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 31st,
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
24th, 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
