I was a lucky one.

I have debated writing this post for so long. One minute I’ll feel good about writing it and then 10 minutes later I’ll think, what’s the point. Why do I need to add my story to all the ones that have already been shared? Why am I sharing this now? At all?

What good do I want to come from it?

Even now as I sit typing this out in a word doc, part of me wonders if I will end up sharing my experience. I keep trying to think of what holds me back from being more open about this encounter. I know I did nothing wrong. And for how things could have gone, I know I got very lucky. So maybe that’s my goal. For someone to read this post and help someone else before it’s too late. Help someone else to be one of the lucky ones.

* * * * *

When I was in elementary school I had a paper route. Every day after school I’d hurry home, roll up my stacks of newspaper, load them into the newspaper bag hanging off my little bike, and head off to deliver the newspaper to a couple streets up the road from my house.

I grew up in a small, quiet town where you knew everyone who lived on your street and just about the entire neighborhood. It also helped that a lot of the people in the neighborhood went to our same church. It felt safe.

One day (my heart just started racing so fast when I began typing this part) a friend and I were playing outside her house. Something we’d done many times before. I don’t remember why, but we ended up at her next-door neighbor’s house. A man and his wife lived there. I know they had a couple of kids that I think were grown and out of the house at this point. They went to church with us. They were on my paper route. They were just like any other parents in the neighborhood.

That first time I went inside his house with my friend his wife wasn’t home – it was just him.

I only remember a few things from that first trip inside his house with my friend that day. I remember they were very friendly with each other. Nothing overtly stood out, but it did seem quite obvious that she had spent time there before and was comfortable inside his house and with him. Which I’m sure made me more comfortable there too. I remember my friend and I were in his living room with him and for some reason the topic of us doing cartwheels came up. I vividly remember telling him that I couldn’t do a cartwheel or else the shirt that I was wearing would come up. I was in elementary school so it’s not like there was anything to see if that happened, but I had the understanding to at least know it probably shouldn’t. I remember him casually blowing off my comment by saying something to the effect of it wouldn’t be a big deal. And I must have believed him, because I did end up doing cartwheels in that living room. And, as I had suspected, my shirt did briefly come up while I did them. All these years later, that’s all I really remember from that first interaction. We left his house and nothing else came from it. At least not that day.

Part of my papergirl duties involved going around once a month and collecting the monthly subscription fees from the people on my route. Some time after the cartwheel visit, I went around “collecting” and stopped by his house. He was friendly when he answered the door and, like many other people on my paper route did, he invited me inside to wait while he got the money to pay me. Again, it was just him in the house. I don’t remember much about this visit except for the very end. As I was getting ready to leave, standing just inside the front door, this man gave me a long, lingering hug. And while we stood there with him hugging me, I suddenly realized his tongue was inside my ear. It was warm and wet and weird. I left his house right after that.

I knew licking inside my ear was strange, but I didn’t really know what to do about it.

Not too long after this experience I was helping my older sister with her paper route which was also near our home. She is two years older than me and we were very close as kids. We had just started her route and I told her what this man had done to me. She was the first person I told. And the only one I had intended on telling.

I feel like I have to pause the story for a minute, because even now, as I’m typing this out, I have a hard time not feeling ridiculous. It was an ear lick. I wasn’t groped. I wasn’t raped. I was hugged too long and he put his tongue in my ear. It could have been so much worse. Having said that, while I sit here letting my thoughts ramble on and my fingers type them out, I’ve listened to enough true crime podcasts to know now that this was more than just a long hug and an ear lick (which is still gross in its own right) – it was a pedophile testing the water.

In what I have always felt was the greatest thing she’s ever done for me, my sister told me right then and there that if I didn’t tell our parents what I’d just told her she was going to tell them.  

We got home later that day and I told my parents what had happened.

They instantly believed me. They made it clear I was to have no interactions with that man. The next time I had to go collecting to his house they were both in the car in his driveway and made sure I stayed outside the front door.

Around this time the newspaper also switched to morning deliveries, so between that and this experience, it wasn’t too long before my days of being a papergirl came to an end. My friend who lived next door to him moved away very suddenly and we lost touch. I’ve always wondered if she was one of his victims who had a worse fate than I did.

Years later his wife (then his ex-wife) would go into the store my sister (the one I told first) worked at and apologize to her thinking she was the one something inappropriate happened to. While I don’t blame her for the acts he perpetrated, I do wonder if she knew what he was doing. I hope not.

Initially my parents and I determined we weren’t going to tell anyone about what happened to me. I found out years later they had in fact told our local church leader to try and ensure this man didn’t have any church positions that allowed him access to children. In hindsight, we all wished we would have called the police and reported the incident. I’m not sure what could/would have been done about it, but maybe he would have been discovered sooner and another child would have been spared.

“It wasn’t that big of a deal. You weren’t groped. You weren’t raped. Why make a big deal out of it.”

As those thoughts continue to swirl around in my head even now, I can’t help but think – what if my sister or parents had thought like that? What if they failed to take those small, strange acts seriously? If they had, I am sure there would have been a totally different ending to my story. And I guess that’s the reason driving me to post this and share what happened to me and how the people around me responded.

It’s about taking those little actions seriously to help prevent something far worse from happening to the children around us. Not to gloss over the warning signs and wait till the disaster has happened before we respond.

I am forever grateful for my sister that day telling me that if I didn’t tell our parents what happened that she would. I’m so grateful my parents unequivocally believed me and took immediate action to ensure my safety and protection from that man. I was a lucky one.

* * * * *

Years after this happened to me, my family and I heard he’d been arrested on charges related to sexual abuse of a minor. After typing up my experience I recruited a friend to be an internet detective and help me track him down and find his criminal record. When she was able to find him, but not a criminal record I thought about canning this entire post. I felt like without a conviction my experience would perhaps be less impactful. But how is that any different than acting like what he did to me was no big deal?

I sincerely hope he has lived the rest of his life and never hurt another child. Sadly, I think it's much more likely we were just unable to find his arrest than the other scenario. There are many pedophiles out there without a criminal record. But even if I was his first and only victim, what he did to me was wrong. Just because he wasn’t convicted of a crime, doesn’t mean what he did to me didn’t happen. Or worse, that it somehow wasn’t wrong. Conviction or no conviction, it was wrong. 

Me & my sister holding our dog Coco.