I was part of the SCA for years, however I have not been going to events for about four years. Now I am glad. I found out a few weeks ago a story about some one I knew. This story was confirmed last weekend. So what could this story be?
Well when James moved down here one of the household showed great interest in him, as he was a fighter. He joined the household, the Marines (known as the squids). I had known most of these people for years. Bruce was part of the group. I had known him for about 5 years. When we went to Pensic and camped with them we had some issues. Bruce and James did not get along and this caused us to pull away from the household, but James was still part of it. We came home from Pensic with a very common souvenir, I was pregnant. Once we had our son we found we just could not manage merchanting at events and a baby, so we decided to stop doing events for a bit. Our son is now 4 and we started looking at the SCA again. It turns out that it was a good thing we had stopped going.
It turns out that Bruce is a pedophile. He was preying on children in the SCA and had been doing it for years and years. Kids I knew! The children of people I had known for years. He was charged and is now in jail. My response when I found out was shock, not that he did it, but that he was still living. I knew some of the people hurt by this and the people around them. I have no idea how Bruce made it out alive.
I know that people think I am over protective of my kids, maybe even paranoid some times. Now I don’t think I am. I am glad that I have never let any one take care of my children outside of daycare/pre-school. Why, because this monster was in my home, with my baby. I used to spend time in their home every week and see them at fight practice. His wife offered to baby sit! I cannot think of how I would be feeling now if I had let her baby sit. I think about how I knew this man for years and never much though any thing about him, he was just one of the fighters and an ok guy, friendly but not my type. James disliked him and that is a big reason for why we had stopped hanging around that particular group of people.
There was nothing about this man to put up flags. He was for the most part known as a friendly helpful guy with a bit of a temper but over all a good guy. I never saw him act inappropriately with any one, let alone a child. There was nothing to let any one know who he really was, or what he really was. How can you tell? The reality is that you cannot tell who is the predator, the pedophile, the child molester. How many people do you come in contact every day? Can you tell if some one is a pedophile? I cannot, but I do know that they are out there. I am going to stay over protective of my kids. A pedophile can be behind any face, even one you know.
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