Save Aaron Vargas Story and the legal System in the US regarding raped and Molested Children

As I sat in your courtroom during the sentencing hearing my hope grew. I heard the testimony of so many, I saw the pain the victims still suffer. And I thought maybe, just maybe, you were actually hearing it too. Maybe, just maybe you were able, for a moment, to put yourself in Aaron’s shoes. To imagine what it must feel like to be abused, to be controlled and be forcefully taught learned helplessness. Maybe, just maybe you could imagine the scene, three days prior to his arrest, when Aaron sat with Darrell’s son and stepson and heard, unequivocally of their abuse and admitted his own. The silence Darrell had so violently instilled in him had finally ended.

“Remembering and telling the truth about terrible events are prerequisites
both for the restoration of the social order and for the healing of individual victims”

My thoughts returned to _______ and her response when I asked her, how’s your brother? “He won’t talk about it”, she said. When she said it I didn’t understand the look on her face, now I do. She knew he couldn’t heal from it because he couldn’t speak of it.

“The ordinary response to atrocities is to banish them from consciousness. Certain violations of the social compact are too terrible to utter aloud: this is the meaning of the word unspeakable.”

And still I hoped you could comprehend what it must have been like for Aaron to suddenly realize the extent of the damage Darrell had inflicted upon him and so many others. I hoped you knew that learned helplessness is only overcome by the ability to recognize the source of the problem as being outside oneself. I hoped you could imagine what it must be like to confront one’s abuser. I hoped you could imagine how the abuser would respond when confronted.

“If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence him absolutely, he tries to make sure that no one listens. To this end, he marshals an impressive array of arguments, from the most blatant denial to the most sophisticated and elegant rationalization. After every atrocity one can expect to hear the same predictable apologies: it never happened; the victim lies; the victim exaggerates; the victim brought it on himself; and in any case it is time to forget the past and move on. The more powerful the perpetrator, the greater is his prerogative to name and define reality, and the more completely his arguments prevail.”

I hoped you’d understand the fact that all these things were happening just when Aaron’s life had changed the most. He was no longer seeing the world through the eyes of an abused and powerless child, he was now looking through the eyes of a parent. He had just become a parent to a beautiful baby girl. The baby girl Darrell offered to “baby-sit.”

I hoped you would compare the behavior both exhibited. Darrell spent his life raping, controlling, manipulating and silencing children. He did anything and everything to hide his crimes. Aaron on the other hand after committing his ‘crime’ immediately assured Darrell’s wife that she had nothing to fear, he wouldn’t hurt her. To reassure her he dissembled the gun and left it on the counter. He then drove to his parents home, told them he had shot Darrell, told them of the abuse he had endured and said he was sorry, sorry for the shock and pain they were now feeling. He then walked down their driveway and gave himself up to law enforcement.

According to the probation officer, Tim King, these events were Aaron’s “attempt to hide his (now consensual) relationship with Darrell.” Thus he was recommending a sentence of 21 years.

“When the victim is already devalued (a woman, a child), he may find that the most traumatic events in his life take place outside the realm of socially validated reality…”

Knowing the ‘justice system’ is comprised of people, just people. Some, more intelligent than others. I hoped you were one of the more intelligent ones. I also hoped you were a person who recognized the law for what it is, merely a social construct originally based on rules of proper conduct and concepts of natural justice.

“... when the traumatic events are of human design, those who bear witness
are caught in the conflict between victim and perpetrator. It is morally impossible to remain neutral in this conflict.”

When you returned from the 10-minute recess with your decision (kudos’, by the way, for being able to make your decision and write up all those pages explaining it in just 10 minutes). I heard you say words and phrases such as ‘intent’, ‘sending the wrong message’, ‘violence encourages violence’ all these words to justify your sentencing of Aaron to nine years in prison. It was apparent whom you viewed as the victim in these incredibly sad and tragic circumstances. Even dead you proved Darrell to be more important than Aaron, more important than any of Darrell’s victims, more important than the children of our community, the ones that are now safe because of Aaron’s actions. You reiterated what Darrell had taught them by his words and actions. “I am more important than you.”

Aaron did what the ‘system’ cannot do. He did what any desperate parent would do. He protected his daughter before the damage was done.

“The perpetrator's arguments prove irresistible when the bystander faces them in isolation. Without a supportive social environment, the bystander usually succumbs to the temptation to look the other way.”

The one thing I know to be true, an absolute, is the fact that the right thing to do is never the easiest thing to do. This is something Aaron knows much better than I.

In regards to _______ I did the easy thing, I did nothing. Now I realize I did nothing because I was unable to overcome my own learned helplessness. The learned helplessness instilled in me by the ‘justice system’. This system had taught me the unspoken and clearly unexamined premise: if the law is unable to do anything about him, that I did not have the right, or the authority to do anything about him, that I am powerless.

This realization means nothing, will be of no help, when one of _____’s victims comes to me and says, “You knew. You knew what he was. You knew the truth, why didn’t you stop him. Why didn’t you protect me?”

So now that you, an elected official, a person of power and authority, an employee of the justice system, knows of ______ and his crimes, what are you going to do? How are you going to protect our children before the damage is done?

Ending the silence,

Rhonda Wilson

**Excerpts from Trauma and Recovery by Judith Herman, M.D.

cc: Pedophile-hand delivered

cc: with victims names removed:
FBPD
MCSO
Meredith Lintott
Mindy Galliani
Aaron Vargas
Governor Schwarzenegger
Derrick Jensen
Roxanne Amico
Kevin Fagan

As I sat in your courtroom for Aaron Vargas’ sentencing hearing, I thought of the previous 16 months of hearings. Of which, can only be described as surreal and schizoid. Always blatant attacks upon Aaron’s character, never Darrell’s. Six feet tall Darrell continually described as “a little old man”. Jill Ravitch describing the abuse Aaron suffered as ‘self-serving and irrelevant’. I heard Beth Norman insinuate Aaron should have moved out of town, even after she learned he had, and knowing whenever he did Darrell found him. I thought of ______. If she had shot her abuser would she also be treated this way? She had moved to escape her abuser but it also took her away from her support system, from her community, from the people who truly loved and cared for her. She was not safe in Fort Bragg, but her abuser is.

I sat and listened to Beth Norman say “he’s not here, is he?” Insinuating Darrell would tell a different story than what she was hearing. This was a man who had spent his life raping children. If he had thought that wrong or immoral who couldn’t have done it. Did she honestly think he’d say anything different than what they were saying for him? “It was a consensual relationship.”

** “In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. Secrecy and silence are the perpetrator's first line of defense.”

Or did she not believe the letters, the signed declarations, and the testimony of the victims? Did she not believe the truth? I have to admit it’s much easier to not believe. It’s so much easier to deny the existence of these abusers, to think of it as alleged, than to accept the reality that not only are they out there, the ‘law’ does nothing about them until they are caught in the act. This is a fact abusers are well aware of.

Or was she just “doing her job”? If so, it answers the question posed by Mindy Galliani, “does doing your job mean checking your humanity at the door?”

As I sat in your courtroom I heard the heartbreaking testimony of John and Todd, two victims who found their voices after years and years of silence, and reported Darrell to the police. One report made in 1990, the other in 2001. I vividly recalled John standing outside the courthouse after one of the first hearings, saying over and over again “this never should have happened, this never should have happened, we told the police, Aaron shouldn’t be here, it shouldn’t have been left to Aaron, we told the police”. The look on his face, the pain, the sorrow, the anger, the depth of that moment is indescribable and unforgettable.

I heard the testimony of Dr. Apostle who described in detail the damage abuse does to children. How children become withdrawn, isolated, the feelings of being different, alone, the lack of trust, the shame, the responsibility the children feel, the interruption of the maturation process, the self harm to localize the pain, the learned helplessness. He also described Aaron’s mental conditions of P.T.S.D., symptoms of Stockholm syndrome, depressive disorder and child sexual abuse disorder and his problems with alcohol. All these things a direct result of the abuse Darrell inflicted upon him. Darrell introduced all his victims to alcohol and drugs, to lower their defenses, to make it easier to abuse them.

“This is most apparent in the way traumatized people alternate between feeling numb and reliving the event.”

These are the feelings the pedophile instills in children to control and manipulate them. The pedophile uses the child’s innocence and vulnerability against him. He whispers to the child “you like it”, “you want it”, “I love you”, “this is love”, “it’s our secret” “no one will believe you”, “this is what people do”. For all those boys and girls and all these years there was no voice to counter Darrell’s.

Sitting behind me in your courtroom were Jamie Species’ brother and sister. You remember him right? He was Darrell’s “little brother”. Another victim. The boy who took his own life after Darrell attempted to get at him again. Jamie’s words to his sister when she urged him to go to the police “I don’t want to be labeled” rang in my ears while the probation officer echoed Sgt Van Patten’s sentiments, sure Aaron was abused by Darrell but it was now a “consensual relationship gone sour.” I wondered. Darrell began abusing Aaron when he was eleven, so when exactly did it become consensual? When Aaron was 12? 15? The magical age of adulthood: 18? And if the abuse Aaron suffered was consensual, that meant _____’s was also. So when did hers become consensual? When she was 6? 10? 12? 15?

The probation officer reiterated what every abuser tells his victims “it’s your fault”.

I realized police officers are nothing more than historians. Always appearing after the fact. After the damage is done. Interpreting the events, as so much of history is interpreted, through the lens of their own reality, their own experience, the experience of grown men