Transcriber: Eunice Tan Reviewer: Tanya Cushman
Have you ever met a monster?
Someone so scary they alerted the reptilian part of your brain?
One morning, I was going to my job as a criminal justice reporter in Denver.
I stepped into a crowded elevator,
faced front,
and got the sense that someone behind me was watching me.
So I glanced over my shoulder
to see this man staring at me in a very calculating way
with cold shark eyes.
So I stared back,
and my look said "rude person,"
and he didn't drop his eyes.
So I ended that contest and turned back around,
alarm bells sounding in my head.
I instantly decided I didn't want him to know which floor was mine.
So at the next stop, just before the doors came together,
I darted out at the last minute.
I flew up the stairs and ran into the newsroom,
my heart pounding.
The fear of monsters is instinctive.
In Denver, in 2005,
reports of a serial rapist had residents so frightened,
some were carrying baseball bats.
Police released a name, Brent Brents,
and the media scrambled to find out whatever we could on this guy.
A reporter at the rival newspaper got Brents' sister in Arkansas on the phone,
and she said,
"He deserves whatever he gets,"
before hanging up.
One sentence, but we'd been scooped.
"Get thee on a plane to Arkansas," editors said.
"Find his family and get them to talk to you."
So I did.
His mother described Brents as willful, intelligent.
He'd grown up hunting and fishing;
ran track, wrestled, boxed.
He had a learning disorder
and became frustrated, then angry, in school.
He started smoking pot at age 10 and drinking,
and that's when he began beating his mother.
At 13, he flipped a switch on a railroad track
and was sent to juvenile detention,
where he was in and out until the age of 18
when he was convicted of raping two children.
He served 16 years in prison and was released without supervision.
His sister remarked that Brent had a lot of anger toward their father,
who had died the year before.
So I turned to the mom and said,
"I'm sorry to ask,
but this is a standard question when someone sexually abuses others:
was Brent ever abused as a child?"
There was a long pause,
and then, looking down, she said,
"Brent makes up all kinds of lies."
Police caught him a few days after Valentine's Day.
At the start of that weekend,
a detective had told him on the phone,
"Turn yourself in, you little punk."
Brents essentially replied, "Come find me."
That weekend, he raped five victims, including two children,
and nearly beat a young woman to death.
The DNA from those cases was processed within hours,
and the manhunt that followed
ended in a dramatic car chase into the mountains,
where police captured him at gunpoint.
This kind of story causes a media feeding frenzy.
Reporters flocked to the jail, but I didn't.
I didn't think it would do any good.
Instead, I sent him a letter on plain stationery, handwritten,
two sentences:
"Dear Brent,
I went to Arkansas, where I met with your mom and sister.
If you were to ask them,
they would say I treated them with dignity and respect,
and I would do the same for you."
I then gave him the phone number to the newsroom
and told him to call collect anytime.
Because I figured he'd be getting a lot of hate mail,
on the back of the envelope, I wrote,
"Please don't be afraid to open this."
At the end of that week,
police issued a statement about another confirmed victim of Brents.
And since they'll protect the identity of a victim of sexual assault,
they'll only release the cross streets that are close to where it happened.
"Get thee to those cross streets, you and a photographer," editors said.
"Find this anonymous victim, and get her to talk to you."
Right.
So off we went to those cross streets,
and we found a sea of rental units,
like giant Legos.
We knocked on doors for hours, with no luck.
It was close to getting dark when we saw a woman out walking her dog.
Dog walkers are always great for information,
and sure enough,
she said the handyman had told her about a woman who'd been attacked.
She gave us the handyman's door number,
and he gave us the victim's door number.
I knocked on the door, and a man answered,
and I could see this tiny, dark-haired woman hiding behind the door.
And I identified myself, and she came out and said,
"You scared me."
Her name is Margaret,
and she told me her story.
Her attack had happened nearly three weeks earlier,
and she still had the yellow outlines of bruises on her neck.
Brents had rushed her at her front door -
she was coming home from running errands.
She fought him,
and he beat and choked her
and then raped her.
Margaret pointed to her couch,
which had a big chunk cut out of the upholstery.
The police had taken it for evidence
because that was where the rape had happened.
And when you can't afford a new couch
and you can't afford to break your lease and move -
and Margaret couldn't -
then you're forced to live with reminders of your worst nightmare.
The police had told her
the DNA from her case would take about two months to process.
They gave her no hope of solving her case.
And then she saw a story about Brents being wanted
and recognized his mug shot as her attacker.
One of the last things she said to me that night really struck me.
She said, "I hate him.
Yet I still feel sorry for him.
An animal - poor creature."
A week later, Brents called me.
One of the first things he said to me was "I'm not going to give you anything."
I love it when people call me and say,
"I'm not going to talk to you."
Okay.
He then said,
"I have one question for you,
and anything further depends on your answer."
And he said, "People say they hate me, that I'm a monster.
Do you think so?"
And without thinking, I said, "No, I don't.
You've done monstrous things,
but I don't consider you a monster."
And that's how we started a correspondence.
In one letter, Brents wrote,
"Don't trip - I've actually stood two feet away from you in an elevator."
And rolling my eyes,
I pulled out a piece of paper to fire back a response of
"Don't BS me. We had a deal to always tell the truth."
And I realized that had been him behind me on the elevator that morning.
The man whose very presence
had caused me to run to the newsroom like a frightened rabbit.
It turned out that Brents had followed my work.
A few months before he was released from prison,
I had co-authored a three-part series
into how the military mishandles cases of sexual assault and domestic violence,
and that had resonated with him.
Not because he was a perpetrator,
but because the angry man-child within him considered himself a victim.
This is a picture of Brent in first grade.
His father had been raping him for three years by then.
A few weeks after this next picture was taken, when Brent was 12,
his father beat him so badly
that he suffered what medical records described
as "a left orbital blowout fracture."
His left eye socket was broken.
Records and interviews with family members
indicate that his father was a violent, sadistic man.
The two children from his second marriage
were both removed from the home because of his abuse.
And Brent and his brother were both returned,
although it's not clear why.
Brent's father told him
that he himself had been beaten and sexually abused as a child
by his father, Brent's grandfather.
And so the pattern repeated:
pain, degradation, shame.
Brent Brents did to others what had been done to him as a child.
And while he was still a child, like many victims he blamed himself.
He once wrote,
"I don't remember much of when I was real young
except fear and shame and lack of courage."
Brents told me that after that detective said to him,
"Turn yourself in, you little punk,"
that he, Brents, had worked himself into a rage.
Then he'd gone and committed his final horrific crime spree.
And I'm not saying
that these factors are an excuse for the violence Brents committed.
He made choices.
He absolutely deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison.
But knowing what happened to him
does help explain why someone like Brents could commit such violence
with such a lack of empathy -
that his brain was predisposed to it
and the abuse inflicted on him was his model.
It's human nature
to want to distance yourself from someone like him,
label him as a "monster," dismiss him as evil.
We don't want to have anything in common with such a monster
because then it could mean that we too are capable of monstrous things.
But putting a rapist in the category of "monster" may make us feel safer today,
but it's more dangerous for tomorrow
because then we won't believe that the "monster" can be a neighbor,
a co-worker, a trusted friend.
And that enables them to hide in plain sight.
The dominant theme of how to prevent sexual assault today
is cloaked in helpful advice like
"Don't walk alone, don't drink too much, don't put yourself at risk."
And the message, primarily to women,
is "Don't get raped."
How about we turn our focus to a different population instead and say
"Don't rape."
And then why don't we take it one step further
and ask ourselves
what are we doing wrong as a culture that we continue to produce rapists?
Because whether it's the ex-convict who attacks strangers,
the college boy who rapes his girlfriend,
or the celebrity who drugs and assaults his victims -
they all choose to exert anger, power, and control over someone else.
And with that choice, they are all the same.
And they all leave pain in their wake.
I've interviewed more than 50 survivors of campus sexual assault
in the past two years alone.
And the details I learn about their perpetrators
paint a picture of so many young men being deliberately predatory.
They isolate their intended victim,
they ply them with drugs and alcohol,
they lock doors,
they ignore tears, they ignore pleas to stop,
they ignore the fact their victim is limp with fear or is unconscious.
10 years ago, Brent Brents was sentenced to 1,509 years.
Today, all over this country, we're seeing new generations of serial rapists.
Why is this still happening?
Why do we continue to reinforce the message to our boys and young men
that their worth is linked to their ability to dominate?
What if we prized compassion more than power?
When they're little, we tell our kids,
"Play nicely in the sandbox."
They get older, and we say,
"Don't get in fights in the playground.
Take a breath, count to 10, walk away."
Then they get older still,
and we teach them about the biological aspects of sex: health and reproduction.
What if we were to evolve those conversations with our youth
and teach them how feeling shame,
how feeling powerless, feeling angry -
all of which cover up hurt and rejection -
could cause them to want to dominate someone else?
And that they can learn to recognize triggers and not act on them?
At least start that conversation.
And then speak up if you witness predatory behavior -
and you'll know it when you see it.
Don't make excuses for it, don't look away, don't cover it up.
And because sexual assault happens on a continuum,
starting with verbal harassment and escalating to a physical attack,
speak up if you hear or read a joke about sexual assault or victimization.
It's not funny; it's not sexy.
It's dangerous.
If someone confides in you that they've been sexually assaulted,
believe them.
False reports are so rare, so yes, believe them.
Listen to them without judgment.
Help them find resources
and then support whatever they decide to do.
For victims, Brents told me
that group counseling for sexual offenders in prison does not work.
For an inmate even to be seen going to sex offender group
puts their safety at risk.
And once there, they don't want to be seen as vulnerable.
It's difficult to change when you're living in fear.
And if we really do want to help them try to change,
why not offer more of the respect and compassion
that can be felt with one-on-one focused attention?
Something a damaged person desperately needs.
Instead of building more prisons and focusing on punishing perpetrators,
why don't we try to prevent them?
Brents has often said,
by the time he was nine, his brain was broken.
What if someone had intervened in his life early on?
A neighbor, a teacher.
How could no one have noticed that boy who went to school with bruises,
smelling like urine
because he had wet the bed the night before
rather than creep down the hall to the bathroom
and risk waking his father?
If you help an abused child,
you could be preventing a lifetime of pain for more than one person.
So many people today live in what I call "garage houses,"
where the garage is the dominant feature.
They drive up to their garage at night,
the door goes up, the car goes in, the door goes down,
and they stay inside until they leave the next day.
They can't tell you the name of the family down the street.
They won't interact, and they sure won't intervene.
What if we dared to care without hesitation, without condition?
It's a harsh truth,
but our society cares more about sexual assault victims
if they are the right kind of victim.
Remember how police told Margaret
the DNA from her case would sit on a shelf for two months?
When Brents attacked victims in a high-income neighborhood,
that DNA was processed within hours.
Lady Justice might be blind, but she can sure have a champagne taste.
I stayed in touch with Margaret
as her case wound its way through the court system.
In July of 2005, Brents pleaded guilty to her attack.
Like many survivors who struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder,
Margaret was terrified of leaving the house.
She had nightmares, flashbacks.
She couldn't hold down a job.
Her marriage fell apart.
The day before the hearing,
Margaret asked me to deliver a message to Brents for her,
and I agreed.
And this was her message:
"Tell him ...
I forgive him."
It's stunning, isn't it?
How could she forgive this man who wounded her so?
Who nearly took everything from her?
And she said,
"I'm not thinking of the man who tried to kill me.
I'm thinking of the little boy who had the same thing happen to him."
And she said, "Hating is not hard.
But if I go on hating him, I will never get over it."
And she added,
"If it was me, I would want someone to try to help me or listen to me
and not just look at me like I was an animal or a monster."
She inspires me.
If Margaret can forgive Brent Brents, we can forgive anybody.
This case had a profound effect on my life.
It taught me that we are all connected
and that turning our backs on others is really abandoning ourselves.
It made me realize I didn't like the reporter I had become.
It was actually Brents who pointed out to me
that he and I had something in common:
we were both driven.
I quit that job shortly after his case ended,
and I will never again work in a newsroom,
because the desperate competition for ratings
is unhealthy for me in many ways.
And I no longer knock on a survivor's door unless I'm invited.
I started that correspondence with Brents
because as a journalist who has spent a lifetime covering sexual assault,
I wanted an answer to the question "Why?"
He began as a bug under a microscope, and that's what I told him.
Brent Brents became a lesson in humanity and compassion.
Even so-called "monsters" have things they're afraid of.
Brents wrote me about his.
He said,
"My biggest fear is that I will die
without ever having done anything good."
And that's why I tell this story.
Thank you for listening.
(Applause)