A Girl's Life Online (25 page)

“Yes, of course, sit down and you'll be next,” she said.

“Could I use the phone to call my mom?”

“Of course you can.”

I started to cry again when I heard her voice. When I was able to speak I told her that I was the most horrible person on this planet and that I needed to go to jail more than anyone else.

“That's not true, Katie,” she said. “You are one of the best people I know.”

“I have done so many horrible things.”

“None of it was your fault.”

“I don't understand how I could have ruined my life this way,” I said. “I had so much potential, but I threw it all away.”

My mother agreed with my decision to see a counselor and told me she loved me. I then went to the waiting room and sat down.
Jerry Springer
was on the waiting room TV and the topic was “Teens and Their Lovers.” A twelve-year-old girl was involved with a thirty-five-year-old guy. Her mother fell for the guy, too, so they just made it a ménage à trois.

As I watched, I began to think the entire world was a sex-crazed mess. I know
Jerry Springer
is entertainment, but what are you supposed to think when grown-ups make a twelve-year-old the object of their desire and then go on TV to talk about it like it's normal? When my mother was a kid, she came home to reruns of
Father Knows Best
. I get transsexuals, hookers, and pedophiles. Sometimes this makes me laugh. This time, it made me feel dirty.

The counselor's name was Vivian, not doctor-something, but just Vivian. She was a small woman about forty years old, with long black hair and brown eyes that were very wide open, kind and trusting. She told me she knew a little of what was going on, but it would be best if I explained it. I couldn't look her in the face, so I stared at the floor as I spoke.

“Well, I met a man on the Internet. I mean, I didn't know he was a man at first, I thought he was just a guy. Anyway, we planned to meet in Texas during this swim meet. I went to his hotel room and he molested me.”

“Okay.”

“Now I'm involved in this trial. It's been going on for a long time and I guess I just kind of lost it under the pressure.”

“Why now?”

“I think it's because I've got nobody to talk to. I mean, nobody in my family has been really able to talk about it, and there's no one here.”

“It's pretty understandable. I mean, these things do happen, but most people are pretty shocked and don't know what to say at all. It's very hard to talk about being molested.”

“You're not shocked?”

“No, I'm not shocked. Have you tried talking to someone like me before?”

“Once. She was lame. She didn't offer me anything. She just wanted me to talk for an hour. She just sat there.”

“I'm not going to just sit here.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I'm going to help you understand that this is not your fault.”

“Oh yeah, right.”

The truth was, Vivian had already made me feel a little better. She was the first person who didn't seem disgusted by my story. She wasn't shocked, either, by the fact that I had come unglued emotionally. I walked away feeling better. It was all out, and now I really had someone to talk to. She even gave me her home number, in case of an emergency.

I walked back to my dorm and found Penn waiting in our room. I was desperate for a normal conversation—nothing about me and my problems—and I knew Penn could do that. I sat down and she complained to me about a trip her family was planning. They were going to go to a dude ranch in Wyoming and she really didn't want to go. I was happy to listen to somebody else's problems, and later we watched TV and laughed.

The next few days were difficult. I still didn't eat or sleep much. My parents offered to come up to see me, but I just didn't want to be a burden. My mom didn't settle for this answer. She left messages saying she couldn't just leave me at school in this condition. She had spoken to several doctors and they suggested I needed medication to help me cope. David said that if I allowed him to come up, he wouldn't bother me, just as long as he could make sure I would be okay. I said no to all of this, because I wanted to handle things on my own. It was almost as if I knew I had to suffer, and save myself, if I was going to feel redeemed for what I had done. My parents finally stopped pressing the issue when I promised to continue counseling and look into medication.

Talking with Vivian was very easy. She had spoken with my parents and sensed the power problem David has and how my mom could be an intimidating person. It was as if she already knew my family. I discussed my life during my swimming phase, which was basically no life. She then asked me whether I felt like I had control over my life. “Yes,” I said, “very much so.”

She didn't accept this. “Actually, you have been controlled all your life,” she said. “It may be hard to realize, but you have.” I may have felt independent and strong at times, but I had always been ruled by the schedules and demands of other adults around me. Frank had been the ultimate example of this, controlling me, manipulating me, without me even realizing it. He had controlled me by first winning and then violating my trust.

I wanted to argue with her. Frank may have been a manipulator, but I was stronger than Vivian thought, and I had to take responsibility. All of New Canaan seemed to agree with this, even my family. I told her what my sister had said: I wasn't some girl who was randomly raped in the park. I wasn't allowed to play the innocent party. I told her what David had said: “Feeling guilty about screwing up a man's life?”

Time and time again I heard Vivian reply, “Katie, you are not guilty.”

Hearing this so much made me consider believing it. And with Vivian I was finally able to admit that I had feelings for Frank. Even though I had friends who were sexually active, they didn't have romantic feelings for a person who was old enough to be their father. Vivian said I didn't need to explain, it was easy to understand.

I said it was sinful. She laughed. “It would have been hard not to have deep feelings for him,” she said.

Vivian agreed that I should see a psychiatrist to prescribe medication to help me through the term. I was terribly afraid of this, but I knew that depression was not unusual. Almost everyone experiences it at some time.

My mother asked me repeatedly if I really needed to see a psychiatrist. I thought I did, but she said, “You know, it would really be better if you could figure things out yourself, Katie.”

“I can't, Mom, I'm only sixteen,” I said.

At the doctor's office I filled out forms explaining everything that I had done. When we finally met, she asked me my life's history, paying particular attention to sex.

“Are you sexually active?”

“No, I'm only sixteen.”

“Well, you never know these days.”

“I am a virgin.”

She prescribed an antianxiety medication that would “take the edge off of things.” That sounded good to me.

It was Good Friday, and when I got back to the dorm my parents picked me up so we could go to Boston for Easter. I missed my parents terribly, and I was thrilled about seeing them. It was also my mom's birthday, so my older sister was going to come up from college. Seeing my family together and happy for the first time in a long time was really good for me.

On Easter Sunday my mother hid a bunch of Godiva Easter eggs in the hotel room and we hunted for them. Back when we dyed our own eggs at Easter nobody wanted to find them because we all hated eating them. Hunting for Godiva eggs was a little different.

At the end of the day I didn't want to go back to school because I didn't want to leave my mom. My sister drove me back, and on the trip we made fun of my parents and she let me change the radio station as often as I liked. Abby dropped me off and kissed me good-bye. When I went up to my room, my new medication was waiting.

I was still afraid to take it, afraid to go to counseling, ashamed to think I had a “mental illness.” Like my mother always does, I made a list of the pros and cons. Taking the pills meant I no longer had control over my own body, but at the same time I realized I had a problem. I swallowed the pill.

Together Vivian and I worked on how I felt and how I thought about myself and what had happened. She helped me understand why I had loved the man who called himself Mark, and why a part of me loved him still. I was also able to see that he wasn't real. Mark was like a character created by a gifted writer. He was a product of the Internet and Frank Kufrovich's malevolent imagination, and it was Mr. Kufrovich who was going to jail.

This made it much easier for me to handle the letter that he sent to me (and is now part of the court record) a few days prior to his sentencing.