Living in US Today? The River Denial Is Deep and Wide
Climbing out of the pit of denial of just how bad child sex abuse in our society really is, is one of life’s biggest challenges
When I first began dating noted horror writer and editor Alan Rodgers (1959–2014), I, like many of his friends, was astonished and appalled by the terrible child custody battle in which he was embroiled.
There was some type of karma involved on my part, because Alan’s child custody case took me through one of the biggest, most difficult lessons of my life. It was a multi-year process. Alan’s custody battle had been raging before I met him and it continued after my baby’s death in January 2005.
Before I met him, Alan had been living in Oregon with his then-wife and their three young children. When his youngest son was a baby, his wife left him while he was at work at a furniture factory making $10 an hour. The woman took off with a man who’d previously stated he was his “best friend.”
Alan got home from work to find the apartment completely trashed, his kids and wife gone, and a note that said,
“I’ve left. Don’t do anything stupid.”
