My Experience with Two Pedophiles as a Child (Trigger Warning)

Following the Epstein Case Made Me Rethink What Happened

Above: me in second grade circa 1973

Trigger warning: content about sexual situations, suicide, and abuse…please do not read if these topics are upsetting to you.

I’ve been reading and watching a lot of videos about the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. And boy what a scandal…if this was a movie plot, it would seem too farfetched to greenlight. But after reading the excellent book by Miami Herald reporter Julie K. Brown, Perversion of Justice (her digging into the story was basically the reason the government opened their second case against Epstein), and fuming about how the girls who were victims were shamed, ignored, and had their and their families’ lives threatened), I reflected that I, myself had experienced abuse and situations with not just one, but two pedophiles.

I’ve never written about it before, but after seeing Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre’s bravery to tell her story, and learning of her tragic suicide, I thought it might help others to know they weren’t alone if this happened to them.

Now mind you, what happened to me was not on the level of what happened to the Epstein girls. But it was abuse, and it was so icky and embarrassing and shameful for me that it never came to light, and neither of the perpetrators was ever outed, much less prosecuted.

But today I was thinking, if it happened to me with not just one, but two men, and I was not even a destitute little girl (or boy; many boys and men are also targets) like Epstein and many classic child molesters target, how many other kids has this happened to? Why can we not shine more light on this in our society? If I can make anyone else feel less alone, why not write about it?

Also, if I’m being honest, the fact that I’m now 59 and don’t care what people think so much — if at all — plays into it. I get why a girl or a woman wouldn’t want to speak up. I mean, for crying out loud, look what happened to the Epstein victims! They were basically blown off by the initial Palm Beach prosecutors as well as the Feds. They were also threatened, as were other victims, the cops who did the initial investigation, reporters, publishers, and I would guess any kind of whistleblower.

A Second Grader and the First Abuser

Reflecting back on my own abuse, I see how I did fit the profile of a victim in some ways. In a video I recently saw online, a pedophile explains what he’d target in kids: Children of single moms (my mom was single with four kids when my abuser met her), the dad was not in the picture (or not a forceful presence if he was), and they were poor or without access to a lot of resources.

My parents divorced when I was two. Ironically, at the time, 1967, we lived in one of the toniest suburbs in the Washington, DC area — McLean, Virginia. There were four kids — boy, girl, boy, girl, and I was the youngest child.

But while we ostensibly may have looked like the perfect little mid-century modern family, complete with the angular furniture, aqua appliances and split-level floor plan, things were unraveling — gradually and then suddenly, as F. Scott Fitzgerald would say.

My dad’s World War II experience was catching up to him, and he developed ptsd. While he had an Ivy League education, courtesy of the GI Bill, and was working at the National Academy of Sciences, the ptsd caused problems in the marriage. My mom divorced him, and we moved to a two-bedroom apartment in Rockville, Maryland.

After a few years, when I was about six, my mom met a man at “Parents without Partners,” a group that was a thing back then for…well, parents without partners…not necessarily divorced.

So a man I’ll simply call FatChap here (because that was the nickname we kids came up with for him) came into our lives.

“Call me Bill,” he would say. So what did we kids do? Of course we never called him Bill. He was “Mr. Chapman” to his face, and “FatChap” behind his back.

He was stocky, maybe 5’8,’’ with black hair and bushy eyebrows. He was around my mom’s age, maybe 36-40. The year was 1972.

I never understood what Mom saw in him — well, the only thing is what she told me she saw in him years later: he reminded her of her own father, also stocky, but an imposing man who was a diplomat, eventually ambassador to two countries. Pop-Pop, Gerald Drew, eventually became the inspector general of the foreign service, and that was how my mom’s family wound up in DC.

But Gerry, though a wonderful provider, was gruff, and I don’t think he was great for my mom’s self-confidence. She and her two sisters were shipped out to boarding schools while he was stationed around the world. I don’t know for sure if her relationship with her father played a role in her marrying a man like FatChap, but I strongly suspect it did.

Reston, Virginia — the “Golden Ghetto”

In any event, Mom and FatChap married at a Unitarian Church, replete with weird wedding rings, and we moved to Reston, Virginia. (Mom would later joke it was the “golden ghetto,” because Reston aimed to mix socioeconomic classes with walkable clusters in adjacent neighborhoods). Reston was a modern planned community, and the idea to move there was the single good thing I think FatChap brought into our lives.

He was a real estate agent, so he knew something about the neighborhoods in the area. However, the entire time we lived there, he didn’t close a single deal. He was always fucking home.

We moved into a townhouse by Reston’s Lake Anne. The house was super cool, with a stucco exterior, fenced courtyard, and four levels. It had dock access to the adjacent lake down a bike path. Mom did a bangup job decorating it, and we girls had the cutest 1970s bathroom you ever done seen, with pink shag carpeting, pink beaded curtains, white and gold painted wood furniture, and purple swags over the beds.

I don’t remember the very first time FatChap made a move on me, but from the get-go we kids all thought he was creepy. As the youngest, and a girl (and small for my age at that) I was the most vulnerable of us four kids. He would often try to lure me into a room and expose himself, or try to get me to do something.

Once he asked me to come into the master bathroom, and he unzipped his pants and took out his penis. “Kiss it,” he said. Then he squeezed it, and a drop of clear liquid appeared. I ran out of the room.

He liked to be naked, whether to shock people or just as a personal preference. He also liked to ask us kids to do chores, though I never saw him do one, so another memory relates to that.

“Julie, come down here!” he called from the lower floor landing. I emerged from my bedroom to see him standing stark naked on the landing. And he was fondling his balls.

“I have some chores I need you to do,” he commanded as he lovingly stroked them. I wonder if this was exhibitionist behavior just meant to shock; I don’t know. I don’t understand what goes on in the mind of a person like this. They get their jollies from shocking people?

Epstein bribed his victims with gifts and cash. On a much smaller scale, FatChap would find what I liked and use it to entice me. At that time, around second and third grade, I collected little animal-shaped rubber erasers called Itty-Bitties. I would save whatever money I had and buy a new one at the school store every week.

One day, FatChap randomly found an old, rare itty bitty out on the bike path near the lake. I recall it was a little beige chicken, lifting one of its wings. (Weird what we remember).

“Look what I found,” he said. We were standing in our living room, alone. “Do you want this?” he asked me.

“Yes,” I said.

“Then you have to kiss me first to get it,” he replied.

“OK,” I said, not looking forward to it at all but really wanting that itty bitty. I closed my eyes and our lips met — and he shoved his tongue into my mouth forcefully. As an adult woman thinking back on it, it was just awful, crude and violent, and I can’t imagine a romantic partner doing it that way.

There were other times he’d give me that creepy kiss — I remember one time in the lake, as we were swimming about. He had a pungent sweaty smell.

I don’t remember everything. I only have these disparate memories. But the ones I have have stayed with me over the years. He would try to touch my chest, or other areas, or “massage” me, working his way to inappropriate areas. There was no actual “rape” in that sense of the word. I suppose that much I should be grateful for!

In those memories, I think things started to shift, and I started to push back. Finally.

One evening, some of us were sitting in front of the downstairs rec room tv, and I was in his lap (I can’t remember if this was before or after the bathroom event; what memories I have are discrete units that have no chronology), and he pushed his hand down my pants. He was messing around down there which felt very uncomfortable to me. I think also, even my seven or eight-year old brain thought what he was doing with me, just a girl and not a woman, was weird and wrong.

“Take your hand out of my pants!” I blurted. He quickly pulled it out. Some of the family was there, but I can’t remember who. I’d like to think it wasn’t my mom.

But finally one of my brothers realized that and other things were coming to a head. He caught FatChap in the boys’ bedroom with me. It certainly didn’t look good. What was a grown man doing in his stepsons’ bedroom alone with his stepdaughter? With the door closed?

FatChap made some lame excuse about how my brother needed to take his model airplanes down from the net on the ceiling.

Not long after, Mom moved us all out to a nearby apartment complex, Northgate Square, and divorced him. FatChap became like Voldemort — he whose name must not be spoken.

During the time we lived in that townhouse in Inlet Court, I never told anyone in the family what was happening. But everyone saw FatChap’s episodes of nudity and creepiness — one time he sat in his living room armchair in broad daylight, starkers, reading the folded out newspaper. Kids who were our friends came in and out of the house, and some of them knew about it, and some neighborhood parents commented about it, but I suppose nobody thought there was enough there to do anything.

I never told my dad or any adult. My dad had moved to Delaware and remarried right around that time. I didn’t even feel I knew him much then.

Northgate Square and a Customer

So after Mom left FatChap, us four kids and she were thrilled to move into our three-bedroom apartment in Northgate Square, even though it was a far cry from the cool architectural wonder that was the four-level Inlet Court townhouse. But FatChap wasn’t there. We were free!

It was a garden apartment complex, three and four-story walk-ups. I guess this was the ghetto part of the golden ghetto Mom would joke about.

But Mom made do, and we still enjoyed Reston’s bike paths, pools, tennis courts, and the Lake Anne Plaza, where I would make my daily treks to buy candy.

Both my brothers had paper routes there. I would help one of my brothers with his Washington Star route, and he paid me a percentage of his take. But when he broke his collarbone, I took over the route. I was 11-12 years old during this time.

With a Washington Star or Post paper route back in the day, you had a “drop point,” where the newspapers would be stacked, tied with plastic strips for you to cut open, do inserts if needed, and then load into your rolling cart for delivery. My drop point was the first building in the complex across a street that was part of the greater Northgate complex.

Now believe it or not, back then in the ‘70s a kid would have to do his own “collecting” for the paper…go around door to door asking for checks or cash to pay for the subscription and delivery. And we usually did it in the evening, when people were home after work. (And the deadbeats would come out of our pocket).

So I went to this one customer’s house first, because his was the first lower-level apartment at my drop point.

Bang bang bang! I knocked on the door.

The peephole darkened as a person looked out to see who it was. A man with long brown hair, beard, and mustache opened the door. He was wearing a loose button-down shirt and underwear, no pants.

“Collecting for The Washington Post,” I chirped.

He gazed at me for a few seconds, contemplating.

“Come in,” he said.

I stepped into his foyer, similar to our own foyer at Northgate with puke-green sculptured carpeting. (Google “sculptured carpeting” if you want to see a part of the past that very much does not need to make a comeback).

“I need to get my wallet,” he said.

I waited in the foyer while he strolled into another room. He returned with his wallet, but this time his underwear was off. He was just a-danglin’ in front of me. I was confronted with yet another man’s wiener before age 12.

He handed me cash, and I quickly took his money and left.

A few days later, on a weekday afternoon, I was crouching on the ground at my drop point, cutting my stack open. The guy had just parked and walked up to the steps on the way to his apartment. I ignored him, but he stopped next to me there on the sidewalk.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hi,” I answered, still looking down.

“You know what you saw when you were here the other night?” he asked.

I hesitated. Oh no, I thought. I need to exit this conversation fast.

“Yes,” I said.

“Do you want to see it again?” he asked.

“No, thanks,” I replied.

He waited a beat. “I’ll give you a dollar,” he said.

Shit. “Um…no, I have to get going… I have to get these papers delivered,” I said, grabbing the rest of the stack and throwing it onto the cart. I wheeled the cart as fast as I could to the next building.

But it didn’t even stop there, as later I saw his car following me when I emerged from each walk-up apartment building.

I was terrified, but I just kept my head down and kept moving quickly from building to building.

Finally I didn’t see his car anymore. I breathed a sigh and dragged my cart as fast as I could back home across the street and into our part of the complex.

I told Mom about it later, and she was concerned, asking, “Should we call the police?”

I was so embarrassed. “No Mom, please do not call the police!” So she never called. I hope the guy didn’t go on to flash other kids, but who knows.

In any event, it hit me today that this happened not just once, but twice, to me — just a regular kid in America. Certainly not rich but not destitute or homeless…but vulnerable in different ways.

It makes me wonder how many other kids were subject to this. I would have thought by the 21st century, society would have woken up to this and made adjustments.

But to this day, a case, a story, a situation involving pedophilia and underage sex / sexual abuse invokes all kinds of shame, blame, coverups, bribes, and threats.

—-

Well, that’s my little story. Maybe one little blip going out to the universe will help other kids. Because I still don’t understand why adults abuse children. Is it because they were abused? But plenty of people are abused, but don’t go on to abuse.

Or is it that they are angry at the way they were treated, and deep inside they want to ruin someone else’s life? They want to take their innocence…it’s some kind of thrill?

I remember the classic novel “Lolita,” by Vladimir Nabokov. There was an excellent rendition of the book on film with Jeremy Irons. The ending was beautifully done, in my opinion.

Humbert Humbert, the book’s main character, who lusted after and had a sexual relationship with the underage Delores/Lo (Lolita), looks out over a small town from a misty hill above, hears kids frolicking below, and muses:

“What I heard then was the melody of children at play. Nothing but that. And I knew the hopelessly poignant thing was not Lolita’s absence from my side…but the absence of her voice from that chorus.”

End