Sometimes the Rapist ends up Dead

I was abducted, beaten and raped by a stranger. It wasn’t a neighbor, a coach, a relative, a family friend or teacher. It was a recidivist pedophile predator who spent time in prison for previous sex crimes; an animal hunting for victims in the quiet, bucolic, suburban neighborhoods of Lincoln, Rhode Island.

I was able to identify the guy and the car he was driving. Although he was arrested that night and indicted a few months later, he never went to trial. His trial never took place because he was brutally beaten to death in Providence before his court date. 34 years later, no one has ever been charged with the crime.

In the time between the night of my assault and the night he was murdered, I lived in fear. I was afraid he was still around town. Afraid he was looking for me. Afraid he would track me down and kill me. The fear didn’t go away when he was murdered. Although he was no longer a threat, the simple life and innocence of a 14-year-old boy was gone forever. Carefree childhood thoughts replaced with the unrelenting realization that my world wasn’t a safe place. My peace shattered by a horrific criminal act of sexual violence.

Over the past 34 years, I’ve been haunted by horrible, recurring memories of what he did to me. He visits me in my sleep. There have been dreams–nightmares actually–dozens of them, sweat inducing, yelling-in-my-sleep nightmares filled with images and emotions as real as they were when it actually happened. It doesn’t get easier over time. Long dead, he still visits me, silently sneaking up from out of nowhere when I least expect it. From the grave, he sits by my side on the couch every time the evening news reports a child abduction or sex crime. I don’t watch America’s Most Wanted or Law and Order SVU, because the stories are a catalyst, triggering long suppressed emotions, feelings, memories, fear and horror. Real life horror stories rip painful suppressed memories out from where they hide, from that recessed place in my brain that stores dark, dangerous, horrible memories. It happened when William Bonin confessed to abducting, raping and murdering 14 boys in California; when Jesse Timmendequas raped and murdered Megan Kanka in New Jersey; when Ben Ownby, missing for four days, and Shawn Hornbeck, missing for four years, were recovered in Missouri.

Despite what happened that night and the constant reminders that continue to haunt me years later, I wouldn’t change what happened. The animal that attacked me was a serial predator, a violent pedophile trolling my neighborhood in Lincoln, Rhode Island looking for young boys. He beat me, raped me, and I stayed alive. I lived to see him arrested, indicted and murdered. It might not have turned out this way if he had grabbed one of my friends or another kid from my neighborhood. Perhaps he’d still be alive. Perhaps there would be dozens of more victims and perhaps he would have progressed to the point of silencing his victims by murdering them.

Out of fear, shame and guilt, I’ve been silent for over three decades, sharing with very few people the story of what happened to me. No more. The silence has to end. The fear, the shame, the guilt have to go. It’s time to stop keeping this secret from the people closest to me, people I care about, people I love, my long-time friends and my family. It’s time to speak out to raise public awareness of male sexual assault, to let other victims know that they’re not alone and to help victims of rape and violent crime understand that the emotion, fear and memories that may still haunt them are not uncommon to those of us who have shared a similar experience.

For those who suffer in silence, I hope my story brings some comfort, peace and hope.

Men in My Town is the story of my abduction, beating and rape and the unsolved brutal murder of the man who attacked me.

Men in My Town by Keith Smith, available now at Amazon.com

For additional information visit the Men in My Town blog at http://www.meninmytown.wordpress.com

Email the author at MenInMyTown@aol.com

Of course the other thing is that Mr. Obama has stated he wants an amnesty program for illegals, so if they are made legal and then covered, technically they can say (and not be lying) that they are not trying to cover illegals.

Just a little food for thought.

If it were up to me, I would put a big whack of money into reviving and expanding our nations county and state health departments. When I was a kid, a county health department typically offered “safety net” medical care. That’s one part. They did it before and they can do it again. If every Walgreens can make money running an urgent care clinic with a nurse-practitioner staffing it, there is no reason why the health department an public hispitals can’t do the same or better. Then educating people about the fact that they *can* purchase major medical insurance to cover catastrophic illness or injury.

And doing a few tweaks like making COBRA payments tax deductible for people changing jobs, etc. would help without going into another massive welfare state major program – because you know, the war on poverty has gone so very well.

There’s one other aspect that no one is talking about – getting people to use the health care they have. I have a former co-worker who – despite having coverage – didn’t see a doctor for 5+ years until the night he was taken to the hospital with congestive heart failure secondary to kidney failure which was caused by untreated high blood pressure, because you know, he hadn’t had his BP taken in 5 years. (Now he’s on Medicaid and dialysis and hoping for a kidney transplant at public expense – yet his condition was preventable and the only bar to his treatment was HIS failure to see a doctor.)

Another coworker who has coverage has huge visible cavities in his teeth and there’s a massive link between dental health and overall health, especially cardiac. Several of us have even offered to pay the dental copay, but he won’t go. So if he ends up with a damaged heart because he wouldn’t see a dentist when he had coverage – who is responsible and why? There’s no law against stupid and shortsighted and no constitutional mandate to endlessly protect people from the consequences of their own stupidity.

And just FYI, I have a chronic auto-immune illness and I have had to struggle with insurance issues and coverage since I was diagnosed. So I’m speaking with some experience here.

2. Businesses have already pushed out as many employees to be “independent contractors” as is legal to do, and more — see the various settlements by various major computer industry companies (Intel, Oracle, etc.) with the IRS for failing to pay payroll taxes for “independent contractors” who were for all intents and purposes full time employees of the company complete with company name badges and time cards. We have laws prohibiting employers from just arbitrarily pushing out employees to be “independent contractors” who aren’t… thus why if you’re a contractor today, you’re likely going through a contracting firm. Your contracting firm is your employer in that case and will be responsible under HR3200 for your health insurance. I don’t know about your contracting firm, but the health insurance offered through mine when I was an “independent contractor” was useless, that will also be prohibited by HR3200, which will require contracting firms to offer real health coverage to their employees.

3. HR3200 is actually similar to a bizarre conglomeration of the German system (non-profit sickness funds and for-profit insurers) and the Swiss system (all insurance is individual). In all three cases — HR3200, German, and Swiss systems — the government is involved in setting minimum standards and in providing subsidies for those who cannot afford health insurance, not in providing health care itself. Government-run health care like in Britain actually has a pretty good record — e.g., the British mortality rate from prostate cancer (24.3 per 100K men) is actually better than the U.S. mortality rate from prostate cancer (24.5 per 100K men) — but it also tends to be somewhat inconvenient and overcrowded. We’re spending 17% of GDP on healthcare here in the US. We can afford better — and should.

4. Finally: Yes, we can afford it. Private insurers are currently providing 35% of healthcare spending in the USA. Governments provide 48% of healthcare spending, the rest is out of pocket. The percentage of GDP consumed by private insurers is thus 5.95% of GDP. So even if we paid 100% of health insurance costs — which *nobody* proposes — that would only be a 6% tax. According to OECD statistics, the USA is currently the least-taxed major economy on the planet, paying an average of 28% of our income in taxes to government at all levels from local school boards to the federal government. We pay less taxes than all OECD nations other than Turkey and Mexico, and we all know what kind of paradise Mexico is (hint: Mexicans are fleeing *here*, not the other way around!). If we hike taxes by 1.8% to pay for health insurance for the 30% of Americans who are either underinsured or uninsured because they cannot afford good health insurance, we will *still* be less taxed than all of our major global competitors.

In short, we can do this. And we should. People who claim this will allow government to kill granny — when government isn’t even involved except to set minimum standards for coverage! — are talking nonsense. This is a modest enhancement to the current system to patch up a couple of gaping holes — access to the system and illegal rationing of care by insurers who deny coverage arbitrarily based on nonsense in order to weasel out of paying for the care of expensive patients — and honestly, I can’t figure out why any sensible person would be against it, knowing the facts. Which, of course, is the problem… far too many people willing to believe outrageous lies about “death panels” and such. Do these people go to bed wearing tin foil hats to keep government mind control beams from programming their minds while they sleep? GAH!

- Badtux the Healthcare Penguin

But, on the other hand, who would want to be driving an old Pontiac that’s in the shop all the time when they can buy a shiny new Honda Accord or Toyota Camry … I can hardly imagine a US frozen in car time, like Cuba with its 1959 Chevrolets …

Re. the light bulbs, I believe “they” actually CAN make bulbs that never burn out, like this one: http://www.centennialbulb.org/

That sucker has been burning for 108 years!

Planned obsolescence. Light bulbs can be made that never burn out. Cars can be made that never wear out. But you have to keep making new ones, or else the economy will fail b/c people who make those products will be out of a job.

This particular argument from “capitalists” has always puzzled me, because, hello, NOTHING lasts forever without maintenance. So the people who were doing the manufacturing could do the maintenance instead. (Half of those jobs have already been shipped overseas anyway…)

Most household cleaning products are useless too. Windex is just watered down, dyed ammonia. You can keep your entire house clean for a year with one big bottle of bleach, one big bottle of ammonia, one big bottle of vinegar, and several boxes of baking soda.

This is totally true. Cleaning products are a major capitalist scam. Vinegar cleans everything, and if it doesn’t, then baking soda will, and if it doesn’t, then bleach will.