Predators Live Among us. Diane Roblin Lee
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M. I am going to speak to the pastor about it, but I am in a very delicate position in that church. There are certainly people, I would say the majority of people who are spiritually mature, rational people who understand the nature of forgiveness and are giving me a second chance. There are a few, however, who are really upset about me being there. They haven’t actually vocalized their concerns to me, but I certainly sense the vibe. They have spoken to the pastor about it, but he’s giving me a chance. It’s a hard situation.
D. So you feel that in your position you really can’t address it. But for someone else who was concerned, do you feel that the fellow should have been challenged?
M. Well, it was with the full approval of the mom. She went out to his car and opened the door for the little girl to get in and then let them go off on their own. I guess that in my situation right now, I’m just paranoid. I could be over reacting to this situation with the mother and her boyfriend, because friends of the pair who seem to be people of good judgement don’t appear to have a problem with it. They seem to think it’s okay. Anyway, a parent just has to be wise.
D. Did you ever feel that there was any kind of demonic presence influencing you or harassing you?
M.. No. I think Satan gets blamed for a lot of things he doesn’t do. This was just totally selfish human nature.
D. What was it like being accused of child molestation?
M. Gut wrenching. My heart stopped. My mind was spinning thinking, well, this won’t be that hard to get out of, because there’s no hard evidence. That was my initial instinct, but before I admitted that I was guilty, I started realizing that whether I was proven guilty or not, people were going to think I was, because I had been accused. Reality was slow to seep in, but when it did, I started to realize that I had to do the right thing.
D. Describe your experience with the law. What was it like when the police came to the door?
M. Initially I had no idea what was going on, but my heart went into my stomach. They were very professional. I don’t think they believed the accusations at all at first, mainly because they were so nice to me. I would have thought that if they had believed it, I would have been incarcerated, at least overnight. But after taking me to the station for an interview, they took me home. They were very good to me. There were two uniformed officers and one plainclothes. They were very professional. I lied through my teeth in the first interview. I was very scared. I think I did a pretty good job of hiding it, but I was scared.
When I went back the second time to confess, it was a huge relief. I felt much, much better about the situation. I finally felt I had done the right thing after a long, long time.
D. What led you to turn yourself in and confess?
M. I realized that this was not going to play out well. That it was going to totally divide the family and betray them more than I already had. By me denying everything, it was more abuse on Linda. To drag her through a trial was unthinkable. I most likely could have won, if I had played it totally cool and calculated and denied, denied, denied. If I had totally lawyered up and done everything they had told me to do, I could probably have beat it—but there would have been a big mess in the family and I just really.... I knew I was going away for a long time and I wasn’t coming back. I wasn’t going to incur any lawyers fees for my family. I was just going to plead guilty to everything. I didn’t care if I went away for life. I knew the best thing for me to do was admit it. Take the lumps. That was my intent.
D. In case someone who is fantasizing about molesting a child reads this interview, I’d like them to understand the price they’ll pay. Could you tell me exactly what happened from the time you turned yourself in?
M. After making my statement, I was put into a holding cell by myself at the O.P.P. station. I was so relieved to finally have the truth out. There was a nice old lady working there and so I started to talk to her and told her how good I felt to have done the right thing. She stood there and asked me what the charges were and I told her. She just went white and became very belligerent and got right on the phone. The constable who I had been talking with came up to my cell and said, “I’m only going to tell you this once. When you go over to the jail, keep your mouth shut. People do not want to know about this charge, and so for your own self-preservation, ... and it was very good advice.
But then, when they took me over to the jail, the guards over there already knew. And so all of this stuff started to happen.
D. That lady told them?
M. I don’t know. The guards who carry you over have a record of what you’re charged with so that they can process you in. So it started with the strip-search with the guards berating me and marching me naked, carrying my jail clothes, in front of everybody in the holding cells with them all yelling at me about how they were going to get me.... I really... I really don’t want to go there.
D. Remember, the reason why I’m asking you about the details of this is in hopes that it will be a deterrent to anyone else who is thinking about molesting a child and so that victims will feel that they have had some justice.
M. Yeah. It’s hell on earth. You can’t believe how alone you are. I basically went nuts for a little while. They psychologically broke me. I was totally delusional for a couple of days at least.
D. What did they do to break you?
M. No sleep. They put me in a padded blanket-garment sort of dress thing with straps made from safety belt fabric over my shoulders. I was strapped into it. I had no clothes. They had taken everything I had. They control the temperature in the cells and so they turned my heat right down so that it was a very cold cell. All I had was a tiny little blanket about two feet by four feet, made of the same fabric as this dress thing. It was basically what they call their “suicide watch.” There was one guard watching me. I don’t know his name, but I’ll never forget his face. He was a guy who was big in the union and very belligerent. It was that guy who made the decision that I was going to go into the cold cell. I was taken to a nurse and of the corner of my eye I caught him give her a big wink that this was going to happen.
So they kept me there for three days. Basically, they would stay outside my door and taunt me and tell me how terrible I was. They’d carry on conversations outside my door about all the horrible things they’d heard I did. If I did go to sleep at all, they’d bang on my door to make me wake up. So I’d had no sleep at all and was very, very cold for three days.
Then at five in the morning, they took me down to a holding cell to wait until 8:30 to be loaded into a paddy wagon to go to the courthouse. So I was just left there to wait in this absolutely filthy cell. I think they must smear these places with excrement on purpose so that they are as miserable as they can possibly be. The walls are just covered with feces.
D. You mean in the cells below the courthouse?
M. No—in the Super Jail, but the courtroom cells are the same. There are some cells that are okay, and then there are others that are just terrible. When I was first going through all that, I was always put in the worst ones for obvious reasons. It’s like a game to some of these people. The worst guards were the women, by far, but in general, there a lot of very, very good people there.
D. Earlier, you spoke of the “perp walk.” What was that?
M. After they strip search you, they’re supposed to give you an orange jumpsuit with underwear and slippers and you should be able to put those on, because there are five or six low-walled cement cubicles so that when you return from court, you’re supposed to strip out of your street clothes back into the prison wear in those cubicles. But instead of that, when a prisoner like me is taken from the holding cell to the regular cells, they make them stay naked, just carrying their prison clothes and walk past all these holding cells, some of which can hold as many as 30 men. Some hold ten or twenty and then there are some cells with just one man. They let these guys know what the charges are and so as I walked down the hall, all these guys were yelling profanities and threats about how they were going to get me. It was.... So that was the perp walk.
D. So that happened