Warning: this blog contains graphic discussions of both adult language and themes as well as violence. Some people may be triggered by this and I advise care when reading. I don’t want you hurt.

Not long ago, I was trapped in a group home with a monster. The guy’s mental illness was ten times the sum of everyone else’s in the 7-person home, and he scared me. Badly.

I’m not afraid of much. I spent my childhood and many years afterward terrified of everything. When a bully scares you too many times, though, he loses his power over you. Your fear will vanish and be replaced by thoughts so evil that murder is the least evil thought you have. Thoughts of slow torture, terrorism and after extracting every ounce of pain, draining the last of a person’s soul, then you will let them die.

Chris was a schizophrenic who every weekend visited his way too-elderly parents and always came back on Sunday night drunk, against the strict rules of the program. A rehabilitation program. A program he was never fit for because he was obviously too far gone.

One night after a weekend of hard liquor binging, he came home and pushed me into a corner. He had bullied me before, but nothing like this night. Eventually the police were called. He was suspended for a week. Then he came back. Management was always like that. Before expelling a resident they have dozens of steps the offender has to tick off. He was just getting started.

But then he came at me again. He said something and I told him to shut his trap. I went to the office to talk to my caregiver, and he came through and said something in passing that I judged a bit too much, as if he was testing me. I wasn’t having it. I just wanted to kill him. I said, “Hey. You don’t talk to me like that.”

And when I get that way, which is rare, I’m scary. He knew I’d do it. He knew I wanted to kill him.

And part of me wonders even now, if I should have killed him while I had the chance and enough cold disregard for his life to slice and dice him.

It came closer to happening than I ever would have thought. Me, kill another human being in cold blood? How could I? How could I even think so casually about doing it?

I’m not a good Christian. But I am a Christian. We don’t murder other people.

I had been pushed way too far. A coward doesn’t like to be scared. I hated it. And I wasn’t scared anymore.

He asked for and secured a transfer to another home. And this is where I have the awful thought that I should have killed him when it was in my power to do so.

Because about three years later, in the woods near his group home, he dragged a little girl to where she couldn’t be heard and spent a whole day raping her repeatedly. I tried, after hearing about it, to find an article or an arrest report online. There was nothing. Rumours said she was 16. Nope. Had to be even younger if the girl’s name and her rapist’s name couldnt be found. That happens when authorities want to protect the victim. I know, because I was a victim too.

But he was found, identified and arrested. I thought he would go away for at least a decade.

He didn’t. I saw him when getting my covid vaccines. That was a shock. Mainly that our system fucking refuses to give rape victims the justice they deserve. But also because I know that it’s not a matter of if, but when, he will re-offend.

His first victim is damaged for life. Excuse me, let us not mince words here. She’s fucked up for life.

Any shithead alpha males who want to tell me that she probably asked for it I’ll have something for. Goddamn idiots. I’ve heard that dumb shit all my life: a woman in summer clothes walks by. Some asshole pervert says to his buddy, “No wonder there’s rape.”

Monsters!

When this animal rapes again, someone else will suffer. Long after he’s dead, they’ll go from feeling eternally soiled to the shame, guilt and humiliation of it, then feel suicidal, then, if they survive, cycle right back through it. Counseling and drug therapy can help, but there is no cure for a goddamn thing no one should ever have to be put through.

If he was prosecuted and imprisoned, and he was, then the girl was courageous and had a rape kit done and she testified or was deposed. Either way that was even more trauma. And I…

I could have stopped it. Me. I had it in my power to end him, and I didn’t, and now a young woman is growing up in pain and a forever feeling that life isn’t worth the pain you go through.

So how am I to deal with this? Should I feel proud of myself for not committing murder even though I knew he was dangerous? I thought he was homicidal, but a rapist? I should have seen it. I knew about bullies and their need to control and dominate. Same as rapists. I goddamn knew and I let him live. I spared his life. He then ruined the life of another.

And he will again. Because that’s what rapists do.

How to judge myself, and how will God judge me? Are there not times when we see the truth, but fail to act, and in doing what we think moral, actually commit an immoral act? Do others not count, can we even say that, and how can I justify not having saved that child from a lifetime of pain?

Is there a way to know, to really know the consequences of our actions as well as our inactions?

Of course not.

I feel terrible about the girl. I feel terrible about his next victim. And if I had known the future, then yes. I would have killed him.

But we can know a dangerous person. We can be sure of their potential for causing harm. We cannot kill based on the instinct or insight no matter how powerful it is. Any good police officer will tell you that a person who has not committed a crime cannot be arrested.

And so it is not for any of us to destroy life based on intuition. It’s murder, and once done, we never get to know if we were even right.

And yet I’m haunted. Over what happened and how I might have stopped it.

It is a pain I wish I never had to know.

But it is nothing compared to that of a girl violated by a monster, the very worst kind of monster.

You know what the monster did the next day? He went around telling people that he had a new girlfriend!

There is murder and vengeance in my heart. It does not belong there, but I can’t get rid of it. And I’m bitter. Why am I sitting here crying about it when I have normal feelings for once in my life? The feelings are natural reactions to the utterly horrible things that happen, to us. To others. Because of us. Because of others. Because as real as you may think God isn’t, there’s surely a devil. And don’t we love him, don’t we at least act like we do?

I’m thankful for nothing in this case. I grieve and seethe with silent rage. I am, at the end of the day, still an asshole, and I will always be an asshole.