The way we fell apart 18 march 2010

The Way We Fell Apart
How do I even begin to describe the way we fell apart? I’ve thought about this over the years… Not to be over dramatic about it all but for me… The events of Thursday 18 March 2010 was, to my personal life, like September 11th was to America… There was a before, clearly marked and mostly unremarked at the time, then the shattering events of the day, and now an after… And a forever… And a this really happened and is part of our family history, our personal histories and can never ever be undone.
I guess I will start out by telling it like this… It’s one thing to sit smug in you living room watching “To Catch a Predator”… It is another thing entirely to wake up in a real live version… minus, at least at that moment, the TV crew, with the addition of FBI, ICE US Marshalls, Olathe PD and of corse CPS…
Out of all of these, up to that point, CPS was the one that filled me with a stomach dropping, blood chilling fear. Of a knock on the door, or a phonemail, or, as I would experience 17 months later, a child that id not return home from school, where the driver could only tell me, you gotta call the school… She didn’t get on the bus… They wouldn’t let her…
This fear of CPS is common with blind parents, all disabled parents, but as I am lind I can only talk from where I know the most… This fear is not unfounded… I grew up hearing stories of blind parents who had their children take off them by the state because somebody had worries about how a blind person can care for children…
These stories involved yet again having to prove one’s blind self better than acceptable… Some of the time the investigation was dropped without anything more being done, sometimes services were offered, sometimes the children were taken away and put in foster care and the parental rights were in danger of being, or were removed and the children were? gone… Just gone…
Sometimes there was reasons other than blindness, and sometimes it was just ignorance on behalf of sighted people, not being able to put themselves in someone’s place who was blind…
I was to find out though, there were things worse than CPS… Things more frightening than some lipsticked, pantyhose, clipboard waving lady at the front door or at the other end of the phone…
Sometimes, the thing you should be fearing was closer than you’d of ever thought possible…
Sometimes the monsters you made a big production of shooing out of every corner of the room each night by spraying “monster go away spray” really just some cheap body spray from walmart after all the good night hugs and kisses and fist bumps and sparkles were done, weren’t so easily banished…
18 March 2010 just after 7A.M., just before daybreak
“Muah! Ma-ma-ma! We muihmuhmuhmuhmuhmuh warrant!”
This is what I awoke to early that Thursday morning mid March of 2010. At first I couldn’t tell what was going on… I just knew some boy was yelling about something. I couldn’t put it all together for a few moments and I thought that the girls, on spring break had snuck out for some fun and brought some boys back that were being rude AF and how Larry was going to…

“FBI! SEARCH WARRANT! FBI We have a search warrant!”
I sure could hear them now and what they were saying… FBI had a search warrant… for us… It would seem but why? Maybe this was one of those oops wrong houses or wrong people things you heard about on the news. Boy would Larry be pissed and we would have something to talk about later on down…
“FBI!”
Larry sat up and pulled on his pants. I remember hearing his keys clank together as he pulled them on… The last thing I really remember ever hearing him say in my presence was “Oh fuck…”
we got up and stepped to the bathroom door, the FBI people or the US marshalls or maybe it was the OPD were crowded up in the hall and coming in the bedroom door and the bathroom door that lead into our room from the hall bathroom. They started talking loud and shoving. I remember someone’s gun butt brushed crossed my hand.
“Holy fuck… A gun… Whatever these people are on about, they surely aren’t playing…” I remembered thinking with a start.
Larry said something about the babies, Skye, 3 and a half and Ben just 18 months sleeping in the room across the hall and in a more pointy, defensive voice he demanded that they, these gun toting officials, be careful with me because I was blind and couldn’t see what was going on very well…
The lights came on… I couldn’t tell what was going on but Larry was gone away and in his place there was a lady cop and one or two men…
I sunk to the floor and grabbed whatever was near to dress… The men and lady cop were okay about it, of corse not at all friendly but not unkind…
I remember sitting on the side of the bed and my leg started going, a nervous habit. One of the men asked if I were okay… I said that I was not… I was scared. I didn’t know what was going on or who any of these people were and why they were in my house…
They then explained, a very thin on details explanation of who they all were and why they were there…
They were, as I said earlier, members of the FBI, US marshall service, ICE… What was ICE? Remember this is way before ICE was a household name like it is now in Donald Trump’s great America…
Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Olathe Police Department and somewhere in there the fine folks from CPS showed up, but I don’t know if they came along with everyone else or showed up later after being called to the house.
All they would say at first was it had something to do with he internet, computers. They asked for all my passwords and accounts I had online for things like yahoo, which I hadn’t used in ages and ages and for other things. They looked through my video camera and somehow I managed to keep that plus the tape that was in it, the other two tapes I had for the camera I never saw again, same with my digital camera. No big loss because a month before, I had got an iPhone 3GS…

They asked about my MacBook. They were talking about getting somebody that knew about Macs to look at it. It sounded complex… Likewise they wanted to know about my thumb drives I had for downloading talking books for the blind… And I gave over my phone I told them they could look through all the pictures and videos on there because I had just, hours before copied everything from the macbook to my phone…
I sat there for what felt like ages… I asked what was going on…. No answer…
People came in and out, taking pictures, going through my things, some of which I found later was gone for good, having been taken…
What was going on? Why were these people here?
BLAAAAAAAP! BLAAAAAAAAAAP! BLAAAAAAAAP! my phone blasted awake at 8 AM…
“Grocery Day!” the notification on the screen said. “I’m sorry, that’s my phone… Larry was going tooo… get… food… from the store… We needed to go to the store… For food…” I weakly tried to smile… “Guess that isn’t happening… Now…”
I racked my brains trying to figure out what computer thing could be so bad that all these scary people felt it necessary to come visiting so loudly and early in the morning.
At first I thought the fact I had been downloading talking books of Larry’s account was why they were here… I know, that is super stupid… Then the events of the previous evening crossed my mind…
Some odd things had taken place. First there was a dust up over the oldest’s iPod. Someone had taken it off her and bought like a hundred bucks worth of iTunes stuff… Then a random guy knocked at the door as sunset. He said he was from the cable place and offering some thing or other… I wonder to this day if it were really someone from the PD or FBI or somebody checking out to see they had the right place, the right people…
The lady cop stayed with me the whole time but didn’t say much… A man came in and again I asked if they could please tell me what was going on…
They wouldn’t say for the longest time, once man, I didn’t know if he was PD or FBI or who, kept telling me he’d let me know as soon as he could… He kept going out o the room and coming in and asking some more questions.
He asked about my Mac… The only mac in the house. Did I let anyone else use it? No… I explained that the MacBook was very expensive and I did not let alone on it. Because of the price tag but mainly and most importantly, I had it set up so I could use it as a blind person… I told hi m about voiceover, the screen reader. I told him how most of my friends and family were hundreds of miles away in Wichita and the computer was how I stay in touch with them and how I got information about things like cooking and child care and how, because Larry was funny about letting me and the babies out of the house, it was a major connection to the world as was my iPhone. I explained that the iPhone was mine and I didn’t let anyone hold it never mind take off with it or call on it… And it was the only phone I had access to.
The man went out again and came back. He left out a few more times…

One of these times I realized people were in the babies’ room and they were awake and people were talking to them or trying… They didn’t see very many adults at all and they didn’t say much, well as much as 3.3 and 18 month old children can hold a chat… The TV was on… I recall that clear as day… Mickey Mouse ClubHouse was on… The newer one… They were singing the hotdog song… Someone asked my daughter about a book and someone called out to me to ask where their shoes were… I told them… The last thing I remember before the truth crashed in and they were taken away… The schraaaaap of a child’s shoe velcroing open… and the hotdog song… I don’t like the hotdog song and it took years before I ould stand to hear it without panic clawing at my heart.
I was never told, not then at any rate where the babies, or the girls or their friend were or what was being done with them… I just knew in my heart they were gone. I don’t know where Larry was, if he were still in the house or what…
The man, the one who came and went and asked me a lot of the questions finally came back… The lady cop was there too… I don’t know if she was there the whole time or if she went in and out too but I do remember she was there…
Then I was told…
“Mam, we are investigating your partner for child p**n… Involving your daughter and son…”
The whole world lurched sickeningly. Something slammed down hard in my heart and mind cutting off the ability to feel. I felt like a big glass door had slid down between me and life…
I attacked the pillow that was near by and punched it and yelled Noooooo! Fuck him! No! No! Oh God! and then boom! I felt and heard, inside my head a slam.
A calm came over me… “I’m sorry for acting out… I’m okay now. Not okay but I’m not going to kick off anymore… Are you sure? Larry? Skye, Ben? He did that to them?”
“Yes ma’am, I’m sorry to have to tell you…”
“Well… I’ve got a lot of things to sort out… Starting with this…”
I took the engagement ring I had proudly wore on my left hand for the past 6 years…
“Could you please hand me my billfold, there on the edge of the top shelf?” I asked and they did.
“Thank you… I guess I know who my heart is with… Larry gonna have to be on his own. If this turns out to be an error, we’ll have to work that out but… I can’t fly under the idea this is in error. Larry gonna have to mind himself, I’ve got MY kids to worry about. They little and don’t have anyone but me, their mama…” and with that I put the mother’s day ring Skye had “ot” me for mother’s day 2007 on where my engagement ring had been… Normally I wore the mom ring on my right hand but had been doing something and took it off and tucked it in my billfold for safe keeping…
It didn’t feel like anyone was left in the house… The air had taken on an abandoned haunted feel… I was not looking forward staying in this grave that used to be my home when everyone was done and packed up and gone home…
“Do you have somewhere to go? You can’t stay here…” reason being everything was tore up and moved around…
I told them, that maybe I could stay with my friend Erin… And regardless I sure as hell wasn’t going to spend one more moment than I needed in this hell house.

Somebody called Erin, who was recovering from a medical procedure… She said I could stay with her no problem… She was just as shocked as I was… She would be a important part of me trying to figure out what “next” was meant to be…
Then.. I knew I had to call my mom and dad and tell them… That Larry was gone, the kids were gone…
The lady cop called my mom’s number and handed me her phone.
My mom answered…
I said something like.
Mommy, something bad has happened and Larry and the kids are gone. and anon my god. it is bad. don’t be mad okay please?…”
The lady cop could tell I was having a lot of trouble getting the words out. She quietly asked if I wanted her to tell my mom… Yeah I said.
“Mom, the lady cop here is going to tell you… I’m sorry…”
And then it was out… What had happened, what had been happening for the past 18 month to two years as I would later learn…
I don’t know why I couldn’t tell my mom. Talking to her was the only thing that cracked open that glass that had come down. I was afraid…. That I did something bad… wrong…
And as stupid as it now sounds I thought if my folks did not know and I could fix this on my own before very many more people knew. Then it would be somehow okay or like it didn’t happen or it did happen but it wasn’t my fault or if I could fix it I wouldn’t be hated…
I knew how the mothers in these sorts of stories were viewed. I even saw it a little bit in comments about the story… “Where was the mother?” I was always here… And I didn’t know.
How would I of? The babies didn’t act differently around their dad then they ever had… The girls never acted like their dad was after them like that… Larry hated chimes… His older brother did a turn in state prison for something like, but not what Larry did… And Larry hated his brother. Called him every bad word and if his brother sent him something from inside he chucked it in the trash without looking at it.
When his brother got out a few years prior to this, there were a few tims I had to be in the same room. Larry was very protective and once Skye and then Ben came along he was like a dog with a bone…
We used to be two of the people smugly watching “To Catch a Predator” when it came on in huge hours long blocks on MSNBC.
We both could spot the chimes straight away. Even without them being on the show. Just looking at theses weird pasty pudgy guys…
Every show as the same setup. I could never work out how they kept catching predators after a season or two…

They would introduce the chomo’s story… Read and show bits of transcript between the chemo and his underaged victim… All the nasty details, and the ones that were too gross for TV were left out but enough context was given that you could fill in the blanks. And if you couldn’t you could go to prevertedjustice.com and find the whole nasty transcript with pix! Gag
You would hear all about how bigdogdaddy69, not as far as I know a screen name of anyone that was ever on the show, was chatting, or thought he was chatting with a child.
The chat would start out… with the chemo asking the child what how old they were and what did they do at school and what did they do for fun and things like that… Then it would go off the chain. The chemo would ask if they child had hair on their privates or if they had ever done sex with anyone and did they want to do sex with them…
I don’t know if the men ever told the children they were grossss creepy old men or if they tried to pass themselves off as guys younger or the same age group as the children they chatted with.
I seem to remember all these things took place.
After the story was finished being explained. We then learned that the chemo and child had agreed to meet for some fooling around…
This is the part I was always stumped over… All these children lived in some big fancy house… Way out the middle of nowhere. I guess so the cops that in later shows were able to pounce in a hail of bodies and yelling on the poor dumb bastard as he stumbled out after getting cockblocked and shamed with TV cameras…
Here they would come way way way out into the middle of no place to a big fancy house… Clearly none of these people, thankfully, seemed to have ever seen a scary movie. For if they had they would know nothing good ever came of big fancy houses empty in the middle of nowhere. Empty save for the “child” they were going to see, and Chris Hanson and TV people and cops galore… Glad they are dumb because they got busted.
Anyway they’d pull up to the big fancy house in nowhere ville and hop out all a bundle of nerves and hormones and cheap cologne and flopswet… Sometimes they would be thoughtful enough to bring rubbers, or booze or something like that… One guy came in without the benefit of a stick of clothing on him. I guess he left his shirt and pants on the floor of his creeper car right along with his last gig to give about anything…
They would come up and knock or ring the bell of the big fancy house… Off camera a young sounding, mostly girl but sometimes there would be a boy.. These were not real kids but grown folk that sounded like young kids would shout off screen for them to come in… They were just finishing up getting ready and their guest could have a seat at the bar… There was always a bar… And have some cookies and lemonade… The “kid” would often point out they made whatever was on offer themselves… I couldn’t figure out why such a detail would even matter… But when you thought, some of these ages theses guys were coming to see were closer to playing with an easy bake oven than they are to adult hood, it made some sick sense…
The guy would sit down nervously and pick at the cookie or drink but wouldn’t get far… This is when Chris Hanson would glide around the corner, calm and cool as could be…

“Hi I’m Chri s Hanson with dateline NBC…” and the rest was a slow painful cringe slide into the official wrong side of the law…
Chris would confront them with a transcript of their chat. They would try to come up with some BS excuse. One guy said he stopped by to say he wasn’t going to stop by. That sounds like the stupidest excuse in the known universe… But my weird creepy therapist I saw for a time after all this, tried laying the same boogywoogy on me when I called to tell him my ride had fall through and I needed to reschedule… He’d say “Can’t you just come by for a few minutes?” Um no… DR. Cell phone, he would always break of mid season with e to yack down his cel phone… I can’t because if I could, I’d just stay for the whole thing…. My trouble is my ride has fallen through so I have no way of getting to your location… Anyway…
Chris and chemo would go back and forth a bit and then chemo would leave out.
Early on they had to let the guys go for some reason, but later on the perp would slink out having had has asss and balls handed to him on TV… Then a roaring would commence… It was the cops yelling for the guy to hit the dirt or something. I think they’d run at the sad sack and body slam them to the ground like on cops after a chase… Then the chemo of the hour would be cuffed and carted off to. whoever fait was there for sad weird old chomos in the world.
How this worked time after time after time just floored Larry and I. Especially when the SAME guy got caught out and then got out of lockup, I guess, and ended up right back at the very same place the very next night! How the hell do you be that dumb?
All these dudes, I never say any women on there but I know they are out there… All these dudes looked just looked like what a chomo would look like.
Lumpy, doughy, pail, balding and just goofy AF… Even if Chris Hanson hadn’t been there with his TV crew you could mark that guy as a chomo for a mile away…
Anyone growing up in the 70s or 80s knows well stranger danger… And to stay away from men in long rain coats, that want to sit right next to you in a movie place, or a creepy guy with a big bushy mustache crossing around the play yards offering candy to get in his big creeper car, the ones with the two big huge doors that ranged access to the front and back, the bench seat, there was always a bench seat and a busted ass book door lock or handle… They would always be trying to pass out candy… I always pictured the candy as some yucky kind, ribbon candy, all stuck together in some used past it’s useful date paper sack… I could of been the summer heat stuck it all together or the nervous palm sets as the creep tried to catch some dumb little kid… Or they would ask about puppy or kitties. Either they wanted to show some off or they had lost one someplace and needed help finding it.
I always wondered what was wrong with these weird grown folks, asking a kid? All the kids I knew were kind of dumb or too smart to talk to weird old dudes in a car. A s for me I was fearful of strangers to the point of not talking to them and going the other way as fast as I could. I still am… My kids are… It is okay…
The neighborhood watch signs were also helpful in telling you who to watch for… Anyone that looked like a shadow man with white cutouts where his eyes were to be. He’d be in a cloke or long rain coat but no puppies or kitties or weird sweated together grandma’s candy dish candy in a bag… As far as I could tell from the pictures on TV that came on when the neighborhood watch PSA aired…

Before the lady cop called my mom… I remember being in a heap on the floor of what had been Larry and my bedroom. I was shattered but not able to really shat, if that makes sense… My emotions wouldn’t function properly. I was upset but not movie of the week dramatic part of the movie upset…
I do remember the lady cop was kind. she told me this would all be okay. it wouldn’t be easy but eventually, it would all be okay that I would get past this and I would be able to bring up my kids and that I would have to reach out to my family and friends but they would would help me get through this and that it wasn’t my fault.
I might, if I wanted go on and find the love of my life… The lady cop shared that she had a shit relationship for a long time and it ended and she didn’t find the love of her life until after she was almost forty…
I have never forgotten her kindness and I wish I could tell her thank you and that she was right. Well not aboutht the love of my life. He’s not found me yet but I’m also not looking too hard for him, but everything else, she was right.
We did go on from there… My family and friends all picked me up, helped me rejoin the human race… My family and friends and God and Jesus his own self have seen me and the kids through and we are doing okay for the most part…
I forget how the convo went with my mom but she said I wasn’t in trouble or bad or anything and we would sort this out someway or other…
Shortly after that I gathered the framed pictures of my kids, a pillow and a change of clothes and my phone…
I ended up getting to keep my MacBook, my HD for the MacBook, my videocamera, a tape for the camera and my phone. Did I say that? Oh I also got to keep the flash drives that had my talking books on them.
My friend Shane told me that likely the reason was I was so willing to answer all the questions and had no problems with them looking through everything… The other part to that puzzle might have come from a comment one of the OPD investigators told me as I was getting into theback of the cop car to be taken over my friends’ house…
I gathered up my stuff and was helped down the stairs and I walked out into the bright morning sun. It was a bright clear day, a knock your eyes out blue sky just like on september 11…
I was taken over to the cop car and was shocked! I had never been in a cop car. It is alll hard plastic. The seat and there is a clear divider between the front and back as you would expect but the right and left sides are also sectioned off with see through plastic…
There is a seat belt that you must fasten… I remember getting sat in and one of the investagers a guy I would work with a lot over the coming weeks…
He shook my hand. He gave me his card. He told me his name.
He told me that Larry had confessed to everything. everything and he made sure to tell him, the investigation guy, I had nothing at all to d with whah he did. He made it perfectially clear and said I didn’t know anything and he had taken advantage of my being blind and trusting.
Blind and trusting are not always hand in glove but if you can’t trust the father of your two children, who can you trust?

He also said he had interviewed people like Larry for a number of years and he could tell Larry was honestly telling the truth and sorry for what he did.
I asked if Larry had cried and I was told he did… I thought the only thing a hard baby like that is balling over is the fact he got caught out and wasn’t sorry about anything like you should be sorry for in something like that.
He has said to people, and to me in letters I have never responded to and in court several years later when he had to listen to our, me and Skye and Ben, victim impact statement… That he said he disagreed with somewhat but that is for a later story.
I walked out of that house, out of my life and into the unknown… I thanked the investigator for what he had said about Larry fessing up… And then I took my first and only ride in a cop car to my friend’s house.
I remember thinking that all the other cars on the road with us must think I’m a drunk or a hooker or someone got busted passing bad paper or something.. I also remember the driver, himself a cop, asked me to say and spell my name. Like how they used to do on A and E Intervention.
My name is Jenny J E N N Y…