Scared Selfless

by Michelle Stevens, PhD

  When her attempts to persuade me failed, she moved on to accusations. “Aw, you just don’t want me to be with anyone,” she said. “You’re just jealous. You just want me all to yourself.”

  Looking back, the timing was astoundingly suspicious. Their first date was in early spring. By the middle of May, my mother was packing boxes. The move to Gary’s necessitated that I change schools. But it was less than six weeks till the end of the semester. Stranger still was the fact that Gary’s house was not located in the school district where he taught; it wasn’t even in the same state. Since he was adamant that I attend his elementary school, this meant he would need to sell his current house in Pennsylvania and purchase a new (and far more expensive) home in New Jersey. Such transactions take time, of course, and generally happen over the summer. But instead of simply waiting to enroll me in his district at the start of the new school year, Gary petitioned the school board to enroll me as an out-of-state student immediately. For this favor, he agreed to pay the public school a sizeable tuition.

  What kind of teacher demands that a third grader change schools a few weeks before the end of the semester? What kind of man agrees to buy a more expensive house and pay school tuition for a child he has known for less than two months? What was so urgent that Gary couldn’t wait a mere six weeks to cohabitate? What, exactly, was the big rush?

  The big rush was that Gary Lundquist, professional acquaintance molester, had grown bored with simply seducing other people’s children. He was looking for some new sexual thrills, hoping to play out some deeper, darker sexual fantasies. Long before we met, he had come up with a sinister plan. He had already worked out the whole scheme, visualized the perfect scenario. He just needed to find the right victim. And as soon as he met me, he wanted to get started. But first, he needed to secure physical control of me. It was the only way he could move forward with his wicked plot.

  —

  IT’S NOT UNCOMMON for a sexual predator to raise the stakes as the years go by. Exhibitionists may gradually feel the need to make physical contact with their victims. Child molesters might go from touching breasts and genitals to penetration. This escalation is fueled by sexual fantasies. An offender may masturbate to specific images and scenarios for years before he gains the confidence to act out his fantasy in real life. Once the fantasy becomes reality, though, it loses its oomph. The sexual predator must then find a new, more depraved scenario to get aroused. In this way, sexual perversion is much like drug addiction. One must constantly up the ante to get the same high.

  Gary, already molesting for years, had turned up the dial quite a bit on his perversions. By the time we met, he had developed a thing for sadomasochism, like a third of all pedophiles, and he liked the really hard-core stuff. I don’t know how he got into it or how long he’d fantasized about it, but Gary was obsessed with S/M. He fed this obsession through stories in books and images in magazines. He collected all sorts of S/M paraphernalia and delighted in dirty movies. Inspired by all these sources, Gary had developed his own S/M fantasy—one he was determined to fulfill.

  Gary’s dream was to get himself a sex slave. Freaky, I know. But to an S/M enthusiast, the sex slave is literally half of the equation. The slave/master duo usually involves two consenting adults. Some masters, though, are not content with Craigslist hookups and safe words. Some men are real sadists, and they want real slaves to cater to their perverted whims.

  Gary Lundquist yearned for a real slave, one he could completely control. That’s what sadism is: a need to dominate. At its most rudimentary, domination can be achieved by brute force—tying people up, torturing them, degrading their bodies in various ways. That’s all fun stuff for the basic sadist, but for a guy like Gary, who considered himself a man of superior IQ, physical coercion got boring. He needed a bigger challenge. So he decided he would not only dominate his slave but also get her to willingly want to submit.

  What I’m talking about here is brainwashing. Robbing someone of their free will is a time-honored tradition and, sadly, not that difficult. But it does require a lot of time and privacy. For an acquaintance molester, the desire for a sex slave gets a bit tricky. I mean, how does one torture other people’s children and get away with it? What if the whip leaves marks? Gary came up with an easy solution; he decided to procure his very own kid.

  My mother was the perfect target. Young, uneducated, poor. Working full time at a dead-end job, she necessarily left me to fend for myself since she couldn’t afford child care. From the start, Gary portrayed himself as her savior. He offered her a house to live in, a bit of financial security, and a built-in babysitter. Is it any wonder that she jumped at the chance to move in with the guy? Any wonder that she ignored the frantic warnings of her eight-year-old daughter?

  —

  RIGHT FROM THE START, Gary began to enact his plans for me. That first weekend in the basement was the beginning of his explicitly planned brainwashing campaign. To those unfamiliar with the concept of brainwashing, this probably sounds pretty strange. But in the world of hard-core sadists, tips on how to brainwash victims are openly shared through books, magazines, Internet articles, and chat rooms. Even without prior knowledge, any run-of-the-mill bully seems to inherently understand that a mix of violence, terror, degradation, and occasional small kindnesses is all that’s required to rob someone of their free will.

  Gary certainly knew the techniques.

  And he couldn’t wait to try them out.

  On me.

  Story of M

  Tap, tap.

  Huh? What’s that?

  Tap, tap.

  A noise. Noise. Coming from somewhere.

  Tap, tap. Bang! “Shit,” in a low whisper.

  Is that a man’s voice? God, what’s happening?

  I was asleep. Dead to the world. But now, even from the deepest slumber, any little noise puts me on high alert.

  Tap, tap. “Shell! Shell, wake up!”

  I scan around searching for clues, searching for danger, but I see nothing. The room is pitch-black. I don’t even know where I am. It takes a few seconds to remember I’m in Gary’s house. We just moved in today. Now I’m in my new room. The room at the end of the hall where he took the pictures before. Except the twin bed is gone now. Replaced with the full-size canopied bed I used to share with my mother. The white princess-style furniture we shared is in the room too. It’s all mine now. My mother now shares her dresser, her closet, her bed with Gary Lundquist. I’m supposed to be happy about all this. I’m supposed to feel that living in a house, having my own room, sleeping in my own bed is a dream come true. It is, I guess. For my mother anyway.

  Tap, tap. “Shell! Shelley-Bell!”

  The voice is louder now. And familiar. A woman. My aunt Laura! I fumble across the bed to the window and open my Snoopy curtains. There she is. Her face is right up next to the glass.

  “Open the front door, Shell,” she whispers. “Hurry up.”

  Stumbling out of my room into the hallway, I assume it must be late because the house is completely dark. Very quietly, I open the door to the room across from mine. Gary’s room. He and my mother are lying under the big green bedspread, their bodies dimly visible under the glow of a neon beer sign hanging over the bed. I gently rouse my mother, whispering, “Laura’s here.”

  —

  MY MOM COMES FROM a big family; she’s one of thirteen kids. From the moment I was born, I was surrounded by aunts and uncles and an endless stream of cousins. They all converged at my grammy’s house in Maryland—a modest two-bedroom place with no running water, just an outhouse in the backyard. There was no dining room, either. Everybody ate in an unfinished basement. All the kids slept in the attic. When my mother was little, they averaged several to a bed. By the time I came along, though, most of Grammy’s kids were already out of the house. Just a few of the youngest remained, one of whom was Laura.

  To a middle-c
lass outsider, I guess my mother’s family would be called white trash. But to me, the Brechbills were a fun, close, loving bunch. Every single one of them, save my mother, lived within a few miles of Grammy’s house. Some of them even lived on the same street. My grandparents’ house was a constant hub of activity with relatives coming in or out to visit, eat, or drop off their kids. Most of my cousins got dropped off for an afternoon or a weekend, but my mother often left me there for months at a time.

  I didn’t mind. I loved living with Grammy. She was a gentle, soft-spoken woman who showered me with maternal attention and the very best kind of unconditional love. Every morning, she would make me pancakes. Then I’d follow her around while she cleaned and tended her lavish flower beds. In the afternoons, when my teenage aunts got home from school, playtime would begin. The girls would tell me stories, play games, or take me on long walks. Laura was like a sister to me. She was my mom’s best friend too.

  On the night she was tapping on my window, Laura had just rented a new apartment. The timing of my mother’s move was fortunate; it meant Laura could take Mom’s old couches. So Laura had rented a U-Haul and driven three hundred miles to pick the furniture up. It was night when she finally arrived, but that was no big deal. Laura was expected. What’s more, she was family. Mom thought nothing of it.

  But Gary didn’t see it that way. He marched into the living room just as Mom was letting Laura in and pointed a gun at her. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he boomed. “Who the hell do you think you are, showing up like this? Waking us up in the middle of the night? What kind of a lowlife are you? How dare you come into my house?”

  My aunt was shocked and terribly shaken. She looked helplessly to my mother, who looked helplessly back. Laura tried to explain herself, defend herself, but Gary would have none of it. He berated her with insults—“stupid . . . retard . . . lowlife . . . redneck . . .” Offended, my aunt left quickly, vowing never to come back.

  At the time, I didn’t understand the implications of the blowup. It was only later, in adulthood, that I realized Gary’s seemingly impulsive rant was probably well planned. He knew Laura was coming; he also knew she was my closest relative and my mother’s confidante. Gary couldn’t do whatever he wanted to me if Laura was snooping around. And so, with a few well-placed insults and a handgun, he distanced a potential threat.

  —

  IN DOING SO, Gary was enacting step one of the brainwashing playbook: isolation. In order to abuse, a perpetrator must first isolate his victim. During rape, the offender attacks his prey in an isolated area—a car, a motel room, a deserted park. Kidnap victims and political prisoners are locked in secret cells far from the eyes of would-be rescuers. While domestic abusers rarely hide their wives and kids, they must also find a way to keep them from potential do-gooders—coworkers, teachers, relatives, friends. They do this by systematically severing all of their victims’ close relationships. That’s why Gary iced out Aunt Laura.

  Isolation serves the predator’s needs for privacy and secrecy. It also helps him monopolize his victims’ perceptions, limiting what they hear, see, and, ultimately, know—which is brainwashing step two. Monopolization of perception is key because once a perpetrator controls the flow of information he can create a false reality based on self-serving lies. Dictators do this to their subjects with propaganda. Cult leaders use dogma. Abusive husbands spew misogynistic rants.

  Children are naturally dependent on their caregivers. So, in attempting to isolate and monopolize me, Gary had a head start. Nonetheless, he pulled out all the stops. Just two days after he sent my favorite aunt packing, he packed me into his Pacer and set off for the school where he worked, the school I would now attend. When we arrived, yellow buses and kids were already crowding the parking lot. Classes were about to start, but I wasn’t registered yet. So Gary hurried me into the school’s office.

  The place was bustling with activity. Teachers getting their mail. Parents dropping off forms. Gary stood impatiently at the counter, tapping his foot and checking his watch as he glared at the busy secretaries.

  “Yes, Mr. Lundquist, how can I help you?” said the lady behind the counter.

  “I need to register my daughter.”

  “Oh . . . ,” she said, with surprise, glancing past him to look at me. “Oh . . .”

  She scurried over to a file cabinet and returned with some papers. “First name?” she asked.

  “Michelle.” He spelled it.

  “Last name?” she asked.

  “Lundquist.”

  Lundquist? Had I heard right? Lundquist was not my name. My last name was Brechbill. Like my aunts. Like my grammy. When had they changed my name?

  The truth is: They hadn’t. My mother and Gary were not married. He hadn’t adopted me or gone through any court. No one had spoken to me about changing my name. I doubt my mother even knew Gary was going to do it. She wasn’t using his name, after all. How could she? She had no legal standing to do so. Nor did I—a fact that would make it difficult for me to get a Social Security number and all other legal documents in future years.

  So why did he do it? Why did Gary suddenly give me his last name? I think it was because he had to put his brand on me. His mark. He had to demonstrate his omnipotence—another essential step in brainwashing—and what demonstrates omnipotence more than the power to change someone’s name? Slave owners have always known this, so have patriarchal societies. It’s a symbolic way to rob the disempowered of their identities.

  S/M culture revels in this sort of authoritarian display. It’s no surprise, then, that S/M masters routinely give their slaves new names. In some cases, infantilizing terms of endearment like Baby, Kitten, and Bunny are used. On the other end of the spectrum are names meant to degrade and humiliate, such as Bitch, Whore, Slut, or simply an initial—a practice famously portrayed in the book Story of O. Somewhere in the middle, there are mildly derogatory slave names that sound endearing but still belittle the recipient, like Trinket and Pet.

  Gary gave me such a slave name about two weeks after our first meeting. During his first visit to my mother’s apartment, he jokingly referred to me as a “mooch” because, as with any child, I was financially dependent. Afterward, Gary only ever referred to me by the name Mooch or The Mooch. He used it so exclusively that, within weeks, his family, kids at school, teachers, even my own mother began to refer to me that way. Soon there was no one in my life who called me Michelle. Most people didn’t even know it was my name.

  Since birth, I had been Michelle Brechbill. Daughter of Judy. Granddaughter of Evelyn and Glenn. Now, with the flick of a pen, I was Mooch Lundquist, daughter of Gary, new student at his out-of-state school. In 1976 no one seemed to question any of this. No one seemed to care that my school records displayed a different name or that Gary was not my legal guardian. We weren’t even related. Were Gary’s coworkers oblivious to the discrepancies? Did they buy his sudden and bizarre announcement of a daughter? Or did they notice that things seemed a bit off and chose to look the other way? My guess is they did notice; they did think it was odd. But social norms dictate that we do not insert ourselves into other people’s personal lives, particularly coworkers or other casual acquaintances. Being polite means keeping one’s mouth shut.

  And so I, the newly minted Mooch Lundquist, became a third grader at Delaware Township School. My classroom was on the first floor of the elementary building—just a staircase away from Gary. Every day at three p.m., as soon as the bell rang, I was expected to climb those stairs and report to Gary’s desk. Inevitably, a few of his favored ten-year-old students would still be hanging around—joking with him, sitting on his lap, climbing under his desk to escape his tickling hands.

  Some days Gary would oversee an afterschool activity. The gifted and talented club was invitation only—Gary’s invitation, that is. Gary considered himself to be a genius, so he felt it was his right and duty to identify ot
her geniuses and exalt their superiority too. Trouble was: Gary had no real training or authority to be administering IQ tests. He didn’t use the validated tests that I, or any other psychologist, would use. Instead, he gave kids a short multiple-choice test, the Mickey Mouse kind sold in bookstores. Then, based on his findings, he labeled certain kids—the kids he liked and wanted to spend more time with—as “gifted.”

  I was gifted, according to Gary. This was a real convenience, as he demanded I join his, and only his, after-school clubs. He signed me up for his drama club too and encouraged me to sing in the school talent contest. On the night of the show, various kids performed their acts, and the winner was chosen based on audience response. Gary was among the judges who awarded me first prize. After that, I was given the lead in all the school plays that he directed.

  Have I mentioned that Gary could be shameless?

  To the other parents, I suppose it seemed that Gary was harmlessly lauding his new daughter. In a certain way, he was. Not because he actually thought I was gifted or talented. I doubt he really thought much about me. Gary was a narcissist, and narcissists view their families as extensions of themselves, as trophies. Gary believed he was superior, so it was imperative that the world see his daughter as superior too.

  —

  BEHIND CLOSED DOORS it was a different story. Gary treated me with a dizzying blend of overinvolvement, neglect, overindulgence, and cruelty. With Svengali-like skill, he quickly took over every aspect of my life, dictating what I wore, to whom I talked, even what toys I used. The enforcement of trivial demands is another classic brainwashing technique.

  So was the way he strove to monopolize my time—an easy accomplishment since my mother left for work before I awoke and didn’t return until evening. During the school year, this meant Gary had me all to himself for an hour each morning and at least three hours every afternoon. Once summer came, he had me all day, every day, all to himself.