So i kept a close watch on the Stubenville Ohio Rape case where the two high school football players raped that girl. I’m glad the judge found them guilty. Shamed that he only gave them one year in juvee. The one Kid got all teary eyed and broke down apologizing. But it wasn’t out of empathy for the young girl. It was for him realizing he had just lost all that was good for him. It was selfish. I know because i have given that same apologetic teary eyed act before. It was selfish.
It’s to bad he doesn’t get empathy. It’s taken me a lifetime to realize the power that people with empathy have. They are often seen as week but the truth is they are the strong. I am getting there. But i was that boy with the tears and choking sobs. They are touching. But I like him, I was only just realizing how bad i screwed up and what the consequences meant for me.
-Brent Brents 3-19-13
Tag Archives: raped
that same apologetic teary eyed act
Filed under Brents' writings
Three Words That Triggered a Final Spree of Violence: “You Little Punk”
Brent Brents often told me his greatest fear was not of being killed, or tortured, or injured in any way–but of being shamed.
“Please don’t make me look stupid,” he would repeatedly say to me regarding publishing his writings, and when I asked him why the fear of humiliation held so much power over him, he didn’t have an answer.
The very first time I interviewed him, Brents told me his final crime spree-where he raped three women and two children over the course of a weekend–was triggered by a police detective talking smack to him on the phone in an effort to get Brents, who had a warrant out for his arrest, to turn himself in. I write about it in Diary of a Predator: A Memoir.
“He called me a little punk. ‘Tell me where you’re at. I’ll come get you, you little punk,’” Brents told me. “I said, ‘Fuck you. Come get me.’”
Then, he said, “I worked myself into this rage, walked out of the coffee shop . . . [thinking] ‘You wanna play games? I can play games, too.’”
At the time, I thought it was a ridiculous excuse, and merely a way for Brents to avoid taking responsibility for his actions. And while he is indeed responsible for his actions, today I now understand the deep motivation that shame and humiliation play in inciting violence.
“I have yet to see a serious act of violence that was not provoked by the experience of feeling shamed and humiliated, disrespected and ridiculed, and that did not represent the attempt to prevent or undo this ‘loss of face’–no matter how severe the punishment, even if it includes death,” writes James Gilligan in his excellent book, Violence: Reflections On a National Epidemic.
“The purpose of violence is to diminish the intensity of shame and replace it as far as possible with its opposite, pride…”
The more trivial the matter, Gilligan says, the deeper the humiliation: “…their very triviality makes it even more shameful to feel ashamed about them.”
Men who feel this way and act on it become violent because they feel they have no nonviolent alternative to boost their self esteem, Gilligan says. Also, with their sense of self threatened to be overwhelmed by shame, they lack the emotions of love and guilt that would normally prevent someone from becoming violent.
Again, it doesn’t excuse Brent Brent’s behavior–but it does help explain it.
Filed under The story
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
Filed under The story
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.
Filed under The story
Diary of a Predator 