Hi. My name is Rachel Curry.  My father is a pedophile.

Yup, my father is a pedophile. He’s a well respected doctor, the head of toxicology department for Banner Health.  He brilliant professor of University of Arizona’s medical school.  You can see his bio here.

My immediate family still lives in the fog of denial. Their reality reminds me of a snow globe. The figurines are fixed in place, everything looks pretty from the outside.  They don’t mind being submerged underwater in a glass bubble of artificiality.  They don’t mind drowning, as long as they keep up appearances. They don’t mind the life-shattering shake up of earthquakes and hailstorms, or surviving in a sea of disruptive white, winter dots.

They just model plastic grins and sing musical pleasantries that feel cozy, like nap time. The lyrics go like this:

“Nothing. Nothing to see here. Everything’s fine.  Rachel was always a challenge.  Don’t believe what she says.  Something happened after age 10, and she broke. We don’t take Rachel seriously - she’s unstable.  She suffers from false memory syndrome.  Pray for her.  It’s such a sad story.  Now, pass the potatoes.  Smile for the camera.  How was Erika’s baby shower last Sunday?”

This is the story of my life. It is not the story my family wants you to know. It’s the story of a girl who was molested, raped, and quietly drugged to preserve the ego of a sociopath.  It’s the story of an admired man in political positions of power.  It’s the story of religion gone wrong and memories forgotten.

I’m telling my story to the world to validate my truth and restore my dignity.  To give my painful experiences purpose and create meaning for my life.  More importantly, I’m telling my story to offer hope to others who have been the victims of chronic psychological violence and sexual abuse, or silenced by family members who choose to ignore life-altering facts so they can bask in the comforts of their esteemed reputations.

If you keep forgetting how to remember, I completely understand.  Denial is a hard drug.  The detox is brutal. 

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People who know my dad would be the last to peg him as a pedophile. He’s not a scraggly creeper who patrols school yards and parks.  He’s a church-going family man who restores radios on the weekends.  He’s the humorous favorite among his colleagues and invites lonely interns to family dinners at holiday time.  His wife is a beloved mom who bakes cookies for bible study and volunteers at the homeless shelter.  She dresses herself in brand name clothes, freshly applied lipstick, and Christian charms dangling from her bracelet.

“They’re such a nice couple - Steve and Ann.  They have such well-mannered children in that mountainside mansion up on Horseshoe Road.”

They are such a nice couple.  My dad is easily bored, but charming.  He’s mischievous, but subtle.  He’s impulsive, but publicly diplomatic.  They are such a nice couple.  That is, until you stand outside the glass bubble and wake up from their dream.

If you are born to the king of a religious island and spend your whole life drinking Kool-Aid, you don’t recognize the sweetness.  “Kool-Aid? What’s that? Oh, this?! This isn’t Kool-Aid!” you say. “This is water. It’s just water. It tastes like regular water to me.”

Suddenly, a lucid part of your spirit responds to your own brain. It says “but it’s red. Isn’t that strange? The water you’re drinking is red.“ And you say back to yourself, “But Rachel, everyone around here drinks red water. The King says the water has always been red.  Mom doesn’t seem to notice. None of the villagers speak of the redness. My life would be easier if I stopped making such a fuss about the water.  I wouldn’t get in so much trouble.  They’d stop getting my vision checked and sending me to doctors.  My mother would be happier. My brother would be safer.  The King said so.”

And after a while, your mind does the work of brainwashing itself so your pedophiliac dad doesn’t have to.  It shoves everything into a little black box and “forgets.”  It forgets so the bubble doesn’t break, the water doesn’t spill, and the glass doesn’t shatter.  It forgets so you can live a semi-normal life in a Jesus-loving community of likeminded snowglobers.

I used to call it the Caucasian Country Club for Jesus.  Yup, that’s what the community was like.  I went three times per week, and never missed summer camps or winter retreats.  We wore WWJD bracelets and made Christianity cool by hiring worship leaders that wore berets.  Everything we did was either “Christian,” or “not-Christian” based on the religious proclamations of capitalist business owners.  For example: Chic-fa-let? Christian.  McDonalds? Not-Christian.  Hobby Lobby? Christian, and thus approved.  Michaels? Not Christian, and less preferred.

In the culture I came from, you are in or you are out. You are saved, or you are not-saved.  You are an obedient follower of the King, or you have fallen away and threaten to contaminate the purity of the community.  You are part of the narrative that preserves the glass house, or you are an outsider from whom the house must be protected.

It’s easy for pedophiles to hide in glass houses.  These structures look fragile, but they’re actually built on the pre-existing illusions of thousands of people.  The bullet proof glass was installed by generations of men that came before them.  It’s kept in place by an unspoken agreement to keep the secrets locked up and the system alive.  But it’s not unspoken, is it? It’s actually spoken over and over and over again:

“Don’t betray your parents.  Don’t betray the church. Don’t betray God.  You’ll suffer if you do.”

. . . . . . . . . . 

It took me years of therapy to undo the damaging effects of my fundamentalist upbringing.  To say I was sheltered is the understatement of the century.  I’m a 36-year-old woman and didn’t believe in evolution until my second year of college.  My high school sex-education was basically a homemade experiment organized by sexually repressed moms.  It was held in a Sunday School classroom, and filled with video clips of overly remorseful teenage girls who had abortions just miliseconds before accepting Jesus as their savior.  The film was periodically interrupted with graphic images chronicaling the developement of facial STDs and the dangers of porn addiction.

I attended public school but was guarded inside a cocoon of Scottsdale evangelicals.  My church youth group was comprised of at least 300 kids at any given time.  We were subgrouped according to school district so our commitment to biblical “truth” wouldn’t be deluded by the secular teachings of unbelievers.  I suspect Scottsdale Bible Church was one of the biggest mega churches in the nation throughout the 1990’s.  It was filled with weekly activities rich with patriarchal dogma that supported traditional gender norms and republicanism.

Coincidentally, the SBC youth group was run by Les Heughy, another recently accused pedophile who was protected by the glass walls of denial for decades.  Like my dad, he was a charming, outgoing man with a off-beat sense of humor.  Most of us would describe him as a grandiose prankster who was obsessed with his musical work.  His family looked like mine - mostly perfect, closed doors, clean laundry, happy pictures.

Why am I telling you so much about the religious community that molded my childhood? 

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