Processing

I was thirteen. My mom told me to come home from my friend’s house. It was really important. I sat on our love seat, she on our main sofa. She leaned over, trying to grab my hand. It felt embarrassing. She said, “I think you’re mature enough to know this now — J is not your biological father. He asked for a paternity test when you were four. There was only one other option for who your dad could be and his name is Bill. I was seeing him when J and I broke up for a bit. This doesn’t change anything about J. He loves you and you are his daughter. If you want to contact Bill, I won’t stop you, but you should know that he is a registered sex offender.”

As a small child, I stared at a photo of my dad on the wall in my grandparents’ kitchen. I stared at it often. It was the only photo of his that I could see myself in. His hair was blond as a little boy, so was my mom’s, and so was mine. I thought my hair will change colors when I grew up like theirs did. I looked a lot more like my grandma than my dad. I guess things just skipped a generation. I loved her the most too. I wondered if maybe I was adopted. It was a thrilling fantasy to think that maybe my complicated parents weren’t my own and I could get re-adopted into a better family. The reality was worse, I think.

There on the loveseat, in stunned silence, I couldn’t make sense of what was happening. Anger, confusion, grief. I couldn’t hold back the tears even though I didn’t want my mother to have the satisfaction of an emotional response. Still, I yelled. Our roommate walked in the front door, not even phased by what really was a common event — me in tears with my mother staring at me. “She just told me my dad isn’t my dad!” I shouted at him. I hoped he would be angry at her too. I called my best friend and told her it was an emergency. She sat with me on my porch while I cried. Side by side and shoulders touching, my tears slowing, she explained a similar situation in her family. I guess this wasn’t as uncommon as I had imagined. We both agreed that, yes, my dad is my dad and nothing will ever change that.

My mother hadn’t told her family until she told me, but my dad did tell his the moment the paternity results came back. I’m fairly certain that’s the only reason why he continued to be my dad. His family thought the obligation would be good for him and make him grow up. It didn’t.

I never wanted to meet Bill. All I wanted to know was what he looked like and what his family medical history was. It was enough for me to know that he was a rapist. I could never crave a relationship with him. Shortly after turning 18, I got a Facebook message. He asked if I still wanted to be on his dental insurance. Dental insurance? I knew nothing about this. I still don’t. Why is that how he’s introducing himself? I asked him for his family medical history and he tried to build a relationship that I resisted. It wasn’t until I was kicked out at 18 and living with a friend that I was nudged to get to know him. Who gets a second chance at having a dad? It seemed like he really cared, I guess. He insisted on coming to meet me. He didn’t tell me he’d bring his mother with.

My friend and I sat at a dining room table while he talked about himself. He talked a lot. He said his father was a murderer and his brothers are terrible people he doesn’t speak to. His mother confirmed these things though I was never given specifics. I thought they can’t be worse than him? He explained that his sex assault offense was really a misunderstanding. We’ve all heard it before. “She lied about her age.” His story is that she said she was 18, had sex with him, stole his wallet, and went to the police and that’s how he found out she was actually sixteen. He took responsibility, of course. He plead guilty righteously because he knew he did wrong without intending to. Oh, and she was actually a con artist having done this to multiple men! Pay no attention to the many, many young women he happened to be close to. He just has a young soul, they’re surrogates for the daughter he never got to raise, age is just a number… etc. We told him we didn’t believe him, we have extensive sexual abuse histories, we believe victims. But he bought me a tv, a teddy bear to signify all the happy birthday teddy bears rotting in his garage, he put me on his phone plan so I wouldn’t have to pay for my own! He’s definitely just a good guy who made a mistake one time! And one last thing: he would’ve been around my entire childhood but he was court ordered to never contact me until I was 18. My mother cited to the judge the reason for wanting no contact was because of his sexual assault charge and the judge said okay. I have no idea if this really happened. Both he and my mother are pathological liars. Regardless, he watched my social media until the day he was “allowed” to contact me. Cyber stalking me. A child rapist silently watching a child grow up through the internet.

He made me uncomfortable, I didn’t like him. He started talking about being a father to my friend, and how he wanted to buy a duplex for all of us to live in together. He showed up at my job out of the blue one day. He lived across the country and suddenly there he was walking towards me. He said he went to the other location first and they told him where to find me. Forced into a position I never wanted to be in, I had to agree to go to lunch with him. On the drive home, I realized he was attracted to me. The way he spoke about me and looked at me was not like a father but as an old man wanting to fuck a 20 year old. Now he knew where I lived and he came to find me again days later. I did everything I could to avoid him but there he was, pulling over on my street while I walked to the bus for work. He moved his cyber stalking to real life. I had to tell him he will never be a father to me when he continued to cross boundaries. He’s just a man and I feel nothing but discomfort towards him. He raged at me and I never spoke to him again.

Bill has never understood consent. Or maybe he just didn’t care to get it. People like him only care about their own desires. It didn’t matter to him that I was visibly uncomfortable and scared when he stalked me. It didn’t matter to him that cyberstalking a child with his history is extremely inappropriate. It didn’t matter to him when he raped children.

My dad died in the beginning of 2024. I stopped communicating with his family when I was 16. It wasn’t until I learned that my grandma needed an organ transplant and she was at a hospital near me that I decided to reestablish a relationship with my dad’s family. I had removed myself for a multitude of reasons and none of those were that my dad wasn’t biologically related to me. He was my dad — always had been and always will be. I don’t think he knew what to do, how to be a parent. He spent most of his time playing computer games and whining about having to see me, calling me a brat for wanting his attention. Our relationship was fraught the entire time. His first wife made him a more involved parent and I cherished the time the three of us got to spend together. This didn’t last and our relationship devolved quite quickly after they divorced. Reconnecting after 7 years away made me appreciate my grandmother’s love so much more, but it also solidified that my dad could never really be a Father. By this point, that was okay for me. I had already grieved the father I wanted and needed. He morphed also into just a man in my life, and I think it was better that way. He wasn’t a bad person, just a bad parent. I appreciated him more when I could see him as just a flawed guy instead of the parent who failed me.

Ever since it was revealed who my “real” father is, people ask for clarification when I say “my dad”. Why would I ever call Bill my dad? Why would I suddenly stop calling J my dad? The man who begrudgingly participated in raising me was not perfect. He was never happy, he struggled to do anything, he didn’t really want to be a father. But he wasn’t a predator. He took me LARPing with him as a little kid, we rode rollercoasters at Six Flags together, he married a woman who wanted him to be a better man and father and he really did change for awhile. Bill raped a child. I know when people ask for clarification, they think it’s an innocent question and innocent confusion. It’s not. I loved and still love J despite all of his faults. How could I ever see Bill as a father? Why would I ever call him my dad? How could anyone not see the difference? Do you even know me?

After my dad died, I started to unravel to an extent. Part of that meant Googling Bill.

SEXUAL ASSAULT ON A CHILD BY ONE IN A POSITION OF TRUST VIC UNDR 15

This was no surprise to me. I knew the kind of man he is. But I felt disgust knowing he will be a part of me until I die and still long after. I can’t change that I share his DNA. I can’t change that I look just like him. Am I a monster too? His father was one, his brothers are monsters, clearly something is running in the family. Will I have been saved by not being raised by him? It’s remarkably distressing to think about any of this at all. It’s like every helix of DNA that he contributed to my being start thrashing against each other. I want to rip out anything that could have been his first. My eyes, my hair. I want to scrub off my skin. I feel violated purely by the fact that he fathered me.

He used to work security at conventions, like comic con. He met my mother while LARPing so, yeah, duh. Except, every friend he made from cons was a very young woman, barely in her 20s. Every single friend of his was a young woman, I knew of no men or older women. When I learned that he reoffended, it became extremely clear to me that the conventions were a hunting ground for him, not a way to engage in a community of people with the same hobbies and interests.

Now at 30, I felt the need to Google him again. I wanted to learn about his family history if I could. Was his father really a murderer? Are his brothers actually that terrible? Do I have siblings I don’t know about? Unfortunately, as predators do, he has no internet presence. He didn’t use his real name on the Facebook account he used to first contact me, which is now deleted. He knows how to avoid people learning about him.

I have spent hours and hours trying to pull threads of truth from the lies with very little information. Bill was in the military and stationed over seas. Japan, I think. I imagine he was quite happy to take advantage of being in a different country. I would be incredibly shocked if I don’t have at least one unknown sibling, knowing his behavior. Would I feel like I finally fit in with someone? I don’t feel belonging with any family. I could do a DNA test to know for sure, but then I’m handing over my biological data to companies that won’t protect it and I’ve spent too much of my life not being protected. Instead, I searched through pages of court records to find other child support hearings that weren’t my own. I thought I found one that could be him. I searched for the mother on Facebook, and then searched her friend list for her son. He looks like me. He looks like Bill. Do I need to contact them to get answers? Do they know the kind of person Bill is? Would they have information for me that could help me make sense of things? The second time I looked at this court record, I saw it had been updated. The father was recently listed as deceased. It wasn’t him. Am I sad?

Unfortunately for both me and Bill, I kept searching for anything I could. I couldn’t find any family history or connections but I did find an article about his first offense.

“Although one man has been charged with sexually assaulting a 14-year-old village of Sharon girl, other suspects have surfaced, prompting officials to seize the girl's aborted fetus from a Milwaukee clinic, authorities said Tuesday.”

This article implies not only that this child is a trafficking victim, but it was stated quite plainly that she was fourteen, not sixteen, and an aborted fetus was tested. I couldn’t be emotional about this but my body did throw a fit in my brain’s absence.

This has been written in the middle of the Epstein files slowly releasing. And I’m left to wonder about Bill. Did he call a phone number from an ad in a newspaper? Was it word of dirty mouth? Did he meet these children somewhere and started grooming them? With his most recent case, how was he in a position of trust? Was he dating her mother? Was he a mentor? Or was he just an average community member expected to not abuse a child? It takes a village.

I don’t know a single woman who hasn’t experienced being sexualized as a child. I’ve been directly harmed but I’ve also experienced men following me in their cars while I walked on a sidewalk. Men have pulled over to ask if I need a ride home. Men have shouted at me from cars. Men have tried to lure me somewhere else with strange lies. Men have commented on my body since I was in elementary school. How many of them are like Bill? Do they realize they’re the same? Do they realize all of the sex they had to beg and lie to have makes them the same as Bill? Do they realize how similar they are to Epstein and Friends?

I requested the files for Bill’s first case but I don’t know that I’ll ever get access. I have no idea how people find access to trafficked kids. I do know, though, that it’s easier than any of us might imagine. With the internet as a tool, it takes very little to find what you’re looking for and it’s anyone doing the searching. It’s your neighbor, your brother, your pastor. My biological father.

When I think about any of this, my brain puts up a wall. It's like when you’re on a website and your wifi stops working. The page freezes, you can’t click on anything, and eventually the page goes completely blank. My brain has decided this information is too dangerous for me to experience. I’m thankful to have this mechanism — it’s saved me from completely losing my sanity for my entire life. Right now, however, I need the wifi to work, I need to be able to click on things.

People like Bill weave a web of pain and trauma that connects every person in their life. We live with the fallout. We pay the price. I will always have to contend with the fact that he is a part of me. I will always be disgusted by it. I will always be left with more questions than answers. I will always live with his victims in my heart, hoping they’re okay.

I was saved from being directly abused by Bill, and I’m grateful my mother chose a different man to be my father.