Scott Brown...Every time someone comes out...

[LuvOrlando]

Every time someone comes out about some form of child abuse he/she gives the silent a voice and makes adults who are way too comfortable looking the other way a little less comfortable with ignoring whats in front of them.

I think it's especially hard for a male to admit being mistreated because men are expected to be powerful, they forget every single one of us start out the same way, helpless & at the mercy of others. I wish I could give him a

 

[ChrizJen]

I agree!!!

 

[IdesOmarch]

I agree, but who is Scott Brown?

 

[LuvOrlando]

Look him up, you'll see. I didn't post his title because it is irrelevant for the purposes here. There are people everywhere, of all races & creeds, socioeconomic levels, education levels, genders... it isn't just a burden shouldered by the "Precious"(es) of the world. Hate doesn't have a particular demographic.

 

[themilesfamily]

Good for him! So what's going to happen to the camp counselor now? Is he still alive? Has the statute of limitations run out?

I think something positive would be to elmininate the statute of limitations on child sexual abuse. So many of these kids don't come forward until they are well into adulthood and the statute of limitations has expired.

 

[EMom]

I've found myself in Bizarro World over the past few years. About 5 years ago, someone close to me confided that she had been molested (a kind word for it) by her father for years as a child. She kept quiet until adulthood and then told her mother, because she feared the same thing might be happening to her youngest sister. The story she told me (years after the fact) was that little sister said no such thing had ever happened, the whole family got counseling, the father never was punished, but they made peace as best they could.

As the years went by, through bits and pieces, I discovered he had molested every one of his daughters, not just the one. As I had suspected, his supposed remorse and the visits to counseling all those years before had been a successful ploy to con his family into not going to the police. He had played them like a fiddle. Through discussions with her, I figured out he never really admitted to much of anything in counseling, blamed being drunk (well, stop drinking!) and obviously didn't admit the abuse was still going on.

The behavior continued LONG after the counseling.....years. He messed those girls up in a bad way. The mom swore she had no clue, but I seriously cannot see how that's true. But that's another story.

At any rate.......For the Bizarro World part of the story. Even without the molestation, he was by any measure a crappy father. Keep in mind, virtually no one knows of the molestation. They have kept it very quiet, since they live in a small town and if word ever got out, the grandchildren of this man (who are now in the local school) would face all sorts of teasing, etc. I always thought they should out him, but I wasn't the one who was abused, so it wasn't my call. Maybe if my father had done to me what their father did to them, I wouldn't want the world knowing about it either.....So I have kept my mouth shut as shde requested and kept the confidence she shared with me.

A couple of years ago, their father died. Had it been me, I'd have breathed a sigh of relief. But no.........I swear to you, they have turned him into a SAINT. I didn't go to the funeral, but many close to me did. They described the eulogies delivered by the DDs and how they carried on and you'd have thought that the Father of the Century had just died. Forget not mentioning he was a serial child rapist, they made it seem as if the WORLD was going to be a lesser place for losing this glorious man.

It continues to this day. "Daddy" tributes on Facebook. Messages about how they miss him and may never get over losing him. To anyone who doesn't know the truth, it seems these poor girls have lost their dear daddy and your heart goes out to them. To those of us who do know, we wonder why they feel the need to turn him into The Best Daddy Ever. If they make everyone else believe it, will that negate what he did to them? Because as I said, even without the molestation, he was a crappy father in general. Too strange. I guess they just can't face what he did.


Maybe the guy who abused Scott Brown isn't dead. I don't know...... Maybe Scott Brown wants the truth to come out so that his abuser isn't painted as a saint at his funeral. Maybe that would stick in his craw. Maybe he's had enough of secrets. All I know is, it makes me sick for someone to go to their grave thought of as a "great guy," when in fact, they were evil.

 

[IdesOmarch]

Don't worry, I have no doubt he's in a much.......warmer place now. I am quite sure child molesters get punished one way or another, if not in this life then the next.

 

[Robinrs]

Don't worry, I have no doubt he's in a much.......warmer place now. I am quite sure child molesters get punished one way or another, if not in this life then the next.

I agree.

 

[EMom]

Don't worry, I have no doubt he's in a much.......warmer place now. I am quite sure child molesters get punished one way or another, if not in this life then the next.

That is my only comfort. And you are right. As he was dying, the family did try some sort of baptism/sprinkling on him in an attempt to get him into Heaven. He was "already gone" so he was not aware of it. But let me saw they are the sort of religion in which THAT won't cut it. Well, the rest of the family is.....He never went to church. Probably afraid of the roof caving in.

Another person who knows the sordid truth was talking with me about it and we both agreed that sprinkling him was NOT going to get him into Heaven. He lied about what he'd done all those years, did everything he could to keep it a secret, never confessed in church or to law enforcement and certainly never was punished. He made certain of all of that. He made out like a bandit while on earth. He died with his reputation in the community intact. But the other person and I both made note that NONE of that would matter when he got to the Pearly Gates, because THEY would know all about what had happened and he'd finally have to face justice. Maybe he avoided justice while on earth, but it eventually caught up with him.

Still, the whole "He was the best daddy ever" thing with his daughters makes me nuts. If I had been one of his DDs, even if I couldn't being myself to out him, at a minimum I'd have never spoken his name again and done everything I could to forget he had ever breathed life.

Secrecy lets these people get away with far too much. I never had any clue what was going on while it was going on. It's very disturbing to know what can be hidden right under your nose.

 

[SereneOne]

Denial can be a powerful though dysfunctional coping mechanism. Some things are so dark and painful, one has to deny it, because admitting to the horror would be too painful and be like a death if that makes any sense.

 

[EMom]

Denial can be a powerful though dysfunctional coping mechanism. Some things are so dark and painful, one has to deny it, because admitting to the horror would be too painful and be like a death if that makes any sense.

Yeah....That is what I usually come back to. Also, if his DDs admitted what a sorry excuse for a human being he was (as opposed to singing his praises publicly) the next inevitable step would have to be to admit to themselves that their mother (who is still alive) did nothing to protect them all those years. I do not know if they will EVER face that truth. It would be too painful and like losing their remaining parent.

I often wonder if this Darling Daddy rewrite is their way of making him the father they wish they'd had.....

 

[themilesfamily]

EMom, that story depressed the heck out of me.

Question -- counselors are mandatory reporters. Wouldn't that counselor have had to report the father's sexual abuse to the police? Or perhaps there weren't mandatory reporter laws on the books at that time?

 

[EMom]

EMom, that story depressed the heck out of me.

Question -- counselors are mandatory reporters. Wouldn't that counselor have had to report the father's sexual abuse to the police? Or perhaps there weren't mandatory reporter laws on the books at that time?

You know, I have never even thought of that. If I do the math correctly, the DD "told" her mom in the mid-80s, thinking the same thing might be happening to her much younger sister. The story as she told me was that the youngest sister denied anything happening, the father admitted (within their family only) what had happened with the oldest sister and the whole family went to counseling. The kicker, if you only knew how manipulative he was, was that HE managed to garner all their sympathy by claiming he wanted to kill himself. Trust me, there was never a man less likely to commit suicide. He made it all about him and played them.

Getting to your point, I don't know if mandatory reporting was in place n the mid-80s. But no one ever reported him. And since I came to know he indeed molested every one of his daughter, either the oldest DD fudged that part of the story when she told me OR she was (at least 5 years ago) still laboring under the false belief that she alone hat been a victim. I still don't know the answer to that.

If someone had reported him 25 years ago, at least his youngest daughter would have been spared years of abuse.

The way we all put the story together was this.....

Oldest DD told me her story, with her as the only victim, 5 years ago. That was decades after it had all happened and she begged me to never tell anyone.

Years ago, while the youngest DD was being victimized, she confided in "Jennifer," another teen. Jennifer advised her to tell her mother, which prompted the youngest DD to give a reply that indicated that would be futile and that her mother would always back up her father.

Many years later, long after the middle DD was married and out of the house, she said something to Jennifer's mother about her dad abusing her that made J's mom realize she meant sexual abuse.

At some point, Jennifer and her mom said enough to each other to realize that they each knew about a different DD's abuse and that both had been victims years earlier. He then dies and I get into a conversation with Jennifer's mom. She makes some sort of disparaging remark about him and it clicked to me that she knew he was a molester. I hinted at it and she acted surprised that I knew about the two youngest DDs. I WAS!!!!!!!!! I told her I had known nothing about those two and had been told he had only targeted the oldest. It was her turn to be surprised because she had not known about the oldest. At that point, we both realized that as bad as we had thought the abuse had been......in reality, in had been much worse.

I hope that makes some sense.

 

[EMom]

Basically, it was like putting puzzle pieces together. Several of us had pieces, but were unaware anyone else had pieces. We each got our pieces at different times, over a couple of decades. We put it all together when he died because when he died, he became a topic of conversation.

 

[Jennasis]

Often victims remain silent because they don't wish to be treated like victims. They don't want to be perceived as "broken", "messed up", "fragile", etc.

 

[LuvOrlando]

Often the payment for feeling loved or belonging is to go along with whatever is going on in a household so spouses are willing to go along with it to keep their fake marriage together (or because this is what they think all families do), and children, as victims or siblings, go along with it because in their crippled state, they can't make it being cut off from everyone else. It is very hard to accept that neither parent loved you or that a parent is evil. Sure, all of us can look around and pick out the flaws in the people we come across but some kind of distortion happens within the family unit. I tend to think it centers around the basic idea society floats that all parents love their kids which translates into, well if they love me either a) this is what love is or b) I am partially to blame because I am causing things to go off script. Eventually that child grows up and either chooses the pain of walking away away or falls into the fold and adopts the life he/she came from (where all these willing mothers/enablers come from thinking it happened to me and I survived so its ok).

I believe the most damaging thing people can do to a child as he/she is trying to figure things out is to contradict that child when he/she says their parents don't love them. People say things to make themselves feel better like, "Of course they love you" or "They love you in their own way", what a horrible thing to say to a mistreated child. Kids know what love is and isn't, it isn't healthy to reinforce what they are learning at home but people do this ALL the time thinking it will make the kid feel better when in reality all it does is reinforce poor self esteem. What someone should do in that situation is just listen and validate the child. The unfortunate truth is that all anyone has to do to get a kid is either have working parts or marry someone who already has kids, or adopt (I have an adopted friend who lived a horror) capacity for love has nothing to do with it.