Hello. I'm a monster. Not just any kind of monster. Vampires and werewolves get to star in movies. They're monsters, but they can also be heroes.
I'm the worst kind of monster. I'm a sex offender. And the worst kind of sex offender. I'm a pedophile.
Don't worry. I'm locked up. I've been in a federal penitentiary for almost two years and I'll be here for at least another seven. No time off for good behavior. Not for monsters like me. When I get out, I'll be on lifetime probation. That means that every couple of weeks, for the rest of my life, I'll have to report to a parole officer and tell them what I'm doing. They can tell me where to live. They can tell me where I can't live, or work or go. And everywhere I live my neighbors will get flyers warning them about me. If they miss the flyer, a handy database is there to show the address where I live. That makes it easy for anyone to find me and tell me what they think of me. Anyone. It's perfectly legal to deny me an apartment, or service.
You're probably thinking that I deserve it. Being a monster and all. So... want to know what I did?
Three years ago... which might as well be a hundred, on another planet. Three years ago, I was a med student. That shouldn't be shocking. Dr. Jekyll. Hannibal Lector. Plenty of evil doctors.
It was during third year, when people call you "doctor," even if they shouldn't. Unlike most of my classmates, I looked the part. I started out as a nurse for years, so I had already turned thirty, with a scruffy beard, thick glasses and a middle-aged spread that was encouraged by a med student's crappy hours and crappier diet.
I had an impossible schedule, and nothing in the bank, but I had a challenging and rewarding task in front of me. I had a serious girlfriend and a limitless future.
I also had a tendency to chat on dating sites. They weren't crazy, sex-addict sites. They were normal, gotta put in your profile, fill out all your favorite things sort of dating sites. They were how I'd met my serious girlfriend. It was just that after I met her, and after we started dating, and after we started living together, I kept chatting. Because I liked it. I liked talking, bantering, complaining about ex's, trading comments on movies. I felt a little guilty about carrying on these chats, but only a little. After all, online was only talk. Yeah, I told myself that lie.
One of the people I'd been talking with on the dating site asked me if I would come and chat with her on another site. She—let's call her Billie—gave me her info and told me I could get the program for this new, more private chat room on the App Store. I downloaded the app, created my own account, and contacted Billie. She used a profile picture that was blurry photo of a young woman with short hair and a big smile. I used a photo that was equally vague, with several people in the frame, none of whom were me.
On that first night, we talked about a video game. Billie like shooter games, which was unusual for women. I didn't, which was unusual for men. We both agreed that online role-playing games were fun, but took a lot of time. We talked about maybe starting in one together. End of conversation.
In the next week, I probably talked to Billie ten times. The next week it was twenty times. If I wasn't messaging her, she was messaging me. We talked about Ghostbusters and Zombieland. I told her about the idiocy and pressures of medical school, and the added pressure of my mounting six-figure debt. I talked about how I didn't really get along that great with a lot of my fellow med students since I was older and they rarely invited me to join on the rare social occasions. I whined. A lot.
Billie was sympathetic to all my whining. She always said encouraging things. Still, I started to notice odd things.
Billie talked about how she only worked part time, and couldn't buy the things she wanted. She left openings for me to say I'd buy those things. I didn't. I was too broke to even pretend I was rich. She also spent a lot of time talking around sex. Not about it—around it. In almost every chat, she gave me at least one "want to know what I'm wearing" kind of opening. Later that changed to more of "so, if I was there, what would you do to me." But she never said anything about it directly. She just dangled.
I took the bait. At first gave Billie the kind of line I'd use in real life. The "if you were here, I'd" followed by something that involved kissing or massage and her shoulders, back, neck, face. But after a few days of replies filled with smiley emoticons, "tell me more", and "what then", I got into it. I said things I'd never said to anyone in real life. I used words and expressions lifted from late night cable, and things I'd heard guys say at the gym. By the end of the month, Billie didn't even want to talk about video games, or movies, or that week's TV shows. If I talked about those things, she got bored and told me she didn't have time to chat. If I really wanted to chat, it had to be sex. All sex.
At the same time, I was actually getting more serious with my girlfriend, and I was in the middle of my internal medicine rotation. I was exhausted, but also elated, and the injections of sexy talk with Billie seemed like part of my day. Something I slipped in, the way others actually would play an online game, or drinks, or drugs. I found myself chatting with Billie even when I was walking down a hallway between patients. If I thought about it, I felt guilty, but I didn't stop. I know that sounds bad. It was bad. But it was about to be infinitely worse.
In the first week of August, Billie told me she was fourteen.
I misread it the first time. I thought she was telling me a story about when she used to be fourteen. But she repeated it a couple of days later. I just turned fourteen, she said. Last week was my birthday. Even then I thought she was joking. I thought this was Phase Two of the kind of chat we'd been having. Billie would pretend to be pretty princess, I would be big daddy. When she said something about trying out for cheerleader, I knew that was the game. I wasn't just a nerdy, overweight medical student, I'd also been a nerdy overweight kid. Who didn't want to get sex talk from the hot cheerleader?
Billie could not be fourteen. I'd been talking to her for weeks, not just about sex, but about everything. I knew fourteen. I'd been fourteen. I had nieces and nephews who were fourteen. None of them talked like Billie.
It took maybe a week, way longer than it should have, before I got a sinking feeling. I started to review everything she'd told me, and realized that while I had been whining and Billie had been sympathizing, we hadn't really talked much about her. She'd mentioned taking a test in something. Biology? I couldn't remember. She'd said something about her part time job, and working around her class schedule, and when school ended how she was frustrated that she wasn't going anywhere for vacation. What else did she say?
The chat app that Billie had asked me to use was one of those that didn't log your conversation. That privacy was supposed to be one of its advantages, but now it made it impossible for me to go back and check what we'd said. Didn't Billie tell me she was in college? Hadn't we talked about student loans? I thought so, but there was nothing to see now.
The next time I got a message, I looked at it cautiously. It was Billie. "Come on," she was saying, "talk to me. Don't be scared." But I was scared. I told Billie I didn't believe she was fourteen. Her reply only turned up the terror. "Come meet with me," she said. "And find out." She gave me an address, one that was about twenty miles from my home. Billie had never mentioned where she lived, and neither had I. I was sure of that much. It seemed like an incredible coincidence that she was so close by.
That was Aug 10. I know, because I got so upset I had to ask for the rest of my day off, a thing you really don't want to do in med school, and especially not in your first rotation. But I had to go home and just pace. My girlfriend was out. I thought that when she came home I'd fess up. Instead, I just decided not to talk to Billie again and pretend this had never happened. I wrote Billie what was supposed to be a final note. Sorry, life is just getting too hectic. Have a good summer.
I didn't reply when she messaged me the next day. Not even when she told me she was scared. "What did I do?" She asked. "I only want to know you better. Come meet me." I deleted the app.
For almost a month, that was it. My surgical rotation started. My girlfriend started graduate school. We started to talk seriously about long term plans.
Then I got a text message. Not something from an app, but a genuine message to my phone. The message said "Why won't you talk to me?" and it was from an unknown phone number. I looked at it for a long time before I finally replied. It was Billie. How did you get my number, I asked. "You gave it to me," she said. Had I? I didn't think so.I thought I'd been careful about giving out any info, but again I wasn't sure. A spot started burning in my stomach. I asked what I thought was the critical question.
Who are you, Billie? Who are you really? "Come meet me," she said. She asked me to bring her things. She wanted wine coolers. She wanted weed. She wanted me to bring condoms. "Fun ones," she said.
Are you the police? I asked. "No," she said. "I'm not in any way affiliated with the police."
That last part really confused me. I know that no matter how many times TV tells you different, the cops are not required to tell you they are the cops. If that was all it took, undercover cops would all be dead in a week. The police get to lie about being the police.
But Billie didn't feel like the police. For one thing, she'd spent weeks talking to me. She felt like a person. Also, she certainly didn't feel fourteen. I started to have another suspicion.
It might surprise you, but probably won't, that a great number of medical students are assholes. Some of them will stop being assholes by the time they make it all the way to doctor. Some of them won't. But at the start of third year, people are really feeling that home stretch. Out of the classroom, big salary and massive ego boost in sight. I began to think that Billie was someone that I knew. Maybe one of my fellow would-be doctors. Now that I thought about it, she seemed to know me. It wasn't just the phone number bit. There were times when it seemed like Billie knew all about my school, or even knew what I'd been up to before I said anything. She said it was because I'd told her, but I didn't think so.
Who are you? I asked her again on another day. "Come see me," she said. She repeated her requests for wine and "things so we can have some fun."
And I said I would go. She gave me an address and a time. I agreed... only when the time came, I didn't go. "You hurt my feelings," she texted me. "Don't you want to be with me?"
You could be anybody. You could be trying to trap me. "You're scaring me," she said. "Come meet me."
It was September when I finally agreed to meet. It had been a long day. I was exhausted, staggering back to the apartment in scrubs. My new white coat smelled like a locker room. My girlfriend was already asleep when I got there. My phone buzzed.
"Come meet me." It's too late, I said. "No," she said. "I'm up. Let's get together."
Going out again was absolutely preposterous. It was after midnight. I was expected at the hospital the next day, and I was just coming off sixteen hours with barely a chance to sit down. Who are you? I asked.
"Come see," she said. "Come meet me."
I agreed to meet her, not at an address, but at a restaurant, one just off the highway and just a short drive away. It was a dozen miles from the address she'd given the first time. The last thing I said to her was, I'm just coming to meet. "That will be nice," she said. "I'll be wearing an orange shirt."
I stumbled into the restaurant around 1 AM. It was just a local hamburger chain that happened to be open 24/7. There were only three people there. Two of them looked like biker dudes. They were big, thick-necked guys in denim and leather. The other person was a young woman with short dark hair in jeans and an orange blouse. I took one step toward her, then turned away. Instead I went up to the counter and asked for a coffee. While I was waiting, I looked at the woman out of the corner of my eyes. She looked more twenty-four than fourteen. She looked kind of like the person I thought I'd been talking to in those first messages. She kind of looked like Billie's blurry picture.
The guy who brought me coffee couldn't stop grinning. "What is it?" I asked him. He snorted and turned away.
Suddenly I really, really didn't want to be there. I didn't care if the woman in the booth was Billie. I just wanted to be home. I tossed the full cup of coffee in the trash and went out the door. I was halfway to my car when I heard the door open behind me. I turned around. It was the biker dudes. One of them was holding up a badge.
I only wanted to see who it was. I said.
"Of course you did."
I spent the next twelve hours locked in a room at the county sheriff's office. I can't say what the room looked like, because they took my glasses. "Suicide risk," one of them said. How I was supposed to kill myself with plastic glasses, I didn't know. They waited a long time before talking to me.
This is a mistake, I said when someone finally came in. "Sure," he said. He gave me papers to sign. He said one authorized the police to look at my computer because "guys like you always have child porn." The only picture of a naked person on my computer was in an anatomy text. So I signed it. Another authorized them to search my car "for condoms, KY jelly, that sort of thing." Without my glasses I couldn't read the papers, but I signed. They put blank paper in front of me. "Write what you did last night," they said. I wrote a couple of paragraphs about driving to the restaurant to see who had been messaging me. I thought about how the handcuffs made my handwriting as bad as any doctor's. All I could see was a blurry scrawl. I kind of laughed. They seemed happy enough. They talked to me for maybe half an hour, then they went away and left me sitting for a long, long time.
Then they took me to the county jail. When we got there, they escorted me inside, stood in front of of the common room where a hundred or so other prisoners were sitting or standing or walking around. "This man tried to rape a child," they announced. Loudly. Then they shoved me forward. The guy closest to me spat in my face. All I could see of the other prisoners was a kind of blurry orange mass. Someone steered me toward a bench. Someone else hit me in the back of the head so hard my face bounced off a table. Laughter all around. "You dead," said a voice at my ear. I just nodded. I really was.
At the end of the first day, someone came to tell me I'd been charged with enticement of a minor. They didn't stay long enough to answer any questions, but at least they brought my glasses. I didn't try to call anyone. I didn't know who to call. My father had died over two years before, not long after celebrating my starting med school. My brother and his family had moved to another country. My mother was retired, living on dad's pension two states away. My girlfriend was a serious girlfriend, serious enough that we'd talked about getting married after med school. I couldn't imagine calling any of them. Couldn't imagine saying "I'm in jail for trying to have sex with a child." So I just curled up on a narrow metal pallet in the corner of the big bunk room and tried to ignore the things being yelled at me and the kicks aimed at my back.
On the third day, I was told my lawyer was there. Which surprised me, since I didn't have one. They cuffed my hands and took me to wait in a small room. I was acutely aware that I was wearing a baggy orange jump suit, and that I hadn't shaved since before my long shift at the hospital, and that I stank. The lawyer was younger than me. He was hired by my very serious girlfriend, who found out where I was when a detective came to our apartment to get my computer. She had paid $5000 of her own money to hire the attorney. That was just a starter. If we went to trial, he wanted $20,000 more. I couldn't imagine were she found the money.
The attorney looked at me with an expression not much better than the prisoners. "Did you talk about sex?" "Yes." "Did she tell you she was underage?" "Yes, but..." "Did you go to a meeting?" "Yeah, but only..."
"You're fucked," said the lawyer. Bail was set at a quarter of a million. I couldn't pay it. So I stayed. I've never spent a day outside a jail or prison since.
My very serious girlfriend visited for the last time while I was still at the county jail. She was the one who told my mom what had happened. I couldn't stand the idea of mom getting a call that started "This is a call from an inmate at..." telling my mother that her son the doctor, was now her son the sex offender, the felon, the monster.
It took three months before they made their best and only offer. Ten years. Five years of that is "day and date." No chance of early parole. The rest I have to serve at least 85%, if I'm good. Which mostly means confessing that I'm a pedophile, over and over, and being sorry. Right after Christmas, I moved to a federal penitentiary. I got a job washing dishes. I learned to tell lie about why I was in. I learned to beg forgiveness sincerely.
And here I am still. I thought I was an exception, but I was the rule. I was just one of thousands of guys who all had exactly the same story.
Billie wasn't a real fourteen year old, and she wasn't even a police officer. Billie was a whole team of specialists, consultants, and even some psychiatric students from another med school. They met every day to read the transcripts and work out what to say next. They attended seminars, studied papers, planned conversations days in advance. It was a professional "cybercrime" team, and I was just one of 300 guys that single team pulled in that year.
I thought it would be an issue that they invited me to chat. That's allowed. I thought it would be an issue that I walked away and they kept texting me. Allowed. I thought it would be an issue that they invited me to meet, that they picked the time and place. Allowed and allowed. The laws on this stuff are expressly written so there is no out. The conviction rate on these cases is 99%+. If you're a DA, you love cybercrime. You put away scary predators by the bulk load, and you never lose. 95% of the people brought in have no prior arrest. It doesn't make a difference, because the sentences are mandatory.
My life as a man, as a son, as a boyfriend, as a med student, as a human being, ended in a hamburger place at 1:30 on a September morning. Now I'm a monster. I always will be. Sometimes I remember that guy in med school, with the girlfriend and the proud mom and a future. But that was somebody else.
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Note: I'm not monster. That is, I'm not in jail and not the person whose story is told above. He's a real person, but as you might expect, he has no Internet access. I've posted this for him, taking the text from several letters. I have made light edits, changing names, dates and leaving some things out. I've changed some of the quotes between him and "Billie," because the quotes were in court papers available online. For several reasons, monster does not want to be identified by name.
If there are questions, I will send them to him, but understand that it will be some time before you see a response.
Thank you for reading. I apologize for the length. I had a hard time deciding what to cut.