Open Letter to Dr. Elizabeth Loftus Regarding “False Memories”, Recovered Memories of Sexual Abuse, and the Satanic Panic

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: The Satanic Panic
2. Satanic Ritual Abuse Investigations: Were They Really a “Witch-Hunt”?
3. False Memories, Recovered Memories, Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, and the Freyd Family
4. Medical and Psychological Validity of Memory Loss and Recovery Following Traumatic Incidents
5. Conclusion

Content

1. Introduction: The Satanic Panic

     I was born in 1987, close to the middle of the so-called “Satanic Panic” scandal, which lasted from approximately 1983 to 1990. The Satanic Panic was a moral panic, experienced by the American public, regarding the possible existence of child-molesting preschool employees and possibly also Satanic child molesters.

     The Panic eventually resulted in a backlash which attempted to limit children’s access to sexual music and lyrics, and to Satanic and occult imagery. Such imagery - according to concerned parents and pastors - was allegedly found in various toys for children, and in games such as Dungeons and Dragons, and in television shows such as He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.
     [Link to pastor Phil Phillips explaining his objections to He-Man and D&D:
     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNrPs4qReHk]

     This panic also included a backlash against claims that “recovered memories” of childhood sexual abuse are real memories. "Recovered memories" is the theory that it's possible for a person to be sexually abused, then forget the memories of the abuse, but then retrieve the memories later-on in life. Detractors of the "recovered memories" theory began to use the phrase "False Memories" to describe the memories that people claimed they had retrieved.

     By the end of the Satanic Panic scandal – and at the end of the “most expensive trial of all time” regarding McMartin preschool – public perception held that those panicking about Satan had been unsuccessful in proving the existence of Satanic child molesters.

     Thus, concerns about heavy metal lyrics, demonic children’s toys, and even pedo-Satanists, subsided; as has belief in recovered memories of sexual abuse.

     There’s just one problem: Some people involved did have real stories of abuse. It's just that the Los Angeles -area police took a handful of credible allegations, and responded to them by launching an investigation that went completely out-of-control, resulting in the questioning (a lot of it leading questioning) of hundreds of unrelated children. Police discovered nothing more than a few kids telling Andrew Dice Clay -style dirty nursery rhymes, and more or less concluded that nobody (except maybe a McMartin employee) had molested anybody.

2. Satanic Ritual Abuse Investigations: Were They Really a “Witch-Hunt”?

     There is a real boy who was allegedly abused at McMartin preschool in California. His name is Matthew Johnson, and he was four years old when Ray Buckey (or another employee) anally sodomized him (either with a finger, a penis, or an object). He told his mother, Judy Johnson, who took him to a nurse. This nurse reported observing abuse. But the fact that two nurses didn’t report abuse, is cited by detractors of the McMartin preschool abuse theory.

     The jury was unable to convict his abuser because they couldn't figure out which employee did it. Matthew's mother Judy died, from overconsumption of alcohol, before she could testify. If she had lived, she would have clarified what her son reported to her.

     Judy Johnson's son Matthew reported being taken away in a balloon. He also reported seeing a witch. It sounds impossible, but the boy’s reports don’t have to be literally 100% true in order to be concerning. If you ask me, it sounds like this child was forced to watch The Wizard of Oz while somebody abused him from behind. I’m not saying that’s definitely what happened, but it would certainly explain why the child reported seeing a witch and a hot air balloon, which are among the most memorable elements of that film.

     Children only explain things in language they understand. If a child sees his abuser as the devil, or a witch, then the parent should report that fact. The fact that most people would describe child rape as demonic, doesn't have to mean that all Satanic rock bands abused her kid, nor any particular sect of Satanism. Most Americans would agree that Tipper Gore and the Parents Music Resource Center got sidetracked, from their original task of looking for Satanic pedophiles, by instead focusing on Satanic and demonic toys and music, and getting all sexual music - like the "Filthy Fifteen" list of inappropriate songs - off the airwaves (even for adults).

     Furthermore, the fact that a man named Gary Hambright gave sexually transmitted diseases to multiple children at a daycare at the Presidio of San Francisco (which is on land owned by the U.S. Military), has now been long forgotten to history. So too have we forgotten the fact that the chief defender of the military, against those charges of being involved in sexual Satanic Ritual Abuse (S.R.A.) was Colonel Michael Aquino, an open Satanist. He is affiliated with the “Temple of Set”; named for Set (or Seti), the Egyptian god of darkness, night, and the underworld. Aquino also wrote a psychological warfare operations manual for the military.

     Despite the actions of Ray Buckey or Virginia McMartin, Gary Hambright, and Colonel Michael Aquino, the public has all but concluded that no Satanist or devil worshiper has ever molested a single child in the history of the world. I find that hard to believe.

     It is also interesting to note that a man who calls himself Lucien Greaves – who is affiliated with the Satanic Temple in Salem, Massachusetts – has put on a presentation attempting to debunk the allegations that children were trafficked through tunnels underneath McMartin. Ted Gunderson (of the L.A.P.D. and the F.B.I.) believed that the tunnels did exist, and that they were just concreted-over to destroy the evidence. There exists a photograph of Gunderson standing near one of these concreted-over tunnels.

     The possibility that Satanists – as well as the U.S. Military – have been involved in (and possibly even collaborate on) child trafficking and rape, has been completely glossed-over, oversimplified, and treated with a knee-jerk reaction informed solely by the notion that everything Christians and Republicans are concerned about must not be serious problems.

     In approximately 2023, a young woman burned her aborted fetus, on TikTok, while openly talking about how she was doing it as a Satanic sacrifice. I want to know why that’s not a serious problem, and I also want to know why Mike Pence is wrong for demanding “fetus funerals”. Whether Satan exists or not, fetus funerals would have protected the corpse of this woman’s baby from its insane, horribly misguided mother.

     Regardless of the insistence, in the Satanic tenets, that consent is absolutely essential and children are not to be harmed, it seems that treating others in a demonic manner has taken root as a standard signal of politeness among those who scowl at the thoughts of showing restraint, modesty, or respect. Whatever words we want to use to describe it, a demonic element of vanity and hubris has taken hold of our society, and most of us have been groomed into not noticing it.

     Anyone who doubts the existence of child-molesting devil worshipers can go ahead and try to argue that the father in the Hampstead S.R.A. case in Britain is just an actor. Or that there are no MS-13 members who have ever raped a young girl and then sacrificed her to the devil.
     Or try to explain John and Tony Podesta's art collections, or the collections of James Alefantis or Marina Abramovic.
     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tyu910iyTuY

     Or explain that worshiping Lucifer could not possibly have been one of the motivations that Teresa's grandfather and the cult he belonged to, had, when they forced Teresa to submit to rape by animals when she was just fifteen years old. Teresa is a woman from England, who appeared in a 1989 interview, produced by John Penlington, for a segment titled "Satan's Children", for the television show 60 Minutes Australia.
     The video of that interview can be viewed at the link below (and the second link below is to the episode's page on IMDB.com):
     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2ioRBNriG8
     https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5178494/

     Granted, the band Slayer did not intentionally incite their fans to murder fifteen-year-old Elyse Pahler on account of her being a virgin. But the fact that those fans intentionally sought to sacrifice a virgin should concern us, whether the Devil is real or not, and whether the members of Slayer worship Satan or not.

     The fact that the Church of Satan is headquartered in the same county in which the McMartin allegations originated, should not escape our notice either. If a child were to claim that "satanists" abused him, then should the local Satanic chapter in the area be free to sue that child and his family for defamation? It's sad to say, but this is not a frivolous concern, whether Satan is real or not.

     Sexual Satanic Ritual Abuse is real. Honest investigators will always keep looking until conclusive proof - or at least evidence that a cover-up may have occurred - is found.



3. False Memories, Recovered Memories, Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, and the Freyd Family

     On the topic of recovered memories: They do exist. I know because I began recovering memories of sexual abuse and assault in 2015 (age twenty-eight), of which I had no memory beginning some time between 1997 and 2000 (ages ten and thirteen) until 2015. The abuse occurred at ages eight and nine (1995 and 1996).

     In 2019, I began writing about what I could manage to remember about the abuse, and I subsequently went to the police twice about it and submitted written reports each time. I have been recovering memories of the abuse slowly over the last ten years, and keeping notes, in order to prepare to eventually submit a third report (focusing on memories recovered since the second report, and including everything I will have written on the topic).

     One main reason why people think recovered memories aren't real - and call them all "false memories", even if they're recovered but true - is because of a psychologist named Dr. Elizabeth Loftus.
     Dr. Loftus told numerous courtrooms that her patients told her that they had met the cartoon character "Bugs Bunny" at Disney World. However, it is impossible to meet Disney World employees dressed as Bugs Bunny, at Disney World, because Bugs Bunny is a Looney Toons character, and Looney Toons is a division of Warner Brothers, not Disney.
     Loftus takes these claims from her patients, as proof that sometimes people claim to "remember" that they saw something, which they didn't. This, she takes as proof positive that "Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable", and as proof that it is possible to implant "false memories" into people's minds.
     There's just one problem: The reason why Loftus's patients told her that they met Bugs Bunny at Disney World, is because she is the one who told them that they met Bugs Bunny at Disney World in the first place. Loftus is the person who intentionally implanted this "false memory" into her patients' minds.
     Loftus told her patients that they had told her that they had met Bugs Bunny at Disney World, without her patients ever having claimed that in the first place. After she told her patients this lie, her patients repeated her own lie back to them. They probably did this because they trusted her, as a mental health professional, and had no reason to suspect that she was making it up.
     Elizabeth Loftus is the sole reason why Loftus's patients falsely claimed (or "falsely remembered") that they had met Bugs Bunny at Disney World. She is taking the fact that she got away with lying to her patients, as proof that it is possible for people to remember things that didn't happen.

     Loftus evidently never considered that what she did to her patients could be described as fraudulent, manipulative, or even unethical psychological experimentation. After all, she did lie to her patients. At no point did Loftus inform her patients that she was using them as test subjects in an unwitting experiment. Therefore, the patients could not have consented to be part of that experiment. This should cause us to question Loftus's morals as well as her methods.

     This is not to say that Loftus is deceiving everyone on purpose, however. It's possible that she has not even considered the ethics of her actions. She has also probably not asked herself whether intentionally implanting false memories in people's minds on purpose, may have reinforced the confirmation bias which she evidently holds (towards the belief that recovered "false memories" are not real).

     I believe that Loftus has this bias because (as she has said in interviews) she was sexually abused as a child, and that abuser was caught soon after, and punished. I believe that anyone who experiences such a thing would probably not forget it. Being given medical treatment, and rape tests, and having a lot of attention on you, and being in a courtroom, and maybe even speaking in a courtroom, are not easy things to forget.

     However, other children who are attacked sexually, do not always experience the attention and response that Loftus's case received. Since biological fathers and family and close friends are the most frequent sexual abusers of children, most abused children are forced to live with their abusers for years. This perpetuates the cycle of abuse, and after a while, the victim almost "gets used to it".

     It's not that the victim begins to enjoy the abuse, exactly. Granted, though; child rape victim turned billionaire television presenter Oprah Winfrey once explained that many child molesters subject their victims to forced sexual pleasure, under the threat of harm, as a way to trick the child into thinking that they enjoyed the act (because they were forced to enjoy part of it).
     Now, it is fair to want Oprah to be thoroughly investigated for her possible involvement in child trafficking and her association with serial child rapist cult leader John of God. However, that fact doesn't invalidate her statement about how child molesters trick children; she is absolutely right about that. Some child abusers combine pain with pleasure while abusing their victims, while other child abusers commit rape in excessively violent manners which result in many injuries to the children.
     Most child abusers force their victims to "find something about the abuse that they enjoy", as a way to coax the child into enduring the pain, to ensure that they'll remain submissive and try to relax as the abusive acts continue.

     That's how - eventually and gradually - the abused child learns to make the best of the bad situation that he or she is in. While being prevented from escaping repeated traumas, the child avoids the abuser to the extent possible, and fawns (i.e., ingratiates himself towards his abuser), and gets desensitized to pain by the abuser, and gets psychologically groomed.

     If the abuser can keep the abuse sporadic and unpredictable and repeated, but less and less severe over the years, then the victim will forget it ever happened, and "do what they have to do to get through it" until they turn 18 and/or become financially independent enough to flee from the abuser permanently.

     This continues, until the point where the victim ceases to recognize the way he has been treated, as abusive; mostly because he does not remember the earliest and/or most severe incidents of abuse.

     Such a person will, soon after, become psychologically vulnerable enough to fall for gaslighting. Such gaslighting may occur intentionally or unintentionally. Intentional gaslighting may take the form of directly telling the victim that the victim was not abused, or telling the victim that the victim is remembering the events wrong. Unintentional gaslighting may take the form of underestimating the severity of the abuse that the victim claims he is experiencing (and/or has experienced).
     Thus, such a person becomes a prime candidate to go into denial, begin doubting his own ability to remember accurately and correctly, and then literally forget that he was ever sexually abused in the first place. The less a person talks about past memories of abuse, the more difficult it becomes to recall those incidents accurately, and the more the person gets used to staying silent about what happened. This makes it easier to forget. And, since talking about the memories less, will lead to less antagonization and combativeness coming from the abuser, continuing to remain silent about the abuse becomes advantageous to the victim.

     When repeated abuse, like this, is never detected, the patient is never going to be adequately medically or psychologically treated for what happened (if even at all). This creates the perfect recipe for the total ignoring of the child, and of his or her claims of abuse (which increases the difficulty of detecting and preventing subsequent abuses).

     Hopefully, though - at some point, when that adult is alone with his thoughts long enough, and gets some freedom to travel far enough away from his abuser to collect his thoughts - the recovered memories begin to surface.
     It may be something the abuser said, or a feeling that evokes the memory of an unwanted touch, or maybe just the sound of an unknown person screaming, which is the first semblance of a memory that is recovered. But either way, this prompts the person to ask himself whether he was sexually abused.
     This begins a journey of memory-searching that eventually results in the recovery of real memories (not "false memories"). Recovered memories are absolutely real (although that is not to say that false reports and false rape claimants do not exist), and therapeutic assistance in the recovery of memories is something that has been specifically studied in the field of psychology and trauma counseling.

     If Dr. Elizabeth Loftus had been forced to live with her abuser for years after the initial incident, and subjected to more abuse – rather than afforded instant care and a memorable view of her abuser being sentenced for his crimes – then I suspect that she would not be as adamant that recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse are not real.
     On the contrary; I suspect that, if that were the case, then Loftus would have had to actively ask herself whether she was abused - and consciously attempt to recover memories - in order to get a chance to remember what happened (and then bring her abuser to justice).
     That is why I believe Dr. Loftus should admit that intentionally suggesting that her patients remembered information which was factually impossible to be true, was unethical; and reconsider and retract some or most of her findings on the topic.

4. Medical and Psychological Validity of Memory Loss and Recovery Following Traumatic Incidents

     I do not say all of this to wish that Loftus had suffered more, so that she may better empathize with other abuse victims. I say this solely because I hope that Loftus will reconsider her conclusions. Her expert testimony has been relied upon in some of the most important sexual abuse cases since the 1980s, so it is very important that she approach this topic with a scientific mind, and ask herself whether her personal experience caused a confirmation bias that skewed her conclusions towards doubting the accounts of people who recovered memories of abuse.

     There is a perfectly reasonable medical explanation for recovered memories.

     The mind shields us from things that are too traumatic to be processed on a regular and/or conscious basis. There would be no adaptive evolutionary advantage for the brain to allow the body to panic and be stressed all the time. Having to think about past sexual abuse regularly provokes a fight-or-flight response, and causes the release of adrenaline and cortisol. Cortisol is released when a person is under stress.

     Cortisol shrinks the hippocampus, the part of the brain which is responsible for the formation of long-term memories. The shorter the hippocampus, the more difficulties with memory retrieval. This is probably why remaining unstressed for long periods of time, is so helpful to people who are trying to “fill-in the gaps” of what happened, during the parts of their childhood which they don’t yet remember.

     Cortisol also grows the amygdala, which is responsible for moral judgment. The larger the amygdala, the more “black-and-white” - and less ambivalent - the person’s moral thinking becomes. Thus, a person who has been abused multiple times, is more emotionally reactive and sensitive, and “on-edge” around people they don’t trust, than people who were abused less, or not at all.
     The way a person acts, after they have been abused - and after their amygdala grows - may come off as judgmental; especially from the perspective of people who don’t know that the person was abused. This effect may also lead an abused person to become “reactive”, practicing “imperfect self-defense” in overreaction to perceived threats and perceived lack of safety.

     I am sincerely sorry about what happened to Dr. Elizabeth Loftus when she was a child. But I also hope that she will read this article, and consider retracting some of her submissions to written academic discourse on the topic of recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse and assault.

5. Conclusion

     I urge my readers to watch the 2008 documentary Flashback, the only film of which I'm aware which directly deals with recovered memories of sexual abuse. Dr. Loftus appears in the documentary. Its full title is Flashback: The Science Behind the Recovered Memory of Child Sexual Abuse, and it can be viewed for free on YouTube at the following address:
     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0lSXh_fE7Y

     About halfway through the film, a woman with curly gray hair appears, asking why children would say such things about parents who have only tried to take care of them. That woman was Pamela Freyd, the wife of Peter J. Freyd. Freyd coined the term "False Memories Syndrome", and founded the now-defunct False Memories Syndrome Foundation. The reason why the foundation is defunct, is because Peter J. Freyd sexually abused his daughter Jennifer. Jennifer Freyd grew up to be a psychologist, and write books about her experiences, including one titled Betrayal Trauma.

     Until Dr. Loftus makes her retractions, I hope that this article will serve as sufficient cause - in the court of public opinion - to indicate that the efforts to debunk recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse, have, themselves, been officially debunked. Or, at the very least, to indicate that the investigations into McMartin, Hambright, Aquino, and others were grossly mishandled (or even covered-up) and should be re-opened.

     I hope that this article will prompt more thorough investigation of recovered memories claims, as well as Satanic Ritual Abuse claims. I hope that it also results in the phasing-out of the phrase “false memories”, which was coined by a child molester to discredit his own daughter’s true claims of sexual abuse.

     To those who still suspect, after reading the above, that anyone and everyone whom is concerned about exposure of children to occult and demonic themes, must only be motivated by a desire to convert children to Christianity, I say the following:
     The pastor, Phil Phillips, who raised caution about the show He-Man, did not only object to the description of He-Man as the "master of the universe" (a title which Christians only afford to God); he also objected to the exposure of children to He-Man insofar as his body-builder body-type indicates that he is a hyper-masculine stereotype. This imprints, upon boys, unreasonable expectations about the body, which may be deleterious to boys' ability to feel manly (i.e., because they don't look manly enough).
     Thus, Christians and transgender allies alike have a reason to think twice before they allow children to watch He-Man, play with He-Man dolls, or play with other hyper-masculine man dolls or hyper-sexualized hyper-feminine woman dolls.

     One does not have to believe in God, nor Jesus, nor the Devil (or Satan, or any demonic entity), in order to object to the exposure of children to hyper-sexualized, gender-stereotypical, or dark or foreboding themes. Children deserve happy childhoods; they do not deserve to grow up around goat-headed statues with exposed breasts, or demonic-looking hyper-sexualized drag queens who want to read them stories.
     Children deserve respect, and we cannot give them respect until we free ourselves from our delusions. We must stop giving possibly pedophilic Satanists and possibly pedophilic members of our military and police the benefit of the doubt. We must not suspend disbelief.
     As Rosemary said, in Rosemary's Baby, "This is no dream! This is real!"

     The cost of freedom, and happy and safe childhoods, is for adults to be eternally vigilant.

     I hereby declare the Satanic Panic to be officially back on.

Written and published on August 21st, 2025
Edited and expanded on September 10th, 2026

Based on two e-mails;
one written to David Rych in 2023 or 2024,
and another to David Ramsay Steele on August 21st, 2025

My Mother Made-Up "A Dream I Had" in Order to Gaslight Me into Thinking That My Father Hadn't Sexually Abused Me

      Some time in late June or early July of 2023, I recovered memories of my mother telling me (at age seven or eight) that I’d had a dream about getting a bird's egg stuck in my ear. I believe that some or all of what she said about this dream was made-up, in order to cover-up for the abuse I experienced, and in order to distract me from the abuse, and gaslight me into thinking that my father had not abused me.

 

     This memory seems to originate from somewhere around the age of seven (i.e., in 1994) or age eight (1995).

     I say "seems to" because it's difficult to pinpoint when, exactly, this happened. That's because (as I have explained in my previous writing about the abuse and memory loss I suffered) I noticed, around the age of twenty-five, that my memories prior to age ten were incomplete. I didn't suspect that I'd been abused until years after that, though, because my girlfriend at the time told me that it's normal not to remember some of your childhood. I subsequently realized that it is very normal to not remember large blocks of your childhood because you were sexually abused. Adaptive Information Processing (A.I.P.) is the term applied to the process by which we forget or ignore traumatic memories for the sake of improving our chances at survival.

     I have previously stated that the majority of the incidents of abuse occurred in mid-1995, mid-1996, or both summers.

      This leads me to suspect that it’s possible that the abuse began at age seven instead of age eight; I’m not sure. It’s hard to say, due to the memory loss I suffered around that time (caused by the initial sexual abuse, partial suffocation during that abuse, and subsequent gaslighting and brainwashing by my father). Also, I have previously stated that the abuse could have began at age five, when I drew a picture of a hamster covered in holes (referred to as “Incident #1” in my first report to police, and referred to as “Incident #3” in my second report to police, after I recovered additional memories). So it’s entirely possible that I was abused between the ages of five and eight, in addition to the majority of the incidents, which occurred at age eight and nine.

      Regarding the supposed dream itself: I seem to remember myself, sitting at our kitchen table, eating something, most likely cereal. This could only have happened at our house at 524 East Washington Avenue in Lake Bluff, Illinois, because we moved into that house in summer 1992, when I was five years old, and did not move again until 2005 or 2006.

      I remember my mother – sitting across from me, at the other end of the kitchen table – telling me about a dream that I’d had. I remember asking her - maybe that day, or maybe the next day, or a while afterwards – something like, “What else did I dream?”, or possibly, “Did I have a dream last night?”. To repeat: I remember - at some point during the conversation about the dream, or else shortly thereafter – that I was relying on my mother to tell me what happened in my own dream. This should give an indication as to how much I trusted her at the time.

      I have had this memory for a very long time. I probably didn’t think about it – or didn’t think about it often – between the years of 2000 and 2015 (the period of time during which I had no memories of the abuse). But the memory of my mother screaming “It’s in his ear!” has popped-up in my memories, every now and then, for years. I’m not sure when I began remembering this, or whether I ever lost the memory in the first place. All the times that I recalled remembering this possible dream, up to a month ago, all I could remember were those words that my mother screamed, and the notion that I’d supposedly dreamed about a bird egg being stuck in my ear.

      Until a month ago, I have remembered the words “It’s in his ear” as some of the last words uttered in a dream I’d had, about getting a bird’s egg stuck in my ear. The exact words I believe myself to have “heard” in that possible dream, were “It’s in his ear! It’s in his ear! HIS EAR!!!” The last sentence, of those three, seems less likely to have been part of that possible dream, than the first two sentences. Until a month ago, I believed that the first two utterances of “It’s in his ear” were from the dream, and that “his ear” was something that either: 1) I “heard” while waking up from that dream; or else 2) my subconscious mind added to the memories of the dream, while I was awake, some time after the dream occurred.

      To be perfectly clear: I’m not sure whether these memories are due to an actual dream I had, or whether the entire dream was made-up by my mother. It’s possible that I did have a dream, but that my mother either: 1) added details to the dream that weren’t there; or else 2) substituted a dream she made-up, for whatever I was telling her that I’d dreamed about.

      My memories of either the dream - or what my mother told me about the dream - are that I was playing on the edge of our yard, in the dirt, and somehow got a bird’s egg stuck in my ear.

      There is nothing in my medical records about doctors having to remove a bird’s egg from my ear. And I have no concrete memories which would indicate that such a thing ever actually happened.

      This could only mean that either: 1) I dreamed it; or 2) I dreamed something else, and my mother substituted her own narrative for some or all of what I told her I dreamed about.

      Given the incomplete nature of this possible dream, and these memories – and given the memories of molestation and anal rape which have resurfaced in my mind since 2015 – all of this causes me to suspect that at least some these memories may have originated from something that my father did to me.

      To me, the most likely explanation, seems to be that my father may have ejaculated onto my face, and into my ear. If he did, then my mother would have been the only person around who would have had the ability and the incentive to clean me up after the abuse. It’s entirely possible that my father ejaculated into my ear, causing my mother to scream “It’s in his ear” when noticing the semen, and prompting her to clean it out. I suppose it’s possible that my father put something else in my ear, like spit or feces, but that seems unlikely.

      I seem to remember my mother having been very insistent, during that conversation at the kitchen table, that I’d dreamed what I was talking about. Or else she was insistent that her recollection of events was superior to my own. Possibly both.

      I also seem to remember my mother telling me that she knew what I was dreaming about, because she heard me talking in my sleep. I don’t know if that’s true, because I’m not aware of any existing proof that I talked in my sleep as a child. I do know that I occasionally talk in my sleep as an adult, so it’s possible that I did this as a child as well. But even if I was talking in my sleep about a bird egg stuck in my ear, that doesn’t come anywhere close to fully explaining the memories I have. I say that because I have no memories of what I was saying during that supposed dream; I only remember my mother screaming those eight words (or possibly ten words).

      I know that what I have said above, mostly consists of incomplete memories and speculation about said memories, and that this does not constitute direct proof that I was abused, nor proof that my mother made up a dream I had. But the fact that I have so much to say about this possible dream, leads me to conclude that this is something that needs to be talked about, in the context of what I remember related to the abuse.

      I believe that my mother intentionally implanted false memories about dreams that she couldn't possibly know that I was having. Unless, of course, I talked in my sleep. But I repeat: 1) That does not explain all the questions I have relating to the supposed dream; and 2) I have no memory of what I was saying during that dream, only of what my mother was saying. All of the verbal information that I have about that possible dream, comes from my mother, and not from myself. To me, this strongly suggests that my mother made up most of the dream, or perhaps even the entire thing.

 

 

 

 

 

     Another thing I should mention, which seems relevant to bring up here, is the incident which I numbered “Incident #4” in my second report to police. It is relevant to mention here because this incident and the dream about the bird egg both relate to my first experiences with ejaculation.

     That incident was not mentioned in my first report, because I did not then (and still do not) have any concrete memories, attached to that incident, which would suggest that I definitely endured sexual abuse during that incident. But that does not mean that sexual abuse couldn’t have happened during that incident; I do not know because my memories of the incident are incomplete.

      In my second report to police, I stated the following: 

     "#4. There is a 70% chance that the reason why I thought I remembered (at the age of five or six) the character Elmer Fudd performing a sexual act upon the Babs Bunny character from Tiny Toons, is because my father may have done something to me while watching Tiny Toons that exposed me to sex, or at least to what ejaculate (or to what “cum” / “come”) is.

     "I'm pretty confident that I saw Elmer Fudd sticking his shotgun into Babs Bunny's guts, and her screaming, on television. I know that I had sexual thoughts about this afterwards, which involved white cream and Babs Bunny's crotch. But I do not know how I – at the age of five or six – could have known that white cream had anything to do with sex or orgasm, as I did not ejaculate any fluid until I was at least 12 or 13 years old. That is why I suspect that my father may have somehow exposed me to sex - or something related to ejaculation - while I was watching Tiny Toons. This incident occurred at 524 East Washington Avenue.

     "I have remembered this since it happened, but this is the first time I have discussed it in statements to the authorities, because I have only recently begun to suspect that my father, or the possibility of something sexual happening to me, might have had anything to do with why I knew that white cream was the result of sex at just six years old."

      I do not mean to retract, nor revise, anything about the three paragraphs above; I only mean to add details and context to those memories.

      It’s possible that my father either: 1) exposed me to sex while I was watching “Tiny Toons” (the actual name of the show is Tiny Toon Adventures); or else 2) exposed me to sex afterwards, while humiliating me for thinking that Babs Bunny (the cartoon rabbit character, which wore a dress and had big eyes and long eyelashes) was pretty.

     I also remember having Buster Bunny and Babs Bunny stuffed animals some time around that age (five years to eight years old). I suppose it’s possible that I had some sort of sexual attachment to the Babs Bunny doll, although I cannot remember such a thing; but if I did, then it would be totally reasonable for me to suspect that my father subjected me to some form of shame or humiliation over my attraction to the character.

      Original episodes of Tiny Toon Adventures were aired between September 1990 and December 1992, but the show went into "off-network syndication" (i.e., re-runs); first on the Warner Bros. channel, and later on Nickelodeon. Re-runs of the show were viewable for years after that. This means that Tiny Toon Adventures was definitely being aired – and frequently – between 1992 (the earliest that this possibly could have happened) and 1996 (the final year that the successful attempts at molestation and rape took place).

      This is the first time I have mentioned being anally raped by my father, in all of my previous articles about the abuse. I will publish more information about those memories – most of which I recovered between October 2020 and November 2022 – as soon as I am ready to speak confidently about what I can remember. I have declined to talk about it until now, because of the fragmented and complex nature of those memories, and because of the shame involved in admitting that I lost my virginity to my own father.

 

 

 

 

 

Written and Published on July 27^th, 2023.

Edited and Expanded on August 3rd, 2023.

 

Includes three paragraphs from my second report to Lake Bluff Police; which was written between January 9^th and February 3^rd, and between February 27^th and March 3^rd, 2021; and was delivered to Lake Bluff Police the day after completion (i.e., on March 4^th, 2021).

 

That report can be viewed at the following address:

     http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2021/03/second-statement-to-police-regarding.html

 

Correcting the Record: Regarding the Details About Six of Forty-Three Dates on Which Molestation Could Have Occurred

     In my second report to police regarding the molestation I endured as a child, I explained that I may have been molested as many as 21 times, between 1992 and 2000. The majority of those incidents – as many as 12 of them (and certainly no less than 3 or 4) – occurred on the gray couch in the furnished basement of my childhood home, at 524 East Washington, in Lake Bluff, Illinois.

     I have identified, in previous statements, the forty-three Sundays between April and August of 1995 and 1996, as the dates on which those incidents of molestation on the gray couch could have taken place.

     I wish to clarify some things about seven of those forty-three dates.

     As I have stated, the twelve incidents in question – given as Incidents #2 through #13 in the first statement to police, and as Incidents #5 through #16 in the second statement – could only have occurred on forty-three possible dates:

     April 2^nd, 9^th, 16^th, 23^rd, and 30^th; May 7^th, 14^th, 21^st, and 28^th; June 4^th, 11^th, 18^th, and 25^th; July 2^nd, 9^th, 16^th, 23^rd, and 30^th; and August 6^th, 13^th, 20^th, and 27^th, 1995;
     and April 7^th, 14^th, 21^st, and 28^th; May 5^th, 12^th, 19^th, and 26^th; June 2^nd, 9^th, 16^th, 23^rd, and 30^th; July 7^th, 14^th, 21^st, and 28^th; and August 4^th, 18^th, and 25^th, 1996.

     The matter which I wish to clarify, is that I was less likely to be abused during major golf tournaments, than other dates mentioned. Those golf tournaments took place on seven of the forty-three Sundays I have listed.

     Those tournaments and dates were:

     1) the Masters Tournament in Georgia, held on Sunday, April 9^th, 1995;
     2) the U.S. Open in New York, held on Sunday, June 18^th, 1995;
     3) the British Open in Scotland, held on Sunday, July 23^rd, 1995;
     4) the Masters Tournament in Georgia, held on Sunday, April 14^th, 1996;
     5) the U.S. Open in Michigan, held on Sunday, June 16^th, 1996;
     6) the British Open in England, held on Sunday, July 21^st, 1996; and
     7) the P.G.A. Championship in Kentucky, held on Sunday, August 11^th, 1996.

     On the seven dates listed above, I believe that my father would have been less likely to have molested me, than the other thirty-six dates.

     I say that because my father is, and was at the time, such an avid golfer and golf fan, that he has routinely gone to parties at friends’ houses – or thrown his own parties – to watch golf tournaments on television.

     The significance of this is that I have increased the precision with which I have identified the dates on which I could have been molested.

     Those (between three and twelve) incidents of molestation on the gray couch, could only have occurred on the following dates:

    -  April 2^nd, 16^th, 23^rd, and 30^th, 1995;
      - May 7^th, 14^th, 21^st, and 28^th, 1995;
     - June 4^th, 11^th, and 25^th, 1995;
     - July 2^nd, 9^th, 16^th, and 30^th, 1995; and
     - August 6^th, 13^th, 20^th, and 27^th, 1995;
 and
     - April 7^th, 21^st, and 28^th, 1996;
     - May 5^th, 12^th, 19^th, and 26^th, 1996;
     - June 2^nd, 9^th, 23^rd, and 30^th, 1996;
     - July 7^th, 14^th, and 28^th; and
     - August 4^th, 18^th, and 25^th, 1996.

     As I have explained, I was molested no less than three or four times, and as many as ten or twelve times, on the gray couch (aside from nine other incidents, of which I have partial memory, and am not sure whether sexual touching occurred meanwhile).

     I can’t remember how many times it happened, because the pattern of abuse – sitting behind my father’s legs, being restrained onto my father’s lap, being tickled and partially suffocated through forced laughing, and then forced genital touching – occurred so similarly, over and over again.

     This fact makes it difficult to distinguish one incident from another in my memory, aside from two incidents. One is the time I clearly remember standing in the basement living room, telling my father that I didn’t want to sit behind his legs while he was watching television, knowing that he was probably going to touch me inappropriately. The other is the time I remember speaking to my mother in the laundry room and asking her to stay home.

     I wrote this statement because I want to make it clear that – if I was molested as many as twelve times on the couch – then there is as much as (approximately) a thirty percent (30%) chance that I was molested on any one of the dates, chosen at random from among the following even sets of three dates in close succession to one another.

     Namely:

     - there is as much as a 30% chance that I was molested on either April 2^nd, 16^th, or 23^rd, 1995;
     - there is as much as a 30% chance that I was molested on either April 30^th, or May 7^th or 14^th, 1995;
     - there is as much as a 30% chance that I was molested on either May 21^st or 28^th, or June 4^th, 1995;
     - there is as much as a 30% chance that I was molested on either June 11^th or 25^th, or July 2^nd, 1995;
     - there is as much as a 30% chance that I was molested on either July 9^th, 23^rd, or 30^th, 1995;
     - there is as much as a 30% chance that I was molested on either August 6^th, 13^th, or 20^th, 1995;
     - there is as much as a 30% chance that I was molested on either April 7^th, 21^st, or 28^th, 1996;
     - there is as much as a 30% chance that I was molested on either May 5^th, 12^th, or 19^th, 1996;
 and
     - there is as much as a 30% chance that I was molested on either May 26^th, or June 2^nd or 9^th, 1996.

     August 27^th, 1995, and August 18^th and 25^th, 1996, were left out of the set of dates above, since they could not be easily grouped together into sets of threes.

     My father, Richard S. Kopsick, should be asked where he was, and what he was doing – and whether he has electronic or paper records proving it - on the thirty-six dates listed above (as well as during the last week before Christmas of 1996, when Incident #20 occurred at the Union League Club Hotel in Chicago).



     To read my most recent statement to police (written between January 9^th and March 3^rd, 2021), please visit the following link:
     http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2021/03/second-statement-to-police-regarding.html

Written and Published on May 8th, 2021

Correcting the Record: How I Recovered Memories of Childhood Sexual Abuse at the Age of Twenty-Eight

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Preface: Clarifying, Not Recanting
3. My Previous Statements About the Lists of Terms
4. The Lists of Terms
5. Analysis of Terms Pertaining to My Father and/or to Abuse
6. Conclusions
7. References

Content

1. Introduction

     In my first report to police regarding the molestation which I endured as a child – written between October and December 2019, and delivered to Lake Bluff police on December 31^st, 2019 – I explained how I recovered memories of that sexual abuse.

     In section 9d of that report – titled “When I Experienced [‘]False Memories[‘] of Abuse, and Why I Think I Experienced Them” – I told police that “in the first few months of 2015, perhaps March or April, when I remembered having been pressured to wear penny loafers, as a child of about nine” during events for school for which I had to dress in a formal manner.

     I continued that remembering having to wear penny loafers “resulted in me recovering memories of Incident #17”. I want to clarify that I was thinking about penny loafers in early 2015, but I cannot yet prove that I wrote the phrase down at any point.

     I certainly wrote “shoehorn” down, though, which I have shown below, in the first of four images of the lists I created in early 2015.

     My statement continued as follows:

     “Another event which caused me to remember the events of Incident #17 more clearly, occurred some time around the time I heard Vashti Bunyan's song [“I’d Like to Walk Around in Your Mind”] in the bath. I'm not sure whether it was before or afterwards, but I remembered that I had been pressured to wear penny loafers to events as a child. Some time in March or April 2015, I thought about the possibility that I was abused, while hand-writing a list of words and phrases which were on my mind.”

     In April 2021, I found that list of words and phrases that I created in 2015. I created those lists in order to gather my thoughts, and then, shortly after creating them, I read the lists, and tried to think about whether any of them triggered me, or jogged my memory about my childhood.
     I consciously did this because I had begun to suspect that I had been molested as a child, and I knew I needed to think more about it and probably work to recover memories. Shortly before or after creating these lists, I went through my old childhood toys and school projects, and tried to remember what the basement at the old house smelled like, in order to jog my memory, and put myself into the state of mind I was in around the time of the abuse.

     Upon reviewing the contents of these lists in April 2021, I discovered that “penny loafers” did not appear on any of the documents I have managed to find thus far. It’s still possible that I wrote “penny loafers” on another piece of paper which I haven’t found yet.
     But since I have not found "penny loafers" written on any of my papers from 2015, I have decided that it was necessary to write this statement; in order to explain 1) why I thought "penny loafers" was the term that triggered me instead of "shoe horn", which it actually was; and 2) why I wrote many of the other terms which appear on those lists.
     These facts should help explain my state of mind in early 2015, explain the relationship between the trigger terms and the way I was treated growing up, and demonstrate that my statements regarding how I recovered memories of the abuse, are at least internally consistent. The fact that I have to much to say, and expand upon, regarding these incidents - and the fact that I am probably the only person who noticed or cared about any of the incidents mentioned below which involved multiple people - should demonstrate that I am the only person with something to say about these incidents.
     Other people's sheer denial that these events happened - and their bare, baseless insistence that they "never happened" - should not suffice as evidence contradicting my claims. I am basically being told that I made-up or hallucinated all of my negative memories of my family.



2. Preface: Clarifying, Not Recanting

     I want to be clear that I am not recanting anything, nor retracting anything, nor amending my statement in any major way. I am remaining consistent about the fact that I considered “penny loafers” a triggering phrase which I associated with abuse, in early 2015.

     I am not “changing my story”, but merely clarifying that writing down “shoe horn” was probably the written term – rather than “penny loafers” – which triggered me, and led me to try to think and remember more deeply about my childhood and the abuse.

     I believe the reason for my confusion regarding which term I wrote down, was that penny loafers and shoehorns are both associated with tight clothing

     These terms are both triggers for me because I didn’t like wearing penny loafers as a child because they were too tight, and because I used to go into my father’s closet as a child to play with his shoehorns.

     Before remembering that that’s what happened in my dad’s closet, I suspected that I had been molested in that closet; but after thinking about it, I realized that I had no memories of such a thing happening, and I concluded that I had not been molested there.

     I believe that the reason why I associate that room with fear of my father, and why I briefly suspected that he molested me there, is because my father would tell me to get out of his closet when he saw me playing in there.

3. My Previous Statements About the Lists of Terms

     Below is another excerpt from section 9b of my first statement to police, which are relevant to penny loafers, shoe horns, and the first memories of abuse which I recovered due to thinking about those “trigger words”.

     As a reminder, this excerpt reflects my state of mind and memories as of late 2019; nearly one-and-a-half-years ago, and before I began therapy.

 

     “Unfortunately, I can't vividly remember writing that term down, nor can I find any document in my possession which bears the term. But that could be because I thought of penny loafers after completing the list. Either way, remembering that I didn't like wearing penny loafers as a child, helped me remember other times I had been pressured to wear constrictive clothing (and pressured to accept unwanted affection and touching when I dressed so [‘]cute[‘]), and that memory helped me to remember my father caressing the back of my head (i.e., the events of Incident #17).

 

     Aside from the term “penny loafers” becoming a “trigger word” for me (that is, a word that prompts memories of abuse to come flooding back), the word [‘]breezeway[‘] may have resulted from that attempt to make a list of terms to jog my memory. I can't remember whether I first suspected my father of molesting me in the breezeway of our house in January 2015 or in March or April. My thoughts about being molested in the breezeway, and in my father's bedroom closet, turned out to be false, after I thought about them for a while.

 

     Thinking about possibly being abused in the breezeway of my family's house, eventually resulted in me realizing that those [‘]memories[‘], as well as the [‘]memories[‘] of being molested in my father's closet, are false (and probably attributable to much less stressful events which occurred in those locations). But thinking about why penny loafers were on my mind, caused me to remember that my parents, and the school, had made me wear penny loafer shoes as a child. It wasn't primarily that penny loafers made me uncomfortable; I found some consolation and [‘]coolness[‘] in the fact that I could wear money on my shoes openly. But it was the other clothing, which the adults around me wanted me to wear, that bothered me.

 

     I remember being pressured to wear penny loafers, and other uncomfortable, ill-fitting and tight-fitting clothing. I remember being [‘]rewarded[‘] for wearing them, by being called [‘]cute[‘] by my parents and their friends. Students had to dress that way for musical productions, and other social events (such as golf outings). I had to dress that way on the evening of Incident #17, in order to dress appropriately enough to have dinner in a restaurant of the Union League Club Hotel in Chicago. During that incident – when my father was with me in our hotel room helping me get changed for dinner – my father caressed the back of my head with his fingers, and I remember beginning to cry.

 

     That memory of being touched on my head, is the memory which resurfaced then (in early 2015), and that is the memory which comes up now, when I think about penny loafers and being expected to wear constrictive, uncomfortable clothing (which made me look like an adult) as a child. This memory of being touched on the head by my father, is the same memory which resurfaced when I heard [‘]I'd Like to Walk Around in Your Mind[‘] by Vashti Bunyan on the Pandora app on my smartphone, while taking a bath at my father's house in March 2015.”

4. The Lists of Terms

     I have scanned all of my papers from 2015 on which I wrote lists of terms and phrases that I hoped would help remind me of my childhood and possible abuse (which I then couldn’t remember clearly). Those documents appear below.

     The word “breezeway” does not appear on any of the lists. That was the other location, besides my dad’s closet, where I briefly suspected in 2015 that I had been molested, but then concluded that I had not been.

"Shoe horn" is visible near the top-right

5. Analysis of Terms Pertaining to My Father and/or to Abuse

     Below, I have included a list of all of the terms and phrases from that list, which are references to my father, his abuse, or abuse in general.

     - “alcohol in baby bottles”:

     I wrote this because I had been disturbed about the possibility that I had been given alcohol while at my grandfather’s house. I describe what I remember happening at my grandfather’s house, in my descriptions of Incidents #17-#19 in my second statement to police (which were Incidents #14-#16 in my first statement).

         

     - “automatic pencil sharpeners”, “cigar cutters”, and “Michael Sullivan – haircut” and “ear cutting”:

     I wrote these phrases because I remembered playing with automatic pencil sharpeners, with my brother, at my father’s law office as a child. I also remembered my brother playing with my grandfather’s cigar cutters while we were at his house. I was worried that he was going to cut off one of his fingers.

     Michael Sullivan was the name of my principal at Lake Bluff Central School, between (approximately) the years of 1996 and 2000. Michael Sullivan never cut my hair, but might have yelled at me once. I don’t know why I wrote Michael Sullivan next to “haircut”, but it might be because one of the earliest memories of abuse which I (partially) recovered, was the incident wherein he caressed the back of my head, and I blacked out, in our hotel room at the Union League Club Hotel in Chicago, in December 1996.

     Another reason why I might have written Michael Sullivan next to “haircut”, and why I wrote “ear cutting” as well, is because I used to be afraid that my ears would get cut, when I would get haircuts as a child. I was particularly frightened by the sound of scissors snipping in my ears. My father’s barber Lee, based in Highwood, became my barber, right before this became an issue for me. I remember feeling resentful towards my father for seeming to not be taking the fact that I was scared, seriously.

     - “back into my penis”:

     I don’t remember my father, or anyone else, ever saying this to me. But I believe that, in 2015, I was worried that my father abused me from behind. I sometimes wonder whether my father told me to put my penis between the cushions of the same small loveseat on which I would sit after he molested me, but I do not have any concrete memory of that happening, so I think that wonder is probably attributable to me putting my penis between the cushions by myself, without being instructed to do so.

         

     - “bashing head on wall”:

     I probably wrote this because I was remembering being a teenager, and studying for exams while sitting up on my bed, and hitting my head against the wall. I did it for attention, and one or both of my parents asked what the noise was. I don’t remember what I said; I might not have felt  safe or comfortable enough to tell them that I was stressed from all the studying I was doing. I might have apologized. I can’t remember. But I definitely banged my head against my bedroom wall – and maybe also my desk, on another occasion – when I was stressed-out from too much reading and studying.

     My mother never pressured me to study for long periods of time; only my father did that. It’s not that my mother didn’t encourage me to study; she did. But she didn’t need to; I was a good student. My father watched me like a hawk to make sure I did my homework, and when I was in high school he berated me about my grades. Several times, he accused me of concealing my grades, when I genuinely didn’t have them yet, because my teachers hadn’t graded my tests yet. He left me with no way to prove I was innocent of his baseless accusations.

         

     - “BED”:

     My father was extremely short, frank, demanding, stubborn, and insistent, when it came to telling me and my brother to go to bed. When he wanted us to go to bed, we had only a few minutes to brush our teeth and get into bed. He wouldn’t beat us, however, unless you count a few spankings for both me and my brother, and the molestation which I endured and then forgot.

         

     - “boat rapist”:

     I wrote this because I was trying to remember whether sexual abuse occurred, and because I was remembering hearing the tongue twister “toy boat” as a child. I was trying to remember whether I had been abused in the bathtub. I have not recovered any such memories.

         

     - “bowel movements”:

     My father would say this phrase to make himself laugh, and to try to make me and my brother laugh.

         

     - “butterfly”:

     I wrote this for one of two reasons. First, because my grandfather’s live-in girlfriend Ruth called my brother a “social butterfly”, and I remember being jealous of my brother, because I was not as social as he was. Second, because butterflies are associated with transformation and metamorphosis, and therefore, with puberty. Due to their association with puberty, butterflies could also be viewed or used as symbols for pedophilia.

         

     - “corsets”:

     I probably wrote this because corsets are a particularly tight article of clothing, not unlike shoe horns and penny loafers. I remember seeing women squeeze into corsets in the films Titanic and Moulin Rouge, when I was ten and thirteen years old, respectively. I may or may not have been thinking about these films at the time when I wrote “corsets” on the list.

     It’s likely that I had tight clothes on my mind, which are triggering for me, because of the way my parents fussed over my appearance and dress as a child (which I believe made it easier for my father to get away with being sexually attracted to me).

         

     - “CWM = cum = whom”:

     My grandfather (my father’s father Joe) would often talk about the Welsh word “cwm”, which means “valley”, saying that it was the only “English” word with no vowels. I probably wrote “CWM = cum = whom” because I was trying to remember possible sexual connotations attached to things said by my father or at my grandfather’s house.

     However, I do not remember my grandfather ever saying anything sexually inappropriate, or doing anything sexually inappropriate, to me; nor do I remember my father talking about the word “cwm” in any sexual context. I probably wrote the above series of phrases simply because they came to mind, and seemed like they could possibly be relevant in terms of helping me recover memories.

         

     - “Elmer Fudd vs. Buster (blue) and Babs (pink) Bunny”:

     This refers to my description of Incident #4 in my second statement to police (an incident which was not mentioned in my first statement). I seem to remember seeing Elmer Fudd stick his shotgun into Babs Bunny’s guts, on the show Tiny Toons, when I was around five or six years old. I remembered Babs Bunny screaming, and I remember perceiving it as arousing.

     I also remember associating white cream with that memory; like that Elmer Fudd had inserted his fingers into Babs Bunny’s vagina, and the white cream was ejaculate, or vaginal secretions. I do not know how I could have known that white cream had anything to do with sex, considering that I was just five or six when that happened, and that I did not ejaculate until I was about twelve years old.

         

     - “finger in butt” and “forced strip searches”:

     I probably wrote “finger in butt” because I was trying to remember whether my father had ever stuck his finger in my butt. I have not recovered any concrete memory of that happening, so I think the cause for that confusion relates to me touching myself there at the age of eleven, years after being molested by my father.

     Another reason for writing “finger in butt” as well as “forced strip searches” could have been that I was strip-searched during an arrest in Utah in 2010, and/or because a friend of my father’s told me around 2011 that he was subjected to an anal cavity search by police when he was a young man. In 2014, I became confused about this memory, and thought that it was my father who was searched, instead of his friend. I wrote about that incorrect memory on Facebook shortly thereafter.

     I have written about this incident in my statements to police, because that post was one of two posts which I made to Facebook in 2014 which pertained to either child molestation or to sexual matters involving my father. The other post was a remark something like “If American society were a cult that ritually molested all of its kids underneath a Christmas tree, our culture wouldn’t be any different from how it is now.”

     One or both of these posts, caused my mother to have a conversation with my father, when they were coming to pick me up from Lake Forest Train Station on February 24^th, 2015, after I had come home from Portland. According to my mother, during that conversation, my father said “I didn’t molest him” even though she hadn’t mentioned molestation yet in the conversation before he said that.

         

     - “fingernail bedding damage”:

     I started biting my fingernails at the age of seven. One day at the age of seven, I was on the school bus, and I saw the fingers of one of the neighbor girls, which she had been biting. This was either what prompted me to start biting my nails, or it happened slightly after I had started biting my nails, and caused me to stop worrying about my habit getting out of hand. After my father discovered my nail-biting habit – a problem which he shares with me – he started instructing me to lay across his lap while he did my nails. He would often dig under my nail beds too deep, causing me pain, which he would usually ignore.

     My father’s attention to the state of my fingernails caused me to start picking at, and biting, my toes, thinking that he would not detect it. After he noticed what I was doing to my toes, he stopped ordering me to lay across his lap for nail trimming. I believe that my nail-biting habit is a self-abusive form of adaptation to my father’s constant, weekly subjection of me to stresses and intimidation (in addition to guilt, shame, manipulation, and psychological abuse).  

                  

     - “fork up the ass”:

     I wrote this because I would watch Shirley Temple movies with my grandmother when I was a child. In the episode I watched more than any other, someone was trying to kidnap Shirley, and in response, she jabbed a fork into his behind. My father never used a fork to abuse me, nor did anyone else).

     - “guitar string in ear”:

     When I was about eight years old, I was tuning my father’s guitar. My father wasn’t in the room, and I didn’t get his permission to touch his guitar. Also, I didn’t play guitar yet, so I didn’t know what I was doing. I tuned one of the strings too tight, and it snapped, striking me in the face. I wasn’t seriously injured. I put the guitar down, and told my father that I broke a string. I don’t remember him getting too mad, or abusing me, or anything like that. I definitely didn’t try to tune his guitar again after that, though.

     The phrase “guitar string in ear” also reminds me of a movie called Whiplash, which I watched in my father’s house in early 2015, probably before I wrote the list of terms. That movie is about a teenage boy who injures himself in order to be a good drummer, in order to make his father proud of him. Seeing the movie Whiplash, after my father recommended it to me, was disturbing to me for several reasons. It certainly made me less interested in doing anything related to music, after my father and I bonded over guitar. I have no reason to bond with him over music, much less anything else, after recovering memories of the abuse he inflicted upon me as a child.  

         

     - “gun rape”:

     This is a reference to another disturbing film I saw my father watching when I was young (of which there are many examples). The 2003 film Monster, in which Charlize Theron plays prostitute-turned-serial-killer Aileen Wuornos, features a scene in which Wuornos is raped with a gun. I remember being a teenager, probably age 16 or 17, and being in the basement of our house at 524 East Washington, seeing my father watching that scene from Monster on our television (probably on DVD or On-Demand).

     My father never abused me or threatened me with a gun, however. Nor did anyone else. However, a guy whose name I never found out, aimed an unloaded gun at my head and then pulled the trigger while we were in my apartment - Apartment #12 of 2307 Northwest Hoyt Street, in Portland, Oregon - in January or February of 2015. He did not overtly threaten me, though; he was silent at the time. And nothing sexual happened during that incident. I do not think that I was remembering this incident when I wrote "gun rape"; it was more likely a memory of Monster.

         

         

     - “heroin”:

     I probably wrote this because I had recently discovered a plastic box of letters – marked with the name of my older half-brother – in my father’s house. As I have said, I would not have opened them if the box had been marked with my father’s name. In that box, I found letters which my father wrote as a child, addressed from “Richard Melvin Kopsick” and other false names, most of which included either Richard or Kopsick in them. My father’s middle name is Steven. Evidently, my father liked to write to people under false names as a child, and not send the letters.

     I also found, in this box, a letter which my father’s law partner Scott Gibson, wrote to him in the 1970s or 1980s, while vacationing in Europe. In that letter - which I believe was written in black pen ink on red card stock, and included a picture of Gibson surfing - Gibson commented to my father about the quality of heroin in Europe. I have informed police of my discovery of this fact. It is worth noting that Scott Gibson has had problems with alcoholism, and that alcohol is chemically similar to opiates such as heroin, which means that alcoholics are especially susceptible to opioid abuse.

         

     - “hold on to the horse”:

     I believe that one or both of my parents said this, or something like it, to me, when I would ride on the horses on carousels as a child. I have always been resistant to going on Ferris wheels and rollercoasters; even very small rollercoasters, designed for small children. I believe that I was anxious about the possibility of falling off of the horses on carousels as well.

     I was never abused near a horse or carousel, though. And the molestation which I remember clearly, probably happened after I was around the age where I would be small enough for carousels. But knowing that I wrote this phrase, has caused me to consider whether fear of motion is at least partially attributable to being shaken, prodded, and molested by my father.

     Despite the fact that I have been afraid of Ferris wheels since I was just two years old, I think it is a distinct possibility that the way my father touched me and handled me, made this problem worse.

         

     - “horse blanket”:

     My father would talk about how he needed a horse blanket, to make fun of his own size and his weight.

     I seem to remember first hearing about the Icarus myth around the age of eight (i.e., in 1995). Either my father told me about it, or I found out about it in a book of Greek myths. I seem to vaguely remember my father either calling me Icarus, and/or telling me to not fly too close to the sun; but I can't remember in what context, nor what age I was when this occurred. I know that I was thinking a lot about the similarities between the words "Richard", "Icarus", "wicker", and other words, between late 2014 and early 2015.

     I was a very inquisitive and studious child, and my school had been teaching me about really interesting and arcane things like Egyptian hieroglyphics and hierarchy, the Futhark language of the Norse, and the works of Leonardo da Vinci. I was about nine years old when a Romanian-American classmate told me some things about Romani (i.e., "Gypsy") superstitions. I also remember being about eight, and trying to write backwards in the mirror like da Vinci did. I was also reading books about U.F.O. sightings and alien abductions, and reading books about Greek mythology, around this time. I think my father found out about this, and put a stop to it. He might have even confronted me while I was at the mirror, and threatened me into stopping it.

     If it's possible that I'm not remembering this incident accurately, then I might be confusing it for Incident #2 (in my second statement to police), wherein I remember my father telling me to kneel on the floor and look at the mirror, possibly while he abused me from behind. I believe that he touched my penis, and then told me to get dressed.

     However, that happened when I was five years old. That's why I believe that there may have been a second incident involving a mirror (the same mirror, actually), later on, at the age of eight years old (or, perhaps less likely, nine).

     It's possible that my father put a stop to my interest in Greek mythology after he became aware that I knew about the demon Incubus. In 1995 - when I was eight years old - the Reebok shoe company came out with a shoe for women called the Incubus. Evidently, the people at Reebok did not know that Incubus is a mythological demon who rapes women in their sleep. I believe that I became aware of this fact the same year it happened, because it was a scandal that was being reported on in the television news.

     If things happened the same way I remember them happening, and my father knew about it, then that could explain why my father didn't want me reading about Greek mythology. The sexual nature of that incident might even explain why he started molesting me regularly that same year. The fact that I knew about Incubus, and other things I've named above, at such a young age - and the fact that I was trying to learn to write backwards using a mirror - might have caused my father to notice that he needed to do something to stifle my intelligence and my ability to communicate (whether to others, or to myself using writing decipherable only to me, like da Vinci), if he wanted to get away with molesting me.

     - “Jethro Tull – Aqualung”:

     I can't recall whether I remembered, at the time of writing, that my father would play this song a lot. I know that I never wrote about it - or thought about it for too long - until early 2021.
     My father would walk into the dining room, where he had his stereo system set up, and play Jethro Tull's song "Aqualung", usually very loud. The song starts with an abrasive, low-pitched, booming electric guitar riff, with bass and drums behind it. Singer Ian Anderson, who wrote the song, sings: "Sitting on a park bench, eyeing little girls with bad intent". He continues, "Drying in the cold sun, watching as the frilly panties run". The song, Anderson has stated, is about a homeless pedophile watching little girls. Anderson has said that the song is about how the narrator - himself - identifies with the homeless pedophile.
     It is odd to think that my father would come into the dining room randomly and play this loud song about a pedophile for me and my mother. It is hard to explain, until you remember that criminals often return to the scene of the crime. Some even want to get caught, because they have a guilty conscience. Such criminals will often put out subtle clues; in part, because they want to get caught (so someone can put an end to their madness and they can get help), and also because dropping hints increases the risk factor, and therefore, the thrill factor.
     I believe that my father played "Aqualung" because he wanted to taunt me by dropping a hint about his pedophilia that I would probably not understand for years. Hell, it took me a full six years after writing down the name of the song, to figure out what my father meant by playing it.
     My father played this song while I was a teenager, all during the period of time between 2000 and 2014 when I had no memory of the sexual abuse which took place mostly in 1995 and 1996. I assume that my father spent the first few years of this time period having no idea whether I remembered the abuse, and the rest of that time thinking that I probably didn't remember anything.
     He probably also assumed that I wouldn't ever remember the abuse. I guess that shows that we should be careful when making assumptions.

          
     - “jousting”:

     This probably refers to me and my brother play-fighting with pool cues (which sometimes turned into mild episodes of violence).


         
     - “Kate” and “Mary” [last names excluded here to protect privacy]:

     These names refer to two women, whom I and my father know, who were girls when I was growing up. I wrote these names because my father spoke about them in a manner which could be construed to be inappropriate.
     Regarding Kate: When I was about ten or twelve years old, and I got a toy that allowed me to hear far-away sounds, my father cautioned me and my brother not to use it to spy on anyone. The first and only thing he thought to use as an example, was if "we" had thought to use it to spy on the girl across the street while she was taking a shower.
     Regarding Mary: I overheard my father remarking to my brother that a girl with whom I attended high school, was cute. She and I were about twenty years old when this happened. When my brother responded by scoffing or displaying mild disgust, my father defended himself by saying "It's not like I'm going to date her."
         

     - “middle child syndrome”:

     My father is a middle child. This fact often figured into the conversations I had with my mother throughout 2015 - and also in 2010 when I was dealing with the fallout from being arrested for marijuana possession - when we were talking about how my father treated me, and what types of psychological issues he might have.


         
     - “my blue-eyed son”:

     This phrase is a segment of the lyrics to Bob Dylan's song "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall", widely interpreted to be about nuclear fallout. The full lyric is "What'll you do now, my blue-eyed son". My father would play this song on guitar and sing it when I was young. This occurred when I was between eight and twelve years old (i.e., between 1995 and 1999).
     I remember thinking that this was some sort of nod to my brother, who has blue eyes, like my father. I have brown eyes. I remember feeling jealous of my brother for having blue eyes, as if my father was singing about my brother, but not about me.


         
     - “never-nude (cocks on socks)”:

     I wrote "cocks on socks" because I remembered being ten years old, and running around the house naked while nobody else was home, with a sock on my penis.
     "Never-nude" is a reference to the show Arrested Development. David Cross plays a character named Dr. Tobias Funke, an "analyst/therapist" or "anal-rapist" who has a pathological fear of being fully naked.
     I remember being afraid of being fully naked as a child, due to conscious fear of being caught masturbating. I also remember that, when I masturbated between the ages of six or seven and twelve, I was never fully naked, and I did not even touch my penis directly. I remember putting my hands inside my pants in preschool, but past the age of about six or seven, until the age of twelve, I always masturbated by touching my genitals over my clothes instead of touching my genitals directly.
     I remember, at least once, having the thought that touching my penis directly was too intense. I believe that, prior to the age of twelve, I figured that if touching myself over my clothes made me have an orgasm, it worked well enough, and touching myself directly wouldn't be necessary, and would also probably desensitize me to pleasurable touch more quickly than continuing to touch myself over my clothes.
     I suspect that - aside from my conscious fear of being caught masturbating - I also had a subconscious fear of being molested again. I intermittently had memories of abuse between the ages of eight and ten years old, but only for very brief periods of time, immediately after the times when I was molested.
     My difficulty remembering whether my father touched my genitals under my clothes, in addition to over them, during the molestation on the gray couch in the basement, could also probably help explain why I had an aversion to touching my genitals directly during masturbation.

         
     - “notary public”:

     My father is (or was) a notary public, and has a notary public stamp. Either before or after writing this phrase, I thought about how similar the phrase is to "not a republic". It's as if notaries are stamping every document in this republic, with the mark of "not a republic", as if to say that this country is not a republic.
     It doesn't matter whether this poetic turn-of-phrase is logically valid, or a cogent point, or makes sense to police, or to you, the reader. The point is that I wrote the phrase "notary public", and I did it because I associate it with negative feelings and with my father.
     People who have been abused, and have Avoidant Personality Disorder (which I may have), avoid most things that remind them of their abuser. Thus, a lot of the contents of this list of phrases, seem like an attempt by me to "exorcise" these negative feelings, by bringing them out and putting them onto paper, in order to relieve myself of the burden of holding these words inside. Explaining why I wrote these phrases now - in April 2021 - has certainly been helpful.

         
     - “pool shower rapist”:

     When I was between the ages of six and thirteen years old, my mother would take me and my brother to the Lake Bluff Public Pool near Central School. When I was about eight or nine, I heard that there was an old man who had previously hung out in the men's showers at that pool, and that he sexually abused (or tried to sexually abuse) a young boy. I don't remember hearing anything else about this, nor any details, aside from simply being told not to spend too long in the men's showers when I shower-off after being in the pool.


         
     - “the dark hallway”:

     This probably refers to one of my earliest memories, which may or may not have been a nightmare. I seem to remember a tall figure in a dark hallway. I suspect that this was either a nightmare, or I got out of bed as a very young child and got scared by the sight of my much-taller father standing in the hallway in the middle of the night. In my second statement to police, I referred to this incident as "Incident #1", although I have no clear memory that makes me feel sure that anything sexual happened during that incident (if indeed it was a real incident, and not just something that I dreamed).


         
     - “the video game” (underlined):

     This refers to a video game that my brother played, and I tried to play, when I was about seven or eight years old, and he was five or six. I can't remember the name of it, but I think it might have been for Super Nintendo.
     The game was about an adult man, who was either a cyborg, or an android, or had some sort of computer chip in him that made him part man and part machine. The game begins with F.B.I. agents bursting into the man's house, and arresting him. The first-person player is charged with the objective of helping the cyborg-man. My brother was always able to move around within the game, but I was never able to. I think I tried to read the instructions, and either I didn't understand them, or else no instructions came with the video game.
     This has nothing to do with abuse I suffered, nor with my father, but it has always bothered me that I was unable to move in the game, or do anything that resulted in any outcome but the cyborg-man getting arrested in the first scene. As I recall, you couldn't play the rest of the game, unless you first saved the man from arrest in that first scene. I never figured out how to play it. I had a strange feeling that my brother had been somehow "selected" to be able to play this game, and that there was some unknown reason why I could only lose.


         
     - “toilet-paperer” and “Halloween eggings & leggings”:

     I wrote these phrases because I toilet-papered Dave Miller's house during high school, and/or because I hit a younger kid with a stick one Halloween when I dressed as a pimp. I told a psychiatrist in 2015 that I had hit a kid with a thin wooden stick one Halloween.
     After high school plays, between the years of 2001 and 2005, I toilet-papered the house of Dave Miller, with other students. Miller was the theater director. I did not discover until 2020 that Dave Miller has had inappropriate sexual relationships with 17-year-old boys.


         
     - “tree removals”:

     Some time between 1992 and 1996, my father got into an argument with one of our neighbors, a woman, regarding tree removals on our property. I remember thinking the tree removals were unnecessary, but sympathizing with both my neighbor and my parents.


         
     - “tuck in tummy to bed”:

     The way my father would tuck me into bed as a child, involved "mummy tucking"; that is, pressing the blanket tightly under the edges of my body. I don't know why I included the word "tummy" when I wrote this phrase down.


         
     - “VOOD” and “woodchuck puppets”:

     "Vood" was how the woodchuck puppet from the show Full House would pronounce the word "wood". My father would do an impression of that woodchuck character, and also Bullwinkle Moose from Rocky and Bullwinkle, when I was a child.


         
     - “Saturday at 11:00”:

     This probably referred to an estimate of what time of the day and week I was molested on the gray couch in our basement. In October 2020, my father informed me that he worked nearly every single Saturday, so I clarified in subsequent statements - regarding Incidents #5 through #16 - that I was probably molested on several Sundays, rather than on Saturdays. This molestation probably occurred in the late morning, and there is an outside chance that some incidents may have happened in the afternoons.


         
     - “stutterer”:

     When I was about six years old, my teachers noticed that I had a stuttering problem. I went to a speech therapist at my school, and she tested me for signs of speech impediments. My symptoms - mostly stammering and stuttering - seemed to go away when I was around the speech therapist; I don't believe that she was able to detect any symptoms. I believe that not being around my father at the time, made my stuttering problems go away.
     I am absolutely certain that my father's extreme level of attention to the words I choose, have caused me to be extremely careful about what I say; sometimes even to the point where I insisted on taking a long time to respond, or stopped speaking altogether because I knew that he would somehow find fault with whatever I chose to say.

          
     - “volunteering information”:

     My father would pressure me to "volunteer information" - when I had done something wrong (or when he merely thought I might have done something he didn't like) - as a way to "make it easier on" myself. Arguments over my grades, and whether they had come in yet, were one of the most common things that resulted in my father pressuring me to "volunteer information".
     My father was raised Catholic, and his parents forced him to go through confirmation when he was resistant to it (and possibly even already an atheist). I suspect that my father spent my childhood projecting onto me, what the priests projected onto him when he was a child; i.e., that I have done something wrong, even if I don't know it, and that whatever it is (even if it's nothing), I need to confess something, because no matter what happened, I would be punished.


         
     - “welt from belt”:

     I was never hit with a belt when I was a child, but my brother and I used to play with belts, and probably also fight each other with them briefly. But never to the point of serious injury. And no belts were involved in any of the sexual abuse which my father inflicted upon me.


         
    - “Whodunit”, followed by “Lester Dunn, Lester Maddox”:

     One day in March 2015 - only several weeks after I had come home from Portland and moved back in with my father (to my surprise) - my parents asked me to help move my brother's stuff out of his apartment, because he was moving.
     During the trip from the moving truck rental facility to my brother's apartment, my father revealed that he had recently attended a funeral for the father of a friend of his, whose last name was Dunn. I asked what the man's first name was, and my father replied "Lester".
     This caused me to start shouting at my father, and criticizing him for naming me Joseph after his father. My father reacted by calling my mother, telling her that I needed to be taken home, and that I didn't want to help move. I was able to calm down and help move, however.
     The reason why I had such a strong reaction to my father saying "Lester", is because for the previous several weeks, I had been experiencing intermittent states of panic and confusion regarding whether my father had molested me as a child. At the time I was helping my brother move, I had only recently discovered that I would be living with my father instead of my mother, which disappointed me and upset me. My father shouts at me so often that it is impossible to communicate with him, and I cannot stand being near him. Having to talk to my father every day, after beginning to recover faint memories of him abusing me as a child, was the last thing I wanted to do at that point.
     Hearing my father say the word "Lester" - which is 3/4 of the word "molester" - triggered me into a mild panic attack.
     I wrote "Lester" after writing "Whodunit", because "whodunit" and "Lester Dunn" popped into my head at the same time. Probably because "Dunn" is one of the syllables in "Whodunit" ("who-done-it").
     I don't mean to imply that remembering my father saying "Lester" is proof that my father molested me. I am merely stating what I remember, in the interest of full disclosure, and stating that the molestation I remember, explains my harsh reaction to hearing my father say three-quarters of the word "molester" to me. Readers may draw whatever conclusions, from these statements, that they may.
     I probably included "Lester Maddox" (the racist governor of Alabama in the 1960s) because he was another person named Lester who was on my mind shortly after my father told me that Lester Dunn had died. I also remember thinking, in 2015, about Dick Lester, the director of the Beatles film Help!. When I moved back into my father's house in early 2015, I found some old Beatles posters of mine, and Dick Lester's name was on one of them. I remember thinking, some time in 2015, that Dick Lester was a very unfortunate name. I did not write down "Dick Lester", however.


         
     - “you’re a good-lookin’ kid”:

     My father would say this to me while he was criticizing me or punishing me as a teenager and during my twenties, as a way to pepper-in a compliment or two while berating, demeaning, devaluing, guilt-tripping, and shaming me, or while telling me that I need to get a job and get my life in order.
     The fact that I wrote this down, shows that I was thinking about my father's inordinate attention to my appearance. Which the appearance of "shoe horn" (and in a way, "corset") also helps explain.


    

6. Conclusions

     The forty preceding sets of phrases and explanations show that there were dozens and dozens of terms, among the one or two hundred terms in those lists, which indicate that I was having a lot of negative thoughts and memories about my father, and questions about whether and how I had been abused, at the time when I was writing them (i.e., February or March 2015).

     I would be willing to swear in open court that the preceding information is true to the best of my recollection.
     The only reason why I am not providing Lake Bluff police with this statement, is because they have told me that the Lake County Specialized Victims Unit doesn't look like they're going to file charges, so I suspect that the police would regard my informing them of these facts as nothing more than a waste of their time.

     I will end this statement by cautioning its readers never to attempt to raise children in Lake County, Illinois.

7. References

     Readers interested in learning more about what recovering memories of abuse, and about what I have gone through psychologically, should study the following topics:
     - A.I.P. (Adaptive Information Processing);
     - the "splitting" of the psyche or personality during abuse;
     - avoidant personality disorder arising as a result of abuse; and
     - narcissistic personality disorder and narcissistic abuse;
     - C.P.T.S.D. (complex post-traumatic stress disorder);
     - gaslighting; and
     - "false memories", and the fraudulent psychiatrist Peter J. Freyd who coined the term "False Memory Syndrome".

     My two statements to Lake Bluff police are available for reference at the links below.

     http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2021/03/second-statement-to-police-regarding.html

     http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2020/05/my-father-richard-steven-kopsick.html

Written on April 15th, 21st, and 22nd, 2021

Published on April 21st and 22nd, 2021