By snippy.snippy.crab.kristine,flickr.com

What if someone wrote to me and confessed being a "former pedophile?"  What would I say? As a mom, I've thought about this a lot. 

So this is a letter, I would write to a pedophile - who is actually working to recover.  I try to address it to one who is trying to stay in recovery, because no issue is simple.  So what if a pedophile is inactive, but the victims never knew what to do with what happened to them because he moved?  This is my "letter."  

We have registered pedophiles right down the road and across from my girls' former school.  And most convicted sex offenders are not registered.  They slip through the cracks.  So, since I "live in the VOX neighborhood," this letter is to someone if he/she lived in my neighborhood.

You Owe Your Victims Their Day

Dear Friend,

It's been a while since I wrote and I believe a public letter to you is the only way I might get through to you.  First, I believe you are "rehabilitated" in the sense you don't act on your urges.  Second, I don't know what you actually did to "steal the innocence from young children".   Third, as you said, with no details of your "crimes", with no names, no victims who ever came forward, the police can't do anything with your past.

I realized knowing your story from your private messages to me revealing your past and the analogy to the movie “The Woodsman,” became a brick in my lap after a while. I felt like I was abetting your crime of silence, yet another violation to those kids, I don't think you realize you've left them with.   So I have come back to say something.  And say it publicly so that it might reach you when a private message will be ineffective. 

As they say, “There are no accidents”.  You chose to share with me privately that you harmed young children (with me, of all people, for a reason).  It wasn’t just that we really like and respect each other on all the blogs we visit.

I commented on blogs you read - about being "molested" in a strange sort of way when I was 17, in public/private way, yet in a way that had me scared for my life, panic stricken, paralyzed in the moment and ashamed and terrified people would think this bizarre event unfolding was my fault.  I got out of this place and raced home and my mother reported the guy because I was too scared to say or do anything.  They'd think I was a whore, he'd kill me.  Back then, they said, she should have said something.  Great.  My mom said, "THIS is an innocent girl.  She only knew to get away as fast as she could."  So this guy probably continued his bizarre, disgusting shtick.

I commented on blogs you read about watching someone, a nice stranger who smiled at me, block my view while my 5 year old was catching rain drops on the café porch, with a glass door between us, the difference between life and death while he tried to lure her to his car. He could have picked her up and run and she would have been gone with me watching 5 feet away. I have never, ever gotten over it.  I reported him, but the rain was so hard, his plates were hard to read and I couldn't give the police enough to catch him.  It was a flash and he could have taken her were it not for a few odd things that got in his way, When the police really did little,  I felt so worried for the safety of other children that I  drove around that town for a few days to see if I’d spot him or his car.  How could I have let him go? You knew that too.

And you knew my vehement feeling about pedophiles in those comments I made.  Yet you reached out after and wrote  and shared with me, that you had perpetrated acts against children. 

Why tell me, I wondered?  Was it a trust and respect built between two bloggers who respected each other?  Perhaps.  But I think there are no accidents.  You told a vocal mother.  Why?

Plus, you even reached out to share the story with another person you respected - yet under cover enough to not get caught.  Yet you risked it.  You risked a lot on that one.  You wanted us to know pedophiles can repent. Was that all you wanted us to know? 

You told me you wanted to come forward to name the kids you violated, the ones whose innocence you stole and take responsibility.  You said, the counselors told you if you did, you would make those victims of yours relive those horrors.  They said that it would be unfair and a second violation on them (mentally) if you come forward.  And that went right past me - oh if the counselors said that it must be right.  WRONG.  Unequivocally, undeniably, selfishly (on their part to so advise) WRONG. 

So you have dedicated  years to being clean.  You have dedicated yourself to God and to helping your country and to waiting for any ONE child you violated, now an adult to call you out.  And then you said you would willingly confess.  You were in hiding to protect them from further pain. 

You told me the police watch you, yet without the names/the crimes they can't do anything.  And you work very hard to keep it that way.   Because you believe being "recovered" and dedicating your life to God,  to country, and to helping others’ change their “deviant behavior” is to show one can recover and never repeat offend. 

I believe you have genuinely worked to rehabilitate.  In fact I know you are frustrated that society is doesn't see one can recover from being a pedophile.  The fact is, if all you say is true, you are a rare example when all studies say, “impossible.”  So you stay a step ahead of the police so you can do good works.

I hope you're reading this.  Here's what I learned first hand and after speaking with a friend who councils pedophile victims. This recovery you genuinely work on is all about you.  

What about the victims? 

You stole something from them you admit should never be taken – their pure innocent minds and trust.  And you have stolen their chance to recover with this thesis.  The premise of Step 9 of any 12 step program is: to make amends unless to do so would hurt someone - is if you went to their door steps.  Making an amends that way leaves person “confessing” feel better and leaves the other one violated. You are correct.  What I’m saying is this doesn’t apply here.

You could go to the police in those towns where they grew up.  Their names won’t go public.  Your name will be public, your actions only, and they then have the chance to come forward and realize, “Maybe it wasn’t me.  Maybe I’m not crazy.  Maybe what I remember is right.”

I don't know what you did.  I do know on any level, playing with the minds of the innocent or the bodies, you steal something.  Without the chance to confront their perpetrator, they cannot find closure.  They are left thinking that they did something.  They may be left thinking they were mistaken.  Nothing happened - they must remember wrong - but it eats at them.  Or, worse,  they are left thinking they were perverted if they "went along" with it out of fear because you were the trusted adult in power or a mentor. Respect/love got confused with sexual overtones. They were left to believe they caused it to happen.  It was their fault.  They were left with shame.  I don't even know what you left them with in terms of their self-identity and trust.  They were left with changing the course of their lives forever. 

I know enough victims of rape, incest, molestation to know the human spirit can rise above living as a "victim."  But trying to have a normal life after that without confronting the assailant or getting SOME validation that happened to you is not made up is damn hard.   Yet, if they know that person has come forward they can begin to make sense of it, they can confront you or their past.  They wouldn't have to question themselves anymore.  Without you coming forward, you left them with a hard job or for some an impossible one. You HAVE to know that.

Those counselors that advised you: THEY ARE WRONG.  Your silence helps one person:  You.  I understand the reference you gave to the movie “The Woodsman.”  There is a viewer empathy for the recovering pedophile who works to change, as you have, when a society will never stop its revulsion and hate.  

If you went back to the state/s where you did whatever you did to these kids - and turned yourself in to the police and let it come out in the press, their names wouldn't be published.  Yours would.  And then they might come forward and get some closure.  They can't come forward when you've disappeared.  You left them with nightmares and broken spirits.  I don’t know the specifics of your “crimes.”  They may not even be "as bad" as you said.  However, I know they are enough that 20 years later you say the police still watch you.

A friend who councils pedophile abuse VICTIMS said the most insidious side of the act is more than the sexual act. It's the abuse of power, the violation of trust, the manipulation, the mind games, the twisting these innocent  trusting spirits to either be afraid or feel they are at fault.  And if a child tries to question a pedophile/perp in a role of power, the perp knows what to do, take all of what they know about the innocent victim and twist it around until it comes out the other end so they are too scared or too ashamed to come forward.

I do believe in terms of recovery from being a repeat offender, you have stopped, if all you said is true.  But you live in denial: not coming forward is wrong.

If you really want to make things right, go back and give those now grown up children a chance to get closure and get healing.  They are the ones who need it.   I know if you didn’t need a job, you’d find a forum to reach out to pedophiles..  But until you make it right with these kids, you will have forever stolen their innocence and given them no way to wrap their heads around it and you will have nothing to teach a “recovering pedophile.”

If you know that, then I can tell you from every victim’s perspective - that is unforgivable.

There is a reason you wrote and shared what you did with me.  A reason you shared it in public with someone famous in a way you risked discovery. In your heart, you have to know that the baloney about turning yourself in would hurt the victims is just that, baloney. 

And what has me wonder about your sincerity stating to me that if one victim came forward, you'd gladly admit it, is because in the same breath you also said you stay a few steps ahead of the police who seem to be watching you in your new neighborhood.  You know their dilemma and remain uncaught.  Without names, they can’t do anything.  So if the law is reading this, remember, this is a fictitious story in the neighborhood of VOX.  A blog letter to a hypothetical pedophile with a hypothetical history.  But in reality, there probably will be victims who read this who can identify, active pedophiles who may hear, and someone like this recovering perpertrator who may think that doing God's work - means giving your victims a chance to find closure rather than waiting for them.

Who ever told you you'd harm the folks you really harmed was WRONG.  Don't go to the kids, you go to the police and let the victims get closure.  They deserve that. 

IF there are others who know of victims of men (or women) pedophiles, please share, what you know they went through. Any adult who has been molested will tell you, the quickest route to overcome being a “victim” is by confronting their perpetrator. 

Even as a ficticious story this was difficult to write.  I like and respect this "protagonist."  Like in the movie "The Woodsman," I see, nothing is black and white.  And I believe, if this had really happened, the protagonist would know I wrote this from my heart to him, for him as much as for his victims. 

I will say, because this was so difficult to write and such a difficult issue, I am not condoning pedophilia.  I believe for 99% there is no recovery.  It is intractable. And for those, I have no sympathy, no heart.

This story, even if it is ficticious, could help children, grown up, whose lives may have been shattered. 

I respectfully say to anyone who reads this piece, your comments are welcome.  Any that are inappropriate, I will delete.