Tag Archives: rape

by | June 5, 2012 · 9:56 pm

all people have aspects of goodness and evil within

I received this thoughtful letter the other day through this website, and it’s definitely worth sharing:

Dear Amy,
I heard you on Colorado Matters and felt great empathy to you; I hope to know you someday. My best friend, Shannon Moroney, married a man who, to all who knew him, was absolutely wonderful. Still, a month after their wedding, he violently kidnapped and raped two women, then turned himself in, pled guilty to Canada’s highest penalty –violent offender– and is serving a life sentence. Shannon (and her parents, many friends, and I) still maintain contact with Jason who shares many similarities with Brent.

Though his crimes were horrific, the person I know was kind, held my infant daughter, and treated me, and especially Shannon, with kindness. Last fall, Shannon published a book that I hope you get to read someday, THROUGH THE GLASS. Currently, it is only available in Canada through Doubleday, but it will be coming to the US in the fall.

I am so grateful to you for sharing the story of the criminal who is never, as we wish he/she were, purely evil. I believe, as I think you do, that all people have aspects of goodness and evil within. Jason was also sexually abused as a child. When Shannon has been confronted with the accusation “well, all victims of sexual assault don’t become sexual offenders,” her response is, “thank God.”

Why some people do turn to crime is a source of great sadness for those of us who have cared for and even loved victims of crime and the offenders themselves. Please feel my support and understand my gratefulness for telling Brent’s story.

I look forward to reading your book.

Best, Rachael

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by | May 22, 2012 · 7:56 pm

A Mother Who Lost Her Daughter to Rape Searches for Answers

How awful to know that your daughter was raped, and that her attacker was someone she was supposed to trust.

Now imagine being told that after all she had endured, your daughter killed herself, and you’ll know what Suzie is going through.

Suzie contacted me after reading a blog I posted to this website about The Invisible War,  a gripping documentary about the crisis of sexual assaults within the U.S. military. I’m interviewed in the film because of my work covering the issue, primarily the series I coauthored at the Denver Post about sexual assault and domestic violence in the U.S. military called “Betrayal in the Ranks.”

But back to Suzie–here’s part of what she said:

“My daughter was sexually assaulted 3 times in her 3 and a half years in the Army. Twice on American soil, once during her year being deployed in Afghanistan. It culminated in her taking her own life after being told she was bi-polar or borderline personality disorder… She said they wanted to get rid of her and not the rapist. Please help me find truth for all of these men and women whom have had to endure what our own HOMELAND SECURITY could have prevented!!!! God Bless!! I AM NOT FINISHED WITH THIS!”

Her tragic story drives home this point: Whether a rapist is stalking women on the streets of Denver or within his own military unit, we’re enabling him as long as we allow our systems to put victims through hell for reporting their assaults.

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by | February 13, 2012 · 6:00 am

rape is a cruel torture on a human soul

So i reject the B.S. life principles my parents and others filled my head with and demonstrated for me. Why? Because i know and have known for  years that i have been capable of Not blaming others, Taking responsibility for my own actions. And that i chose to hurt people solely to satisfy my own desparate emptiness and fucked up sense of emotional understanding that rape is a cruel torture on a human soul.

Brent Brents 8-10-11

 

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by | November 26, 2011 · 6:00 am

letter to Natasha: i did it to inflict the deepest wounds

Note from Amy: Here are the questions that Natasha posed to Brent that he’s referring to in his letter:

I feel that prisons as they stand today are horrible places and dehumanizing and in no way “corrective” or “rehabilitating”, they only make distressed prisoners more distressed. I wish there was a medium — something like constant supervision of violent prisoners in order to ensure safety of self and others, but with some humanity and compassion attached to it. May I ask, what would be your ideal vision if you could wave a wand and make it happen, past mistakes aside? Do you think you could 100% stop yourself from hurting others in those moments that your rage comes flooding through your mind, if you were a free man? -Natasha

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Ok so i finished the letter to Natasha. I hope it helps answer her questions. Sometimes its not easy to answer peoples questions. simply because the answers are brutal to face myself. Let alone other peoples reactions to them.

-Brent Brents 11-20-11

Natasha,

Ok look somedays i am Not real good at this. I have a tendency to forget that people are basicly inocent and even genuinely nieve. When i first read your Letter to Amy i thought what a foolish nieve person. My honest apologies.

Theres no real simple way to help people get what i think or feel most days. But i will try, then i will answer the two questions you asked me.

Imagine if you can Not being able to walk five steps 24 hours a day, without a sexually violent thought, thoughts of violence, or having the constant desire to release an unatainable high thru ejaculation.

I have OCD, and Manic depression. For roughly 32 years now i have been obsessed with sexual violence, Not just the act. But the deep deep scars it creates in people who i victimized.

I think and feel these things like i breathe air. It sucks. I am constantly ashamed. I wash my hands close to a hundred times a day. I’ grateful that my psych meds leave me physicaly impotent as well as largely curb my obsessions.

I hate that part of me. It Never sleeps, Never surrenders, and Never tires of crushing the soul out of other people. Its angry, full of rage and hate. I push it down, try to focus on other things. Up until now i have had Little or No idea how to restrain myself. It was like heroin. There was this high, yet just like heroin, i couldn’t get high enough. These days the meds help.

I know now i should have sought this type of Mental health care many years ago. But i was to pridefull and ignorant. I feel ashamed that i have fought medication so hard and so long.

So as to the question of 100% stoping myself. If i say yes i am disrespecting you, those i hurt, my friends and myself. Do i want to hurt people. “No” absolutely Not. Some men rape for pleasure, some for control, some to relieve some deep ugly creep inside. Me, i did it to inflict the deepest wounds. The ones i was all to familiar with. The pain of a broken soul. To have control of and to crush someone mentaly. And it still wasn’t enough. I always felt empty and even more full of bitter rage after an attack.

Now I might be able to control myself. But lets Not go there. The Simple truth is if i got out today i would spend a day each with my friends and buy enough heroin to OD on. I just couldn’t imagine hurting anyone else. I would rather die. My brain Natasha is broken. That’s the best way i know how to put it. Broken.

(note from Amy–the second half of this letter to be continued).

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by | November 23, 2011 · 6:00 am

This is Margaret–a survivor of rape

I got a call the other day from someone who read my book, Diary of a Predator: A Memoir, and he said one of the things he found amazing was the account of how one of Brent Brents’ victims, a woman named Margaret, forgave Brents for what he did to her.

I agreed. Even as I was covering her case, Margaret’s ability to find compassion in the midst of all of her own pain, anger and sorrow astounded me. To this day, she remains one of my heroes.

After hanging up the phone with that reader, I thought, “I wonder how Margaret is doing?” and so I gave her a call. I left her a voice mail, and she called me back the next day.

“I was just thinking the other day, ‘I wonder how Amy’s doing?’–and then you called,” she told me. “Pretty funny.”

And when I asked about her life, she answered me, in true Margaret fashion, with a stream of consciousness. Like many survivors of rape who struggle with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Margaret said she still often has a hard time leaving the house. Her marriage fell apart, and she cannot hold down a job. She applied for disability and was turned down, but she’s got a lawyer and is appealing.

More than anything, she continues to fight to heal. But I’ll let Margaret put it in her own words, which she said I could post here:

“The therapist tells me, You don’t wanna think about it. But if you don’t think about it then you dream about it.

When I go to sleep I have nightmares, and I don’t even remember what about.

Filling out a job application–my hands are shaking, I feel like they’re watching me: “What’s going on? Stupid!”

-That’s when I started noticing, What’s left of Margaret? I know that I have to feel better. But when, I don’t know.

I don’t think I’ll ever be the same but I’ll work on getting on with my life.

It’s going to be tough but I’m not gonna let it bother me forever. You have to move on. If you stay mad forever you will tear yourself up even worse. I look at anger as a bad thing and I try to leave it behind.

I’m sure he had a lot of anger, a lot of hurt and anger. I feel bad for everything that happened to him. Maybe someday down the road I can read everything.

I feel bad still but I know there are a lot of people who have it worse. So in a way I feel lucky.”

-Margaret 11-18-11

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by | July 10, 2010 · 5:00 am

How do we help the Margarets of the world?

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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