You've got to call HRS and you've got to be interviewed by the police. "The bad part is if you want counseling you've got to report and you've got to get attorneys - not only for yourself but for your daughter and your family. Like Bill, he reported himself voluntarily. Jim, a 45-year-old salesman, had been fondling his daughter from the time she was 10 until she was about 14. I'll be able to handle it rather than letting this emotional downward cycle pull me down and down to a point where I've lost control." "When the stress of life and business comes down on me again, I'll have different answers. He says he no longer wishes to touch his child sexually. They have emotional problems that can be helped and cured," Bill says. People who have experienced what I have experienced are not criminal types. "There is definitely hope for incest fathers. But there is no middle ground for the system to understand how a loving, caring parent can make a mistake. The system considers itself protecting the children - and I fully understand that initially that's what they should do until they understand the circumstances. "I haven't been living at home for 20 months. Their savings are gone, the house is in foreclosure, the car has been repossessed. Legal fees and counseling over the past 20 months have cost them $40,000. Bill says the pressure on them has been intense. "Once I was sober, and once I realized this action was wrong and could affect my daughter, I felt incredible remorse and guilt about what had happened."īill had hoped to save his marriage, but although his wife has been supportive, she has decided on a divorce.
At the time, it was obviously a selfish feeling I had. It was more an emotional drive, to make a close connection. There was no sexual drive even though sex got involved. "I guess I was looking for that innocent love and affection that we search for all our lives. Anger at her and her family, coupled with his own drinking and a history of depression that began when he was 19 with his first wife's suicide, sent him over the edge. He was upset because he knew she had been sexually abused by one of those relatives when she was a child. My wife, against my wishes, had gone up North to see her relatives." "It (the fondling) occurred over one weekend. It was only about three months old," Bill says. He has been in therapy for 20 months and says he is not the same man he was in 1987. They placed several anonymous calls to social workers and church counselors and learned that those in the helping professions must report all molestation incidents to HRS.īill was charged with lewd and lascivious conduct and sentenced to two years' of weekend jail time, which he is still serving. They wanted help but feared the legal system. Three years later they decided to seek counseling to be sure the daughter had no permanent scars. He confessed to his wife and they sought to get on with their lives. Bill, 45, an Orlando man who owns a construction business, molested his 4-year-old daughter in 1987.