(Part 2) Father George David Byers reminisces about his own childhood rape experiences and stardom in kiddie-porn films. The full stories without the details. Just insights and inspiration. Thank you, Jesus!

• [Part 1 HERE - suffering a failed but violent rape]
• [Part 2 HERE - unwitting stardom in kiddie-porn films]
• [Part 3 HERE - a suggestion]
• [Part 4 HERE- angels!]
• [Part 5 HERE - responding to some comments.]

CHAPTER SEVEN

~ Being stalked as a seven-year old ~

The following Winter, when I was still seven years old, I had made a habit of going swimming at the local Junior High School. The pool was opened up to younger kids like myself at night. It was a pretty good hike to get there, three miles. Bikes were impossible on the ice and snow at night. I know. I tried many times. It’s a good extreme sport, but it really was faster just walking. No one from my neighborhood wanted to brave the hike, but there were plenty of kids to meet there. The trip was worth it for someone who could swim like a fish, and I was just such a one. I think I once did five lengths of the pool underwater without once coming up for breath. I was a bit of a show-off, looking for some competition in this way. Competition, if it’s just for the sheer idiocy of it, is always hilarious to those involved, and is its own reward. I found out that half-crippled legs didn’t matter so much in the water.

Also, I was used to the cold enough to know that when it’s way below zero and one’s hair is still wet, the walk home will be cold only at the beginning. Wet hair freezes into a helmet as hard as rock, keeping one’s body heat insulated. I would let my hair freeze for a minute or so, and then put my hat on over that. Only I would do that, of course. But one has to know how to survive!

On my way home from a great swim, but on a particularly cold night, way below zero on the Fahrenheit scale, a very expensive black Cadillac Limousine started following me at my walking pace, about forty feet back. At the time, the sidewalk was set back from the road about twenty feet, and was protected by great drifts of snow piled up by the city’s snow plows. But this fellow knew what he was doing, for I was just at a point where the sidewalk ended in front of a deep, culverted ditch that was being filled in with construction rubble, and so was packed with jagged metal and unstable blocks of cement that poked through the snow and ice in small hills. I had to walk out on the road, right where he would be able to grab me. Back in the day, there were no houses in any direction for about a half a mile along that stretch of road. The field next to me, blanketed with about three feet of snow, stretched all the way to a forest, also about three miles away. It was pitch dark. I thought I was dead for sure.

But, if you can’t run, you can fight, even if you are only seven years old, as I had learned some months previously. I was braver than I was smart. I turned and walked straight to the car and, when offered a ride – just as I thought – I took it. This seemed stupid even to me, but it also seemed like the only option. I thought I was going to end up in the car one way or the other, but if I took the initiative, the psychological dynamics were such that I could have the upper hand, at least for a while, until I figured out a definitive escape. What a stupid seven-year old! But I was filled with adrenaline once again. And I had not forgotten the bit [mentioned in an earlier part of the autobiography] about letting people hang themselves if that’s what they wanted to do. I learned later on what our Lord did with Judas.

This fellow in the Cadillac Limousine was in his fifties and filthy rich and, as I say, he knew his business. Today I would conjecture that he was in the mafia. More kids disappear from the streets of Minnesota (where I grew up), getting sucked into the sex industry, than from any other state in the Union. At any rate, this fellow interrogated me about exactly where I lived in town and then what my name was. When he heard the name, he asked me to repeat it, again and again. I told him, and said that my dad had been the mayor of the city (of 48,000 people at the time) and was now an attorney at law, and in the State Legislature, heading up the biggest law firm in central Minnesota. I also mentioned my uncle by name, since he was the chief emergency responder in the city. At that point he stopped the car abruptly. As he pushed me out, I mocked him with a sing-song voice, saying he could meet my dad if he wanted to drive me the rest of the way. That wasn’t very intelligent on my part, but he sped away, thank God. I tried to get the license plate number, but it was too dark. I wonder how many youngsters’ lives he had destroyed and was still destroying. I wonder if my ever so troubled friend had been a victim of his. I told my parents right away, and my dad got on the phone immediately. I can only think that this fellow was run out of town for a while, but, in those days, I suppose, only that.

~ My stardom in kiddie-porn films ~

That swimming pool at the local public Junior High School would be a source of trouble time and again. A couple of years later, the older neighborhood kids were saying that swimming trunks were not allowed by the gym teacher. Everyone had to swim, and swim naked, saying that this had already been going on for some years. Many schools were starting to do this I was told, so no adult questioned it in what was now a Woodstock society. But don’t be fooled, all the kids hated it, at least at the beginning. They thought that the instructor was going after the boys. But I thought that I could handle myself, and there was no question that I had to go to school, and to that particular school. When the time came, I did go.

What I found, at twelve years of age, was that the teacher’s office, with its large bay window overlooking the locker room, was always jam-packed with naked boys, whom he seemed to be totally ignoring. But then I saw a very expensive movie camera – very professional looking – set up on a large tripod facing the bay window from the locker room, with its on-air light lit up. He was filming the whole thing. The boys, so eager to be around him, were part of a “secret club” that – as one boy told me as if I were entirely stupid – could only be opened up to membership by the gym teacher himself.

Poor kids. They fell for what they thought was the excitement of immodesty and the sense of belonging to a group. I was disgusted by the kind of spirit that seemed to have blinded them to all but a tiny set of arrogant, self-centered emotions, which were lit up so brightly in them that they were blind to everything else, having no agility of spirit whatsoever. They were like deer willingly mesmerized by their own headlights, being shot down by an unscrupulous predator.

I knew that something was terribly wrong with all this, and was taken aback by the very public nature of it. It was the old trick of flaunting it like its normal so that people will think that it is normal. It worked in society then just as it does today. Some of the kids didn’t fall for it. Neither did I. But what could a little kid do back in those days, so very different from today?

I could try to avoid that camera. But the cameras were everywhere. There were more cameras throughout the locker room, with heavy cables all over the floor. There were cameras in the open room showers, and out in the pool area. There were very large movie cameras up in the empty swim-meet bleachers above the pool, lights blinking away, another in an open storage room at the end of the pool next to the locker room door, and, it seems, below, inside the underwater window at the deep end of the pool. A mafia operation with the school being paid off to turn a blind eye? I think so.

The gym teacher made everyone march around naked, sit in certain areas facing certain ways, sit in groups on the diving board, dive from the board in certain ways, and so on, like scripted scenes that would fit some sort of porno story. He even had us swim to the bottom of the deep end of the pool two at a time in order to fetch a block of heavy rubber matting, asking us to fight for it underwater.

He must have taken thousands of reels of film over the years that this continued, from the mid-1960s into the mid-1970s. I can only guess that this was a fraction of the operation, another part of which was surely the “secret club” of the gym teacher’s naked boys. I can only guess that the fellow with the Cadillac Limousine was financing all this. I can only guess that these films are still circulating among pedophiles until this very day throughout the United States and around the world, surely in super-8, still photos, VHS, DVD and now a multitude of internet formats.

I had been prostituting myself and didn’t even know it. I was a kiddy-porno star and surely I still am so today, but it only hit home when it was too late. When you’re a kid, it really is hard to imagine the immense evil of some adults. Sure, I saw the cameras. Yes, I knew they were rolling. So did everyone else. But I just could not imagine for what reason. It just didn’t make any sense. None of us could fathom the depths of the evil at hand, and so mindlessly went along with it. I had told my parents about it. I think my dad tried to do something. But the power behind this operation seemed to be beyond anything he could do anything about. I have to wonder just how many people in law enforcement were also being paid off.

There was some grumbling among the boys, but only one bit of real, though only momentary rebellion. The occasion for this was one boy being singled out. I felt so sorry for him, and angry and confused right along with him, as did we all. He was made to climb up an inordinately tall life-guard chair and stand there, naked, standing, the gym teacher insisted, with his hands to the side. This boy noticed the cameras up in the bleachers, and mentioned them, pointing to them. You could see the scars of hatred being seared into his heart, as if someone was dragging a dagger right through his chest, deeply, right through his very soul. Overwhelmed, he threatened to jump from the chair so that his head would hit the tile edge of the pool, breaking his neck, smashing his skull open, killing himself. “No! Don’t do it!” we said, almost inaudibly. “No!” We just couldn’t believe what we were witnessing. We almost lost our voices. He didn’t jump, thanks be to God.

With that, the “game” was over for the day, even though there was still some twenty minutes left for this “class” in the school schedule. The gym teacher knew that if he didn’t let us go now, he himself was going to pay a heavy price. He let the boy climb down. I don’t know how the boy didn’t fall while climbing down, so much was he shaking with anger.

There was a big difference, thought I, between this gym teacher/kiddy-porno-film director, and my friend with the switch blade in the previous chapter, though both may have had similar histories. I want to think my friend had remained with a shred of hope in his soul, even in his darkest moments, a hope which manifests the power of the grace of God in the midst of the hell some live through on this earth. The porno director, instead, had chosen not to have any hope. It is how low the human soul can sink.

~ Almost raped, but then he committed suicide ~

Some years later, now the Summer before entering my sophomore year in what was already my second high school (we had moved), I was in a sauna with a couple of students of the same school, older than myself, with whom I had been swimming at the University’s new athletics building. One of them all of a sudden got aggressive and was getting ready to do the rape thing on me, saying that I needed to be “initiated” into my new school, but his friend, horrified, screamed at him and stopped him.

Poor kid. He was killed in what was reported officially as an accident the next Summer in an equally untoward circumstance. People conjectured that he might have taken his own life. They should know. He had done what he did right in front of them.

People suffer in hidden agony, trying to draw others, for self-comfort, into their misery, sometimes with great alacrity and niceness, sometimes with violence and aggression, almost always, if young like this, in an effort to make sense of the hell they are living in. He was one of the most popular kids in that entire region. All that those who suffer need to know is that any misery, however hidden by popularity, can be understood and thus sorted out by letting Christ into one’s life. He’s always with us. Always. We need but look up. And speak to Him.

The stats are now – what? – one in thirteen kids attempting suicide in the United States? Yep. That’s skyrocketed proportionate to the sexualization of kids from pre-school onwards, right?

~ Stalked, until I got a rifle ~

The following Spring there was a man in perhaps his late forties or early fifties who had been stalking me for some months. You have to understand that this was all perfectly legal back in the day. No longer, thank God. Now that we had moved out into the country, with rolling hills and forests and dirt roads and long stretches between houses, this kind of thing could easily happen. If I would be walking in the forest, there he would be. If I would be walking along the road, there he would be. He had attacked a neighbor boy (a few miles away through the woods) a couple of years earlier, dragging him off his horse right on the front lawn of the boy’s own house. The police were called but nothing much came of it.

I was wary. He was a real predator. For the umpteenth time, he was now trailing me along a dirt road cutting through the forest. He was driving an unbelievably filthy red pickup truck only as fast as I would walk. If I stopped, he stopped. If I ran, he sped up. I hoped he didn’t have a gun.

I was really getting sick of these shenanigans. I had already evaded him many times by running into the woods, almost literally flying around trees, down ravines, across swamps and creeks. But every time I did this I would be covered with a severe rash of poison ivy, which was pretty much everywhere in central Minnesota. That might not sound so bad, but I really suffered from it, with whole patches of skin falling off, oozing with clear yellow liquid. And besides, running on the wings of the wind with my somewhat crippled legs didn’t help my mobility for quite a while after any such escape. So this running was just no longer an option for me. I had to end this, right here, right now.

I figured I could just beat him unconscious with my bare fists if I had to, leaving him to be found by the police. As in years gone by with the Cadillac Limousine stalker, I turned and walked straight to the truck. Stupidly, I figured I was getting good at this kind of thing. The first thing I did was taunt him to run me over. I knew I could easily jump out of the way. Things could then turn ugly, but I was again filled with adrenaline. I really was very sarcastic.

When he offered me a ride – as I had suspected – I jumped in and he immediately started driving just a bit faster than I could run, making jumping out quite dangerous. His driving slowly was a thousand times more annoying than my being followed. What a horrifically filthy vehicle. I tried in any number of ways to interrogate him as to why he was always following me, but he never said a word. But then I gave him what was perhaps the lecture and reprimand of his life. But then my mind was racing as to what to do when we came up to where my house was another mile down the road. Would he stop? Would I jump, regardless of consequences? To my surprise, and dismay, he turned up the long drive. This could get nasty, thought I. We had guns at home. I knew how to use them.

As soon as we arrived I got out, but so did he. I continued lecturing him, and told him to leave. He didn’t answer. He refused to go. I went into our garage. But he wasn’t going anywhere, not for five minutes, not for ten. What was he plotting? I had a family to protect. I should have called the police, but we lived way, way out in the middle of nowhere. And stalking was not illegal. And I had accepted a ride. Right? I’m so stupid.

So, instead, I got our trusty Remington .22 and brought it outside, filling the rifle with plenty of bullets in plain view, inviting him to leave and never come back. He wouldn’t go. Just as I was raising the rifle to shoot the gas tank of his pickup truck for as many times as it took to make it explode, my mom called me in. Rats! Ever obedient, I went in. Her presence, after all, put him off. Just when I was starting to have a bit of fun. After that, I never saw him again. That was smart on his part. Yet, I still regret not having pulled the trigger a few times. Sometimes people need to be woken up. And it would have been cool to watch a vehicle blow up.

Now, having said all that, I actually didn’t want to hurt him if I could help it. I had met enough hurting people in my life to know that he might well have suicide on his mind. Indeed, I think that this was his bid to commit suicide, you know, like someone who aims a plastic water pistol, though realistic looking, at police officers, threatening them, charging them, aiming at them with obvious intent to kill, only to get shot to death, just like they wanted.

I told my father about all this, and his response surprised me somewhat, but what he said was good advice. The sum total of his remarks was this: “Pray for him.” He said this with a bit of sternness. It was not a suggestion, but a command. My father, you have to understand, knew something of the power of prayer. O.K., so… Our Father, who art in heaven…

I think that if victims of sexual abuse would pray for their abusers, there would be a great deal of healing going on, at least for the victims, whose act of charity would bring them the blessing of no longer being controlled by any emotional scarring that whatever abuser left behind. Just a thought.

~ Some concluding remarks ~

I suppose I could recount another hundred stories just like these, all so very different, some with boys and girls my age, some with people who were middle-aged, but all these stories, however diverse, are all so very much the same. But perhaps I should add a “Part 3″ for the blog, but I think that these are enough for you to get the idea. As I write this, any number of stories, some quite wild, come to mind. What a distraction! Gagh! I’m sure our Lord had something in mind for each and every one of these experiences, both for my good and the good of others, both at that time and forever after that.

I can’t help but thank my guardian angel for giving me the wherewithal to know what to do in such situations. I was escaping one drama after the next and at the same time learning so much about the fallen human condition and how the Lord, nevertheless, wants us for Himself. My guardian angel was guarding a sense of the greatness possible to the human soul within my own soul. There is hope. God loves us. I know He loved me. He loved everyone. I wanted to see His love in others. I wanted to see the greatness possible to the human soul in this way in everyone I met.

Faithfulness in His friendship is always the way. Later, as a priest, I was to see the Lord’s love in others from up close, seeing the greatness possible to the human soul, especially when I would impart the absolution during their confessions. The Lord is so good to people in confession, bringing them back to Himself. What great dignity people have in their friendship with the Lord. I can’t think of anything more noble than someone making their confession, even of the very worst of sins. Look at how they are being carried along by the Lord’s grace! The Lord’s work in the Sacraments brings light into the darkness. I thank God that I’ve witnessed His work among those He brings to Himself. He is so good, so kind.

Just to say, it was my father, who, as a kind of last will and testament, insisted with me so very many times during the last years of his life, saying, “Goodness and kindness, George, goodness and kindness!” I like that. That’s why I repeat it all the time. It’s not worthwhile living any other way, no matter what happens. The only way is the goodness and kindness of Jesus. And yet, as we know with our Lord’s exclamation…

Jerusalem! Jerusalem!