I sat quietly in a chair, in a therapists office...
and listened to her tell me that my husband, GEORGE ALBERT RYLAND, JR., had been sexually molesting both of my daughters for the past ten months.
We had been married only three years before.
We were married only two years when he started this evil, so much a part of him, his lifetime-primary-occupation-hobby. Today is February 19, 1993.
I hardly know where to begin to tell you of the tragedy: a burning hot blade sliced out my understanding of life more quickly than my eye could blink, or my heart beat. My ears betrayed me and listened against my will and wishes, and my soul shouted NO!! That NO echoed in the air. I heard it while the social worker, Anne, spoke the words that ripped my flesh from my bones and left me pillaged and oozing, sprinkling little drops of blood through my mind. My breath refused to leave my lungs, refused to move at all. I had to beat it into submission to answer to the sucking of my lungs and then push it out again. That hot blade lodged itself in the center of my chest and burned a gnawing hole as each second crawled around the face of a ridiculous wedge clock.
They were staring at me. Anne had stopped speaking. From the gaping vacancy that wore my frame I could taste the screaming silence. They expected me to speak and I couldn't even breathe. I choked on words in my throat like spitting dry sand and bits of stone. Hysteria crowded in the back of my throat. As the words lurched from my mouth, I forced my head to turn to my youngest daughter, Tracy, only fifteen. I could feel the wide-eyed questioning from her, and her older sister Cherie sitting next to me--drilling into me, whipping at my flesh. A warm, bitter foam bubbled into my mouth and panic dribbled out my nose, flowing from every cell, hauled around my body and slammed into my brain.
"Why didn't you tell me?" the ragged words raced into the space between us. Tracy dropped her head into her hands and wept loud, pained tears. My mind now a commandant, barking orders to flesh deadened and turned to wood. Then I was standing at the bookcase weeping in ugly, hacking sobs. After an eternity, my wooden body turned, and as best as I could with limbs of stone, I put my arms around her.
"It's not your fault," I commanded the words to leave my throat.
"You are not in any way responsible. He did a despicable, evil, vile thing. He violated the most sacred trust between two humans--between a father and a daughter--between a husband and a wife."
The words really did come out of my mouth. Words I have always known were sterling and crystal in clarity and honesty and truth.
In the drop of a few words, I lost my marriage, my partner, my friend, my lover; (or so I thought he was my partner, my friend, my lover). And the memory of my full womb screamed in unspeakable agony because my beloved children, my precious daughters had been violated. I couldn't cry hard enough, loud enough, fast enough. My eyes swelled and bulged with tears desperate to escape the ravaging pain. And still the hot blade in the center of my chest burned and beat my soul. Now I understand why they spit the bitter words: "I hate him!" Now I understand their deep depression. Now I understand their dysfunction. Now I understand the anorexia, and bulimia. Now I understand the suicide attempts.
I want to stand in the street and scream till my throat dies. I want to anesthetize my soul so I can't feel the pain. I'm a breath away from insanity. And I still can't cry enough to get it all out. He hurt my children. He raped our sacred bond of trust and shred its remains in a cold, dirty grave that he tried to cover with his bloody hands. But the violation gaped open, uncovered--like an unbidden shadow on the wall, or drops of blood that won't be washed away.
There are so many details to attend to: bank accounts, possessions, bills, payroll deductions, insurance, packing his stuff, separating our lives. Surgeons use a scalpel, they have assistants to help them; and with rock-steady accuracy, they feather apart the delicate layers as they cut into human flesh. I had no such delicacy, no calm and steady gentility. I have no scalpel and my nerves are fractured beyond recognition. I have no assistants to help me, yet I stand here separating, with tears I peel the layers away. So many years, so much accumulated history severed forever. He hurt my children in a way no man should ever dare. He has shorn the beauty of sex in marriage for them; they will never be the same. I want their innocence back!
I eat only to vomit, because the hot blade in the center of my chest burns solid and heavy. But I cannot vomit the pain out. Hurt so deep. Hurt so hard. Hurt so heavy. Hurt so hideous. Hurt so enormous. Can't reel it in. Can't control it. Can't push it away. How can I hurt so horribly and still be alive? I could fill my pen with my blood and write a thousand pages and still not show you all my pain, or the crumbled shards of broken marriage trust. What could be worse?--a biting, stinging, chattering, itching, pricking, crawling, tearing, wrenching, ripping, burning, piercing, aching hurt; a pain greater than all the galaxies of all the universes. He robbed the trust and beauty of their sexual future. He destroyed the trust and sanctity of our marriage.
And what did he say? First, denial. Then, claimed just a little fondling and kissing, and exposing himself. Then said he didn't know how sick he was until he started this. Both my daughters. On many occasions; too many occasions.
Then he said he loved me.
When a man touches a child, a daughter, death is too merciful--he doesn't deserve such a kindness. I want to hack off his excuse of manhood with a cold, blunt flake of stone and cram it down his lying throat. I want to rip out that artificial pump in his chest (for truly he has no real heart)--rip it out with my fingers and grind it into the gravel and dirt.
He left on February 19, 1993, when I confronted him in the presence of two witnesses and he admitted his guilt. My youngest daughter was in and out of psychiatric hospitals for two years. The doctors said her suicide attempts (5) were directly the result of his violations of her. The therapist called the police because she was a minor. The police investigated, and he was arrested. My youngest daughter said that what he did to her older sister was worse; but that daughter cannot talk about it. She just cries. When I asked when, she said which time? When I asked how many times, she cried and turned away. We are so tragically wounded.
The pain is all the greater because this snake-husband knows how childhood sexual abuse crippled my life. That he molested my daughters smothers me in an avalanche of horror. Like a hatchet to my face, every sickening detail of my own abuses hurtled themselves back at me. I am buried alive--I feel the grains of dirt stinging my skin. I am drowned. I frantically paddle my mind, but can not find the surface, nor air to breathe. I am murdered--it's been too long since I went to the far away white zone in my mind, that place little girls go when daddy's do things to their daughters that are hideously shameful; and I cannot find the key to get to that peace of vacuous nothingness and non-existance. That cold, deep freeze where I have kept all thoughts, all emotions, all these many years. But now my enemy has sought my sifting, and my God has turned His mighty face away from me.
We are mangled; our souls weep together. But the weeping doesn't restore the desecration; or right the wrong; or reinstate the loss of self; or repair the obscene rape of our souls. Who will give back the innocence to my daughters? Certainly not the snake who carries his brain in the very small bulge behind a zipper.
Where is my justice? Where is justice for my daughters? He whined and cried when he was arrested. Did he think about how my daughters cried? He was charged with several felony counts. He was jailed for several hours. His mommy paid an enormous sum of money to a slick snake-lawyer. His sentence was plea bargained down to misdemenors because my daughters were emotionally unable to testify. He was convicted of sexual child molestation, yet never paid for his crime.
His fingers were slapped by a judge in Howard County, Maryland, where the prosecuting State's Attorney gave the snake and the snake-lawyer everything they asked for. The five year probation and restraining order to stay away from us, may as well have been written with magic-disappearing-ink. He called daily, and hung up. When I changed the number to unpublished, he increased the calls to my office. He drove by the house frequently; starting just days after I threw him out; and never even slowing after the trials, and orders to stay away. A violation of probation trial brought no diminishment of his cavalier disregard for the law and our desparate struggle to recover from his assaults.
He is free in the world where he can continue his lifelong habit of molesting women, in the most hideous ways.
Yet, somehow, my daughters and I lived through it all, and the after-effects on/in our lives because of his evil behavior. The struggle to heal is a lifelong, death-defying journey.
It is now more than ten years since the brutal day described above. During these years I have changed dramatically; primarily because I trusted in an all-powerful God who transcends this convention called time that we all live in, and i refused to be enslaved by the horror of what happened. I chose to forgive george. My forgiveness does not remove nor negate his culpability, but it does set me free for the entire remainder of my glorious life. He will pay; I am free.
--yss
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you should go see her
you know how cranky she gets when you don't call or write
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