Heal the Blind

I just woke up from the most horrific dream. I was having supper with Jake and he served a baby. A human baby for supper - yes, that's what I said. And I ate it like it was completely normal.

Then I woke up shaking in a cold sweat. WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!

It only took a minute for my waking conscious to understand the metaphor (and to resolve never to forgive my inner-self ever again for creating it). I want to explain it to you, but let me do it through some flashbacks.

Flashback 1: The first time Jake was arrested, back in February 2011, the investigator who found child porn in Jake's office immediately turned on me to accuse me of knowing about the child porn and suggest that I was using it myself. I was excessively offended that someone would ever think that of me . . .

Flashback 2: One of Jake's sisters, while absorbing the shock of her brother being arrested, told some of her friends about it. One of her friends told her, "Well, his wife is probably a part of it. The wives always know."

Flashback 3: I had to prove to social services that I was taking this all very seriously, so I did some serious reading. I picked up some books on sex addicts (not to be confuse with sex offenders, but sometimes an addict becomes an offender, like Jake). It was very enlightening, but the material regularly offended me. Spouse's of sex addicts are sometimes known as "coaddicts" meaning that they are somehow supportive and complicit in the addiction.

I have asked myself over and over since this whole drama started if I was a coaddict. The coaddict of a child molester. I want to scream "NO!" I have always prided myself on my morals. I want to assure myself that my instincts as a moral person and as a mother would always steer me in the right direction. But really, as my subconscious has pointed out, there is a part of me that wonders how stupid I really am. Could Jake have placed his sins right in front of me and I would have lapped them up and called them delicious? God, please tell me that is not the case! Luckily, my time with Jake was cut short. I don't have to be tested. But I still am driven to understand my own character, so I find myself doing a lot of searching through memories to find answers about who I am. Here are a few more flashbacks combined with confessions.

Flashback/Confession 1: When Jake and I were dating, Jake told me that during his first teaching assignment he had a romantic interest in one of his students to the point that they even went on dates. This strange turn of conversation was off-kilter with the man I was falling in love with. I asked him a few questions like, Didn't you know it was wrong? Is it over? Are you sorry? His answers were all the right ones, of course. I keep trying to relive that conversation to get at a few other points. I keep trying to part the fog of my distant memories to find out if I asked him if he slept with her. If I did ask him that . . . if he said yes . . . if I still decided to date him and marry him . . . what does that say about me? I would never forgive myself. (That student, by the way, brought charges against Jake at the beginning of this year and he will be sentenced for those charges in just a few weeks. He did sleep with her while she was a student and he even carried on an affair with her after we were married)

Flashback/Confession 2: During our dating or maybe early in our marriage, but definitely before we had kids, Jake would come up with weird sex games sometimes. Once he suggested that I pretend to be a daughter walking in on her father masturbating. I freaked out with the grossness of it. Another time, he suggested that I pretend to be a young girl that he would help teach about masturbation. In a moment that I am proud of, I did tell him that his idea was horrible and innapropriate and I asked him if I needed to worry about him with our future kids. Yes, let me repeat (if only to make myself feel better) I asked my husband point blank, "Do I need to worry about you with our kids?" He said no. The confession part of this is that I didn't see the reality of the danger. I actually thought that by putting him on notice like that I had cancelled out the danger . . . Almost daily, I am thankful that my kids won't become the subject of Jake's fantasies. Because they could have . . . God, they really could have.

Flashback/Confession 3: Jake liked to read erotica. He found a website with erotica stories. I read a few with him and they all seemed quite harmless, although I normally rolled my eyes at them. One story was about the man coming over to clean the pool and ending up in bed with the lady of the house. Typical men day-dreaming. Another story was a memory of a girl's first make-out session with her high-school crush. There wasn't even sex in it, just sort of a hollywood level of teen romance. But then one day I sat at his computer when he wasn't around and I saw the website was up, so I read it with an attitude of, "What stupid man fantasy is this?" It was a story set in Sparta, Greece in which a father prepared for battle by raping his own son. In the story it wasn't portrayed as rape, of course, they were both wildly turned on . . . I shut down the website and walked away. I later told Jake that I didn't think he should keep reading that site, but at the same time I was too embarrassed to talk to him about that particular story. I wish I had. I would be more satisfied with myself if I had told him that the story was wrong. If only I had made a big deal out of it and really let him know that it was horribly misguided and should not be giving anyone pleasure! Instead, I let myself be reassured by the fact that I never saw him on that site again.

All of that happened before we had kids. In fact, after we had kids he never said or did anything that I would call suspicious. Obviously, he was doing it elsewhere . . . or in a more concealed way. Now that I reach the end of these flashbacks, I am more convinced that I was never complicit in his problems. Unlike Jake, I see a child as an innocent person needing protection from adult sexualization. He sees children as potential sex partners or, worse, as sex toys. If Jake's crimes were "served up" to me, as the metaphor in my dream suggested, I would truly scream and point it out for what it is. My problem is not a moral one. My problem is that I lacked suspicion and sense for the insidious nature of Jake's crimes. It never occurred to me that his moral compass was broken or that he would be sneaking around hiding things from me. In the simplest terms (the ones that I will use to berate myself with for the rest of my life) I am an idiot, a stupid love-blinded patsy.

Sadly, I'm unsure if my blindness is cured. It's not love related anymore, it is just plain good-person, never assume the worst blindness. Even sadder, I think I am not alone in my blindness. No, I KNOW I'm not alone. One in four girls are sexually abused in their childhood, usually by a relative or friend of the family. The amount of boys who are abused is not much better. All of those children probably have someone like me in their life. Someone who has an intact moral compass, but is blind to the signs . . . Someone like you, too, dear readers. One in four. Keep that in mind as you watch your children play on the playground or perform in a concert. Look at all the kids around your own kids and start counting. One fourth of all those kids are being abused and exploited for the sexual pleasure of an adult. Let's not be blind any more. Don't let the bad guys serve babies up on platters . . . God, I want to wash my brain now.

I'd rather be the paranoid mom

This was a very interesting comment I just received and it hits at the center of many of my struggles right now, so I thought my reply was worth a whole post:

Not that this is an excuse for what happened, but as a child (probably around 9)I played a game with my neighbors called "the rape game." The game basically had each of the girls take turns and pretend to be sleeping. One of the boys would pretend to break into our room and pretend to take our clothes off. I don't think much happened beyond that.
I remember thinking that the game was naughty but knew that it was also safe. In fact, I had forgotten about it entirely until I was in my 20's and thought, ohhh my...I used to play "the rape game."
I think kids have to find their own way to explain complicated adult situations. It's possible these girls have see their parents shower together, so a group "pretend" shower might just be their way of understanding or just thinking that this is very normal behavior.
I think it's definitely something to keep an eye on but I'd be curious to see how many other adults have had similar playtime experiences."\

You know, I was bothered the daycare staff trying to reassure me by saying "It was all probably just innocent playing." I actually agree with the innocent part. As long as the kids don't know why the game is bad then they are still innocent. I remember kids showing each other their private parts when I was a kid in daycare and it was all innocent. However, even innocent play can cause problems for children in the long run.

Of my concerns, the mildest one (but a very real one) would be that my daughter would start to take lessons from these games as to how relationships work. Basically, she may think that sex has to be a part of every meaningful relationship or that it has to be the foundation of a meaningful relationship. That disturbs me greatly. On the same thought  line I would be concerned that the "rape game" would have taught some of the players that boys are aggressors who "take" sex and girls are helpless victims. That lesson can be instilled without any clothes being removed. Besides the inequality of genders in that situation, there is the added ingredient of violence that I never would want my kids to associate with sex.

Another problem comes with prolonged game playing in which the children start finding excitement and escapism in these games that lead to more mature forms of sexual escapism and addiction as adults.

Then, of course, there is my largest concern that my child might be coerced into sexual acts by someone older. The mother of the child who is starting this game should be asking herself this same question. There is a chance that her daughter just created this game to explore her curiosity about body parts OR she could have created it because someone has been coercing her into sexual behavior. 

I think the shower game up to this point was very innocent. However, I'm terrified to think that any caregiver would lean on this idea of "innocent curiosity" to avoid having to take any more action.

Back to the rape game, it sounds like you came out of that situation unscathed, so I'm glad. But it leaves me wondering, where were the adults who were in charge of those children? Nine-year-olds don't need constant supervision, but there should have been someone checking in often enough to interrupt a game like that. Someone should have noticed and stopped it with gentle guidance for all of you. Just because you didn't take any harmful lessons from it doesn't mean that one of the others didn't.

The consequences of sex play, even when it doesn't involve true abuse, can be serious. I don't want to be that mom who is always paranoid about this stuff . . . but I'd rather lean that direction then be the mom who blows it off as innocent while her child is learning the wrong things about sex and relationships.

Playing "Shower" - Part 2

At the same time I created my blog post about the "shower" game, I also posted this on Facebook:

"I think an older kid was trying to play an inappropriate game with my 3yo. I asked my daughter not to play that game anymore, but she seemed defensive. How do you explain this stuff to a little kid? She was hardly willing to tell me about the game, probably because she realizes I disapprove. How do I help her understand that I'm trying to help?"

I made it non-specific to place or people involved on purpose. I got several responses from my friends that are not part of our community.

The next morning, as I dropped off my kids at daycare, I went straight to the director to talk to her. A member of the daycare's board was also waiting for me. I was happily surprised thinking, "Wow, they're taking this seriously." But no, she was just there to explain to me how my facebook post could have damaged the daycare's reputation and endangered the children involved. Ugh.

I was horribly offended, of course. They seemed more concerned by my facebook post than the possibility that children were engaging in sex play. We argued a while over the facebook crap. She said that I signed an agreement with the daycare that I would take all problems to the director first. I told her my facebook post wasn't about the daycare, it was about me trying to talk to my child. "Do I have to ask the director's permission every time I post a parenting concern on facebook?"

"Of course not!" she said. But then she continued to compare what I did to a hospital employee breaking the HIPPA (sp?) privacy act. The more I think about, the more that pisses me off because I am NOT their employee and I broke no code of privacy! Grrrr.

She also explained that the comments following the post jumped to conclusions, which could make parents start to think that there is a real predator at our daycare. I'll let you all read the comments below and see if any are inappropriately scary (because I think they are dead-on appropriate).

In the end, I did apologize simply because we live in a small community, so any local parents reading my post could reasonably guess where this incident occurred.

And then we were finally able to steer the conversation back to how the daycare will handle this issue. Let me say that I really like the director and I do trust that she will work to prevent any sex play. The board member is also a woman I generally like, but I hope the director ignores her assertions that "It was probably all just innocent!" Well, it might be innocent, but it could easily start sliding toward the dangerous.

I had the bitter taste of politics in my mouth the rest of the day.

The following are the comments following my post:

From an old high school friend and mother of 2: " that's a tough one. at 3, not sure if I had to have a talk with K-, but we did have the "it's your body" talk and "no one can touch you" type things. but we've been lucky"

From me: "We've talked a lot about body parts and how we don't let others touch us. This game involved pretending to take a shower, including pretending to undress and wash, in a secluded area. When I told Elise that I didn't like that game because I don't want her taking her clothes off with other kids she said, "It was just pretend!" I told her that sometimes pretend stuff becomes real stuff. Then I suggested that we find her better friends to play with and she said, "Yeah, friends that don't want to take clothes off." I practically screamed HALLELUJAH!"

From a college friend and mom of an infant:" i swear that is one of my biggest nervous-ness-es (how's that for a word?) of parenthood.... figuring out the best way to address personal privacy, without going overboard. i would much rather have a girl that is ready to kick some a** for people getting too "friendly", than a girl who is in any kind of trouble and afraid to talk to me."

From a teacher and mother: "Evie, if they were acting secretive it can only be because the older child told them to keep it a secret. I'd be more worried about that child than how you handled it with Elise. It sounds like you handled that perfectly. If you can, you should share your concern with the other child's parents. Sometimes if a child initiates that kind of play with younger children (especially when they stress the secretive nature of the activity which indicates that they know that the activity is inappropriate) it can be an indicator that the child is working out some issues of their own. Many of the children that abuse younger kids have been abused themselves. You might stress to Elise that she needs to play where you can see her at all times. What a frightening incident!"

From a mother of grown children and wife of a teacher: "I agree with [above] and have the opinion that a three year old is too mentally and emotionally immature to plays out of sight unless she is with family or friends that you know extremely well and completely trust"

 From another mother of 2: "sounds like you did the right thing. and making it about talking instead of getting in trouble is ALWAYS the way to go." 

Finally, from me: "When I wrote this post, I intentionally left out details about the location and children involved. It was not my intention to scare any local parents. I was only trying to get some ideas on how to talk to my daughter about the situation. I want it to be clear that the organization in charge of the place where this occurred is taking the appropriate steps with care and concern for everyone involved. My family will happily frequent this location in the future because of how well they are handling it."

Ugh.   



  

Playing "Shower"

My kids go to a great daycare. I feel very comfortable with the teaching style of the teachers. I'm even more happy with the very open layout of the facility. If there is a door, there is a big window in it. There are multiple teachers in the facility, constantly rotating classrooms, and there are parents coming and going at all times. The visibility helps set my mind at ease that there will be no funny business. Basically, I don't have to worry about sexual abuse.

However, when I picked up my kids today, I noticed two older girls, around 7 years old, coming out of a bathroom stall together whispering. I let the daycare worker know before I left.

At home, I asked Elise if she ever played with Casey, one of the girls I saw. She said yes and I proceeded to gently ask her what kind of things they did together. The more detail I asked for, the less Elise seemed willing to tell me. Finally, I asked her where they played and one of the places she listed was the "shower". I don't recall seeing a shower in the stall, so I asked her where the shower was and she said it was with the bathrooms. I asked her what they did in there and she said they took off their clothes to wash themselves. She quickly followed that with, "It's just pretend, Mom!"

I hugged her and asked her not to play in the shower with Casey anymore.

I feel rather sick about this. I'm not sure what to do. I guess I'm going to explain this to the daycare staff. At the least, I don't want Elise playing with Casey any more. I'm leaning toward asking them to have a talk with Casey about the inappropriateness of her play. I'm more than a little concerned why Casey came up with this game . . . What do you all think?

February 16, 2011 (Part One)

I remember quite clearly the moment my husband called to tell me that his boss, the principal at the high school, had sent him home because a student had reported him. Recalling that moment is so clear that I can feel the blood draining from my cheeks now just as it did on that day. 

It was a lovely day in February. I was still running on a birth-high since I had Sabrina just three weeks earlier. Sabrina was so perfect, so calm and content. Elise, my first daughter, was happily playing. She was content, too. It was a good day until he called. 

I had a visitor at that time. She worked with a local non-profit that provided developmental information for parents. I was enjoying her visit. But her presence made the situation so strange. I answered the phone, knowing from the caller ID that it was Jake. It was odd that he was calling in the middle of the school day. He said he was coming home and his voice sounded strained. I can't recall the exact words he said. He was babbling a little. His words were muffled, soggy. Was he crying?

I was just staring at my visitor while I was still on the phone. Normally, I'm a bit over-dramatic when things get stressful, but not that day. Some part of me that I had never met before said, Act normal, Evie, and send her away. This is not something you want to share with outsiders. This is something you protect and bury as fast as possible.

           
Before that moment, I thought I'd be the type of person who would turn my own mother into the police if she stepped out of line. I'm such a believer in rules. And yet, when the moment came, I instantly put up the shield of protection - at least for the moment.

        
I told Jake that we'd talk when he got home and hung up. With smiles and apologies, I sent the visitor away. I turned on the television to distract Elise from the serious conversation that I anticipated.

Jake arrived home with a red, tear-streaked face. I hugged him. I wanted so much to take away whatever bad situation had just occurred. I wanted to protect him. I know that seems ridiculous because he is the one who broke the law, the one who was in a position of responsibility - he was to be blamed, not pitied. And yet, he was the one I knew and the one I loved and he was in distress.

           
He was babbling still, through a runny nose and tears. He seemed so much like a confused child. I tried to listen to what he was saying. He said the girl had told him that she had a crush on him. She had tried to kiss him, but he had stopped her. He told her that he couldn't risk his family and career. She had gone to the principal to report him.

        
 It was so hard to understand him. This was not the man I was used to. Jake usually took pride in being calm in any stressful situation. He never let his cool down. It would have been a relief to see him so sincerely emotional, except that it meant a whole world of hurt was coming down on him.

           
I told him to take a moment to calm himself and we would talk after. For just a minute, he sat at the dining table. Then he got up and went to his office, saying that he had to do some things. I was perplexed that there was anything he needed to do that would come to mind in such an awful situation. But then, stress always drives him to work hard and keep busy. I just comforted myself that he would come to me when he was ready.

           
I was worried, but it was easy to find things to distract myself with. For God's sake, I had a three-week-old baby and a two-year-old! The next thing I knew, Jake was sitting on the sofa with his business laptop in front of him and the television turned to one of his favorite channels. It was like it was any normal day of the week.

        
I sat down with him and asked what he was doing.

        
"Scrubbing the hard drives." That answer challenged my not-so-technical brain a little. I took a second look at the laptop. I noticed, as I looked closer, that it was hooked-up to a portable hard drive that he used as a back-up sometimes. I realized he was erasing it and that made me a little uncomfortable.

But then, I thought about how he liked to look at porn on the internet sometimes. He's just scared and trying to make himself look better in case the school investigates him, I thought. I felt a sense of relief as I convinced myself that he was overreacting. [Now I look back at this moment and think I'm an idiot. A very trusting, lovable idiot].

I said, "Don't you think that will make you look guilty?" He just shrugged.

As the day wore on, I convinced myself that this was all just a misunderstanding. A teenage girl had misplaced emotions for her teacher. The school Superintendent would see that, right? They would clear it all up and he would be back at work the next day.

Later, he had a meeting to go to. It was a community business development group that he had recently joined. He was unsure if he should go or not. I encouraged him to go, live life as normal. "Nothing is likely to happen tonight, right?" So he went.

It wasn't a half hour later that I received a call asking for Jake. The caller, a woman, didn't identify herself, so I was a little on guard. I told her to call back in a few hours. Ten minutes later she called again and identified herself as our Chief of Police. She said it was really important that she talk to him. I told her where he was and his cell phone number.

As luck would have it, Jake's cell phone had a technical issue where it would regularly shut itself off, so he never knew that the police were calling him. As he left the meeting, he called me and I told him to just drive to the police station. As I mentioned before, I am a rule follower. I was so good at "obeying" that fascist dictators would have loved me. I just had a lot of faith in the system and law enforcement. I still do to a degree, but I won't jump so quickly to cooperate anymore.

I didn't here from Jake for hours. I paced aimlessly around the house, holding Sabrina in my arms, trying to keep my mind busy. I called the police department a few times, but they would only tell me that he was there and nothing more. I called Kay, his mom, to see if she knew anything different, but she didn't. At one point, I was so anxious that I begged her to go to the police station, but she said that he didn't need his mother watching over him. In hindsight, she was right, he needed a lawyer to tell him to be quiet.

The police talked to him about the girl. He was open with them. He told them more about the incident than he told his wife. He admitted that he had been talking with her for a while (weeks, I think, but maybe longer). He admitted to friending her on Facebook. He even explained to them how he had run his hand down the front of her chest on the outside of her clothes when she had tried to kiss him (he conveniently left that part out when he told me). They had him write a letter of apology to the student. When I heard about the letter months later, I really wondered at the intelligence of this man - did he not see that this was just a ploy to get a written confession?! Maybe I have watched too many cop shows.

They asked him for permission to view his computers. He agreed and called to forewarn me that they were coming. Just thinking about what comes next raises my pulse and my temper . . . But that will be Part Two of the worst day of my life.          

Haunted

Sometime today, there will be an advisement on the charges for Jake's most recent arrest. At the moment, we have no idea what he was arrested for.

I sit here at the computer in the mornings with Sabrina on my lap, trying to wake her up a little. I can't take a shower until she is awake enough to sit on the bathroom floor and play. Such is the life of a single mom. (By the way, any moms who have steady partners that don't help them do things, like take a shower. That's a red flag. Just remember, you hold the baby every time he showers, right?)

So while I gently wake my baby, I go through emails and catch up on stuff. Well, this morning I was going through old gardening pictures. I came across some family pictures I scanned for Jake's parents two Christmas's ago. And there was Clyde. Clyde was the farm hand that molested and sexually abused Jake and his sisters. I had three pictures of him being goofy with bananas and a lamp shade. (Another red flag. When a grown person makes a fool of themselves to win over your children, be damned sure you are always aware of when they are with your children and what they are doing.)

I thought I had actually deleted those pictures long ago because Jake told me that Clyde had possibly hurt his oldest sister (I don't know if he just didn't remember his own abuse at that time or he just didn't want to tell me). But there were the pictures of Clyde smiling at me.

"This is your fault," I said, thoroughly knowing that I was talking to a computer screen. I deleted the pictures. No one needs Clyde in their lives.

Really, I can't blame Clyde for everything. He molested all of Jake's siblings, and yet Jake is the only one to follow in his footsteps. Jake has made his own choices. I just wish the cycle of sexual sickness would end. How many of Jake's victims are continuing in his footsteps?

Better question: How many victims does Jake have? We might find out today.