I remember every detail of the phone call. I have perfect recall of the emotions that swept over me and threatened to pull me under. I recoiled from the fear that filled me. I remember my knees buckling and collapsing on the couch. The voice was telling me that Marvin was accused of being a pedophile, of seducing children. The sociopath beside me had finally gone too far. Children had talked and told, and while a dread nearly filled my soul, a small part of me felt a tiny tremor of hope. Now, perhaps, there might be a reckoning. But that call turned many lives upside down past understanding. The call brought horror out in the open and nearly robbed me of reason. I remember the voice on the phone being partially drowned out by a loud ringing noise in my ears, and how I was struggling to keep from passing out. I remember dropping the receiver onto the cushion next to me because my hand was trembling so violently that I could no longer grip the phone. I was so traumatized by the news that it took me a full minute to realize that the sobbing voice saying, “I’m so sorry, I didn’t know”, over and over again, was mine. The guilt and responsibility that I felt was crushing. My not knowing, my turning away from the truth, had protected Marvin. My turning a blind eye had let the sociopath beside me work his evil. It was my fault. My fault. My fault. Just as Marvin had intended.
I fell into his trap once more. My fault. My fault. But of course it wasn’t. Marvin had turned the pointing finger toward everyone else in his ever expanding circle. He didn’t have to give himself permission to be a pedophile. He was that already. It was his nature. But somewhere along the path, he had given himself permission to act on that base impulse. He had to give himself permission to act out against our most vulnerable, our children. He gave himself permission to rob children of their childhood, their innocence, their future. And all the while, he pointed the finger of blame in every direction but his own. Marvin did not have the ability to feel guilt. He told himself he was smarter than all the rest, that whatever happened to feed his desire was acceptable. If he could put blame on others, so much the better. The children’s lives were forever changed. Despite the result of the investigation, they will bear their scars forever. But “my fault, my fault,” I told myself, just as Marvin had intended.
The authorities began their investigations. Children as young as 8 years old were asked emotionally painful questions. They were led away from the darkness they had endured, but they were never completely cleansed. A corner of their mind stayed black. There was always and forever a place inside their head they visited in dreams, a place where the sociopath smiled and beckoned into the dark again. “My fault, my fault,” they thought. “My fault, my fault,” they cried, just as I had cried, and just as Marvin had intended all along.
Most of the children involved were initially escorted from their school classroom into a nearby conference room. How frightening that first interview must have been. They had to discuss this horrifying subject without warning. They had nowhere to hide, nowhere to escape. Again, just as Marvin had intended.
The entire community learned of this issue. The school became a haunting reminder of these events. The younger children whispered to each other. The older children spoke the horror out loud, and pointed at the victims as they passed by in the hall. The searching interviews were so psychologically scarring that some parents denied authorities access to their children and their stories. Once again, it was just as Marvin had intended.
All the interviews were documented in writing and videoed so no details would be forgotten. The amount of humiliation that these children, these victims, endured from self-accusation and self-doubt was nearly insurmountable. It was beyond heartbreaking. The investigation uncovered many secrets. I personally brought forward ten children, some as young as 8 years old, who told of Marvin’s sexual improprieties. Did we find them all? There is a substantial amount of evidence indicating otherwise. The evidence suggests they will not be the last. The trauma was massive and far-reaching. The school and all the children who attended, the neighborhood and all the children that lived there, all of the people who loved those children, struggled. They struggled to emotionally survive these hideous discoveries. Some of them struggle still. Some will never get past this painful experience. Some will struggle all their lives. Some will die without resolution. Some will always have the monster in their minds.
Here are some of the techniques Marvin used to further his sexual exploits. He used his own, unsuspecting son to bait his trap, to lure other children into his depraved lair. The victims included not only children but also family members and friends of his only child.
He was well known in the neighborhood for extending frequent social invitations to his son’s friends and playmates on his child’s behalf. The idea for a party or gathering of children always came from Marvin, never from his son, though the opposite seemed the case. The number of parties was excessive, as was the number of children invited. A neighbor described his house as “having a steady stream of children parading through it, children pouring out the windows and doors. We thought of Marvin as a pied piper”. In retrospect that was an apt analogy. Just as the Pied Piper led the mice of Hamlin to their death, so did this modern day piper lead the neighborhood children down a destructive path to a devil’s playground. Under the guise of “Mr. Fun,” he beckoned the children, and the children followed him home.
Nothing was off limits or too extreme for Marvin. After all, he’d say, it was all for the children’s sake. Only in retrospect did his entertainment plans look unusual. Marvin borrowed the money to build an in-ground pool that took up the entire back yard. There was barely enough room for a walkway around the pool, hardly enough room to stand. Once completed, Marvin spent countless hours playing “Marco Polo”, all day and late into the summer night, with any number of young boys. Marco Polo is a game of tag played under water. Marvin used the game to grasp a young boy’s genitalia as his way of tagging. Those who pulled away became a part of his later defense. “Sure, I played Marco Polo with Marvin,” they would say. “No, he never touched me there,” they would add. “Well, maybe once, but that was a mistake. It never happened again.” Those who giggled and allowed the touching became his prey. They were invited to sleepovers or even family camping trips. He loved to share his sleeping bag with boys. How could we not have seen? How could we have let such improprieties happen? That thought process, that self-doubt, was just as Marvin had intended. I repeat that phrase purposely. These things didn’t just happen. They were not random events. Never. They were just as Marvin had intended.
Marvin developed a pattern of befriending the parents of his intended victims. He worked to gain their trust. Not only did that allow increased access to their children, it allowed him to begin to build his arsenal of silencing tools. His purpose was two-fold. He needed to conceal his hideous priorities, and he needed to silence those who knew about them.