Stay tuned to this website for the publication date of the book, Diary Of A Predator: A Memoir, for an inside look into the mind of Brent Brents and the impact his story had on the journalist covering his case. Part of the proceeds from sales of the book will go to Street’s Hope, the non-profit organization that helps women leave the sex-for-sale industry.
Here’s an excerpt. Continue reading
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A reader shares his experiences as an abused child.
Hi Amy and Brent,
As an abused child myself,I was bizarre to read the chronicles from Mr. Bren’t childhood. For years after being beaten,sexually and emotionally abused it was clear to me that society is in part to blame for ignoring obviously beaten child when they are right in front of their face in either a school setting or the emergency room. But getting discovered can lead to heightened abuse a home far from the police station.
After coming to school with a bleeding broken nose my second grade teacher turned me over to the nurse whom phoned the police. Well they pretended to be my friends and got me to tell the truth. Within hours i was back home with my abusive step-dad madder than hell that his secret had been exposed. From the time I was 8 I never trusted another adult and began to live in my own world.
Wonder why most of the abused don’t come forward? They have usually through this before and realize that they end up right back where they came from;the absers are angrier and can’t wait to take their sickness out on you,in this case a small child who weighed 60 pounds. #2 Uprooting them and being put into foster care puts an already timid kid into a place where you have no protection. Although homelike sucks it is the one they know. I’ve met several persons at support groups whom have been placed in foster care,only to be sexually or physically abused. 3. Call it Stocholm syndrome but although it sounds sick it is common for the childeren to love these maniacs. They begin to see bad attention as any attention,sadly they learn to love their abusers. 3.)My step-father who beat me constantly,knocking me unconcios etc…was never taken to court in anyway. It was the 70’s when sadly children were seen as their property and statistically unless you kill a strangers white child no one really wants to get involved to help these children. The cops in my case had several photos of my numerous interactions with them.
A friend of mine in high school finally had enough abuse and shot his father to death. We always thought that had his father done these things to a neighbor or a stranger he would have been in jail. But it seems that you,as a child,have no rights in the eye of the law. Often when you do try to get help the athoraties are dubious to interceded the confines of a family home.
Anyway, I grew up angry and alone until we moved to a different state and my abusive stepdad left my mother who was six months pregnant. Then I turned into a bully and stated to be a monster. Then one day it just stopped less than a year later. Instead I turned to drugs and alcohol to numb my pain which I didn’t stop until I was 35.
Amy you are right! Lots has to change in dealings with children of abuse. We need a revoulution in how we handle these cases or not be suprised when people like Brent act out. After years of someone four times your size beats you almost daily you come out damaged . Who knows if Brent’s dad didn’t knock something loose in his head?
Thanks for this forum
Best,Troy
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Clearly, his choices landed him in the situation where he is now–and yet I wonder what factors affected those choices.
There is no doubt in my mind he does not function like most people, and he would often tell me of “blacking out” and waking up to find himself in the midst of attacking someone. There is a common pattern to these blackouts, such as what he described to me in a letter dated earlier this month, on July 9:
I had another seizure thing about an hour ago. It’s not so bad ya know accept for the stupid headache that comes at the beginning. The headache is like, Blinding. Sudden Burning intense pain. The rest is easy peasy because its a Euphoric Confusion and some numbness in my jaw and tongue with odd tastes and smells and my favorite part the eyeball dance as i now call it. Wow Dude! Thats some Good Shit Man! Ok the end of em suck because that confusion is real bad. Like who am i, where am i type shit.
A friend of mine sent me this interesting story that ran on NPR about the brains of sociopaths. According to the expert, people with little activity in the orbital cortex, which is an area in the front of the brain behind the eyes, have little impulse control. This can affect their moral decision-making process, and as a result, dark behaviors can take over, such as ones linked to violence and rage.
In some people, the article says, the orbital cortex doesn’t work properly. The reasons? Maybe they had a brain injury. Or maybe they were born that way?
It’s been more than 25 years, and I still haven’t forgotten it.
I was eating dinner at a crowded Wendy’s restaurant when a woman seated nearby with a child suddenly reached across the table and slapped him, hard. He was about 8 or 9. He started sobbing, which only made her angrier, and so she began to scream at him to shut up. Then she slapped him again. She looked practiced at it. He cried quietly, his head down.
Everyone stared.
None of us did anything.
I couldn’t eat anymore. I started shaking my head, and the guy I was with–and I would later wonder at his own history that prompted his perspective–saw it coming and started saying to me, “Don’t you do anything. Don’t you say anything. It will only make it worse.”
I stood up, unable to finish my meal, and threw it away. Then I walked over to her and quietly said, “If you keep this up, someday, someone will report you.”
I felt disgusted with myself as I said it because I knew it wasn’t going to be me.
Then I looked at the little boy, who had lifted his head and was staring at me with wide eyes, and I said to him, “This is not your fault.”
I now know so much more than my 20-year-old self, and I know that bystander intervention is a complicated, complex situation that can indeed make things worse if it’s done with anger and blame and an attitude that leads to more violence.
But I also know I will never again stand by and watch someone being hurt.
How many opportunities did people have to help Brent Brents when he was still an abused child, before he was a predator?
How many opportunities do people have to speak up about suspected abuse in some way, and yet they do and say nothing?
It doesn’t have to be this way. We don’t have to be this way. There are lots of resources out there to guide folks through the process of being a Good Samaritan, and not simply a bystander. We can try to diffuse an escalating situation with humor, we can ask others to help us for moral support, we can leave the area and quietly and safely call 911.
This guide, for example, focuses on child abuse.
And this one focuses on adult violence intervention.
When producers with Investigation Discovery called Margaret for an interview, she told them she would feel more comfortable if I was there. I had interviewed Margaret for a story in February 2005, shortly after she was raped and beaten by Brent Brents in her home. He had stalked her for three days, and attacked her as she returned home from a walk. At the time of that first interview, she still had bruises on her face and throat from where he hit and choked her.
Margaret and I talked often while her case wound its way through the court system. During a hearing in Aurora in July 2005, Brents pleaded guilty to Margaret’s attack and also to molesting a little boy.
The day of the hearing, Margaret astounded me when she asked me to deliver a message to Brents for her: “Tell him I forgive him.”
After it all ended, we would call each other from from time to time, and she would update me on her life since the assault. It’s been a constant struggle. I have tried to help Margaret in small ways–by lending an ear, offering encouragement or helping her find resources, such as how to get her dog recognized as an emotional support dog because she needs him to be able to go out in public.
I don’t think most people, unless they are a survivor themselves, ever truly realize how hard it can be to piece one’s life back together after a sexual assault. So here are Margaret’s words that I wrote down before that interview with her a few weeks ago, describing the hell she’s been through and her own personal journey to try to not hate the man who took so much from her:
Now I feel like I should crawl in a hole and hide my face. One advocate told me that she’d been raped at 15. She fussed at me that I should help my husband pack up our things because I didn’t want to stay in the house anymore. One victim advocate told me that the way I looked caused him to attack me–that I was small, vulnerable. I felt like after that it was my fault. She told me, ‘You’re going overboard with this.’ I started crying, ‘I’m sorry, this is the way I feel right now, I can’t help it.’ I felt like I was just a monster, too.
Someone told my husband, ‘What was she thinking taking the RTD (bus)?’ It was my fault for looking dumb and short and small. That I look like a victim.
I’m not feeling bad for the man who tried to kill me but for the little boy who had the same thing that happened to him.
I’m always scared. Always jumpy. I’m treated differently everywhere I go.
I’m not the same person any more.
In my dreams, it’s like I have to save him. It wasn’t the way he was born. What can a little boy do when his mother and father treat him that way?
I never think that little boy says, ‘This is what I want to do for the rest of my life.’ I’m sure he wasn’t doing that because it made him happy. And he’s still a person. I’m not going to say he’s an animal.
If it was me, I would want people to try to help me or try to listen to me and not look at me like I’m an animal or a monster.
When you hate somebody, it’s always there, torturing you. I’m not about to be judging anybody.
What would I say to other victims? Stay busy. Forgive. Forget. Because if you hate somebody, you’re never gonna get cured, ever. The best thing to do is forgive.
Hating is not hard. If I go on hating the person for what happened to me I will never get over it. I have to forgive in order to forget and move on.
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When I started writing about the Brent Brents case through this website, it was with no expectations that anyone would understand the message I was trying to get across: That we need to realize how and why predators exist if we want to prevent the pain they inflict.
I had no expectations, but I did have hope. I thought if just one person “got it,” there could be a positive ripple effect, no matter how slight, and the effort would be worth it.
Clearly, I didn’t have enough faith.
So now I’d like to give a heartfelt thank you to all those who have offered their support, and to whose who have taken the time to write and share their thoughts and stories. It’s been a gratifying process, and at times, a sobering one for the realization of how much silent suffering people carry around.
Toward that end: If you have been abused or assaulted, or are worried that someone you know will inflict harm upon yourself or others, I urge you to seek professional help. There are many organizations you can call, such as the ones listed on the right side of the home page on this website.
If you know someone who has committed a crime that has not been reported, please contact the police and get them involved.
And to those who have written to say they object to this project, I understand. And if anyone has been triggered by it because of their own personal, painful history, I hope you seek out someone to talk to–a counselor, friend, family member, church member. If reading this site distresses you, there is always the option to close your browser and walk away.
I’d also like to clarify a few points:
I believe Brents should be held responsible for his crimes and remain in prison for the rest of his life. I am not making excuses for him–he chose to inflict pain on others. What I am trying to do is figure out why.
Can he be manipulative? Yes. Do I share personal information with him? No. Do I think he now has a sincere desire for some measure of redemption? Yes. And if I’m wrong, then all I’ve wasted is my time and some compassion.
I don’t believe anyone is born evil. Have you ever looked at a baby and thought, That little person’s gonna be a criminal who will eventually rage and crush some souls?
I do think the window of opportunity to help Brents closed decades ago. Maybe if someone had intervened in his life when he was a child, he’d be on a different path. So now all that’s left are questions, and I firmly believe they are worth asking.
I wonder how he formed the decision to become a perpetrator instead of a victim, and how you influence that choice.
I wonder how much drugs and alcohol–and a family history of their abuse–contributed to his lack of impulse control.
I wonder if the blackouts he’s had since he was a child that doctors now say are small seizures caused by brain damage from being beaten by his father played a role.
Again, these are not excuses. But they are factors, and if we can recognize and prevent these factors from happening, can we start to prevent the horrors that predators leave in their wake?
The way our society deals with the issue of sexual assault is a broken, misguided process. We’ve become so punitive, we even punish the victims who dare come forward.
Anger and hate are easy, but they rarely lead to change.
–Amy Herdy
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The story of Brent Brents and Amy Herdy was featured as the subject of an episode of “On the Case with Paula Zahn” on the Investigation Discovery Channel June 27. Check local listings to see when the episode will air again and learn more about the Diary of a Predator project.
Brent Brents wrote this letter as a response to Jane. Amy gave the original handwritten letter to Jane. According to Amy, “Jane read it and got choked up a little, too, and she said, ‘If I had hoped for how his reply would be, this was it.'”
Dear Jane,
I respect and admire your courage. Amy and i have shared the goal of giving victims of Rape, sexual abuse and any other abuses suffered a safe place to have a voice of their own. A safe secure place. I am thankful you found the site and chose to use it for what it is meant for.
I would like to address what the Dr. told you “If you do what you have always done, you’ll get what you always get.” That is the bitter truth of my life. I kept my own mind a prisoner, in my own never ending cycle of mindless hate and anger at those who used me. Never being able to let go of that which tortured me.
Jane i was a victim. But i became a monster of sorts, because it was an easier, safer way to live. Sad but true. It was easier to lash out and harm others, than it was to be truthful and honest with myself. I did not know how to handle the guilt and shame.
You spoke of emptiness. With each person i ever hurt, there was the idea that i could fell that emptiness, that barren place in my soul. But all i accomplished was creating an empty barren place in another human being.
I could have tried harder when the opportunities to change presented themselves in my life. They were there, and there were good people who attempted to help me do so. But i chose to have power and control through brutality. And having known personaly how being raped and abused affected me, i chose rape as my weapon.
Jane in these last five years I have been able to let go of that need for power and control over others. I am vulnerable as hell emotionaly and physicaly. It sucks not to have control over my life. Yes people are angry with me for speaking out. For my being a rapist. I live in a world were 95 % of the people would kill me if they could. I stopped feeling sorry for myself, and i accept the life i live physicaly and emotionaly, is the least of the justice my victims deserve. They deserve more.
There is not one single day that goes by that i don’t feel guilt and shame for what i have done. To the many people who did not deserve my rage, hatred or brutality. There are constant reminders of the animal that i was. No one can punish me more than i punish myself.
So this is a quote from your letter. “I think i am cursed with empathy, because i cannot bring myself to be angry enough at my attacker, in order to grasp closure. Anger can sew up wounds, but it can also keep ripping them open.”
I sincerely wish i knew what to say to that. I found only recently that i wasn’t so angry at my parents for their abuse, as i was at their denials. I felt so low and worthless. I could not then, nor can i now understand how either could say they loved me and yet Deny everything that ever happened. I never wanted an apology from them. All i really wanted was to be validated and loved. Yet they were incapable of saying privately to me, What we did was wrong. Still to this day my mom denies it. I’m not angry at her anymore. I will always have a lingering sense of sadness i suppose. For the loss of what could have been.
Jane empathy is not a curse. I have learned these last few years that good people are people who have empathy. You are good people. I have seen how people with empathy can change lives.
I see someone, a human being such as yourself, And how rape has affected you. I feel shame and self hatred. And Sad because there have been millions of victims of rape and abuse who don’t choose to act out and hurt others as i have. But what is worse is there are millions who do and probably as many who are never caught. A Sad reality.
For your sake i hope that someday you can find what it is that helps you find closure. I am sincerely sorry that your life was deprived of safety and sanity by someone like myself. If there is any way i can help in your healing process i will do so sincerely through Amy. Above all i hope that you continue to use the site to help yourself and others.
Your courage is awesome, i hope it inspires others to use the site. And yes there needs to be discussion. Not only for those who have suffered. But for those who are and who will suffer. It is my hope that the site will not only be a safe place for healing, But a place for those who are being abused to be able to use the help offered there.
And Jane, may you find peace and freedom.
Brent Brents
5-4-10
A letter to Brent Brents from a reader.
Dear Brent,
I am a victim of rape. The person who took away my comfortable view of the world was someone who was always close to me. So perhaps I am fit to say that I’ve lived one day in your life. I am somebody else’s victim, and you are somebody else’s victim and attacker. I cannot ever fully understand the dichotomy you are living, but I have a glimpse of at least half of the anger you may have for your attackers.
I have never been a judgmental person because I have never seen the point in it. I do not aim to judge you, but I aim to cross the communication divide between attacker and victim because I think people are complex beings with far more beyond 3 simple dimensions- and that includes you who society may deem worthless.
Rape is a power conquest, and I have been overpowered by a conquestor. I knew the whole time that I did not matter, that I was thoroughly inconsequential beneath my attacker.
After reading your story on this web site, I felt that perhaps you are cursed with an emptiness for which you demand a witness- even if you create another victim in the process. I think I am cursed with empathy, because I cannot bring myself to be angry enough at my attacker in order to grasp closure. Anger can sew up wounds, but it can also keep ripping them open.
It is a mistake to think you are only ever an attacker, just as it is a mistake to think that I am only ever a victim. I am not naïve, I read how many victims you believe you have claimed. My attacker has also claimed many- but he was never named. I did not name him because he told me not to- and I never had any power to say no to him, he never listened when I ever said “no.”
It is a mistake to say we can’t change also, because then you will never try to heal yourself. You will pace the same steps in your cellblock, with the same thoughts, the same fears, and the same hopelessness, and find comfort in the same things—things which have only ever reproduced your own anger and hopelessness because you just created more victims. You create your own hell wherever you are.
Even if you never get out of your cell (and I never leave mine, that I’ve created and locked), you need to locate your own humanity and sense of comfort or you won’t find anything within you that is human or comfortable.
Being raped left me fragmented, and there’s no quick fix for it. I had to go to a mental hospital because I literally began starving myself in order to find comfort. I wanted to disappear, to go somewhere I didn’t feel my own thoughts. I still don’t find much that is more comfortable than that. But if I can share with you some words from a doctor that helped me, I only hope they can also help you find a new perspective: “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you always get.”
I barely know why I am writing to you. I don’t know anymore where my attacker is, and I know I am not brave enough to tell him anything. I do know however, that silence is the death of us all. I appreciate the creation of this website, and I appreciate your ability to share your own story even though I’m sure it’s made many people angry. Most people don’t want to understand the attackers, or the predators of society.
I want people to read about those we condemn however. We need to know who we are condemning. Too many times the truth is that we have condemned them twice. The first was when they were victimized and we didn’t listen.
We need to encourage discussion, so that those who have suffered have a space to talk. If we don’t include everyone in this discussion, then we are only blindsiding ourselves. Neither communication nor peace is a one-way road.
I am not advocating for your physical freedom, what I am advocating for is your humanity’s freedom. For myself, it is the other way around.
–Jane
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Sometimes a mans past is a regret that will kill him. That child (one of his victims) unlike any of the others drives me to do good. Even if it costs me my life. I know i can’t stop all the evil or hate or abuse. But with your help Amy we can do at least a little to change the world. I can Never forgive myself. I can only hope that when my time comes it will bring a peace to all those i hurt.
I can never thank you enough for standing with me. To help someone heal or avoid the kind of troubles i have known in my life is all i can hope for. To keep one woman or child from being abused is more than All i have done in my whole life. And Amy i am glad i will always see their eyes. Justice in its real form.Well have a good day more later. Smile Amy.
Brent Brents – Jan. 11, 2010
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Many of Brent Brents' victims were prostitutes, women who are especially vulnerable to violence. Therefore, part of the proceeds from the sale of every edition of Diary of a Predator: A Memoir will go to Street's Hope, a Denver non-profit organization dedicated to helping women leave the sex-for-sale industry.
Diary of a Predator 