell on tonight’s big news: The man who molested my oldest daughter is dead. He died almost two months ago. He is dead… buried…
And far from forgotten.
So, now we can close the book. I don’t have to look over my shoulder or wonder if I am ever going to run into this man again! Those chapters of our lives are over. Isn’t that laughable. The havoc caused by the actions of that man STILL touch this family’s life. My daughter told January 11, 1992. I will never forget the day. My son‘s first year’s birthday was only six days before. She told, and I cried… for the innocence lost, and because of the hurt I perceived there to be in her little heart.
The details came out… over months. Enough detail for the detective on the case to tell me there was enough said to charge the man with 14 FELONIES. The local District Attorneys office was nice enough to charge the man with three misdemeanors. Then they were really super nice and let him plead that down to one. The man got one year in county jail. He was let out after 8 months for good behavior. He man was let out on my daughters 8th birthday despite the fact that I had written the judge, county sheriff, and other local and state level representatives to beg them to let him out one day early or one day late. Please don’t add salt to the wound I asked… don’t send this message to my little girl.
My little girl will be 21 one years old in just a few months now. The current joke is that my little girl, now a young woman, is 20 going on three. She often views the world through the feces covered glasses that the ‘child molester’ left behind in his wake. Once upon a time she kept her room so nice and clean. She took good care of her things. I knew something was really wrong when I started finding beheaded Barbie’s. And other toys that she loved in total destruction on her bedroom floor. I knew something was wrong when I’d go clean up her room and not five minutes later I’d go back in and find the work totally destroyed… Later, still quite young she told me it was her alarm system. Anyone coming to get her in the night had to walk and preferably fall over those items all over her bedroom floor so she would know they were coming. As she grew older I tried other forms of alarm systems for her, and tried to teach that her alarm system had become a BAD HABIT. At 20 years of age, she still clings to her alarm system. I am not quite sure just where she sleeps sometimes.
She has anger problems. I cannot imagine why… She likes to keep around a lot of weapons. Big knives, swords… I don’t like them but I most certainly understand those basic fears that are bottled up within her. I feel she suffers from depression or at the very least she really manages to avoid much of the rest of the world by living in her very dark bedroom most of every day. I’ve taken her to so many therapy sessions when she was little that it wore me out! I encourage her to go today. I know she needs it, and she knows she needs it. I can see that these things this one man did to her will affect her for the rest of her life!
I have not spoken to my mother since May 1992. She’s never met my youngest child who is now five years old. I have my reasons. My mother was and is, so far as I know, in a very deep state of denial. The only true victim in this particular case was she; my daughter (her first grandchild) would grow up and survive. I always kind of wanted more for my kids than survival. How can a child who has been used for such heinous acts not be a victim? My mother said and did so many crazy things. Of course, I did too… when you find out your child has been hurt, and you are hurting for that child… well, I wouldn’t accept anything short of breaking the cycle, education, therapy, and apologies where apologies are due for my baby. I will always stand by my child first before anyone! My mother could not accept my terms, and so our relationship lays in tatters… irresolvable, unfixable, never can be again…
All because one man choose to target OUR FAMILY.
After my daughter ‘told’ it came out that this man had molested his own two biological daughters as well. They were grown women by the time my daughters’ ordeal was ending. They offered to go to court against their own father for my daughter’s sake. I’ll never forget such a generous offer.
First there was criminal court. Then there was civil court. As my daughters representative I won a judgment of 1.2 million dollars to pay for her pain/suffering and for future therapy bills. My mother went in with the man and filed some sort of papers and got the judgment thrown out. What my mother did next really just exhausted me and that was the end of our court days.
I have spend most of the past twelve years trying to heal myself and trying to help my daughter heal. And remember that one-year-old son I had at the time. Tell me that the chaos of those years did not have a profound effect on this now, 13-year-old boy. He has had behavior problems all his life and they began then!
Other things have come up in our lives. But do people who don’t live through this understand how profound the fight is once ONE MAN CHOOSES TO TARGET A FAMILY?
There is depression and anger. And the constant question, WHY? And even when you have educated yourself enough to KNOW the reason why, you still ask WHY. There is the missing the family that was once kind of there… wonder where mom is tonight. I wonder if she can sleep tonight. Wouldn’t it be nice to have one hug? I kind of miss my mom, a lot, sometimes. Especially around Thanksgiving and Christmas.
In my mind that man deserved a bullet in the head a long time ago. I seriously asked the detective to find someway to let me put a tattoo on his forehead. And here I sit, just 12 years later, a member of the Disciples Church, a church that is open and affirming, and I am praying to God to help me to pray for this man. I have gone so far in my head to ask, is this process that I am going through is it a prayer request that I need… Is this a moment of God? Maybe I can tell you in the morning. I know one thing; I’m glad that God understands us human beings and has forgiveness enough for us all. I don’t have enough forgiveness in me for that one man, for that I am forgiven. For what he did to my baby the man is forgiven. Gone, but not forgotten… Gone, and forgiven. But not by me.
