You know, I spent some time recently thinking about the Haidl case and why it inspired just so much rage in me.

I had my own four-year pair of trials. Difference was, it was for molestation. And I was all of 7 years old when I was molested.

Didn't stop the defense attorney from saying I tried to seduce his client, that I was "sexually inclined" (at seven!), or that my mother was, at base, a whore.

I hadn't even had my first period when I was molested. I hadn't even started wearing a training bra.

I think a lot of people believe (and want to believe, and how I wish I could join them) that the tactics used by Scumbag Cavallo and Company are rare, and outre`, and not common.

I wish.

I was twelve when my molestor was finally convicted (and he had done this before, by the way) and sent to jail for three years. Why did it take so long?

The first jury was hung. Why?

Partly because of a fuckup on the part of my therapist, but largely because...

Drumroll please...

One guy. One old, toothless, angry old fuck decided /I must be a whore/.

At seven.

When my mother told me that the first jury was hung, I asked her "it was that guy who hates me, wasn't it?"

And I was right. He had stared at me with rage and hatred in his eyes.

You want, I want, to believe this sort of thing is rare.

We want to believe that it's limited to cases where the attorneys are being paid far too much to protect their clients.

It isn't.

It's not even limited to cases where the victim can perform long division.

I was lucky, by the way; my parents and my teacher supported me, and the man who prosecuted the trial both times believed me (and Ron, I still owe you).

The girls that my molestor had victimized before me were not so lucky - there were two of them, and one had her parents refuse to press charges. The other, the police didn't even bother to take a report.

By the time I met them, they were adults. Molestors don't stop molesting because they get older. It is not a phase.

I found the defense attorney on google, by the way. I have sometimes wondered what he would say to me now.

I wonder, if he was defending someone who molested my daughters...



...Would he call my daughters whores?