#and the members of the church forgive the pastor (?) and hugged him afterwards

[sky-daddy-hates-me]

Today on Christian bullshit :

[seniorbrief]

My Father Was the BTK Killer. Here’s Why I Managed to Forgive Him.

Travis Heying/Wichita Eagle

The man knocked on Kerri Rawson’s door around noon on February 25, 2005. She looked out at him from inside her apartment near Detroit—he was holding an FBI badge.

She almost didn’t answer. Her father, a code compliance officer in Park City, a suburb of Wichita, Kansas, had taught her to be wary of strangers, and this one had sat in his car for an hour outside her home. But she decided to let the FBI agent into her kitchen, where she had made a chocolate Bundt cake. From then on, the smell of chocolate cake would make her queasy.

The man asked if she knew what BTK was. Yes, she did. BTK—Bind, Torture, Kill—was the nickname for the serial killer who had scared her mom decades ago and who was responsible for murdering ten people in Kansas between 1974 and 1991.

The FBI guy was her dad’s age, in his late 50s, wearing glasses and a necktie, nervous. Kerri was a 26-year-old substitute teacher taking a day off, still in her pajamas. The man said her dad had been arrested as a BTK Killer suspect. He needed to swab her cheek for DNA. (Here are the strangest unsolved mysteries in each state.)

At that moment, in Park City, Kerri’s mother, Paula Rader, 56, sat down to lunch at home, waiting for her husband, Dennis. Cops rushed in, guns drawn. A week later, Paula’s lunch still sat uneaten in the house she had shared with Dennis since the early 1970s. She’d never sleep there again.

Cops arrested Dennis as he was driving home for lunch. In Wichita, officers picked up family and friends for questioning. At the police station, Paula defended Dennis. Back in Detroit, Kerri yelled at the FBI agent. The last time she had seen her dad was in Park City at Christmas. He’d looked sad. She remembered his bear hug, how he smelled, his brown uniform. This could not be true, she told the man. Dad had called last night, asking if she’d checked the oil in her car.

At that point, she did something she would do many times over the next seven days: defend and then doubt her father at the same time. She told the agent about Marine Hedge. Hedge, 53, was a grandmother with a silky southern accent, five feet tall, weighing no more than 100 pounds. She’d lived six doors down from the Raders and disappeared in 1985, when Kerri was six. Hedge’s body was later found in a ditch. Paula had been fearful. “Don’t worry,” Dad had said. “We’re safe.”

Kerri remembered that when Hedge disappeared, her dad wasn’t home. “It was stormy, and I didn’t want to sleep by myself. My mom let me in her bed—that’s how I know he was gone.”

After the FBI agent left, she took down a picture of her father from the hallway and stuck it in a closet. She Googled “BTK” for proof that he was innocent but then told her husband she was matching her memories to BTK’s murder timeline, wondering if her whole life might be a lie.

The next day, police and politicians gathered in Wichita’s city hall. “BTK is arrested,” the police chief announced. Kerri was furious when she learned that to link her dad to the BTK Killer, cops had obtained one of her Pap smears taken years before at Kansas State University’s clinic. They used it to confirm that the Rader family DNA closely matched DNA in the semen that BTK left at the scene of a quadruple homicide in 1974. The FBI guy had asked Kerri for a cheek swab so he could double-check her DNA.

The first nights, Kerri and her husband, Darian, slept as if one of them needed to be on watch—she on the couch, he on the floor. TV crews camped outside, and when Darian drove to work, they followed.

Darian watched his wife change. Athletic and nearly five foot ten, she was no girlie girl, and he loved that. She could walk for days carrying a backpack. But now, she was the BTK Killer’s daughter. She even looked like her dad: same dark hair, same eyes. She shared his middle name, Lynn. She felt as if she’d done something wrong.

Courtesy Kerri Rawson

Kerri searched her memories. The night of Hedge’s murder, Dad had taken Brian, her brother, on a Boy Scout campout. Was it an alibi so he could sneak out and murder their neighbor? In 2004, around Christmas, after BTK threatened in letters to the police and news outlets that he would kill again, Dad had driven her to the airport to pick up her brother. But Dad had wandered off. Was he mailing one of those letters? Watching the news to see if he was mentioned? She minutely analyzed her whole life.

Kerri remembered how he spoke sharply if she sat in his chair or failed to put her shoes away. Cops said BTK made strange marks in his communications to them. She recalled weird marks Dad made on newspaper stories. “Code,” he’d called it.

Three days after her dad’s arrest, Kerri flew back to Kansas City. On the plane, she escaped by reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. But on her layover, she saw her father’s face on the airport’s TV screens.

Mike Clark, the family’s pastor, visited Dennis Rader in jail a week after his arrest. Clark called Paula afterward, and Kerri watched her mother take the call, with a yellow legal pad in her hand. Paula wrote, “He’s confessing,” and underlined it as they talked.

It was true. He had murdered the Oteros: a mom, a dad, and two children, ages 11 and 9. He had tortured victims, sexually defiled several. He had taken Hedge’s body inside Christ Lutheran Church, where he was congregation president. He posed her and took photos. BTK had started his crimes in 1974, before Kerri was born.

Everybody assumed the BTK Killer was a sadistic genius. But the real BTK is an ordinary, inarticulate doofus, Darian thought. And a good dad, Kerri said. With Paula, he’d taught the kids’ godliness. Kerri had two college degrees; Brian, her older brother, had been an Eagle Scout and was training to serve on U.S. Navy nuclear submarines.

Dennis couldn’t understand why no family members visited. Kerri wrote him: “You have had these secrets, this ‘double life’ for 30 years; we have only had knowledge of it for three months … We are trying to cope and survive … You lied to us, deceived us.”

The family dreaded a trial, where his crimes would be described. Dennis pleaded guilty to spare them. Kerri felt relieved until the plea hearing. Her dad told a TV audience at length how he had killed people, lingering over how he’d murdered the Otero kids. He seemed to enjoy the story. He even brought up Kerri. “Joseph Otero had a daughter; I had a daughter.”

One night the next year, while Darian slept, Kerri lay beside him and wrote her father.

“Should I tell you that I grew up adoring you, that you were the sunshine of my life … true, even if it is coming out jaded and bitter now … Sometimes I just want to go out and buy the biggest, buttery tub [of popcorn] I can find and wave it in your face and say, ‘Ha, you won’t ever have this again’ and ask was it worth it? In the next breath I want to ask if you’re staying warm at night … I’m so sorry that you’re alone in that small cold concrete cell and sometimes I just wish I could give you a hug.”

She never sent that letter. And when her dad wrote, his letters sometimes went into the trash, where she dumped cat litter on them. Other times she’d write, and he would not reply, later telling her he’d been busy.

Dennis committed his first murders at age 29. At age 29, Kerri became a mother, and suddenly she truly despised her dad. In 1974, he had killed two children. In 1977, he had strangled Shirley Vian while her six-year-old son watched through a keyhole. In 1986, he killed Vicki Wegerle as her two-year-old stood in a playpen. “Man hurt Mommy,” the child told police. Kerri stopped writing to her father and cut him out of her life.

Sue Parker, a therapist, treated Kerri for five months in 2007. Parker saw a woman with above-average intelligence, poise, and post-traumatic stress. (Kerri gave permission for Parker to be interviewed for this story.) Many factors determine how well people can recover. “It’s about the severity of the trauma and how long it goes on, but it also depends on the coping mechanisms the victims have … their support system, who they have around them,” Parker said.

Kerri had had good people around all her life, Parker thought. A loving husband. Church. Friends. And good parents. Not just Mom. Dad too.

Courtesy Kerri Rawson

The cops said Dennis Rader fancied himself a James Bond character with cover stories—Boy Scout volunteer, congregation president. But the BTK Killer had also been a good dad, Parker said. “Maybe it was all a cover story,” she added. “But if it was, it was a cover story that actually worked.”

While betrayed on a level only God can understand, Parker said, Kerri seemed healthy and strong when she left Parker’s care. After her daughter, Emilie, was born, Kerri clung to teachings about God’s love. But when a sermon on forgiveness was announced at church, she stayed away. She had a second child, Ian, in 2011, but her dad’s betrayals kept poisoning her life. When Emilie was five, she asked her mother where her grandfather was.

“In a long time-out,” Kerri replied.

Could Kerri see him? Emilie asked.

“It’s a really long time-out,” Kerri answered.

One day at church, Darian and Kerri listened to a woman describe being raped. She said she forgave not to help the rapist, but to lighten her own suffering. Kerri talked about that idea for days. In August 2012, she announced at church that her father was a serial killer and told her story. “I have not forgiven him,” she said. Marijo Swanson, a friend, talked to her. “If we choose not to forgive or not work at healing from the betrayal,” she told Kerri, “we continue to give the other person power to control us and our feelings.”

That fall, Kerri suffered a fracture in her tibia. She was laid up for weeks. Shortly afterward, forgiveness poured over her one day. She sobbed so hard while driving that she had to pull the car over. The anger was gone. In December, Kerri wrote to her dad for the first time in five years. She told him she would never forget his crimes or be at peace with them, but she was at peace with the man who had raised her. Then she wrote of her life and of the grandchildren he would never meet. “I don’t know if I will ever be able to make it for a visit but know that I love you and hope to see you in heaven someday.”

After that letter, Kerri changed. “Before she forgave him, she thought of herself as BTK’s daughter,” Darian said later. “But as soon as she forgave him, she was Kerri again.”

In February 2013, Kerri spoke at church. “[God] told me, ‘You have a dad problem; you have a trust and obedience problem. You trusted and obeyed your earthly father, and he hurt you, so now you’re holding out on me. Let’s fix that.’”

She said, “I told Him that ‘I love you.’ He said, ‘Then show me.’”

Courtesy Kerri Rawson

And so she had done it, she told them. She had forgiven him. She wrote again to her father, telling him once more that she forgave him. Her father was stunned. “Forgiveness is there between the lines,” he wrote in his rambling style. “She recalls all that we did as a family—many good memories, and that helps her make the day. That is true love from a daughter’s heart. What else can a father ask for.”

That was not the end to Kerri’s struggles. In September 2013, Stephen King said in a TV interview that he’d written a story inspired by the Rader family called “A Good Marriage,” about discovering a monster in the house. Furious, Kerri gave her own interview, lashing out at King. Among people giving her rave reviews: Dad.

“She reminds me of me,” he wrote to the Wichita Eagle. “Independence, fearless, uses the media. I was touch[ed] by it … People reading … will see we had a ‘good Family.’ Nothing to hide; Only me with my ‘Dark Secrets.’ Like she said, I was a good Dad, (but only did bad things).”

Memories came back to Kerri. In 1996, the Raders had lost a cousin to a car wreck and were losing a grandfather to illness. To comfort the family, her mom made manicotti, but the Raders got into a fight at dinner. “We had this old rickety table and someone—I don’t remember who—pounded on it, and the legs broke and all the dinner came crashing down … My dad was so angry at my brother, he put his hands around my brother’s neck and started to try to choke him. I can still picture it clearly, and I can see the intense anger in my dad’s face and eyes. Close to manic.”

For Kerri, life continued to be complicated. “I fight my dad sometimes in my dreams, never understanding who let him out of prison,” she said. “I’m always very fearful of him and very angry in my dreams. Sometimes I’m even fighting for my life or frantically trying to convince others of the truth.”

On a bitter morning in January 2015, Kerri is in Wichita. “Coming back here to Wichita is like stepping into enemy territory,” she says. She wonders whether people might recognize her, and she talks about forgiveness. “I feel bad for the 30 years of … bad things because of one man, my dad … I forgave him. But I didn’t do that for him,” she says. “I did it for me.”

She returns to her old block and points. “There’s my grandma’s house, and there’s where Mrs. Hedge lived … And here is where our house was.”

It is a vacant lot. The city razed the house to discourage gawkers. “To get to my grandma’s house, I had to walk past Mrs. Hedge’s house, and now [at age six] I was afraid. And the guy who killed her was living in our house.”

She shows where a tree house stood, built by her dad. She indicates with her arms how big his garden had been. “He turned my bedroom into a nursery for plants when I was three, and I’d sleep with my brother in the bunk bed. I was so annoyed with my dad. But now you realize that kept him out of trouble. He was trying to stop. So it was plants—or murder.”

She points to a depression in the grass: the grave of Patches, a pet dog long dead. The cops were so suspicious of the BTK Killer that they had dug up the dog’s remains to see whether BTK had buried any secrets with them. He had not.

But nothing about her life was spared, Kerri says. Not even the graves of long-dead dogs.

Next, find out the most notorious criminals in each state.

Original Source -> My Father Was the BTK Killer. Here’s Why I Managed to Forgive Him.

source https://www.seniorbrief.com/my-father-was-the-btk-killer-heres-why-i-managed-to-forgive-him/

[hazeeeeeeeeeeeeeel]

Happiness

I want to write about happiness in general as a series. For most of my life I could say that I have been pretty damn happy. But lately throughout the past few years I seem to have lost my touch with it. I hope that in writing this series full of my thoughts, anecdotes, and past experiences, I am able to reclaim where I left off mentally and emotionally. This is Chapter 5.

Friendship

I consider friendship to be the most important aspect of happiness and as such this will be the most personal piece I share with you. It’s pretty shit really. If anything I know it’ll make you upset as it continues to make me upset. It’s the key reason to why I have so much hate in my heart and it’s why for the vast majority of the time I absolutely hate being in Torrance and why I absolutely detest hypocrites, especially those who claim to be Christian. It’s why I absolutely hate a certain church by the name of TFPC from the top down. Their pastors, their leaders, their youth group. Every single one of them with the exception of one friend there. It’s the reason why I don’t make rape jokes and replace them with “fucking destroy” or something along the lines of that. It’s why I have no tolerance for people who have raped others, and why I have legitimately been reserved about who I am as a person when meeting new people because I ask myself “what did they hear about me?” On the positive side, it’s why I cherish my friendships more than anything and why I dedicate my life for those who have confided in me like I have in them. This is my most personal story - one that I don’t take lightly in sharing. And I think also, not letting this hatred go has ultimately gotten in the way of me being happy.

There are a few names we ought to be familiar with. For the first group of people, Paulina Nguyen, Sean Kim, and Elizabeth Kim. I met Paulina early in high school and we have been great friends from day 1. She was more on the emotional side and she confided in me as much as I did in her. We were great friends. Sean and Elizabeth used to date. Turns out it was a shitty relationship but I never knew that prior to meeting Sean. Sean and I were good friends from day 1 as well, I guess we just clicked. Elizabeth and I were also good friends who we met through a mutual friend. Sean and Paulina started dating.

The next name is a set by himself, Albert Huh. Albert and I were brothers in my church and we were really connected spiritually and had a bond that you could only experience in a church setting. We didn’t know each other for long, but when you cry together at a church retreat, nothing can take that away. Albert and Elizabeth were friends.

The next names are Tiffany Kim, Rachel Kang, Andrew Chae, Joan Lee, and Ben Lee. Tiffany and I were good friends and her brother was a pastor at my own church I went to. Rachel was a girl I hardcore crushed on my senior year of high school. She was a year older and during the time went to UC Berkeley. We would spend countless nights on Oovoo and check this out, I even chose to video chat with her instead of playing League. Andrew was someone who went to the same church as Tiffany, TFPC. We bonded through a church retreat and not like close as Albert, but still a bond was formed. Joan was similar to Rachel but in a friends setting. I didn’t like her, but we were good friends and it was pretty great. Lastly, Ben was a great friend of mine who also went to TFPC.

One day early in my junior year of high school, Sean and I are hanging out and Elizabeth asks me to hang out and I tell her that I’m hanging out with my friend and that she’s more than welcome to join so she did and bam ex boyfriend and girlfriend reunion. Kinda weird right? So everything seems fine and I found out then and there that Elizabeth and Sean used to date. We just all hung out for a short bit afterwards and then Sean says we should have a group hug goodbye so I wait for Elizabeth’s answer and she said sure so I was like okay. So we did. And then we went our separate ways.

Fast forward to my senior year, I meet Rachel and I become madly infatuated with her. And surprise surprise she ended up liking me back! I was pretty fucking stunned. It was crazy. This girl was a straight up 10. I was probably a 5 on a good day but to her I was a 10 and that’s all that mattered to me. We spent countless hours oovoo-ing and being awesome and when winter season hit we would spend our holiday nights going on walks and just being fucking great. I’m not sure how, but word got around and even my older brother says “yo what’s going on with you and Rachel?” And my cousin (who went to the same school as Rachel) then adds to the family dinner “yeah what’s going on? My friends are talking about it too” which is fucking crazy because mind you, at THAT time, I’m a senior in high school, my oldest brother was in Irvine, my cousin was at UCLA, so why the fuck are they concerned about what Rachel and I have going on? And I tell them “I don’t get why you would be concerned about it” (DAMNNNNN FUCKING TOLD THEM). I guess, when I knew Rachel was a 10, everyone else did so too. Point being, she was a fucking big deal right.

I go to a winter retreat with Tiffany and Ben’s church, TFPC. It was pretty great. Met Andrew there too. Point of this part of the story is meeting Andrew. I’ve known Tiffany and Ben for years and we’ve had great friendships, especially Ben. To THIS day I still keep in touch with Ben. Alright so I come back, and winter is over, back in school for spring. I’m just living my senior year in high school, enjoying life, talking to Rachel, and literally just waiting for graduation to end. And BAM! Graduation.

I didn’t go to prom. My senior year prom date who said yes to me eventually got asked by someone else and she was having doubts and so I was just like fuck it just go with Spencer if you’re going to feel this way why bother (plus it was like 450 bucks for the whole experience with tickets, dinners, and pictures, I was a poor family). We all hung out at my friend’s house after prom and Rachel texts me asking me how was prom. I told her I didn’t go (and mind you this is at 5:00AM) and she was like yo wtf happened so I told her and I also told her I honestly would’ve loved to ask you out to Prom instead but whatever shit happens you were in Berkeley and I didn’t know how to ask you online or through text and I felt like you would have been busy when you got back to Torrance (Berkeley semester schedule so she was in town during prom anyways so woops, I guess I should've texted her anyways). So she asked me if I wanted to get breakfast to which I played it cool and said sure but in my mind I was screaming like fucking goddamn yes I do want to eat breakfast with you. And this is important. The breakfast. To this day I wish I never fucking went. Not because of Rachel, Rachel was stunning as usual. Even on her bad days she was a 10. A real goddess. Rachel Fucking Kang. Fire. Stunning. Grab a dictionary and every positive adjective you got it. When we were walking out of the restaurant, I run into two familiar faces, Albert and Elizabeth. We say hi like old friends (mind you the last time I saw Albert was at my own church retreat and the last time I saw Elizabeth was my junior year while hanging out with Sean). Not wanting to keep Rachel waiting we make it quick and I get ready to drop Rachel off and so I did (even though Rachel asked me to breakfast of course I went to go pick her up, it’s just what you gotta do). I get back to my friend’s and my whole group of friend’s just crash and sleep because we’re tired as fuck. Unbeknownst to me, that morning was the start to the worst fucking time of my life.

A few weeks later, it’s graduation. Everything was good, my church group and I hung out after my graduation with the rest of the graduating class and after dinner we go to get some boba. And I get a phone call, random number, so I pick up. It’s Albert. He asked me, “Yo! Where are you at right now there’s something I need to fucking ask you and I’m like okay sure I’m at Bobaloca” and so he comes quickly, with a large group of friends. Being the guest of honor as the graduating class, my church group (various age range including younger middle schoolers) stick around and Chris, an older member asks me if everything will be okay because it looks sketch that a big group comes to find me, but it was Albert. And Albert was with our church, and he was with Chris spiritually too so Chris asked me and Albert if everything will be okay and so Albert and I both say yes and Chris knowing that something is going to go down decides to trust us takes his cue and takes everyone home. Then Albert opens, “Yo Ariel. You know you’re a brother to me. That time at retreat. Nothing can ever take away our bond. But when I heard what happened. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t fucking believe it.” I reply, “What did you hear?” He says, “my friend said you raped her” and I was so fucking speechless like What. The. Fuck. Did. I. Just. Fucking. Hear. type of speechless. And I tell him, “No. I didn’t.” He then says “she’s here today right there waiting in that car and she wants to meet you and she wants you to go on your knees and beg for forgiveness.” I’m sorta taken aback. Albert then says, “don’t worry. See that guy over there? He’s a brother to me. We’re here because we just want you to apologize but we’re going to make sure you don’t get hurt even though you probably deserve it so just fucking do it okay?” And there was anger and agony in his voice, but at the same time, there was compassion and love. I could tell he was just as devastated as I was. Sure enough Elizabeth walks out of the car in tears and crying.

So I get on my knees, I have an idea of what happened, and I tell her, “Elizabeth, I am so sorry for what happened to you but you HAVE to know I had no idea what was happening at the time and to me it was just a hug. You know me. You know I would never do that to you. And you know Sean, you know what he did to you in the past and that he would have done that there” Looking for words, in utter complete silence, even amongst Albert and his friends they thought an apology for forgiveness was coming out but it wasn’t. Why would I ask for forgiveness for a crime I didn’t do? And Elizabeth at a loss for words, was so emotional and she just started to walk away back to the car. Albert pulls me aside and says, “Hey, let’s go to my car and talk” So we do. Mano a mano. He says, “Did you really not fucking do it.” And I said to him with the utmost sincerity, “Albert. You have to know who that other guy was. He was Elizabeth’s ex boyfriend who abused her” and I told him their past. I then also said, “Look, you coming here and asking for my side first only confirms that you know the type of person I am and that I would never have done or take part if I was aware of what was going on.” He then breathed a heavy sigh. He says, “You’re right. I’m going to talk to her.” He comes back ten minutes later and says “Okay, just leave. Don’t make eye contact with anyone just take your car and go home.” So I do. Then as I’m walking out this crazy bitch (BY THE WAY, I RARELY CALL WOMEN THAT WORD. THERE ARE TIMES I SAY SOMETHING IS BITCHY, BUT ALMOST NEVER A BITCH) named Angela Jung comes out and says “OH IT’S THIS ‘ARIEL’?!?!?!? WHAT THE FUCK.” Because Angela and I knew each other personally. She screams “GET BACK ON YOUR FUCKING KNEES AND APOLOGIZE FOR RAPING ELIZABETH.” I look towards Albert, and I say “Alber-” but before I finished she gave me the biggest bitchslap in the history of bitchslaps. I begin to notice the crowd around me. Andrew Chae was there with some of his friends and I realize that no way he could have known the talk Albert and I had. So what does it look like to him right? Angela slaps me one more time. And she goes for a third and Elizabeth comes out of the car and screams, “STOP!!!! IT WASN’T HIM. HE DIDN'T DO ANYTHING. IT WAS SEAN NOT ARIEL” And after a bit Elizabeth tells me, “don’t talk to me ever again I’m sorry but just go home.” So I left.

On my way home, Albert calls me. I pick up because at this point any talk with Albert is life or death. And Albert asks me for Sean’s number. I give it to him because you can imagine how fucking pissed I am that Sean molested Elizabeth during the group hug without me knowing only for me to take the fall in place of him because he knew they’d come for my neck first. Luckily Albert was the guy who did not anyone else. Later that night, Paulina texts me calling me a sellout and very harsh words but of course I could never relieve her because of course she’s going to trust her boyfriend over me seriously fuck Sean.

During the next few weeks in summer vacation, I notice that some things begin to change. Rachel stops talking to me at all, Tiffany ignores me from that moment on, Joan as well, and everyone just gives me the cold fucking shoulder. It is at this moment where I begin to talk about friendship. Fake friends, real friends, friends in general. Friends in specific. Just friendship. Then out of nowhere my friend Elle messages me asking me about how there’s a lot of talk at her church (She also went to TFPC) and about how I raped someone. And my heart sank. I’m just like oh fuck no because no shit Andrew ran his gossip as pussybitch fucking cunt mouth everywhere about something he had no fucking part in only seeing part of what happened (of course the bad part). I connect the dots and the dots were confirmed when another friend of mine told me about what Andrew was telling everyone he knew. It was pretty surreal in the worst ways possible. Especially damning because Andrew was on the praise team for his church - literally a leader of the church and of all people to spew bullshit? C’mon dude. Just fuck. If anything, especially with the relationship Andrew and I had, he ought to have been the first person to at least talk to me or even ask me what the hell was going on. But no. He chose to take the lowest way out, to go out of his way just to spice his own personal life. The worst part is that his friends and fellow “Christians” gravitated towards his stories as if they were a campfire in Moscow during the winter. Really fucking incredible. So I hated the church. And, I even began to despise the pastors as well. I do however hold a tremendous amount of respect for them so I didn’t take names on their part. But Andrew? Seriously fuck him. When I see Paul Ryan smirk on national TV when he robs from the poor and does it in the name of goodness, I see fucking Andrew with his truly ugly laugh. Not ugly in the sense of outer appearance, I don’t really think anyone is ugly in that regard, but ugly in the sense of blackness in his heart. It’s the fucking worst. To wear a veil of holy spirituality and then live the life of sin. Me? I know I’m not on a high horse at all, but at least come down to the swamp with me if you’re going to level me up behind my back with your pussybreath. As for the others?

I asked Rachel “do you honestly believe what happened?” No reply. I never talked to Rachel ever again. I asked Tiffany the same thing. She replied, at least she gave me the respect to reply and she says “Yeah I can believe it there were witnesses and Andrew said everything.” I told her “if you honestly feel the way you do, don't fucking talk to me ever again.” It’s been five years, we never talked since. I asked Joan, she never replied. I never talked to her again either. I then asked Ben, “do you honestly believe what happened?” And he said, “I was waiting for you to ask me so I wanted to ask did you do it?” I said “No.” He then said, “Then that’s all I need to know. You didn’t do it.” What a real fucking friend right there. Goddamn did that shit move me.

But what about my own personal group of friends? From high school that I graduated with that night my nightmare started? Gossip spreads like wildfire especially in the facebook era and I know for a fact that some of my closest friends had connections to the friends who spread the news that there was gossip about me going everywhere about how I raped someone and it was total bullshit. Yet, the most amazing part? No one even asked about it. And no one seemed to care about it. No one seemed to be bothered. Nothing changed in our friendships. I never spoke to them about it ever because similar to Ben, they had trust in me. They confided in me as much as I confided in them and that was all they needed. To have faith in me.

For this reason I love my friends more than anything. Not just because of this sole single event and how they responded, or rather not responded which in itself was a response, but the entire idea that they trusted me so much to have never let it become an issue. So think about this… In the darkest time of my life when I was losing friends left and right, front and back, top and down, these guys were the light in my life I needed. And that speaks volumes in the role my friendships play in determining my happiness. Just like how other people have the capability to bring me down, people too have the same capacity to bring me up. That was all I ever needed to move forward. I guess you can say that in bringing up my last blog post, the faith and loyalty that these good people had in people answers where I am on “goodness” right? To this day Ben’s response when I messaged him means so much to me. He grew up in that church where the rumours started. Ben was literally surrounded by people who hated me so much. Who thought I was despicable, a liar, and a rapist. But Ben always believed in me. That type of loyalty is powerful. My dad always taught me from a young age that the most you can ever ask for from anyone is loyalty. From a woman, loyalty counts as friends and as significant other. For men, loyalty comes from true friendship (to which I guess being gay counts too now). Looking back at this event I fucking hated how it all worked itself out. And I directed all my hatred especially towards Sean because he was at the root of all this. So I guess in conclusion to this highly sensitive topic… choose your friends well. There are those that I didn’t. The ones who stabbed me in the back. The Rachel Kang’s, Tiffany Kim’s, Joan Lee’s. I DO WANT TO CLARIFY that I don’t feel spite against Rachel, Tiffany, and Joan. From the notion that on their point of view, they truly had evidence that was in Andrew’s perspective verified because Andrew’s side of the story was true only to his eyes. It’s like if I saw someone kill someone else, I see only the murder. What I won’t see, is the self defense prior to it so I see murder and that’s completely fair. So to Rachel, Tiffany, and Joan? That’s fine. I still don’t believe they’re the type of friends to surround yourself with, but I understand their part and just frankly need to know what is done is done. Andrew Chae’s? A different story, still with the leniency that what he saw was considered his version of truth, but that as a representative in the Church and thus therefore for the religion, he had a moral responsibility to ensure goodness not bad. But Sean Kim? I can’t say words to describe how I feel about him but that the best thing is not revenge, but just to move away. Those type of people will only bring you down and the sooner you do away with them the better. They don’t deserve you. In reflection writing this, I’m just so amazed by how wonderful my group of friends are, to stick with me through something catastrophic as that, but not even to just stick through, but to have never let a rumor as powerful as that one bother them to begin with is incredible. See, you can go through a lot of shit, but when you have as friends as amazing as the ones I do, isn’t that where true happiness is found? In the goodness of truly great people who want to share that happiness with you? Thank you for reading.