I Am A Child, A Boy, And A Man: Stolen Innocence (A Search For Hope, The Need For Faith)

By Jerry Hicks

I chose my title, I Am a Child, a Boy, and a Man: Stolen Innocence (A Search for Hope, the Need for Faith), due to my clear ability to see through the eyes of who I was at each stage of my life. It has been very, very tough to see through the eyes of that child and the boy that I was and not be able to save or help them. I have learned to heal because of those two; their pain, suffering, and loss have given me the need and hope to fight and never give up or stop screaming out to the world to be heard""for those two, I must. The first dark shade from my cover represents my childhood""much pain, fear, suffering, and darkness. The second shade, gray, represents age twelve through twenty-five, not as dark as my childhood but very much lost, confused, and filled with fear and rage about all things in life. I was still suffering with every choice and decision I made in my young life, living and reacting by emotion and not intellect. The third shade is the lightest shade; this is my older adult life. I am so far gone from those first two lives of mine""not at all forgotten, but I am healing, learning, changing and growing every day. My hope now as an older adult is to be heard with the hope that many will be saved and not ignored""that people will wake up to this lifelong crime of destruction. One moment of betrayal can last an entire lifetime. The hope for people to start hearing and seeing the signs and calls for help by these children who are scared, confused, and frightened and needing for the adults and family in their lives to wake up and see what's happening. Not only to wake up and see but also to take immediate action and put an end to this crime as well as justice being served for that child. Never forgive and forget. We shouldn't have to pay for our love with our bones and our flesh.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Feb 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9781098003357

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I Am A Child, A Boy, And A Man

Stolen Innocence (A Search For Hope, The Need For Faith)

Jerry Hicks

Copyright © 2019 by Jerry Hicks

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

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Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

My Drug Addiction from Start To

I will be telling you my life story from the earliest childhood memories that I can possibly remember. It all starts off as the child I was and the life that I was living at the age of four. I will be telling you my story from the eyes of the person of who I was at each period of my life growing up mixed with who I am now. This is why I chose the name: I Am a Child, a Boy, and a Man. Even now, as a grown adult, I am still all three of these people. I can look back at that child or that boy that I was and feel their pain and their struggle and feel so very sad for them both and the life they had already withstood and to see and know how hard each and every day of their future was going to be so much of a deep struggle to survive. My search for hope has always been within me.

All my life, I have hoped for love, change, peace, happiness, and safety—to be rescued from my tormentor. Those forms of my hope are what has kept me alive and going. What’s on the other side of each battle that I face? It is now imprinted into my very being to fight and never give up to reach that other side of whatever battle may be going on at that period of time in my life. My need for faith was not truly realized or even slightly understood until I had become a man. Faith, hope, and love have kept me alive as an adult to tell my story with detail and courage.

My childhood was always this deep dark secret that I have always guarded with great effort. I have only expressed a few details involving my childhood in doctors’ offices, the many different types there have been. Putting such detail of my childhood in words for anyone to possibly read is a very scary deal for me. All that I am feels that it needs to be done. If one child can be saved from me telling my life story in words, then all my suffering and pain will not have been for nothing. I was one of these children out there needing to be saved—needing to be heard. That one child out there all alone, looking and searching, for years, to be saved. For someone to open their eyes and see the lies. If one family or one person takes my story and saves a child from the type of horror, suffering, and struggle that you are about to experience, then I will truly feel victory in sharing with you my survival from childhood molestation, physical abuse, mental abuse, and emotional abuse.

Here’s my life, Lord.

My earliest memories as a young child under four years of age are very few. From the age of four to four and a half years on, I unfortunately seem to remember mostly everything about my childhood with great detail. The abuse started very early; four to four and a half years of age are the earliest memories that I have of when the molestations started. I have lived in many, many different homes, or what I thought were homes, throughout my life.

The very first house that I can remember living in was a small two-story row house. I can clearly see the kitchen, living room, the hallway, and the bathroom that was in the middle of this hallway. I remember our neighbors; they had a little girl who was maybe ten years old. She used to love pushing me around in a very old-fashioned baby stroller just for the fun of it. I think she thought I was one of her dolls that she played with, and I seemed to like the attention.

I had a bicycle with training wheels that I liked spinning the wheels in the mud and watching the water and mud spray out the back. When I think back about this time in my life, I feel as though I was happy for the most part at that moment in time that I am looking back on.

My mother had left my real father below when I was only two years of age. I have no memory of this age at all, as I would guess most people may not.

She then came under the influence and control of a vile and evil man named Greg Forman. If I was to allow it, just by saying his name, I can feel much pain, hatred, and anger deep inside of me toward this evil form of a human being.

As an adult I have learned through hard work and change, that forgiveness and letting go of my past was my only true way to heal. It’s not always an easy thing to do, but I do the best I can daily. I have to fight to want change, to heal and to become better as a person. I have had to release the hatred and anger that I have held inside of myself for so many years. A childhood filled with torment has tried so very hard to steal all of my innocence and direction in this life. A child’s innocence is one of the most important gifts a child has in this life. When this innocence is being stolen from you, that child becomes poisoned, and this betrayal becomes like an acid that eats at your very soul and, over time, can and will destroy you as a person if you do not fight back at what your tormentor tried so very hard to turn you into. This stealing of your innocence destroys the very soul of who you could have been, corrupting you and stealing from you the wonderful things in your future that were meant to bring you joy, peace, and happiness. This is my belief involving stolen innocence.

At this very young time in my life, a lot of my memories are mostly just picture shots in my mind—like scanning through pictures on Reddit. One of my first memories at this house occurred with my mother. I had a very painful ear ache or infection in my right ear. My mother was very young and naïve and did not know what to do to help me with the pain that I was having. Somebody told her to take a hot damp cloth with salt inside of the cloth, put this cloth on the side of my face where the ear ache was. (I’m not sure where she may have received this medical advice from, but this next step turned out to be very bad advice upon me). She then puts this hot salted cloth on the side of my face just under my right ear. The cloth felt very warm and soothing, but my mind was only focused on the pain in my ear. She then takes this hot iron and places it onto the salt-filled cloth just under my right ear, thinking she was adding more heat to this damp cloth. As she was placing the hot iron onto this cloth on the side of my face, the pointy tip of this extremely hot iron badly burnt me just below my right ear.

I’m not sure if I passed out or what my reaction was, because after that iron touched my face, I can’t remember the aftermath. I remember every single moment up until the tip of that iron touched my face, and then poof, my memory of the aftermath of this ordeal was lost. I still bear a scare to this day from this poor judgment of my mother or, at the very least, her ability to use an iron.

One day, when my mother was not around. This man that I only knew of, without any other knowledge or understanding, was my daddy. He just walks up to me and grabs me by the hand and leads me into this bathroom in the middle of the hallway downstairs. He picks me up and places me into a dry bathtub. Why he chose the bathtub, I have no idea. Sick minds do sick things. I must be maybe around four or four and a half years old. He takes my pants off and begins to try and sexually assault me. I remember it hurting and not understanding at all what was going on. This vile act of his only lasted for a few minutes and it was over. I went back to playing and trying to be the innocent little child that I still was before he changed my path—my direction in life—for the rest of my life.

Later that day, I was standing in the middle of this hallway, just outside of that bathroom. My mother was standing just in front of me. I looked up at her and said to her what Daddy had done to me in the bathtub and that he had hurt me. These were my exact words to her. I still, to this day, so clearly remember the puzzled look of disbelief on her face as she stood there just in front of me and looked down at me. She did not say one single word to me in response; she kind of just stared into my eyes and shook her head in total disbelief at what she was hearing. She then turned away from me and walked away.

I, still being this little innocent child, went back to trying to be just that. I did what a little child should do. I told my mommy what he had done to me. It was then her job to do something about it. She did not do her job as a loving and protective mother should have done. Nothing was ever done or said about it again. I don’t remember him trying to molest me again while we lived at this house. We also did not live at that house very much longer. For the rest of the time that we did live there, he would do many things to hurt me, scare me, and keep me in a constant state of fear. It was like his job.

I need to take a moment from my story, which I will do often, to say something to all guardians of children. These words will be what most loving parents should naturally already know. You need to know that if a child ever, ever comes to you of their own free will, not having been coached by anyone, and tells you he or she is being molested in any kind of way by any person, you must act immediately and do something about it. It will always be better to offend or hurt a person by confronting the situation and it not be true, then to do nothing and it be true. No child ever, anywhere, for any reason, should have to endure this type of betrayal. This sick and demented action upon an innocent cannot be accepted under any and all circumstances.

If my mother would have reacted to what I had told her that day like a good mother would have done and put this man in jail. Maybe if she just got away from this monster forever, at the very least, to me, this is what a real mother would have done. You do not hear these words coming from the mouth of your four-year-old child all on its own with absolutely no coaching and do absolutely nothing about it.

I say coaching because I know there are angry, cruel-hearted people out there in the world who will coach their kids to say things like this to get back at their spouse or just to hurt someone. There is a difference. Kids are not dumb, and if questioned under the right and proper legal atmosphere away from the parent, the truth always comes out. That is a lie that is very disgusting and shameful on any person who commits a lie of such a disturbing nature. This type of harm to children is far too disturbing for people to create lies out of anger or selfishness. People who do commit this type of lie should be jailed just as a child molester themselves should be jailed. The truth must always be the main priority with children in dealing with the disturbing nature of rape. Never should such a horrifying act be used as a weapon—never. The truth must always reign supreme involving children and nothing else.

If she would have done something to protect me as a child, maybe we would not be going through the journey of the pain and suffering of my life story and surviving childhood molestation and abuse together in the form that it is. Maybe it would have been a story of greatness and wonderful things, filled with happiness.

I have been compelled by hope to write this book of my life, to show the world what the direct impact from child molestation and child abuse has taken me through in my life. If one child in this world is spared the torture that I have endured in my life—just one child—then my story and me telling you of my suffering, pain, humiliation, and embarrassment will have served its purpose.

Life has not been all bad, but because of the direct impact of the brutal molestations, abuse, and this rapist who perpetrated these rapes, and many other forms of abuse upon me in my life, so much of my life has been a devastating struggle. The struggle to recover has been unthinkably disturbing and, at times, seems impossible. I do continue the fight.

There is this song that Pat Benatar sang in the ’80s called Hell Is for Children. I remember her getting so much slack over this song she sang from all these people who just did not get it. In my mind, how could they get it? The very first time I heard this song, I got it right away. I struggle not to cry every time I listen to this song. All the people who listened to this song and bitched and moaned about it being evil obviously were never tortured or brutally harmed and hiding that they were as a child. If they were, then they would have at the very least got its meaning.

I mention this just to demonstrate how people can be so blind and disillusioned to other people’s suffering and the different types of suffering. If people are not feeling the direct results of the abuse themselves, they will ignore it; they will look the other way so they don’t have to deal with it. It seems to be so much easier for people to bash and ridicule something that they do not want to face or hear that is happening around them. (This way of thinking has got to stop.) If you don’t understand something, learn about it clearly before you judge it or persecute it. People’s future and very lives might be at stake.

I’m talking about real abuse here, not name calling, ordinary punishment for misbehaving, or the extreme political correctness that does not cause the deep-seated pain that childhood molestation, physical abuse, and the lifelong suffering caused by the abuse that I am talking about and will be sharing with you. I would have chosen name calling or offensive words all day every day over what I had to deal with. I may not like being called names or being punished, but I would have chosen the later every day over what I was dealing with every day.

Listen to the words of the song. I think maybe most people would only be able to understand the words of the song if they had suffered or had something to hide as a child, or she would not have received so much slack over this song. She would have received praise instead.

Forgive and forget

All the while

Love and Pain become one and the same

In the Eyes of a wounded child.

You shouldn’t have to pay for your love

With your bones and you’re flesh.

They cry in the dark

So you can’t see there tears.

They hide in the light

So you can’t see their fears.

It’s all so confusing, this brutal abusing.

They Blacken you’re eye’s and then apologize.

Be a good little boy, and you will get a new toy.

Tell Grandma you fell off the swing.

And you know their little lives can become such a mess.

My childhood was a living hell for that little child that I was. I can relate to all of these parts of her song with ease, I lived them, I lived in that Hell and I see no evil in these words. The evil I see is from the people who generate these five lies and cause this type of pain and suffering on the innocence of a little child in their precious life and the need to be protected.

A few months go by and no forms of molestation occur, that I am able to remember. He does continue to do things to torment, hurt, and scare me all the time though. He would torment me daily and do things to me that would just keep me terrified at all times. I was kept in a constant state of fear. This was something you could tell that he must have enjoyed. He would laugh and act as though he was enjoying himself, inflicting this fear and pain on a little child. It was in his soul to be this way. I can only now, as an adult, see all that he was as pure evil.

I am now, I would guess, at a late four years of age. My mother starts taking me to visit my grandmother’s home. Up to this point in my life, I have no memory at all of that side of my family. We were walking to my grandmother’s one rainy day, and I was carrying an umbrella. I was swinging it around and I poked myself in the eye very badly with the pointy end of this kid’s umbrella. It hurt pretty badly, but I was okay. We get to my grandmother’s house and she had all these other kids running around. I had many aunts and uncles—eight all together. We all hit it off right away. I forgot all about poking myself in the eye and struggling to be able to see out of it.

This side of my family, this side of my life; I did not know it then, but I would always be able to go to them and escape the pain and suffering always being inflicted upon me. This family always gave me the ability from time to time to escape and forget the pain and suffering at the hands of greg forman that I was enduring.

On another visit to my grandmother’s, not too long after the first visit, me and a couple of my aunts and uncles were playing cowboys and Indians—it was more like hide and seek. I was alone and searching for them. I saw a small, broken-out, maybe twelve-by-thirty-six-inch window at ground level at the bottom of the house that my grandmother lived in.

I walked up to this window and got down onto my hands and knees to look in through this broken out window. I put my hands on a small ledge on the inside of the window to look in; it was an empty, dark, wet garage under the house, and nobody was in there that I could see.

I sat up, looked around, and then I reached back into the window again and put the palms of my hands on the inside of this windows ledge so that I could get a better look inside. The next memory that I have is being pulled into a car with my mother holding a towel around my arm with lots of blood everywhere. I don’t remember anything else after that. The trip to the hospital, the hospital, or the operation to receive the stitches in my arm—it’s all a blank. I still, to this day, have a two-inch-by-one-inch scar under my right bicep that, if I touch it, there is no feeling—it is numb. I’m not sure why, but I seem to have an attraction of being harmed or harming myself unintentionally.

I am a late five years of age now, and we are now living in a two-story house next to some type of trucking business. My bedroom was upstairs on the right side of the house. I do not remember being raped at all in this house, but yes, he did continue to terrorize me. I have a lot of memories from this house.

I had a lot of toys, and somehow, I actually still have a couple of pictures, to this day, from this house and that time period in my life. It’s funny to me to look at these pictures because I look so happy in some of these. I have always been or became the kind of person who tries to smile and laugh for the world to see, but inside, I was a disturbing, destructive mess. All the toys were like, keep your mouth shut and play with these toys, and that’s what I did.

One day, I was trying to learn how to ride a bike without training wheels. I was on my own, with nobody trying to help me or show me how to ride this bike. I was very angry that I could not ride this bike. I kept falling over and just could not stay upright for any amount of time on this bike. I’d slam the bike to the ground and start stomping on the bike because I was so frustrated and angry. After many slam and stomp sessions, I started to go good distances all on my own without falling over.

On my very last ride, I was really doing well. I rode all the way from one side of my house into the parking lot of the business next door. I was now riding, but then I realized that I did not know what to do after that; I did not know how to stop. Up until this point, I just kept falling over, and that was how I had always stopped. As I reach this trucking business next door, I rode under the trailer of one of the trucks parked in the parking lot and slammed my head real hard straight into the under-beam of this trailer. It hurt badly, and I gained a large knot and bruising on my forehead out of that last bike ride. I don’t remember riding a bike again after that for a very, very long time. We are talking years.

One night, my mother and I were walking across town. We would always walk to a lot of the places we needed to go to, and I used to love these moments. We were walking in front of a school one night, and there were these bright lights shining up onto the school walls. I walked up to one of these lights that were incased in a metal box with a glass cover. I sat down on the metal box that held the light. I looked straight down into the light. For whatever reason, I decided to put the whole palm of my hand onto the front glass lens of this light. When I did this, it burnt my hand very badly. I began to scream and cry from the pain. My mother ran over to me and picked me up. I have no memory of what she said at all. I bet that light had a burned flesh handprint on the glass for a while after that night.

My mother and I then walked to a store nearby so she could get medicine and bandages. As we were standing at the counter inside of this store, I looked up and I saw this big two-foot tall robot on a top shelf behind the counter. I was pouting and in pain. I said to my mom that I really wanted that robot. She said no; it cost too much. The older guy behind the counter was a tough-looking man with a big gut, a half-bald head, and had a half-smoked cigar sticking out of his mouth. There was a teenage kid standing next to him. The older man must have had a crush on my mom or something.

He looks down at me and said to me, You want that robot?

I looked up at him, nodding my head and I said yes. He reached up high onto the top shelf and grabbed this big box that the robot went in. He then looked over the counter and down at me, reached over the counter, and handed me the robot and said, Here, it’s yours.

As he was handing me this toy, he turned toward my mother, smiled, and winked his eye at my mother. I was so happy I forgot all about the burn and him winking at my mother and her giggling like a little schoolgirl. This burn did become a big blister that covered the entire palm of my hand and all of my fingers. I played with this two-foot high robot a lot. It would move and turn, and on its chest, a door would drop down and it would light up and show pictures. It was great. I don’t remember truly knowing whatever happened to that robot, but I enjoyed it while I had it.

One morning, in this same house, I was sitting on the floor watching Saturday morning cartoons when greg came down the stairs and stopped at the bottom of the steps. He looked at me and said, Hey, Joe. Come here.

I slowly and cautiously walk over to the bottom of the steps where he was standing. I never ever trusted him, and I never knew what to expect from him from one moment to the next. He looked at me and asked me, Where is your mother at?

I nervously turned my head to the left and pointed out to the back door into the backyard and said she was outside hanging up clothes. As I turn my head back around to face him, he slaps me across the right side of my face real hard. There was a very loud pop and a very burning stinging pain from the right side of my face. I was very shocked and stunned because of this. This