October 2022
Your honor,
On the morning of Saturday, December 8th, 2018, my wife took my daughter to the mall to hang out with friends, while she was doing some Christmas shopping.
She returned a few hours later, while I was helping my 14-year-old son put together a piece of furniture in his room.
She came upstairs to his room and peeked her head in, asking me to come downstairs and telling me that she needed to speak with me.
I could hear the dread and strain in her voice; it was as if she was out of breath as if she had been running. I could see the stress in her face. She was visibly shaken and had obviously been crying.
It was one of those moments where you can tell whatever is coming next is going to be brutal, and it was going to be someone I was close to, so I calmly got up and told my son to keep working and that I would be back in a bit to help him finish and clean up.
As I followed my wife down the stairs and into our bedroom, the whole way I was running scenario after awful scenario through my head, trying to prepare myself for what she was about to say and about who…
In the 25 years we had been married I had never seen her in this state. As I followed her, I began getting nervous because of her body language and how slow she was leading me to our room. She obviously did not want to share this with me.
She told me she needed me to sit down, but I told her I could not; I needed to stand.
Had there been a heart attack? a car accident? Is my daughter pregnant?
I went through every possible scenario that could impact her in this way…I was trying to prepare myself mentally for anything my wife could say to me; I was trying to prepare myself to support her in some way…but I was not even remotely prepared for what she told me, and there was no way I ever could have been.
You see, for the 20 years leading up to that moment the single person I was closest to, outside of my marriage, was my father.
I had spoken to him every day, at least once, sometimes twice.
It was our ritual; every day, when I drove to and from work, I would call and speak to my father. We talked about politics, movies, work, the weather, life in general, and the kids; we talked about everything and nothing.
To friends and acquaintances, I spoke proudly and openly about my father and his accomplishments, how he had started with nothing and built a successful business, on little more than sweat and determination.
I always appreciated and respected the fact that he never pressured me to follow in his footsteps and that I was determined to follow my own path.
I always felt I had a good upbringing, and a close family, and even though my wife and I moved away so I could pursue my career, it always felt good to come home and see my family and spend time with my mother and father, my brother and sisters and their families.
Since our children were born, we have spent every Christmas and summer vacation traveling to my parents’ home in L______, Virginia, to spend time with them. It was a beautiful place around the holidays, with 5 or 6 Christmas trees and beautiful lights; my children loved it.
When we were not going there, they would come to O______, sometimes bringing our entire family, to stay at Disney World together, and we would have this Disney reunion, I guess you could call it, every couple of years. For my children’s entire lives, this is what they have known.
Living away from family, as parents, my wife and I were always extremely protective of our children and who watched them.
There were only two people among both of our families that we trusted our children with, and they were my father and mother. We would have never considered anyone else.
So, when my son went into the hospital in July 2012 with Steven Johnson Syndrome, we were told how bad this could get and that he would be there for weeks, even months.
We immediately reached out to my father and mother and told them how bad this was, and that we needed them to watch our daughter for a while.
Sending her away was hard, but we knew we could not take care of her while we were in the hospital with my son.
I was never more relieved than when my son came home from the hospital 5-6 weeks later; even as weak and frail as he was, just having him home was a miracle, but it was incomplete, and for it to be complete, we needed our daughter back, and he needed his sister back.
Usually, when we stayed at my parent’s house, my wife and children all slept in the same room, but as of the next visit to my parent’s house, after our son got out of the hospital, my daughter was no longer sleeping in the same room as the rest of us.
My father and mother had set her up with her own room, just across the hall from theirs, while they watched her for that month in the summer, and that is the room she has stayed in, on every visit since.
As my son started to improve and required less attention, we began noticing changes in our daughter. Most of which we thought was related to how much attention we had to give our son, with his medical conditions.
Over the summer of 2018, we stayed at my parents’ house on multiple occasions. We were there in July for a week, then we went back again for 4 days for my niece’s wedding shower in September, then again for the wedding in October. My daughter was one of the bridesmaids.
On the trip back in July, our plan made an unexpected stop in Jacksonville to change crews. While we were sitting on the plane waiting for the new crew, my daughter confided in me that she was bleeding so badly that her pants were soaked through and that she needed a blanket to cover it. I felt so bad for her, but the way she said it to me was such a matter of fact, that it was like talking to another person. The bleeding was so bad we ended up leaving the plane so she could go to the bathroom and change. We ended up renting a car and driving the rest of the way home.
I remember her being in a horrible mood at my niece’s wedding; at the reception, I looked for her so we could have a daddy-daughter dance. I found her standing next to my father, and she looked as if she was crying, we danced for a few minutes, and she told me she didn’t feel well and wanted to leave so I took her to the changing area for the bridesmaids to get her stuff, she was visibly shaking while she gathered her things.
On December 6th of 2018, just three days prior to my wife pulling me aside, I had just made reservations to fly up to my parent’s house for the holidays, just like every other year. We would have been there for six days.
I was sitting at the desk in our living room and had just finished with the reservations and turned around to tell my daughter who was always excited to see her grandmommy and granddaddy, and as soon as I told her the dates of our trip my, daughter leapt out of her chair and ran upstairs to her room, shutting the door…she didn’t look at me, or say a word, she just bolted out of the room. I remember asking my wife, what that was all about. We assumed she had just gotten a phone message from one of her friends.
I hardly saw my daughter over the next couple of days.
Then on December 8th, 2018, my wife had something horrible to tell me. It was so horrible and unbelievable that she sat in a car for two hours in a mall parking lot, trying to talk other people into telling me. She knew how close my father and I were, she knew how important he was to me and how much I looked up to him, she knew how this would devastate my entire family, and she was terrified at what that could do to us, our marriage, and fearful of whether I would even believe it.
And then she said it.
“C___ told J_____, that your father has been molesting her.”
My wife’s emotions flooded out as she could no longer hold them back, sharing all of the details of this conversation with the mother of one of our daughters’ closest friends.
Everything got very still, and my emotions went flat as I said nothing and listened and processed every word my wife said.
She sounded like she was making a case, that this was the truth, trying to convince me, but what she didn’t realize is that as soon as she said it, hundreds of seemingly unconnected details from the last few years, lined up perfectly in my head, and I knew it was true.
My wife and I started searching my daughter’s room for any evidence, and we found in her luggage, sex toys and lingerie, just like the woman said.
I began making flight arrangements and making phone calls to figure out where my parents were and where they would be when I got there.
I contacted my brother to let him know that I was coming up and it was important that he told no one and that I would tell him when I got there.
I shaved and showered.
I carried nothing but my cell phone and wallet and packed no luggage because, at the time, I fully expected that after confronting my father, I would be spending the night in jail.
When C____ got home from the mall, I pulled her aside and asked her directly if my father had ever hurt her in any way, and she burst into tears, asking who had told us.
I then asked, had my father touched you sexually? and she nodded yes.
Then I asked, had my father put his hands inside you? and she nodded yes.
I began crying and apologizing, and I told her I was leaving in a few minutes to fly up there.
On the ride to the airport, my wife drove while my daughter sat in the back seat, I had very little to say and was calm but seething with rage.
For the entire ride to the airport, my wife and daughter begged me to call the police; they had a very real fear that I would confront my father and that he would shoot me or that I would beat him to death.
I finally called the F______ County Police and let them know what we had discovered and that I was on my way there to confront my father.
As I was standing in line at security, talking to my brother on the phone and making sure he was going to pick me up, he was already in a state of panic because of how little information I had given him, it was freaking him out.
My brother kept asking questions, and I finally snapped and told him that my father had molested and possibly raped my daughter.
He was shocked at what I told him and became a wreck to the point that I could not trust him to pick me up at the airport. I told him I didn’t need a ride and would deal with it myself.
As I sat on the plane waiting, I realized there was no way my brother wasn’t going to involve other family members.
I decided to text my father, to let him know what was coming and why.
I must have written, and rewritten that short text, at least five times, because I did not want anyone else to read it and understand what only he would understand.
“You have broken all of our hearts. I am on my way there right now, and you know why.”
On arrival at R________, I moved quickly through the airport and toward the taxi area, when I received a call from my brother, who was already waiting to pick me up.
When I got in his car, I told him I needed to go to a hotel, and he said he needed to take me to the police station and that my father was already in custody.
My short text message was enough to send my father into a suicidal panic, due to a consciousness of guilt, the fact that everyone would know what he had done to my daughter, and that he was most likely going to prison.
I spent the next hour or so being interviewed by F_____ County police officers, who then contacted my daughter and took her initial statement.
The next day, my brother picked me up from the hotel and took me to my parents’ house, where everyone was quite emotional and in disbelief.
“Are you sure?”, “He would never do this!” etc. etc.
I distinctly remember my mother sitting at the kitchen table in shock, clutching one cell phone tightly in her hands while her own cell phone lay on the table in front of her.
My father’s cell phone was never seen again.
It dawned on me as I boarded a plane back home that evening, that I never went back to help my son finish his desk, and I never even told him I was leaving. And even though I was only gone for 24 hours, it felt like a lifetime, and I would not be the same when I got back.
The first two months were the hardest. I began having nightmares almost instantly. I was lucky to get 2 hours of sleep in a single sitting. I would wake up almost violently, my heart pounding as if it was coming out of my chest.
I was constantly checking on my daughter as she had been living in denial for a very long time and everything was starting to come to the surface.
I was there when she got the results of her forensic medical exam, and they told her she had internal scarring, and she kept asking, “Why did he do this? Why did he hurt me.”
I was there when she found out my father had been released from the psychiatric hospital and she nearly fainted in our kitchen.
I was there when she found out he had been arrested and released in less than 24 hours and she burst into tears.
It seemed that every day, more information was coming out about what my father had done and for how long.
My daughter, my wife, and I were all in therapy.
I had to take a leave of absence from work for two months just to pull myself together.
For almost eight months, I went to sleep not knowing if my daughter would make it through the night, and on multiple occasions, I panicked to the point of nearly breaking down her door for fear she had taken her own life.
I had to rush home because police and child protective services were in our house asking my children questions.
I have seen my daughter come home in tears on multiple occasions because she was triggered to the point of panic by the smell of cologne, a voice, or the mannerisms of a stranger, which reminded her of my father.
If I kissed her goodnight when she was already asleep, she would wake up, in fear for her life, not knowing where she was or who was in her room. It was so bad that I was afraid to hug my own daughter for fear of triggering her.
She still sleeps with a locked door and the lights on to this day.
Over the course of this, we have lost over thirty relationships built over a lifetime, with family members who did not want to believe the truth, helped hide evidence, or told everyone it was a consensual relationship.
The process of grief is very personal, everyone experiences it differently, and there is no way for two people to experience it the same way at the same time, and that almost broke my marriage. There were days when I didn’t know if our family would survive this. But thankfully it did.
As a father, I live every day with the guilt of not seeing or understanding what my father was doing, of not being able to protect my daughter, and the fact that he was able to use my feelings for him as my father to manipulate, control and abuse my daughter, his granddaughter.
My family has waited four very long years for justice. And I am sure to an outsider looking in, things are quite normal.
But we wear a mask most of the time.
Just a few months ago, I was cleaning out my office and came across a photo of my daughter at 12 years old, with my father, at Disney World. I was so grief-stricken at the site of it that I had to lock myself in my office for 2 hours, so my wife and children would not see me in this broken state.
I have looked everywhere for answers as to why my father has done this to my daughter and my family.
But the fact is, there is no question that can be asked, or answer given that would justify what he has done.
This was not a situation of circumstance my father found himself in.
This was not an accident or a mistake my father made.
Every act, every crime my father has committed against my daughter, his granddaughter since she was a child, was methodical, calculated, and well hidden.
He used the love, trust, and respect that my family held for him to his advantage, to abuse my daughter, his granddaughter.
He used the knowledge I gave him in conversation after conversation, against her.
He used the fact that her sleeping accommodations, on our visits, were only 10 feet from where he and my mother slept to his advantage and to abuse my daughter, his granddaughter, for hours each night she was there.
He used the gifts of trips for my wife and me to gain complete and unsupervised access to my daughter.
He did this with guilt of conscience, knowing he could go to jail, knowing what would happen if he were discovered and he did it anyway and more brazenly every time.
He abused her in his home.
He abused her with family members, feet away, beneath blankets, and out of sight.
He abused her in my home.
He abused her on family vacations.
He abused her at my niece’s wedding.
When she locked the door, he used his own key to open it.
When she would not comply, he used to shame her and threatened to tell me, her father, and his son what she was doing.
He purchased sex toys that he abused her with and lingerie that he forced her to wear.
Hid did this without concern for the irreparable damage he was subjecting my daughter, his granddaughter to, the damage of verbal, emotional, psychological, and physical sexual abuse, abuse she will spend the rest of her life contemplating and dealing with and he did so with his only concern being the gratification of his own sexual fantasies.
He threatened to kill himself if she ever told.
My father crossed the line as a grandfather over and over, then moved it, and crossed it again and again.
And after every nightly session of abuse, he forced on my daughter, he had the nerve to sit across the table from me, talking about what we would be doing that day, eating breakfast, and drinking coffee without a care in the world.
My father showed my daughter, his granddaughter no mercy and no leniency.
And because of this, I am asking that you show his victim, my daughter, his granddaughter, that what her grandfather did to her was heinous in every way, by giving him the fullest sentence under the law.
I know what I am asking, but that is the sentence he has given my daughter.
My father has pleaded guilty to two of the three charges, but his crimes were so much greater than that.
And while my daughter has healed physically, she will bear the emotional and psychological trauma of my father’s choices and abuse for the rest of her life.
I want to say thank you to the few people who stood beside us in this, but I especially want to thank my wife. I always knew we would eventually get through this; I was never really sure how or in what condition our family would be when it was over, but somehow, we have managed to cling to each other, and I am extremely thankful for that.
And finally, to my daughter, I want to say there are few people who will understand what you have been through and how it will affect you, but my hope for you is that when you look at yourself in the mirror, you see what your mom and I do… Beauty, brilliance, kindness, wisdom beyond your years, and more strength of character and courage than anyone I have ever known. I love you with all my heart.
Thank you respectfully.
P_____ ______