Feb 27, 2008 - Susan Campbell, writing in the Hartford Courant on a personal experience.
My mother married her second husband against the wishes of just about everyone, including her three children. Love might be blind, but a child sees all.Things got so bad at home that I broke the code. I went outside the family for help, stepped up to my fourth-grade teacher's desk and told her that my stepfather was hurting me. She looked confused, so I said it again, as loudly as I dared, considering that the kids in the front row could hear, and then know.The article is "When Child's Plea Goes Unheard; Another Pedophile May Go Free"
She quickly sent me back to my desk, where I spent the day trying to decide what would happen next. After school, I pretended to stack and restack library books in the classroom because I thought she would call me back to her desk and help me, but she pushed some papers into a satchel, waved to me and left. I went home knowing no one would save me from my stepfather, the pedophile.
Her step-father was a respected endocrinologist. A psychiatrist and psychologist in three different evaluations gave the doctor the go-ahead to return and do what he did. His examiners might have made their tragic mistake for no reason other than Reardon was a respected doctor, and molesting children is not something respected doctors do. He died in 1998, but, as Campbell writes, the sad facts of his life were exposed when last year thousands of pornographic photos and videos were found hidden in his former home. Since then, more than 60 adults have filed suits.
Read the whole thing.
