God Don’t Like Ugly

Dear Rebecca,

I see you made the news again this week. This was the first time I saw a good picture of your mug shot. You did a really good job of making it the ugliest it could have been. But if you thought nobody would recognize you, you were wrong.  Now you just look fucked up. Which, didn’t help your case, in jail or in the courts.

It was with mixed emotions I listened to the news broadcast reporting the latest in your cases.  A part of me wanted to announce “Hey! I know her!” but decided against it when I heard that you have been sentenced to ten years for sexually assaulting those little girls.

I sat in jail with you this summer, sometimes beside you, sometimes across from you, sharing meals, sharing stories, laughter and tears.  I listened as you told your story, I stood there beside you while the others would yell and call you names.

I heard you tell us how your parents had come in and taken your mobile home and moved it, along with all of your possessions.  I felt bad when you said your family had turned their backs and refused any communication with you.  I heard you dream of moving to California as soon as you got out.  The hope of a new life, away from these awful allegations.

You said that you loved those little girls, as if they were your own.  You said that they were with you all the time, how you would bathe them, dress them, do their hair. You explained that the neighbor was mad at you, but you were fuzzy as to why.  You said that the allegations were her way of getting back at you and your boyfriend, although again you were vague as to what she was retaliating for.  You even went so far as to say, “If she truly believed the girls were being abused, why did she keep bringing them back to us?”

I understand that telling everyone that the sexual abuse/molestation charges had been dropped was for self-preservation.  I understand that the jail had no other choice but to pretend, even though the whole act was pretty transparent. I don’t fault you for that.  I get the whole downplaying the whole thing, I mean, what you were charged with, and have actually been convicted of, are pretty heinous. It would be hard for me to admit to myself let alone anyone else that I had not only allowed it to happen in my house, I had participated. The Alfred Plea, where you don’t plead guilty, but concede the prosecutors have enough evidence to convict you, doesn’t make you any less responsible for you, John and Billy did to those girls.

So now I’m at the Why? stage.  Why did you do it?  Why did you not only allow them to do those horrible things to those girls,  you helped, you participated.  How does a person get to a point where that behavior was ok?  What was so much worse than saying NO and stopping it? Whatever was going on between you, your boyfriend, and your neighbor, cost you 10 years of your life, which is way less than it cost those little girls.  What ever games you were playing weren’t games to those babies whose lives are damaged now, and scarred.

The next ten years ahead of you will not be easy. You have been labeled, and you now have a target on your back.  The courts, the jails, the prisons are not going to protect you for the next 10 years.  Maybe, maybe the torment, the hell, the ugliness that you will have to endure will somehow measure up the ugly, abuse, hell you inflicted on those girls.  I hope that you get some idea of how much you made those girls suffer, how much you hurt them, how much you took away from them, how much you destroyed.

Everyday, your way of offering comfort to those around you, and to get back at the ones tormenting you, was “God don’t Like Ugly”.  I believe that is true, but coming from you it’s ironic.  God don’t like ugly. Ugly doesn’t even begin to describe what you did to them.