Chapter 8

The Gullible Twelve-Year-Old

Lorry M. is presently employed as a dancer in a ballet troupe of international renown. She shows such promise that it is not improper to suggest that she may one day reign as one of the superstars of ballet. Because she is still young-20 years old-her name is not yet known even to balletomanes, but if those who claim to know are correct, this young lady will enjoy great future success. For the purpose of this study, of course, her real name is not used.

Lorry's future has not always been so bright She has a dark past of which few persons are aware. The complete story of a certain segment of her life was contributed to this study of initial sex experiences by the psychiatrist who was consulted to examine her after a particularly traumatic episode in her life.

The facts are these. When she was 12, a 35-year-old man was arrested and charged with statutory rape, child molestation and contributing to the delinquency of a minor, all of which stem from the man's activities with Lorry at that tender age. The child was treated for shock and released from the clinic the next day after the apprehension of the man who was involved with her. Due to excellent care by the psychiatrist who contributed this report, no lasting mental or emotional harm appears to have ensued. Considerable harm might have been done to Lorry had she not received prompt and effective psychiatric assistance.

For purposes of clarity, her conversations with the doctor have been arranged in the form of a first-person narrative just as they came from her lips. This material was recorded at the time she was still 12 years old, and for this reason it may sometimes seem childish, but it is believed that this will aid the reader to a potentially greater understanding of the situation. The fact that Lorry is, at this writing, 20 years old, is disclosed only to indicate how she bears no apparent ill effects from the experience after eight years of elapsed time. Lorry's own account of her experience follows.

Doctor, thank you very much for helping me and talking to me like you have been doing. Can I say that first? I know you told me to just tell in my own words what happened between Mr. Hunter ... should I call him Jack, or Mr. Hunter? ... okay, then ... between Jack and me. You said that if I tell you all the details again, like I've been telling you on the different times when I've come to your office, that it may help other girls like me, and maybe other men like Jack, too.

I guess the first thing I should tell, then, is about dancing. Because I first met Jack through my dancing. I first started dancing when I was six-years-old, Doctor. My mother had been quite a good dancer before she married my father, so she always wanted me to become a good dancer too. My father also wanted that. When I started liking it a lot, they were both very proud of me and that made me feel very good. I couldn't wear toe shoes right at first.

My teacher said that I would have to start with different shoes and gradually develop my leg and foot muscles before I could wear the shoes. So I did just as they said, and finally I was able to wear toe shoes. It felt so good to wear them, Doctor. I was so free. Whenever I got to practice the dances in Swan Lake I felt almost like I really was a beautiful white swan.

When I was 11, I became old enough to go to another teacher who, Mother and Father said, would be very good for me. This teacher, Mrs. Svanova, was very nice to me and all the other girls. Oh, sometimes she was very strict with us, but then a ballerina's life revolves around rules, as my mother always says, so we were used to paying strict attention to Mrs. Svanova, and to doing just what she said at all times.

Besides the new steps I was learning and the new friends I was making among the girls who were my fellow students at the school, there was another part that I liked about it very much. Because it was much farther from my home, I was allowed to take a picnic lunch every day. At noon, I got to eat my lunch on the lawn under big old oak trees, along with some other girls who also lived far away and brought their lunches. It was really fun! The oldest girls there at the school were 15, and the youngest were my age. It was a very specialized school.

The garden where we ate is also the first place I ever saw Jack. Do I need to describe Jack, Doctor? Okay. He's a man with black hair and a black moustache. He has pretty blue eyes and pretty white teeth. You told me that he was 35, so I guess that's how old he is. I never thought to ask him. Jack was mowing the lawn the first time I saw him. He was the school's gardener. One of the girls who had been there longer than I had, called to him and said, "Jack! Jack! Hello! Come over here and tell us some more stories. Please!"

Jack walked over and smiled at us. I was sitting with two of my friends named Nancy and Debbie. Nancy was the one who called him over to where we were. When he got there he looked at us and said, "Sorry, little friends, but I can't stay long. I won't be able to tell you any stories today. I need to keep the lawn mowed or the grass will grow so tall that I won't be able to see you. We wouldn't want that to happen, now would we?"

We all said, "No! No!"

"Well then, I'd better get back to work. But first tell me who the new little princess is, won't you?" Then Jack looked at me. I was the newest girl in the school and he hadn't seen me before. He always called all of us dancing students "little princess." It was his special name for us.

Debbie said, "This is Lorry. She's new here."

I sprang to my feet and performed a half-mocking little curtsy. I thought that Jack was a very nice man, and I wanted to join in his way of joking with all of us. When I did my little curtsy, Jack's eyes sparkled. He said, "Well, little princesses, your new little sister-princess is a beautiful lass indeed. Why, I haven't seen such an attractive little curtsy in weeks and weeks."

This made me a little bashful, although I was very pleased. I stood with my face toward the ground and grinned. Then I sat back down.

Jack then turned to go back to his work, but before he left, Debbie said "Wait, Jack. I introduced Lorry to you, but I didn't introduce you to her." Then she turned to me and said, "Lorry, this is Jack," pointing to him with her hand opened palm up.

I was kind of embarrassed to talk to him since I had just met him. Finally I said "Hi, Jack."

The girls said afterwards that I said it in a real shy way, with my eyelashes turned down.

Doctor, do you think I have long eyelashes? Father says I do but Mother says they'll grow even more if I eat what she gives me and if I never leave anything in my plate. Thank you, Doctor.

Oh yes, about Jack. As he left us that first time I met him, he said, "'Bye, Debbie, 'bye, Nancy, 'bye, new-princess-Lorry!" Then he went on back to mowing the lawn.

I said, "He's nice, isn't he?"

Debbie and Nancy both said, "Oh yes, he's a very nice man. And he likes all of us a lot too. He can tell great stories. You'll see sometime when he has time to sit down with us and talk to us."

Many times, later, he did tell us stories, and they were always great fun. One thing he usually did was to tell us the stories we'd all heard as bedtime stories when we were younger, except he'd pretend to get all the characters mixed up. I know he knew the real stories, but he would say things like, "Hickory, dickory dock, the cow ran up the clock." Of course we would all break out and laugh a lot when he made mistakes like that.

And then he'd say things like, "Little Miss Muffett

Sat on her tuffet

Eating her curds and whey

Along came Willie Winkle

And sat down beside her and said, 'What a good boy am I.'"

And he'd ask us if we wanted him to tell the story of "Little Bo Peeping Hood," or the story of "Goldilocks and the Three Pigs." Every time he would make a mistake, we would all double up with laughter. Since he was always calling us his "little princesses" and being so much fun, I guess you could say that a lot of us had sort of a "crush" on him.

One time Debbie told me something else about him, too. She said that he liked to look up our skirts whenever he could. She said she had seen him do it a lot of times. She said he did it to her all the time. But she said she liked for him to do it to her. Debbie said to me, "Sometimes he gives me a kind of a secret smile when he does it. And sometimes I smile back, and when I do, he winks at me. Give him a chance some time and he'll do it with you too, I bet." So I kept that in mind. Debbie was my age, so I thought that if Jack wanted to look up her skirt he should be just as happy to look up mine.

I know, Doctor, you've explained to me how little girls-well, girls my age, anyway-I don't think I'm so little-shouldn't play games like that one at all. And you've said that we especially shouldn't play games like that with men who are a lot older than we are. Well, I believe you, Doctor, now that all that happened with Jack and me. But I didn't know before.

Jack had another job, too. He wasn't just a gardener. He was mainly a stagehand. In our school we had a little stage set up. It was almost as big as a real stage. And Jack was the person who turned the lights around to follow us sometimes as we danced, and the one who made the curtain go up and down. I think he liked this part of job better than the gardener part of his job. When he was there doing his stage job, he smiled a lot. And he was always watching us as we danced around in our leotards or in our short little ballet skirts.

It was once on that little stage that I played the little game with him for the first time. The teacher, Mrs. Svanova, always sat out in front. So she couldn't see what went on backstage where we waited for the time for us to go onstage.

I was waiting back there one time when Jack was standing there with his hand on the curtain rope. But he didn't have to do much once he got things set up. He spent most of his time watching us dance. When I saw him, I was the last one to be standing backstage, so I knew no one would see me. I don't know whether I would have done it or not if anyone could have seen me. I probably would have, though, because I knew that some of the other girls did it.

I saw Jack looking at me, but I didn't look directly at him I kept looking out onto the stage. But as I did this, I shifted my position and raised one foot up to a step near where I was standing. When I did this, I saw Jack bend his knees a little so that he could see up underneath my dress better. I had on my white leotards and my stiff white ballet skirt that was very short. But Doctor, he couldn't really see anything. I had my dancing panties on besides my leotards. Anyway, he stared for a long time up underneath my skirt as I stood there.

Once I was waiting backstage. I was bending over to tie my shoe. Jack came up and looked down at me. I knew where he was looking, but I kind of liked it, really. Him wanting to look at me there. He was looking down my blouse! We were doing gypsy dances that day and we were all wearing white, frilly peasant blouses. He could see plenty where he was looking, too. I know I'm still growing there, Doctor. On my chest, I mean. Well, a few months ago when all this happened I was about as big there as I am now. I don't think there was any difference at all, in fact. I don't think my ... my breasts have grown any in the past few months. Anyway, Jack could probably see the tops of them as he looked down my blouse. And it just might have been that he could see all the way down to my ... uh ... to my nipples. I don't know. Oh, I was wearing my brassiere the way I was supposed to, but there are still ways you could see all the way down to my nipples if I just happened to be standing right. Anyway, that's definitely where he was looking.

But, Doctor, I wasn't the only one! The other girls all wanted him to try to look at them that way too! I don't know for sure if they wanted him to see everything, but they sure wanted him to look, because they were always talking about it.

That's why when I saw him looking I gave him a little smile before I straightened up to where he couldn't see down there anymore. When I made it so that he couldn't see any more, he made a joking little "sad face" as though I had taken something away from him that he liked a lot. I played along with his little game by reaching out toward him and pretending to pat him on the head to console him. When I did that he nodded his head up and down real fast and got a strange smile on his face. Then it was my turn to dance again so I left him.

One day when I was eating in the yard the other girls were a little ahead of me and went inside before me. Jack came up and sat down across the yard from me. Since I was outside, I wasn't wearing my leotards, so I knew that if he looked, he could see right up to where my panties were. I had begun to have a little hair grow down there between my legs, and I remember hoping that none of it was sticking out the legs of my panties where he could see it. I still don't know if it was or not, but I do know that he was looking up my dress again, because after looking around to make sure that no one could see him, he gave a low "wolf-whistle" in my direction. I got a little red in the face, I think, but I smiled at him when he did it, too. He came over and stood beside me.

He said, "You know, I think you're getting to be about my favorite little princess, Lorry-lie."

I didn't know what to say. I felt very proud when he said that to me, because I knew that almost any girl at the school would have liked to have him say that to her. I just didn't say anything. In fact, I was half-afraid to look him in the eye while he was talking. I just knew that I would begin that silly blushing business, and I didn't want him to think that I was such a baby that I just blushed all the time.

Another reason I was sort of afraid to meet his eyes was that I knew he could see down my blouse again. And he'd just got through looking at my panties! Boy, he was getting to see a lot of me on that day! Then he spoke.

He said, "You're not just a little bit shy, are you, Lorry?"

First I didn't say anything, but then I got tickled somehow and giggled a little bit as I said, "Maybe."

Jack said, "Well, don't you worry, Lorry, about a little thing like being just a touch shy. Let me tell you a little secret. I like shy girls best of all."

I almost spoiled everything by blurting out, "You do?" But I held myself back and Jack went on talking.

He said, "You are just a little bit shy, aren't you. I mean you aren't real, real shy, are you?"

I couldn't help giggling again. I shook my head and said in a weak little voice, "I don't know."

"Well, there are some little tests we can do to see how shy you are, Lorry-lie. Do you want to do them sometime with me?"

I was getting a little more self-confident by then. I said, "We can do them now, Jack."

But Jack said, "No, there wouldn't be time to do them now. You have to go back inside very soon now, and I have to go back to work on the lawn. You do want to have a nice lawn to play on, don't you?"

"Oh yes," I said. "Yes." I looked at him for an answer, but he only looked down at me and smiled, so I asked, "When can we do the tests, then, Jack? When can we?"

"Well, the best time would be after school is out, but it would have to be a big secret. You couldn't tell anyone that we were going to play the game to see how shy you are. Not even your very best friend. Do you still want to play the game?"

"Yes," I told him. "I'd like to very much. But how can we do it?"

Jack thought a minute and looked up thoughtfully at the sky. Finally he said, "Lorry-He, don't you ever go home with any of your little princess friends after school?"

I didn't understand the connection. I said "Yes, sometimes," with a puzzled expression on my face.

"Well," explained Jack, "you could tell your mother you were going-home with one of your friends, but not really go. And I could tell you where to meet me after school."

I told him I wouldn't do that, Doctor. I really did.

But he said, "Oh, you could do that, couldn't you? It would only take a little while. Then you could just go on home. No one would know. It would be all right."

I brightened up. "I know what I can do. I can just ask my parents. And they might let me!"

Jack spoke very quickly. "No," he said. "No, Lorry, your parents wouldn't understand. They wouldn't understand. You'd better not mention it to them at all." He was very emphatic.

I knew that I had to go inside in a minute, so I said, "Well, maybe, I might be able to do what you said and tell my parents I was going to be at one of my friend's house. I guess it would be okay. When do you want to do it?"

"Tomorrow." Jack said. "Tomorrow after school. And I'll show you right now where we can meet. See that blue car over there? Well you just run right over there and get into that car, and I'll be there in just a few minutes after you get in. But be sure and don't let anyone see you get into the car. Be sure of that. After all, it's our secret We don't want everyone to know our secrets, do we?"

The next afternoon after school I did exactly as we had planned. As soon as I got into Jack's car, he was there with me almost at once. It was beginning to get exciting now. I was glad I had come. He pulled away from the curb and we went for a few miles before we stopped at a small stone house in the middle of the block.

Inside his house, Jack gave me a soda pop and asked me if I was comfortable. I told him I was.

"Oh, I'll bet you're really not," he said. "I'll bet when you go home after school you take off some of your clothes, don't you?"

"Yes," I said, "but I don't have any other clothes to wear here."

"Surprise!" he shouted. "Yes you do have something to wear here."

He reached behind a chair and handed me a funny looking sort of gown. It was about my size, but it looked old and worn out, even though it was spotlessly clean. In fact, it had a few holes in it.

"No, I don't guess I had better change clothes here," I told him. "I'd better just keep on the clothes I'm wearing now."

Then he laughed and said, "Aha, then I've won the game!" I didn't understand. He saw how puzzled I looked.

"Don't you remember the game we were going to play? Well, you see, we've already started to play it. And I've won the first part. Don't you remember what kind of game it was supposed to be? It's a game to see how shy you are. And you're too shy to change your clothes here at my house, so I've already won the first part of the game!"

Suddenly I remembered the game. He was right. I had lost. He had been very clever. I hadn't understood exactly how the game was to be played, and it seemed to me that something was wrong, but Jack was always so much fun that I thought I just didn't know enough about the game to like it yet. I was still leery about changing into the gown he had given me, but I thought maybe it would be okay as long as Jack didn't see me do it.

"Oh," I said, "that's the game. I didn't know you meant-"

He interrupted me. "Well, sure," he said, "That's how we find out how shy you are!"

Of course, I thought to myself, how could I be so dumb as to not understand the game! Then, thinking that I was catching on faster than he had planned for me to, I said, "But when I change into this gown, then we'll be even again, right? You won't be ahead in the game then, will you?" I thought that would show him how smart I was.

"Oh," Jack shouted in fun, "this little Lorry-lie is going to beat me if I don't watch out!" Then he turned to me and said, "That's right. Right! If you go ahead and do what I think you're too shy to do, then you win."

I was very pleased with myself. The game was getting to be fun. I ran into an adjoining room to change into the gown and prove to him that I wasn't too shy. And I was also winning the game by doing that, I thought to myself.

When I was in the other room Jack called to me, "Well, are you changing your clothes?"

I yelled back, "Yes, but you stay in there. You can't look!"

Then Jack answered, "Oh, I'm going to stay in here. If I came in there where you are I might see something!" That tickled me and I started giggling a little.

"But we can still play the game with you in that room," he yelled.

"How?" I yelled back. Then I moved a little closer to the door so we could hear each other without yelling.

"Well, you have to tell me exactly what clothes you're taking off in there," he said, "and if you're too shy to do that then I win again."

"Oh, that's easy," I said to him through the door. "I'll win this part of the game, too." I told him about each piece of clothing as I took it off.

"Good, good," he said. "You're winning, you're winning!" I noticed that his voice sounded funny when he spoke.

"Now I've almost won the game," I told him. "I'm putting on the gown you gave me."

"No, wait," he called out, "you can't do that yet. You aren't ready. You don't have all of your clothes off. You can't put the gown on until you take all your clothes off!"

"But I do have them all off," I said. "And now I'm putting the gown on." I wasn't going to let him trick me into losing the game!

He was insistent. "No, if you don't take them off, I Win this part of the game. In order to put on the gown I gave you, you shouldn't have anything on under it."

I looked at the gown. Maybe he was right. It was a sort of sleeping gown, and you shouldn't need anything underneath a sleeping gown. But I was still too shy to say the words to Jack. "Well, all right then, I'm-I'm ta-ta-ta-king the rest of my clothes off now before putting on the gown," I stammered.

Then Jack rasped in an even shakier voice, "What are those things you're taking off now, my little princess, what are those things? You must tell me, in order to win the game! What are you taking off now?"

The game! I had come so far that I had to win it! I finally said, in a very soft voice you could hardly hear, "My panties, Jack. And my brassiere." And as I told him the names he wanted to hear, I unhooked the back of my little white brassiere and let it fall off my small breasts. I held it in one hand while I wriggled my panties off with the other. As I stepped out of them and took them in my other hand, I knew that Jack had heard me, because he said in a low husky voice, "Your panties and brassiere, Lorry-lie? Is that what you said, honey?"

"Yes, Jack." I spoke up a little louder, proud now that I was winning the game, but feeling very strange about the way Jack was acting. His voice was sounding so funny and he was breathing so hard.

I decided to end the game once and for all. There was something which I thought if I would say, Jack would just have to declare me the winner of the game. I'd gradually been catching on to how he wanted to play this game, and I decided that if it was naughty words that Jack wanted, it was naughty words he would get! I said, "Jack, I'm standing here with no clothes on and that's not all, Jack. Do you know what I see when I look down at myself?" I knew I was being terribly naughty to talk like this, but I just had to show him I wasn't shy, and end the game once and for all. Now all I heard from the other room was a low moan and a kind of gurgling noise. But I pushed on, anyway.

I said in a perfectly loud voice, yet kind of scared, I guess, "Jack, when I look down I see ... I see a little bunch of brown hair between my legs and two small titties on my chest!"

That did it. I heard Jack say a bunch of garbled words something like, "Oh you sweet little thing with your titties and your pussy hair between your legs, I'm coming, I'm coming, I'm coming!"

Suddenly, Jack rushed into the room where I was standing naked. He had his clothes off too, and I could see that his thing ... his sex thing ... was stiff and throbbing. Somehow, I knew that he was no longer playing the game. He pushed me down onto the bed, and spread my legs, and pushed his thing into me, while he kept saying dirty things like, "I'm fucking you, Lorry-lie. I'm fucking your sweet little cunt."

It hurt me for a minute or two when he pushed it in, but he was too big for me to shove away. After a while, he pulled his thing out of me, and it was shooting out some white, sticky stuff. I felt warm inside me, where some of the stuff had gotten up into me. I felt funny-good in a way, even though I knew it was wrong. I almost wanted to say, "Put it in again, Jack."

Then there was a loud noise, and three policemen broke through the front door and rushed into the bedroom where we were. Two of them grabbed Jack off of me. One of the policemen grabbed me. He rubbed his hand kind of hard between my legs, and some of the white stuff came off on his fingers. He looked at it, and said to the other policemen, "The kid's been fucked!" He rubbed himself between his own legs, where there was a big bulge in his uniform, until the other cops looked at him funny. Then the three cops beat up on Jack, calling him names and giving him a real whipping. Jack was still naked while they were beating him, and his thing got hard again, and it shot out some more white stuff even while they were whipping him. One of the cops yelled, "The cocksucker's coming all over me!" Another cop said, "Shut up, you dumb bastard, the kid's still here."

They left off beating Jack, and one of them put a blanket around me very gently, and they carried me out to their squad car ... and took me home to my parents.

You know the rest, Doctor, how you helped my parents and me get over the shock of what had happened between me and Jack. You know how Nancy had seen me get into Jack's car with him at the school and how she told Mrs. Svanova who called the police and sent them to Jack's house after she found her records that told her where he lived. I never did understand what Jack meant when he said "I'm coming, I'm coming, I'm coming!"

PSYCHIATRIST'S ANALYSIS

Lorry's unpleasant experience resulted not from any real overt act on her part, but instead because she was of an age that is particularly conducive to the attention of a certain kind of sex deviate-the pedophiliac. Pedophilia-from Greek words meaning "child love"-is a sexual deviation characterized by the sexual attraction of an adult to a child. Although many degrees of variance within the term pedophiliac are to be found, the true pedophiliac is one who is able to obtain gratification exclusively from sexual involvement with children. Lorry's "friend" Jack was obviously a pedophiliac.

That Lorry was able to recover with no permanent emotional disability is the result of several factors. Of primary importance was the attitude of her parents. They were helpful, able to restrain themselves from undue emotional distress, and most important, were able to keep from feeling anger toward their child, who had, after all, been taken advantage of, rather than having been involved in a situation which she could control. Lorry, in other words, was the victim, not the offender-and her parents wisely recognized this fact and acted accordingly.

Dr. Lester Kirkendall, eminent American sexologist, states in an article titled Family Sex Education Program (Sexology Magazine, 1959), that " ... the anxieties created by adult reactions may lead to the very kinds of sex practices which the parents fear. Some studies have dealt with children who have been involved in some sexual offense. The evidence indicates that more damage may be expected from the horrified, panicky reaction of the adults who deal with children than from the experience itself"

Fortunately for Lorry, her parents were not among the grouppostulated by Dr. Kirkendall. An indication of Lorry's feelings toward her parents in the wake of her experience is apparent from the fact that the girl makes only a passing reference to them near the end of her story. If her parents had acted in a manner which caused Lorry any emotional anxiety, experience has revealed that she would have been almost certain to discuss her parents at great length. Yet there was no mention of any family difficulties during the aftermath of her meeting with Jack.