When I was 15 years old, and my brother, Bruce, was 13, we lived in a suburb in Tacoma, Washington, called Lakewood (which has since been incorporated and is now its own city).
One day, while my brother ans I were out terrorizing the world together on our 10-speeds, we saw a black man flying a line-controlled model airplane in an empty parking lot of the local highschool. It was the weekend, so there were no students around.
Being the boys that we were, my brother and I were of course drawn to the scene like flies to well, you know. The man quickly befriended us and even offered to let us try to fly the plane. My brother and I had similar planes of our own, so we had no trouble getting the model into the air.
The man said his name was Jeff Polite, and he soon asked us boys if we wanted to go to his room to see his other model airplanes. He was obviously retarded and still lived at home with his parents though he was in his mid 20's.
Because he acted so much like a kid – like one of us – my brother and I accepted the invitation without apprehension. Jeff seemed a little weird, definitely not dangerous.
Jeffs parents were not home, of course. But, he invited us into his bedroom anyway, of course. The room was almost a typical of what you would expect of any teenager's room – there was nothing „adult” about it all. There was a made bed in the middle, a few plastic Revel model airplanes hung from the ceiling with fishing line, and more plastic models on some book shelves.
At the end of the bed was a desk that might have had a model airplane in the process of being assembled. The desk did have various impliments and gadgets used for building model planes, which my brother and I took an interest in.
Then for some mysterious reason Jeff became agitated with me and asked me to leave. But my brother was welcome to stay so Jeff could „show him something”. My brother and I were still completely unsuspicious of Jeff, so I just thought he'd decided he didn't like me, and my brother wanted to stay to look at the models and stuff some more.
So, I left, and my brother stayed. But, not for very long.
Before I got even halfway home on my bike (about a mile) I heard my brother calling from behind for me to stop so he could catch up.
When he caught up he just said, „Jeff's a weirdo”. Then we continued on together.
I asked him what Jeff wanted to show him, and my brother said he didn't know. He told me that Jeff just asked him to hold onto a two or three foot length of wire that went „inside his pants”.
This didn't make sense to either of us. But apparently Jeff made my brother nervous enough that Bruce quickly decided to leave and try to catch up with me after all. When I pressed my brother for more information he repeated what he'd already said, and we both shrugged it off as some „retardo” thing.
Less than two years later I was convicted for raping a 14 year old boy in the same neighborhood. I guess things change pretty quickly at that age.
Some fifteen years or so after that, while I was still on parole for the rape, my brother came to visit me at my Seattle apartment, and gave me an interesting update on the Jeff Polite saga.
Bruce told me that he had run into Jeff recently at a fast food restaurant, and decided to confront him about the incident back in 1978, when we were boys.
It seems that my brother had decided over the intervening years that Jeff was masturbating that day in his bedroom while he held onto the wire. It wasn't just a „retardo” thing; it was a „perverto” thing! So my brother asked Jeff for an apology right there in the restaurant.
My brother told me that Jeff very nervously denied even recognizing him. But Bruce was certain that Jeff not only recognized him, but was guilty as hell too, because of the way he was acting. „Scared shitless”, was the way my brother put it.
Bruce, unlike me, had grown into a fairly imposing man. He was over six feet and easily more than 200 pounds. He liked to keep scruff on his face (which made him look macho) and carried a concealed 38 automatic of some impressive sort, because he could. He was the type of person who would „accidentally” let people see he was packing heat, just for the fun of it.
But when I suggested to my brother that perhaps Jeff was just scared over being so rudely confronted by a scary man in public, my brother insisted again, „No, he's a perve, and he knew I knew it! I wanted to blow his stinkin' head off right there!”
That was just the way my brother talked, which after 15 years in prison didn't impress me very much. I suggested again that maybe Jeff genuinely did not recognize him, and even if he was masturbating back then, so what?
Big mistake on my part that, „so what?” bit. My brother got angry at once (which he tried to hide as usual, but I could tell as easy as I could when we were kids that he was about to be rash). So, I tried to clean it up by asking him to tell me again what actually happened back in '78 in Jeff's bedroom. What he told me was pretty much the same thing he told me back then, except now with a little more insite to Jeff's motives.
Bruce said that Jeff „molested” him, even though he kept his privates in his pants, and never touched my brother on his.
I tried to question my brother about what he meant by „molested”, but he could only tell me the rote responses that someone might get from a book, or magazine article.
„He used me”, my brother said.
„He asked you to hold a wire. You didn't even know what he was doing then, even if you do now”, I retorted.
„It doesn't matter if I didn't know. I was just a kid and he molested me!”
We clearly weren't communicating. To me my brother was just spouting off all the classic „victim” expressions but saying nothing about the reality of what happened at all.
What I wanted to do, but sensed danger so I didn't, was remind my brother of the times he himself „molested” younger children even before we ever met Jeff. (By my brother's own definition of course. As far as I know, my brother has never really molested anyone. But, as kids we sometimes „played doctor” or „spin the bottle” with other children, which involved a bit more explicitly sexual behavior that what Jeff had done with the wire. Jeff was, after all, mentally only a kid himself even though he lived in a man's body.)
So, instead I reminded my brother about the time he was „molested” by George Worley, who pumped air up his butt with a bicycle pump. George was 15, and Bruce was 10 at the time. George became an „Eagle” in the boyscouts, which is how my brother and I knew him, he was in our troop 462, and at least I heard George was some sort of commander in the U.S. Navy stationed in Hawaii.
I asked, „How come you don't go demand an apology from George?”
That was enough to send my brother storming out the door of my apartment. I guess I'm lucky he didn't „blow my stinkin' head off”.
(No disrespect, bro'! I just never could take you seriously; you were my younger brother after all! I love you and miss you dearly!!)
My brother died from a sudden heart attack in 2006. I learned after his death that he believed I „molested” him too, and was even going to write a book about it. I wish people could see how victim hysteria creates more victims than it will ever help. My brother's emotional trauma was real. The reason for his trauma was a fabrication of the worst kind, and not real at all.
(Originally written by Joseph E. Duncan III - March 31, 2011 – 1 am
