The Prison Inside Me (8 page)

CHAPTER TEN

A
s Dr. Adeline Fisher opened the door to her consultation room and said good-bye to her patient, her receptionist whispered that Detective Szysmanski had called again, requesting help with a case in which he was involved. Fisher was the consulting psychiatrist to the Trout Lake Police Department.

When the receptionist said, “On the line,” Fisher picked up her phone.

“Listen, Siz, if this is about the Jay Street thing, you are talking to the wrong person. I don’t know anything about random shooters. You need a psychic, not a psychiatrist.”

“No, doc, it’s not about that. It’s about the Nichols suicide.”

“That I may be able to help you with. What’s up?”

“Doc, we find that he may have been a pedophile. Help me understand better what kind of person a pedophile is.”

“Go ahead,” Fisher said.

“Well, first, we have information, really nothing great, that Nichols molested young boys maybe twenty or thirty years ago. How can we confirm something like that when the party they are accusing is now dead?”

“That’s tough. Maybe you can look into old medical records or school records where the subject told someone of this abuse. If the child was physically harmed in some way, perhaps some physician or hospital that treated him—you say it was boys—made some entry that would confirm the accusation.”

“Doc, this was only improper touching, as far as we know. We don’t have anything like sodomy or penetration yet. And we’re not talking about forced abusive behavior that would have left marks, as far as we know up to now. No one has come forward with anything other than inappropriate touching, maybe mutual touching, but that’s all we have.”

“Siz, this is like the old joke of the police station whose toilets were stolen. You have nothing to go on. At least not with the information you are giving me. Maybe if you can get multiple sworn depositions from a number of children who were molested, you may have a reason.” She hesitated. “Reason for what? How are you going to charge and try a dead man?”

“Well, it’s not really about him. We have good reason to believe that his suicide was staged and that it may be homicide by someone he abused years ago.”

“OK, that’s different,” the psychiatrist mused. “What else can I tell you?”

“Out of pure curiosity, I see cases being settled from many years ago where the abused kids, now adults, are awarded even millions of dollars. How can a jury make such awards on accusations that can’t be proved other than the word of kids who say they were abused?”

Fisher hesitated a moment. “Their attorneys make a case of pain and suffering. These adults who were abused as kids show signs of trauma, sometimes even a post-traumatic stress disorder, that has caused them grief, medical expenses, and loss of ability to hold a position that would pay them more than they have been able to earn. Because of the trauma of early sexual experiences, these affected kids in adulthood present depression, eating disorders, substance abuse, alcoholism, and other forms of anxiety. This early sexual exploitation is very confusing, and as they grow older, it may be repressed psychologically and emerge in physical disorders.”

“Doc, how come they never talk about it until some kind of stimulus, like the Nichols suicide, makes it all pour out?”

“Oh, boy, Siz,” Fisher sighed, “this is going to take hours to explain. First, in many cases, kids think it was their fault, something they did that made the adult take advantage of them. They feel guilty about this. Everyone grows up with some form of warning from parents about inappropriate sexual behavior. They think, ‘What have I done?’ That’s not something one talks about to anyone. No teenager comes out of the bathroom and announces he or she has just masturbated, much less a younger child taken advantage of, in a nice way, by some adult. Then, in case you haven’t noticed, the abused kid may have had a feeling of pleasure in the arrangement and doesn’t want it to stop. Now, I’m not talking only about sexual pleasure, but perhaps the adult has awarded the kid with something. It can be as simple as money, or sweets to eat, or even praise. But more often than not, the abuse, as we call it, is from a trusted adult, a teacher, a related and revered adult like an older cousin or uncle or aunt, whom the child loves. This older person may be giving a child, otherwise deprived, the kind of warmth, attention, and even love that is missing in the child’s life.

“There is also a bit of confusion in the child’s mind. ‘What have I done? What does all this mean? I don’t understand why anyone wants to touch me there.’ Remember, we are talking about kids who are preadolescent. They don’t understand the sexual needs of adults as they will when they enter puberty. No one draws pictures for a six-year-old of what his parents had to do to create him. Why not? Because they wouldn’t understand. This is the lack of understanding on which pedophiles foster illicit and inappropriate touching, and worse, with very young children.

“There’s also a big thing about denial. Children have an easy time blocking out things they did that are unpleasant. They know, but they don’t know. They clean their memory so they don’t have to think about it. It’s not that it never happened. It’s that they don’t want to know that it happened, which kids are very good at. They repress, like it happened to someone else, not to them. ‘I can’t understand what happened, so I’ll fantasize that it never happened.’

“To close this whole thing, we come to perhaps the principal reason that kids don’t talk. Who is going to believe them? Some trusted adult, a respected community member, a great influence in the family, is about to be accused by some kid. If the kid knows to accuse him, or rarely her, of inappropriate sexual conduct, the kid knows he is not just spilling the beans about Uncle John buying him an ice cream just before dinner. No, the kid knows he is about to drop a bombshell, whatever age the kid is. He thinks, ‘Who is going to believe me?’ He knows what happened the last time he lied when he took an extra cookie, or when he stole his brother’s toy. ‘I’m going to be a liar again, and I’ll be punished for it.’ Siz, some kid comes forward and accuses me, or you. Who is anyone going to believe? Kids just don’t come up against adults in a verbal ‘he said, she said’ game, because they think they are going to lose. Better just to shut up, bury whatever it is he doesn’t like, and get on with living. It’s so easy for kids to repress ugliness. Kids are horribly physically abused by drunken parents, and yet they still love them. Their beatings never happened in their minds.”

“Doc, you’ve been great. But I need more info about how pedophiles work. What makes a successful man like Nichols become a pedophile?”

“That’s easier from our research. One mustn’t think that homosexuality is a cause of pedophilia. It is common in both homosexuals and heterosexuals. One very common cause, at least from recent findings, is that pedophiles were abused when they were children, too. The confusion I mentioned is still present. They may need contact with young children to get sexual pleasure.”

“But Nichols was married for forty years, seemingly happily, with two kids, now grown. How could that be?”

“Lots of pedophiles are happily married, leading normal sex and professional lives. I’m sorry to say that even people in my profession have been guilty of pedophilia. One has nothing to do with the other. Pedophilia is not a genetic structure akin to most human sexuality. It is a psychiatric pathology for which, unfortunately, medical and psychiatric science has not been able to effect a cure or even a treatment. The government posts a registry of convicted pedophiles because once convicted of this crime, really a malady, we believe that the adult will remain a pedophile for the rest of his or her life. The procedure is prevention, keeping them away from children.”

“You mean every sexually abused child will become a pedophile?”

“Hardly; that’s something we don’t understand. Some become abusers, and others just live through it and have lives like the rest of us. Some abused people internalize certain protective psychological processes that protect them from repeating the abuse they suffered. I wish I could tell you more of this, but it’s difficult to fathom. We really need more study of this, but people who have made a good adjustment to life rarely come forward to speak of unpleasantness in their childhood.”

“Yeah, doc, but how do these pedophiles get the kids to accept their advances? Is there a technique that works with all kids?”

“Pedophiles are gifted in determining which kids will yield to them. They sense a need in the kid, and then they groom them, even for long periods of time, to make sure they are approachable. The last thing a pedophile wants is to be denounced by some kid who has become alarmed at the pedophile’s advances. If the kid shows the least sign of resistance, the abuser backs off and finds another kid who is susceptible, who won’t reject him. The susceptible kid always wants something the pedophile is offering. Remember, we’re not talking here about some monster, some rapist, who takes a kid into the woods to rape or sodomize him. We’re talking about someone the kid trusts. That trust has to be confirmed in the most firm manner by the pedophile before the advance is made. It may take a lot of time, but the pedophile is willing to take the time to avoid being unmasked. I guess if a pedophile has a lot of money, he can go to a foreign county where children are for sale for the sexual pleasures of the adult. Hey, Siz, normal heterosexual adults are willing to spend a lot of time to seduce someone who is attractive to them! Some of you guys have a sixth sense about this. That sixth sense is also present in perverted adults too.”

Szysmanski laughed at this analogy.

Fisher continued, “One more thing. Pedophiles often need the stimulation of illicit contact with young children to become aroused. You can understand this from the thousands of kiddie porn sites on the Internet. Who looks at these? Why? It has to be for some form of perverted stimulation culminating in sexual pleasure of some sort. Maybe we can’t understand how that works, because we are not susceptible to that form of prurience. Maybe they can’t achieve sexual climax, something all of us perceive as normal, without such stimulation, for some reason unknown to us. Siz, it’s a crazy world out there. Ask me; I’m in it ten hours a day. If it didn’t exist, I’d have to become a cop or find some other kind of honest job!”

“Thanks for your help and for all your time, doc. I’m not sure what I can do with it, other than understand where Nichols is coming from and perhaps why someone would want to kill him for it. I’ll be in touch as things happen. See you later.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I
t was the third year of their marriage. Their finances were finally coming into a very normal flow of monthly receipts and expenses. Susan’s salary at Child Protective Services and George’s at Trout Lake Community College began to pale in comparison to the results of their camp operation. The various credit card debts were now eliminated, and the interest and amortization of the mortgage on their lodge were a normal monthly cash outflow within the budget of their income. They were even able to make small, albeit irregular, payments to their parents for the advances they had received to help buy the lodge and start Recovery Camp.

The operation of Recovery Camp was a business now aided by retained legal counsel, with assistance from an accounting firm. The presence of these two expert appendages to their business gave them more time to concentrate on the core of the camp, attracting more children to attend. Susan had convinced her superiors at CPS that many of the families with whom she was working to resolve their children’s problems could benefit if they could be aided by the camp’s tutoring services. Although CPS paid less for the services that Susan recommended, a small percentage of the camp’s receipts came from CPS. The greater benefit was the good name of the camp that was spread by a growing number of satisfied clients from all levels of the community.

Both looked long and hard at a major expansion of their facility to attend to more children in need. George was the principal demurrer in their conversations. “Let’s face it, Susan,” he would argue. “Yes, of course, I would love to enhance our income. But the success we know is the result of two principal aspects of our operation. First, we are most efficient in our use of resources. We don’t have paid employees, other than absolutely necessary maintenance people. We get those teenagers in my college prep courses to work for a reduced tuition. We only need them a few hours a week to help out with cleaning and some cooking. We don’t need counselors and other support personnel with special skills and salaries that would burden our operation.

“But the principal asset we have,” he continued, “is my ability to teach kids mathematics, to bring that subject to life for them, to turn them around where all other attempts to help them have failed. If we bring in too many kids, I can’t clone myself to handle them. And we can’t find anyone else with this skill. I can’t train or mentor others to do what has come to me naturally, to use this very special gift with which I have been blessed. We run the risk of a few failures, and that will destroy our name and fame. Our business will go right into the ground. A few disasters, no matter how many others we are successful with, and we’ll lose everything.”

Susan listened carefully to all this, wanting to find a flaw in his reasoning but unable to do so.

His next comments really pleased her. “Let’s not forget that we can see the light at the end of this tunnel of our debts, mortgages, and other obligations. Once all this is paid off, we will be generating income beyond our dreams. Imagine if all these payments we make each month to the bank, our credit card companies, and our parents are no longer going out. We can do other things we really want to do, like finally furnish the lodge the way you always wanted, take a vacation at the beach, or go on a cruise…”

Susan now interrupted him, “Or even start a family, at long last!”

“Yes,” George smiled, “even find someone to occupy one or two of those empty bedrooms! Let’s just stay the course on which we have embarked—no detours, no wild dreams. We have created a great winning combination. It ain’t broke. Let’s not fix it!”

Life became idyllic. Their love for each other grew, as did their business. They enjoyed their nightly martinis, the demanding work week in which each was involved with professional obligations, and the demands of the camp on weekends. Their Sunday afternoons after the campers left were their only escape time, with one Sunday a month at the shooting range, except if a holiday intervened to be used for that purpose. The two even found time to admire, somewhat longingly, the bedroom they had painted yellow, in expectation of an addition that both were sure would come one day. They talked at length of the family that they desired but that was being held in abeyance pending a firmer grip on their personal and business finances. But the room was ready to welcome whomever they would be blessed with.

The anomaly in George’s sexual behavior continued. With overnight campers present on weekends, Susan would read the boys a bedtime story. On occasion George would take one boy into his office for private tutoring. Even during the normal daytime activities such as swimming or boating that Susan supervised, George might take a boy into his private office for a tutoring session. Some Saturday nights, after a private tutoring session, George would come to bed highly aroused, awakening her and making passionate love. She adored this special warmth despite both of them having put in a week of strenuous, tiring effort. This didn’t happen every Saturday, only perhaps every other week. Rarely did they have sexual relations during the week, never after his special night classes with the high school students. She thought this quite strange, wondering what it was that made him so amorous on those Saturdays.

She accepted what she had and decided not to investigate, nor to ask George what got him so excited on occasion. She wished he would make love to her more often, relishing the attention and the fulfillment she felt in his appreciation of her femininity. She knew that during the week, he was working on his feet close to eighteen hours a day, Monday through Thursday. She rationalized that his fatigue after a grueling day of teaching and tutoring required the deep sleep into which he fell those nights without residual strength for lovemaking. Their relationship, however infrequent it was in total intimacy, was “as good as it gets,” but she wished it could be better.

And then she missed her period. Could it be? She told George of her suspicions, since she had always been so regular. A visit to their physician confirmed that she was six weeks pregnant. George was elated. “What do we want? A girl or a boy? Whatever you wish,” he said at the news, “and we’re going to make it a winner. I hope he or she likes yellow!”

They called their parents to bring the good news. It would be the first grandchild for George’s parents. Susan’s sister, Elizabeth, had given birth two years before to the Campbells’ first grandchild. Another bonanza fell into Susan and George’s lap. The two families discussed the loan they had made to their children to start their camp. They agreed to give this new addition a special baby gift of forgiveness of the remaining principal of the loans both had made to help create Recovery Camp. “You need something to help you furnish the house, get a nice layette for the baby, help with the medical bills, and maybe even hire someone to work in the camp or to take care of Susan to lighten her load.”

With the forgiveness of these two loans, Susan started to furnish the lodge, finally creating a home for them and the new addition. They were able to increase payments on the outstanding bank mortgage; they could see themselves being debt-free within three years if the camp continued on its current course. They even bought a new car, larger and more accommodating of their expected family. Life was getting better; both expressed their deepest appreciation to their parents for this new generosity.

It was the seventh month of Susan’s pregnancy with Caroline. She took leave from her work at CPS. She spent her days looking for small things she could do around their home, dormitory, and classroom to make them more attractive. She made sure that George’s multicolored whiteboard markers were arranged neatly, that papers and texts were all in their proper places, that the chairs were in neat rows, that pencil marks on the tablet arms were erased, and that she did everything she could do to make George’s tutoring and teaching easier.

One day, as she was straightening things on the desk in George’s office, she noticed a dog-eared, much-used folder. She recognized it as the folder George occasionally took into the bathroom before returning in an aroused state for a passionate session of lovemaking. She smiled, thinking that she was about to find either camp financial records or hard-core pornographic pictures of men and women locked in carnal embrace. She picked up the folder and opened it.

Her heart sank, and she gasped for breath as she saw the many photographs in the folder. Her legs grew weak. She felt she was going to faint. She fell into George’s chair at the desk. Each picture was of a different male, obviously a young boy, torso only, lacking the maturity of pubic hair, completely naked, genitals in full view, cropped so that neither head nor face appeared. She gasped for breath. She turned over a few of the photos, stopping before viewing all that were in the folder.

Oh, my dear God, what have I done? What is George doing? What have I married? And now I’m pregnant! Is this the end of our marriage, the end of our lives together, the end of our business and financial success? How do I face him? Do I tell Elizabeth, my parents, his parents? Where do I turn? I should never have opened that folder. It’s none of my business. George is entitled to a private life. We share so much; we have such joy together; we really have come to love each other so deeply. I don’t think I can live without him, without all this that he has given me. He has worked so hard for us to make a great life for me, and soon for our baby. I have no right to pry into his private life.

Susan carefully closed the folder after rearranging the photos it contained so that they would appear untouched. She carefully replaced the folder in the exact spot she had found it. She stood up and looked at the desk to ensure that George wouldn’t suspect that she had been in the office straightening things. Obviously, he had been looking at the folder and had forgotten to put it back in his attaché case. She got up weakly from the chair, replaced it under the desk as she had found it, and went back into their living quarters to make a cup of tea. She wished she could have that regular martini that they both had foregone during her pregnancy. She waited for the water to boil.

What do I do? No, Susan, you can’t just confront him; you can’t put him on trial. Do you think you can ask him to give up his pictures? Oh, my God, all those little boys. He must be doing something with them when he tutors them alone at night in his office! No wonder he comes to bed so excited! He’s doing something terrible to those kids. He gets all excited by whatever it is he does, and then he comes to me for the rest. Why the pictures, then? Probably it’s not enough when you can have the real thing at hand. What am I going to do? I’m a psychiatric social worker. I know what’s going on. And I send him kids, too! These kids are the most vulnerable; they need him more than the others. That explains why it’s not every Friday or Saturday night that he tutors that he comes to bed excited. It’s only on those nights when he has a willing youngster to abuse. There, I said it, abuse. He is an abuser; my husband is a pedophile, and now I know it. Help me, someone; what do I do?

The kettle was whistling. She turned off the heat, took a cup from the cupboard, put a tea bag in it, and poured the hot water over it. She stared at the brewing drink.

I can’t face this. I’m a big girl. I’m almost eight months pregnant. I must go on as before. I have to shut this whole thing out of my mind. My life was good before, and it will be again. I can’t just shut it off. George has worked so hard for me, for us. Yes, and look at all the good he has done for so many kids, turning them around, making them successes at math, learning to love a subject they hated before. Look at all the good he has done for those grown students at the college and in his college prep course. I can’t just throw that away. Susan, close your eyes. You had no right to look at his private papers. You never saw them. It never happened. Susan, don’t throw your life away, and George’s too. You love him. Maybe you can help him the way he has helped so many others, including you!

She took the tea bag out of the cup and put it on the sink top. She took the first sip of comforting, hot tea. She felt much more assured of what she had to do as she sipped her tea.

I can’t stop, either, sending kids from CPS to the camp. If I do, someone will suspect something and start investigating. I’ll go down along with George for having betrayed my professional obligation. How will we survive? If it comes out, George will go to jail. I couldn’t take that. Me? How about George? He would be destroyed. I can’t let that happen. George, I don’t know what you do with those little boys. I have never seen you do anything wrong. The boys have never complained. Maybe you don’t do anything at all; maybe you just look at those pictures the way you did before. Maybe you never touch those kids. Maybe I’m just playing worst-case scenarios. Maybe I’m seeing ghosts. I don’t know. I don’t want to know. I won’t know, ever, nor will anyone else. We can go on as before, just the two of us, even if it’s against the world. We always succeed, and we will this time, too.

She finished her tea in a newfound strength to support her husband. The loomng tragedy didn’t happen, not then, but it would.

And so their lives continued as before in an idyllic state with a successful business, a good name in town as people who helped children with difficulties, time for vacations, and progress in their professional lives. George became head of the department at the college. He was offered the position of provost but declined, as it would have interfered with his income from his other interests. Caroline was born, and two years later, George Nichols III, who was nicknamed “Trey” for the Roman numeral after his name. Both children grew up in a loving, fun-filled, demanding home. Both succeeded at school, in sports, and in other extracurricular activities.