The Way We Treated People-Mr Scott

Mr Scott lived two doors down.  His daughters went to my school. When I was nine, in the second grade, my brother and I returned Easter baskets to his house on a Sunday while his daughters and wife were at church. My brother, three years younger, played with a firetruck that squirted real water while Mr Scott  played games with me like Hide and Seek and Make a Tent with the covers on this bed. I didn't like the games and wanted to go home.  He didn't let us.  Eventually, we went home.  He gave us a candy bar each.  I threw mine away.

I was quick to tell my folks who were enjoying a late morning together in bed. Every detail of the encounter, I shared with them. Every movement, every exposure, every invasion, I shared. I concentrated so much on telling the incidents, I remember very little about what looks and reactions must have taken place between my parents. They seemed calm and so, I was, too. We went to the doctor soon after, and I told the account again. I had some questions about what I had seen and asked them.  Could a man have three penises? That's what it looked like when he opened his robe. But, I wasn't sure if the images I saw in the tri-fold mirror at his wife's make-up table, were accurate. The doctor had questions for me, too. And, I answered them.

Then, we did an exam like I had never had before. And it hurt more than anything Mr Scott had done. I knew what Mr.Scott did was wrong.  It was not okay to touch me like he had. It was not okay to hold me on his lap and not let me go. He forced me to do things that I didn't want to do. That was wrong. He kept me in the closet and under the covers. That was wrong. He needed to be punished somehow.

When I went back to school after Easter vacation, his daughters told me to quit making up stories about their dad. They chased my brother and me home from school. Shortly thereafter, Mom told me she had a desperate call from my grandmother asking me to come and stay with her to take the edge off the loneliness she felt since grandpa had died in early February. So, I went to live with Grandma for the rest of the school year. I never realized the real reason I was sent away until I was an adult.

When I saw my family during this time, I asked about Mr. Scott and what would happen. I figured something legal would be done.  He would be put in jail, right? I was willing to tell anyone about what he had done.  He might do that to others.  He had to be stopped. But, he continued to live in our town until after my Mom visited the store where he worked. She went in and left me outside in the truck. When she came back, she said she had talked to the owner of the store about Mr Scott.  Soon after, Mr. Scott and his family moved out of town to another state. And, that was the end of that.

But, it wasn't the end in my mind. I was fraught with worry that somehow my telling of the story had not been good enough. Maybe that part about the three penises had made others think I was lying, as his daughters had screamed. Maybe he had convinced everyone it wasn't true. Why hadn't he been jailed? The doubts piled up.

My mother consoled me.  Everyone believed me.  He was evil incarnate.  He was gone and would not come back. No need to worry. We didn't go to trial because the court wanted to protect me from having to appear! So, I asked tentatively, "Is it okay for me to hate him? I know we're not supposed to hate but, can I hate Mr. Scott?' "Oh! Yes...you can hate Mr. Scott,"  she replied. And, I did.

As an adult, I revisited this incident. I was still concerned that there was something more my nine-year-old self should have done. Mother was very reassuring. The doctor said he had never met a child who was so thorough in her descriptions or so precise with her words for everything that had happened. The rape kit had shown no penile penetration. I contracted no venereal diseases. Those had been big worries for my parents at the time. The courts had no way to hear a minor in a case like this.  A trial had never been an option and 'proof' in the legal sense was not available, although there were pubic hairs and other indications of molestation.  It just wasn't handled like that, then. So, instead, he was run out of town.  His employer fired him. He moved to Nevada with his family. As an adult I had the facts. But, not the ending I needed.

Two years later he was imprisoned for thirty years in Nevada for forceful rape of a two year old child. I carried the guilt for not stopping him in our town, all the way to therapy thirty years later.

I'm thankful our treatment of sex offenders has changed so much in my lifetime. Thank God.