Wait and See
To be honest, at this point I just want to walk away from all this for a while. But I feel like after sending up flares last week to ask for help, the least I can do is tell everyone what I know now. Thank you for all your kind words, advice, and support.
I went to Kansas City last week. I’m now back in Portland. It feels like it was generally an unnecessary trip–no one I spoke to in Kansas City in person was necessarily unreachable by phone–but at the time it felt like there was a present danger to my brother and I didn’t know what else to do.
Glen is in jail. After taking off all his clothes a second time last weekend, he was admitted to a local psychiatric care center, where he proceeded to make advances against another patient. He was arraigned for Sexual Deviancy and Forced Sodomy.
Susan L. Dill, who you may remember as a vocal supporter of Mary Beth in my previous post, has been selected to represent Glen in court.
My hope is that Glen’s actions last week will be the final straw that allows Jackson County to recognize that he is a threat to himself and others and needs to be incarcerated or committed for a long time. Ideally at least five years, which would give my little brother time to reach legal adulthood without Glen as a direct threat.
My mother remains in denial about Glen and her history of enabling behavior. I have spoken to several people who were familiar with Glen even before he and Mary Beth were an item. (They worked in the same mental health care facility.) It was apparently rumored at the time that Glen had been assaulting patients. As an administrator, Mary Beth would have been privy to that information.
In addition, Glen was accused by other patients over the years of sexual assault. Mary Beth was aware of these accusations, if not the acts themselves.
That this all occurred before I was abused hurts me deeply. That my mother refuses to acknowledge her role in facilitating the actions of a sexual predator for over two decades compounds that hurt.
Yet even if she were as naive as she claims to be, the fact remains that even after Glen was prosecuted for abusing me, Mary Beth begged me to allow him back in the home, then refused to act when I told her that Glen continued to make advances against me. However you slice it, Mary Beth has been a party to years of abuse against her own family and those around her. Knowing something of her own family history and the abuse therein, it is my belief that she is dealing with issues of shame and denial so profound that she has put her own comfort above the safety of her family, as well as putting dozens of other children in harm’s way.
Unfortunately, simply being an accessory to abuse isn’t illegal, nor is it grounds to remove my brother from her care. In short, I’ve been told that until something actually happens to my brother–he is attacked, abused, or kidnapped–there is nothing that the state can do to remove him from the home.
I’ve been told to “wait and see,” which leaves a feeling of crippling helplessness. I am worn down, tired, and angry. But for the moment I am powerless, except for my ability to put what I know out in public, warn everyone in the community of the situation (something Mary Beth continues to refuse to do), and hope that my brother will be able to survive the immediate physical and sexual threats if Glen is released–and approach the inevitable psychological challenges that are inherent as a child of two mentally unstable adults.
Help
I wrote this yesterday in an email to a friend.
Woke to the news that my stepfather has decided he is no longer gay due to a serendipitous encounter with an old pastor at Panera Bread and has returned to my mother’s house with the intent to take out all their available cash and invest in a company that sells “biblical cologne” made from frankincense and myrrh. After locking himself in the bathroom for a few minutes where he could be heard quoting bible verses to himself over and over, he emerged with a new plan: to convert all their currency to gold.
My mother, who has refused to file for divorce since kicking him out of the house over a month ago after he expressed “worry about his desires” with regard to molesting my kid brother, informed the Family Services case worker that “Nate needs to see his father.” The case worker agreed and did not require supervision.
Calls to MO DFS were not returned, nor were calls to either of the churches that are in various degrees of contact with both my stepfather and my mother. The compassionate detective at the Jackson Country sheriff’s department said she is doing everything she legally can to build a case against my stepfather, but that until he does something illegal or admits to a crime to someone who will sign an affidavit–any one of the two-plus decades of sexual assaults against developmentally disabled clients to which he has confessed to my mother or the reports of “stalking young boys” given by his just-dumped boyfriend-slash-Christian Counseling parter would be a start, if only they’d actually talk to law enforcement on the record–she is legally unable to bring him into custody.
“When he threatens to kill you or your family,” the detective said to me almost cheerfully, “please don’t call my office phone. Call 911.”
Tonight I received a call from my sister who said that Glen, my stepfather, was just released from the hospital were he had been taken to receive stitches after careening into a stop sign while running naked down the street outside of Crown Center, a local shopping center. He told my sister and mother (with who I am not speaking and vice-versa) that he didn’t remember moving my mother’s car and had been running naked to “shed his shame” (or some such).
I contacted both the KCMO Police Department and the Kansas Crisis Hotline, reaching people at both places who told me point-blank that nothing could be done to protect my kid brother–who is at home, alone, while my mother helps my stepfather search for his abandoned car keys in a snow bank–until Glen directly threatens them, me, or himself. My mother appears to be unwilling to contact the police in all these matters in an attempt to protect Glen, expressing concerns that he might go “over the edge” if she does anything.
This is clearly not the right decision in this circumstance. Glen Robert Johnson has expressed behavior that clearly indicates he is a harm to himself and potentially others–he had admitted that he had come out as a homosexual because he felt fear that staying in the closet might cause him to act on urges he admitted he had toward my brother–and I am the panic I have felt for a week or more is coming to a head tonight, because despite everything I do to communicate with the authorities, I am being told there is nothing I can do to immediately protect my family, especially if Mary Beth has decided that she is unwilling to stop interacting with Glen.