Arrested Development

My backpack was wired with a hidden microphone Saturday. Our entire conversation is on tape. I realize that's not playing fair, but then, you didn't exactly play fair with me in 1978. I didn't feel any sense of threat from you on Saturday, but then I have to entertain the possibility that you are a sociopath. But even sociopaths have a sense of self-preservation, so just know that the tape has been copied, and if I die in any way that is even the slightest bit suspicious, the tapes and affidavits will be forwarded to police and prosecutors in both Colorado and Alaska.

By "you're going down," I meant that "your name's going to be in print, and you're going to go to prison" -- not "I'm going to kill you."

After the article came out, my mom, who still lives in Anchorage, Alaska, where the rape occurred, and from whom I inherited my taste for vendetta, mailed copies of the cover story to everyone in the man's neighborhood, along with a signed note identifying him as the unnamed molester in the story. She was a one-woman sexual-predator notification program.

The same night I sent him my letter, she also called the guy, bombarded him with fury, and, when he asked her what he could do to make up for what he had done, she told him, "Cease to exist."

So between my article, my "you're going down" letter, my mom's note to his neighbors and her suggestion that he should stop living, I can understand why this man and his wife got a bit freaked out the morning of May 29 when they looked out their window and saw my friend Nelson parked on their street in his black jeep, watching their house.

I had asked Nelson to keep an eye on this guy for a couple of days to make sure he wasn't casing the Westword building or driving by my apartment complex or going to the airport. I was concerned that he might come after me, or, worse, fly to Alaska and try to hurt my mom. It seemed prudent at the time. In retrospect, it seems paranoid.

The man and his wife left their house late that Saturday morning, and Nelson followed them. He called me to say that he'd been spotted, and that the man, who was in the passenger seat, looked terrified and had jumped into the back of their SUV to hide. This didn't sound to me like the behavior of a man who was a threat, and I told Nelson that I'd made a mistake and he should stop following them. He did, but by then, they'd already called the cops. (Prosecutors have claimed Nelson also peered in their windows and followed the man's wife when she was by herself earlier that morning, but Nelson denies that, and I believe him.)

Nelson was arrested around noon that Saturday, and when I went to bail him out, I was arrested, too. On Memorial Day, the Denver Post interviewed me, and even before its story appeared the next day, the headline got picked up by the Drudge Report -- and from there it went supernova. For the next week, I was the one being stalked. My phone was blowing up with messages from the media, both local and national, and reporters were camped out across the street from my apartment building, looking to do an ambush interview. How karmic.

The moment "Stalking the Bogeyman" hit the streets, my e-mail inbox became a reservoir of pain. After my arrest, it was flooded. I have received more than 2,000 messages and counting, most of them from people across the country, around the world, who were also molested as children, or whose children have been molested. I've also received one marriage proposal and two offers from women volunteering to have my baby, sight unseen. (In the original piece, I'd written that my biggest psychological fallout from being raped as a kid is that I'm afraid to have kids of my own.)

I can't deny that being arrested was the best thing that could have happened in terms of exposure for the story I wrote, which in turn means increased awareness of the pervasive evil of child molestation in our culture. It is a huge and filthy secret that feeds upon shame and silence. I believe that repeat child molesters, and by that I mean almost all child molesters, absolutely deserve to die. But because I'm not sure whether the man who raped me when he was a teenager is still molesting children or not, I'm glad I didn't kill him.

And I'm glad I'm not going to prison.