** Trigger Warning **

What happened to me as a kid was a tragedy and it almost broke me. The
human spirit and heart are resilient however, and they bent but did not break.

We came here from Europe, before I turned six, and my dad bought a piece of
land in a lakeside community, and had a new house built. On outward

appearance, it was a paradise, oh my, are looks ever deceiving, There is a Clive
Barker novel titled, "The Great and Secret Show," I can think of nothing more

appropriate to describe this place. There were a pair of younger male adults
which had been at work for years in this community. We moved in right next

door to one of them, and man did they zero in on me. The blond haired, blue
eyed little boy, who at that time had a British accent and whose father was

frequently away. There was like a ring of silence that was loped around the
younger male teens. Not all of them were like this, but some of them were, to

this day I don't know why? I guess they had taken that for years and for some it
had turned inward on them, and they were afraid of the two men. Their primary

purpose was to keep a tight knit control of those in my group, and they made
VHS tapes of us to sell. I saw some of these transactions and people paid a great

deal of money for them. As I got older, and my father would be away, some of us were sent to spend the night with people. Oh, what a book I could write about

that, we called those barn nights, as there was a large barn on the top of a hill above my house. When available they would get us all spiffed up and it was like

people coming to shop. There were those that really liked me because I was withdrawn and really quiet. There was one boy who spoke out, he did not live in

the community but was there often enough visiting his best friend, so they
thought he was safe. He was assaulted of course and the following Monday, went

and told the middle school guidance counselor. I came home and that place looked like a Christmas tree as there were cops and social workers everywhere.

There were two waiting for me at our home, and they grilled me for nearly two and a half hours. To this day, I cannot explain this, but I did what everyone else

from that community also did, I lied. So, nothing changed, and the poor kid that

reported it was harassed so much at school. His parents had to move to a different town and put him in another school. We were not old and sophisticated

enough yet to realize if more would have spoke up, this would have not been the result. We saw this as an absolute barrier from which there was no escape.

luckily for me, genetics kicked in when I was around 14 and I started getting big. Plus my dad me enrolled in TTJC Taekwondo, it was enough to start to make the

predators fearful. I did not let this turn inward on me, I never harmed anyone, but I would protect younger people of the community when I could. I left for

college at 16 and never returned to that F'n place. Later, I helped the police see to it that the older of the two adult men that organized that fiasco, got 25 years in

prison. He is now doing life, because when his sentence was up he assaulted his half brother's youngest son, they don't change. One of my two best friends, was a

kid I helped to protect from that mess, as best I could. I don't care how much time he spends in prison, they took something from me more valuable, than

platinum, gold, even the rarest of jewels, my childhood. When it is taken, you
don't get it back, and I have spent much effort in my lifetime healing from that.

People that try and give a psychological or analytical perspective of evil; are
wasting their time. I have looked into the eyes of it many times, it is not a

fanciful concept, or abnormal psychology, it is all too real. That is how the world
greeted me, is it any wonder that I despise a great deal of it? It is not sending me

out of it any better. I think of all the lives that were so badly damaged or
destroyed in that place. Combat in the army by comparison was a card game of

Uno or Tiddlywinks. At least then, I had 16 heavily armed Rangers that had my
back, that child was all alone..