Scared Selfless

by Michelle Stevens, PhD

  The door opens. Light pours down the staircase. Gary and Joe are back. They have mean looks on their faces. I’m in trouble. Something bad is going to happen again. And just like that, I am transformed from a happy girl riding her horse to a mindless, bodiless ball of terror. I don’t matter. My daydreams don’t matter. All that matters is the look on Gary’s face.

  “I am very disappointed with you, Slave,” he says. “I keep trying to train you, but you don’t seem to want to learn your lessons. I don’t think you appreciate how much I’m doing for you. I don’t think you’re grateful for all my time and attention.

  “I think you need a harder approach. I think pain is the only thing that will teach you to be more obedient.” He bends over and opens the cage. “Get out,” he says.

  Immediately, I crawl out of the cage. I have learned already that it’s best to obey him and the sooner the better.

  “Stand up,” he says, grabbing me by the collar. Then he pushes me over to the ropes.

  Oh, God! Not the ropes again. Not the stick. So much pain! Mindless terror overtakes me. Instinctively, I start to crumble and try to back away. But he is there, hoisting me up again, tying me into the sling.

  “No, please, no, no,” I beg. “I’ll be good! I promise! I’ll be good!”

  “Quiet,” he growls, as he holds up the stick ominously. I am petrified. Crazy, out-of-my-mind terror. I brace for the pain, but it doesn’t come. Instead, he puts his hand there and starts to gently rub.

  “Now, doesn’t that feel nice?” he’s saying.

  I—I don’t know what I’m supposed to think. Does it feel nice? Yes, I suppose it does. It feels much nicer than the stick and the pain.

  He keeps on rubbing, but it’s hard to understand. Hard to understand what’s happening. I thought I would be hurt. Thought I would be tortured. But this is not bad. This doesn’t hurt at all. Still, I’m confused. Can’t trust it. It must be some kind of a trick. Why isn’t he hurting me? Why is he rubbing me? Why has his face suddenly turned nice?

  “Isn’t that better?” he’s saying. “Doesn’t that feel good? Do you like that? You like that, don’t you? Yeah, just relax. Just relax.”

  The next thing I know, the men are taking me down. Gary has me in his arms, and he’s carrying me upstairs. Back to the same house as before it all started. Through the kitchen and the dining room, down the long hall. I’m so confused. Don’t know what’s going on. Don’t know to be afraid or relieved. Don’t know what I’m supposed to feel. Don’t quite feel anything.

  Before I can make any sense of things, we are in Gary’s bedroom. He is pulling back the covers. Laying me in his giant green bed. He gets in after me. Pulls up the covers. Cradles me in the crook of his arm. Starts rubbing between my legs again. Gentle. Rhythmic. “There, doesn’t that feel nice?”

  It’s warm and soft. The rhythmic rubbing, the gentle voice soothes me. I am so tired, and it is so peaceful, and in spite of everything, I start to relax. Relief washes over me. The basement is gone. I am warm now. I finally, finally feel safe.

  I drift off to sleep to the lull of the rubbing. I can’t help it. My body hasn’t relaxed in days. It is a sudden, deep, lifeless sleep. The kind one only enjoys in childhood.

  —

  FOR AS LONG as I knew him, Gary was fond of history. He liked to regale people with tales about presidents and politicians. But his very favorite story was the one about Stalin’s chicken. From the head of the dinner table, Gary would talk about Stalin and his quest for power. How Stalin stood up in front of his Cabinet one day, and said, “Do you want to know how to control the people?” Then a door was opened, and a chicken was brought in. Stalin put it on the table in front of him and, one by one, plucked out every feather. For the chicken, the pain was unbearable, and the bird fought mightily to get away. Yet, when Stalin was all done, the frightened, vulnerable chicken refused to leave his side.

  —

  IT TOOK ME thirty years to understand that I was the chicken.

  The Pied Piper

  Over the past forty years, there’s been a lot of interest in child molesters. As a result, pedophiles are probably the most researched group of sexual deviants. But despite a plethora of studies, articles, and books, there is little consensus on what makes these guys tick. A big part of the problem is finding subjects. How exactly does one meet a wide range of child molesters to study when the nature of their actions makes them want to hide? Historically, the favorite place to find such subjects is prisons, but this presents an obvious bias. Are child molesters as dumb, disordered, and low functioning as some studies suggest? Or is this only true of those who are incompetent enough to get caught?

  Further complicating things is the fact that criminals, well, lie. So any information gleaned from a forensic population is bound to be iffy. According to criminologist Dr. Dennis Stevens, author of Inside the Mind of Sexual Offenders, child molesters are particularly tight-lipped because, in prison, men who rape children are notoriously targeted by other inmates. As a result, child molesters tend to keep mum about their offenses. And when they do talk, they frequently omit or fabricate pertinent information—unless they know their lies will be detected. Case in point: When pedophile inmates were asked to disclose the number of children they had victimized, they revealed four to six times more victims if they knew their answers would be verified by a polygraph test.

  Knowing that pedophiles blatantly lie is important, because those lies have created some powerful myths. For instance, most people assume that child molesters were themselves molested as children. This popular assumption comes from research studies that claim between 28 and 93 percent of pedophiles suffered childhood sexual abuse (versus 15 percent for random control groups). But those studies relied solely on the criminals’ own accounts. When pedophiles were asked the same question knowing they’d be monitored by a polygraph, only half as many said they’d been molested as kids.

  So why do pedophiles lie—even to researchers who keep their identities confidential? Because they’re obsessed with their own PR; they want to present socially acceptable justifications for their crimes. By casting themselves as abused abusers, they manage to make the rest of us feel a little sorry for them. We can suddenly fathom why they want to have sex with children, something that is utterly incomprehensible otherwise.

  Playing the victim has worked quite well for pedophiles. Many researchers have described them as sad, lonely, immature men who lack the self-confidence to woo adult women and instead look to children for love and affection. But pedophiles may not be the misguided romantics they portray themselves to be. So who are they? What do we know about them? First, we know that almost all are male (although some studies suggest the number of female perpetrators could be higher than people assume). Second, we know that the vast majority are heterosexual; one study found the ratio of straight to gay pedophiles was 11:1. Third, we know that child molesters come from all races and socioeconomic groups, with no particular group grossly overrepresented compared to the general population.

  People tend to assume that most molesters are strangers to their victims. One of parents’ worst fears, in fact, is that their kids will be abducted by a stranger. That fear, though, is irrational. It’s far more likely that a child will be struck by lightning. What parents should fear are acquaintance molesters, because acquaintances are the biggest culprits of child sexual abuse. But that gets sticky, as these people are our teachers, Cub Scout leaders, friends, neighbors. They’re Catholic priests and Jerry Sandusky. They’re everywhere our children are. And they look and act just like us.

  Acquaintances perpetrate 60 percent of all child sexual abuses. (Family members contribute another 30 percent; strangers, 10 percent.) The average acquaintance molester victimizes 50 to 150 children before he is ever arrested, if he is ever arrested. Even after incarceration and/or treatment, an acquaintance molester’s chance of reoffending is between 52 and 77 pe
rcent.

  Most acquaintance molesters are preferential pedophiles, meaning they are obsessed with having sex with kids. Since puberty, the typical acquaintance molester has fantasized about children, masturbated to images of them, and collected child pornography. They feel the compulsion to molest the way a serial killer feels the compulsion to murder. They are true predators who are always, always hunting for the next victim. As a result, the typical acquaintance molester chooses his home, spouse, career, hobbies, his entire life based on the singular goal of gaining access to children. In short, for the acquaintance molester, having sex with children is a lifelong professional pursuit.

  —

  GARY LUNDQUIST was a professional acquaintance molester. While I don’t know his entire history, I do know that he had been pursuing sex with kids for many, many years before we met. He’d already been teaching, working with kids for at least eleven years. During that time, he’d concocted a lot of ways to gain access to children. Besides his normal teaching job, which kept him surrounded by twenty kids for seven hours a day, he also ran a gifted and talented program and a drama club after school. These extracurricular activities added another ten to fifteen hours a week to his teaching duties, and they provided Gary with another thirty to forty kids to stalk.

  Once Gary spotted a child he desired, the next goal was to spend more time with her through the guise of tutoring or extra rehearsals. (Gary almost always chose females.) He had to get to know the kid better, find out if she was an easy mark. This generally meant that she had to be smart and outgoing, not just because these were the qualities Gary found attractive, but because such children displayed a natural curiosity and need for attention that Gary could use to entice and manipulate them. Being an easy mark also meant that the kid had to come from some kind of difficult home situation—for example, the parents were embroiled in a messy divorce, the father was already out of the picture entirely, the parents were neglectful of the child due to work schedules or a family crisis. It was imperative that children be from this kind of broken home. First, because kids from unhappy homes are particularly needy for attention and willing to do just about anything to keep an interested adult in their lives. Second, because overwrought parents are usually desperate for child care and are far more likely to hand their kids over to someone else.

  When a family was in crisis, that’s when “Mr. L.” stepped in. He was purported to be a great guy who loved kids and was always willing to lend a helping hand. If a kid needed transportation or couldn’t afford school supplies, Mr. L. was the go-to guy. He would give the kid money, give her a ride home, even stop at the candy store to buy treats for the poor child. If the girl was really lucky, she would become one of Mr. Lundquist’s extra-special kids—the kind who got to work for Mr. L. at his antiques store on the weekends. Even more exciting, she might get the honor of traveling with Mr. Lundquist to an antiques show in a faraway town. These antiques shows, where Gary sold his wares all summer, were usually held out of state and lasted five days at a stretch, necessitating at least four nights in a motel. If Gary especially liked a girl, he would offer to hire her as his worker for the event. This meant a nine- or ten-year-old would get the special treat of staying in a motel room with him for a whole week. Just the two of them. No parents allowed.

  Over the years, I watched the same scenario play out again and again with lonely kids from troubled families: Nina, the foster child whose biological mother had abandoned her; Katie, the ignored middle child whose parents always worked; Marcy, the timid girl who would do anything to avoid her authoritarian father; Dick, whose little sister had recently died. It was always the same MO with Gary. First, he’d identify a kid from a family in crisis. Next, he’d befriend the kid, offering attention, admiration, and a shoulder to cry on. Later, he’d befriend the family, offering tutoring, transportation, child care, sometimes even financial support. To these parents, Gary’s brand of reliable, convenient, economical babysitting was invaluable. A godsend, really. I mean, who wouldn’t want a credentialed teacher to tutor, mentor, and watch one’s child free of charge? Apparently, a lot of parents desired such a service, because Gary was always, always surrounded by kids. At school, at home, in stores, in restaurants, wherever he went he brought children along. Kids followed him around so loyally, in fact, that people in town jokingly referred to him as the “Pied Piper.”

  Little did they realize it was no joke.

  Gary Lundquist was in the business of stealing childhoods.

  And the townspeople happily enabled him.

  —

  ACQUAINTANCE MOLESTERS, in general, do not abduct children. They don’t need to. Parents are usually all too willing to hand over their kids, never realizing that the nice man they are entrusting their babies to isn’t really nice at all. Children rarely tell their parents what the nice man does to them behind closed doors. And even in the odd event that a child does disclose the abuse to her parents, it’s common for the parents to dismiss the allegation. As a result, acquaintance molesters often break the law repeatedly, without detection, for thirty years or more. On the rare occasion when an acquaintance molester is publicly accused of sexual relations with a child, those around him—his family, friends, neighbors, colleagues—usually don’t believe it. They rally to his defense, claiming he is a fine upstanding kind of guy. This is exactly what happened with the Catholic priests, Michael Jackson, and Jerry Sandusky.

  How can parents, friends, colleagues, an entire community be so easily fooled? The answer is simple. Acquaintance molesters are master manipulators, capable of conning not only children and parents, but also nearly everyone they meet. Considering the fact that the average child molester starts abusing in his early teens, one must remember that he has had many, many years to perfect his skills of deception. Most acquaintance molesters effectively fool others by leading a double life. They get married, become stalwart members of the community, and seek out professions or volunteer opportunities where they can, ostensibly, help children (e.g., teachers, camp counselors, pediatricians, youth ministers, coaches, foster parents).

  Because child molesters are so prone to helping professions and volunteerism, they are often seen as the nice guys in the neighborhood. When one of these nice guys is accused of sexually molesting a child, is it any wonder that the people who know him have trouble believing it? He has been their beloved neighbor, coach, teacher, priest, uncle, husband for years. He seems so helpful and altruistic. How could he suddenly turn around and do something so horrible?

  What people don’t understand and can’t accept is that he didn’t just suddenly, in some weak moment, turn around and molest a child. This is something he’s been doing (or at least fantasizing about) for years. People see him as the dedicated coach/teacher/priest/uncle who inexplicably may have molested a child. In reality, what he is dedicated to is molesting children. The role of coach/teacher/priest/uncle is just his cover, his means of accessing victims.

  This kind of deception is very hard for most people to accept. It means that someone close to them—someone they like and trust and maybe even love—has been conning them since day one. This is simply impossible for most to believe, because people are highly confident in their ability to detect a lie. But they are wrong. Studies have consistently shown that no one, including judges, police officers, and psychiatrists, can spot a liar more than 50 percent of the time. That means even the professionals can’t do better than chance. Yet the typical layperson is positive he or she would be able to spot a practiced con man.

  Parents’ false sense of confidence regarding their ability to judge others is one of the main reasons child molesters are able to victimize so many children for so many years without detection.

  Child molesters are notorious for exploiting parents’ trust; most revel in it. They are so skilled, in fact, that many parents who have been duped will go to their graves believing that their “friend” was trustworthy. If their children disclose
abuse or law enforcement contacts them after other victims come forward, they may have some doubts. Still, anecdotal stories suggest that many parents dismiss the allegations or, if that is not possible because of irrefutable evidence, find a way to minimize the painful, inconvenient truth.

  —

  THAT’S WHAT HAPPENED to me when I tried to tell my mother about Gary Lundquist. Just a few days after she picked me up from the weekend in his basement, she dropped the bombshell: We would be moving into Gary’s house. Effective immediately.

  Needless to say, I was distraught. I panicked and yelled, “No! I won’t go!” I doubt I gave her the details of what Gary had done to me. At eight years old, I had no words for such an experience. But I made it exceedingly clear that I hated Gary, feared Gary, and absolutely, positively never wanted to see him again. I cried. I shook. I screamed. I was hysterical with terror and dread.

  When my mother tried to leave the room, I wrapped my arms around her legs in a death grip. I was desperate to make her understand. As she dragged me into the hallway, I pleaded frantically, “Don’t move in with him! Don’t move in with him! I hate him! I don’t want to go! Don’t make me go! Please!”

  Despite my impassioned protest, my mother dismissed the scene as child’s play. “I don’t know why you’re carrying on like this,” she chided. “Gary said you two had a really good time together.”

  My mother had known this man for less than two months. She had known me—a good-natured and easygoing kid by all accounts—since the day I was born. Still, when witnessing my fervent disdain for this near stranger, her immediate reaction was to dismiss it. “He’s a nice man,” she assured me. “A teacher. You know, you should give him a chance. He really likes you a lot.”