HARD FAL (14 page)

“Hello,” the woman said. “I’m June.”

The Girl Who Never Was: Memoirs of a Survivor

by June Unknown

How I Found My Voice

I’LL NEVER FORGET
that first case where Seth had me testify during the sentencing. He said I could have just given him a victim’s impact statement and he’d submit it. When he told me that, gave me that out after all the work he’d put into finding me and prepping me, put my needs before his, that’s when I knew I couldn’t let him down.

By then, I was nineteen, I realized I couldn’t live like most people do, but I still had no idea where my place in the world was. Living like a hermit, alone except for my paintings, that felt like having a limb amputated.

Living with others, that was being drawn and quartered in front of a crowd, watching, judging my every response.

I wanted a reason to leave my solitude. I needed someone I could be with. Seth gave me both—and so much more.

But that was later. Now I had to survive this first trial.

The guy is already convicted, Seth kept reminding me. No matter what happens, nothing will change that, so don’t worry.

I don’t think “worry” comes remotely close to how I felt when I walked into that courtroom. Walden came with me since Seth was busy up front with the other lawyer and the defendant, a guy named White.

Is there a state of being beyond panic? When your heart beats so hard and fast that it pushes your being out of your body? That’s how I felt, floating, tethered to reality only by the tightness that constricted my chest and made it impossible to swallow. Like my body was an anchor and I wasn’t at all sure that I didn’t want to cut it free and just drift away.

But then Seth turned to scan the row of seats behind him and he saw me. He looked so proud and happy to see me—no one had ever looked at me that way, not even Daddy. Like I was special. Like I was important.

To hear White’s lawyer and friends and boss and church deacon and wife tell it, he was the victim, here. Poor, overworked, overstressed shoe store manager, he’d turned to porn to alleviate his tension and accidentally downloaded photos from the wrong site.

Never mind that there were over three thousand of them, all preschool aged girls. White pled for leniency, this wasn’t his fault, his family needed him, would be ruined if he was sent to prison.

And the judge kept nodding, like he was buying it. Even smiled at White’s wife.

Then it was my turn. Seth introduced me—I was so nervous, I didn’t hear what he said—and I approached the podium. I smoothed the pages of the statement I’d carefully crafted with Seth’s help, my sweaty palms smearing the ink. Didn’t matter—I can’t read very well anyway, but I’m good at memorizing things I see and hear, so I was going to recite it from memory.

Except then I looked at White. At all the people sitting behind him, supporting him. His fine upstanding wife. His fine upstanding deacon. His fine upstanding paperboy. Whoever these people were, they looked at me like I was some kind of vile, corrupting, ungodly creature sent to seduce fine upstanding men like White.

To them I was the one who should be locked away to protect society. To them it was all my fault.

Heat blazed through me. My hands shook the entire podium, so I closed them into fists and placed them onto the printout of the statement that I would never read.

“Are you okay?” Seth whispered from where he sat at the table beside me.

I nodded, still unable to speak. The silence lengthened. People shifted in their seats, whispered behind me. The judge cleared his throat and nodded to me to start.

Still, I was silent. The judge, his patience ended, glared at Seth. “Mr. Bernhart—”

Before he could finish, I opened my mouth and began to speak.

“The first thing I learned when I was little was that girls are to be seen and not heard,” I said, focusing my entire being on the judge. Seth had told me that in almost half of child pornography cases judges would ignore the sentencing guidelines and give defendants less time than even the minimum called for.

Not this time. Not if I had anything to do with it.

“After living the first ten years of my life never being heard, I’d like to thank you for the chance to speak. To add my voice to the ones you’ve heard today.”

I gathered my breath, totally improvising, but the judge was paying attention and that was what mattered. “I lived the first ten years of my life only knowing one other person. That person was my whole world—literally. I lived for him and him alone. When he sent me away, when I grew too big for him, I thought I would die without him.

“Learning how different my childhood was from everyone else’s was a shock. I didn’t know how to read or write or do math beyond counting. I didn’t know how to talk to other people—didn’t even know how to play with kids my age. How could I? I’d never met other kids or any other adults. It was years before I could catch up enough to go to school. I managed to graduate from high school but left college after a year—I didn’t know how to be around people, especially men. Every relationship ended with me feeling ashamed, guilty, and abandoned.

“I live a fragile existence. Unable to trust myself. Unable to trust anyone else. Unable to focus or do so many things normal people do. I can’t drive a car. Have never been able to hold down a job—I can tell time on a clock, but have never learned to translate that into anything meaningful. All of which you could blame on those first ten years.

“You probably wonder what Mr. White and his fascination with underage girls has to do with my failures. Why should he be held accountable for my inability to make up for those first ten years? Ten years of my life that he and others like him watch as entertainment with no thought to the fact that the girl on the screen, the girl growing up before their eyes in thousands of images, that girl deserves a life beyond serving their sexual gratification.

“That girl—me—deserves a voice. Deserves a chance to be heard.”

I swallow hard, a feeling of power surging through me—I’ve never felt like this before. Every person in the room is listening to me and only me.

“Now that I’m old enough to understand what was taken from me, I’m in constant fear. Fear of someone like Mr. White recognizing me and coming after me. Fear of men like him using those images of my childhood to coerce other victims. Fear of men like Mr. White using my images to recreate that horror for other little girls.

“Fear that because of my stolen childhood, the violence and horror will never end.” I pause, trying to figure out how to wrap up. Wished I could remember anything from the statement Seth and I wrote, but it’s too late now. “Mr. White may not be the man who stole my innocence or my childhood or my voice, but he’s the man who has stolen my dignity, my privacy, and my future. He's the man who paid for it, who made it
profitable
for me to be victimized. He. Paid. Money. For my innocence.

“I’ve been diagnosed with depression and PTSD and panic attacks and generalized anxiety, but these fears that haunt my every waking moment and that twist my dreams into nightmares, they are not unrealized, vague, neurotic anxieties. You know that, Mr. Bernhart knows that, Mr. White knows it as well if he’s honest with himself.

“These fears are real. They will torment me for the rest of my life. Will knowing that I have one less predator to fear by asking the court to sentence Mr. White to the maximum allowable by law and to request some measure of accountability in the form of financial restitution give me any measure of comfort?” I pause, hoping I’d used the right terms from Seth’s coaching.

“For ten years I had no voice,” I continue. “Now that I have the power to speak, I can tell you honestly, yes. I will sleep better tonight knowing that justice has been served and that Mr. White will never harm anyone again. Then I will wake up tomorrow, scared and alone and cowering, too afraid to step foot outside, but I will walk outside into a world that for me is filled with danger. Because, despite everything taken from me, I have the power to set things right. One thief at a time. One predator at a time.”

Chapter 18

“MEGAN,” LUCY SHOUTED
after her daughter. She spun to go after her, torquing her ankle and releasing a howl of pain.

Nick shook his head. “Give her some space.”

“I guess she’d rather it was Taylor here instead of me.” Lucy hated the bitterness that the words emerged with. Damn, couldn’t she do anything right?

She hated even more the fact that clearly she had no remedy for Megan’s pain. The trauma counselor said it would take time, to give Megan space if she needed it, but all Lucy seemed to be able to do was to make things worse.

“Would’ve helped if you answered any of her calls,” Nick said as he hung up his coat with measured movements.

“What calls?” Lucy slid her phone free. Three missed calls, all from Megan. “Shit. We took the back way here, past the dam.” The state park tried to use their lack of Wi-Fi and cell coverage as an incentive for folks to take a vacation from the stress of the modern world, but it was still damn inconvenient.

“Then maybe you could have called her. Or me. Let us know you were all right.”

“I’m all right? Of course I’m all right—” She stopped, realized he knew about the attack on June and Seth. Damn Internet. She glanced down the hall where Megan had gone, assessing the possibilities.

“She saw you, Lucy. Driving like a maniac, flying over a cliff—”

“It was barely a six foot hill.” Well, maybe eight feet. Still, they weren’t talking an Evel Knievel stunt. More dangerous for the Subaru than for her. Anyway, that wasn’t her main concern. If video had caught the car chase, it might also have caught her face—or some enterprising reporter might have discovered she was there at the scene. No way would any of her people leak it, but…

Seth, his timing impeccable, emerged from the kitchen behind Lucy. “Hi, there. Seth Bernhart,” he introduced himself. “The pregnant lady Lucy helped is my wife, June. I just want to thank you both for everything you’ve done. Lucy saved her life—and my baby’s.”

Nick flushed. Never a good sign—usually he was the one who kept his emotions in check, dealing with them rationally, while Lucy tended to simply let loose and apologize later.

As he took the few stiff steps necessary to meet Seth in the middle of the living room Lucy realized she wasn’t the only one completely off balance. And it wasn’t just because of what happened today. This was about more than what happened two months ago. Ever since they’d moved here to Pittsburgh, her job—the promotion that was meant to keep her safe behind a desk and home on time for soccer games and family dinners—had not only endangered Lucy time and again but also their entire family.

And Coletta had paid the price. But she wasn’t the only one. Megan could barely look at Lucy or be in the same room with her, and Nick…Nick, he was overwhelmed, playing both mother and father to Megan, therapist and rehab partner for Lucy, cook, cleaner, and house maid, executor of all the legal stuff that went along with Coletta’s death, and the safety net holding their entire family together.

Exhausting—for both of them. For Lucy it was just as stressful to watch from the sidelines as it was for Nick to be taking on everything himself.

“Nick Callahan,” he said, shaking Seth’s hand. His voice held none of the warmth it usually would have. In fact, it was so cold Lucy wished for her coat.

“Nice to meet you, Nick. I’ll just go check on June.” Seth gave her an encouraging glance before disappearing down the hall.

Lucy stared across the distance that separated her and her husband. Nick glared back. He remained on the opposite side of the living room while she waited for him in the archway leading into the kitchen. Neither of them made a move to get closer.

Okay. It was going to be one of those fights.

She shifted her weight, immediately regretted it as pain shot through her ankle. Her cane was behind her in the kitchen but damn if she was going to retreat to get it.

He took aim first. “The men today. The ones with guns. The ones sent by a vicious sociopathic obsessed pedophile to hurt a pregnant woman. Did you catch them yet?”

“No.”

“Then, they’re still after her.” He held up a hand as she opened her mouth to explain. “I don’t need to know why you did what you did. Honestly, I don’t really care. Not right this moment. I need to know if our daughter is in danger because you brought those people here.”

Lucy flinched at his words. More so at the assumption behind them. As if she hadn’t been calculating the risk the moment Megan stepped through the door. If he couldn’t trust her judgment, trust her to know what she was doing, trust that she would always put him and Megan before the job…but that was the problem wasn’t it? The job. What it did to her. What it did to them.

Silence gathered between them. Usually she loved how in sync she and Nick could be, how they seldom needed words to communicate the important things. One more thing lost since the attack on her and her family two months ago.

Now they couldn’t even fight like they usually did. Instead, they both held back as if afraid of hurting the other, damaging the strained threads holding their family together.