My Father's Secrets-Danica Hubbard

all right Danica Danica uh you are an author you've published a book on a topic that covers a lot of the subject matter that's in my videos your family you your father did some things that are probably described a lot in a lot of my videos can you can you talk about that a little bit I can't what's the name of your book the name of my book is sex offender my father's Secrets my secret shame and it came out fairly recently this year in 2022 and I started writing it when we moved and we part of the moving process of course is purging and getting rid of things and in that process I came across a box of my father's letters and um it was painful to open up those letters because there were 17 years of letters back and forth when he was incarcerated in a state prison and I like to organize and archive and my husband was with me and we sat on the floor in the living room and spread out all of these letters and started categorizing them by date and year and I just started rereading them and recalling the the stories and the pain and the processing and that language of loss and I talk to my family about it and I said I think there's a story here and I believe that there's a story that needs to be told from a daughter of a convicted sex offender and I'm an English teacher and I've been writing for years and reading students writing and I'm encouraging my students to tell their stories to share their personal narratives to dig deeper into what it is that makes their lives worthwhile or makes their lives feel invisible or makes their lives painful and I decided to take a risk and took a big sip from the cup of courage and started Drafting and creating chapters and trying to find my voice in the process because I'm a teacher I think that initially the voice was very academic and in those initial reads of the manuscript my colleagues and my friends and even my family kept saying where are you in this story you keep defaulting to research and defaulting to that voice that's detached um we need to hear you and that that took a while a couple years actually for me to find my voice without shaking and find the confidence to share the words sex offender because it's not an easy thing for me to say about my father I adored my father I'm an only child and he was my mentor our high school softball softball coach a marathon runner a corporate executive and a sex offender so that Paradox was really difficult to come to terms with were you one of his victims or no I I wasn't and I say that with a with a level of Doubt because when I started researching sex offending and you've you've interviewed perpetrators pedophiles sex offenders but when I started doing the academic research there's a process approach and it's it's not the man in the white van handing out candy candy to children and on playgrounds or at the mall it's not the man skulking the Shadows it's it's not that man um my father was a sex offender and when I was about six years old I was a victim of sex abuse but not from my father ironically it was a man in our neighborhood and everyone in the neighborhood congregated at this man's house at this family's house and part of that reason why we always wanted to go to this particular house was that he had all the things he had the cold Coke and bottles that I wasn't allowed to have he had cartoons on constantly which I wasn't allowed to watch all day long so we like to go to his house and that had been going on in this neighborhood for a while unbeknownst to me I was only six years old and one time when I knocked on the door and wanted to play with his children which would have been a typical day in the neighborhood they weren't there and I thought nothing as a six-year-old going into the house because I had been in the house so many times before and he asked if I wanted a Coke not the drug yeah but um of course I said yes because I wasn't allowed to have that at my house and he said well I'm going to go upstairs and take a shower and as a six-year-old I didn't think anything of that because the cartoons were already running and I was sitting there with the Coke and I was happy until I heard him call from the shower he kept calling my name and I thought oh my gosh should I go up there is he hurt I should probably go up there but I'm drinking my Coke and Bugs Bunny is on so I don't know but anyway I did I went up there and he was naked and said if if you want another coat you know you need to touch me and I just ran I just ran out of there but when I finally told my parents it turned out that this was An Occurrence that was happening in our neighborhood for quite a while and we went to the police station there was a private investigator I was six I didn't know what was going on and that form of interrogation even as a six-year-old was so uncomfortable and foreign and strange and unfamiliar and my dad at the time was sitting there the hero right I mean he was sitting there defending me and and supporting me and loving me and and making me feel safe but when I started researching this book it turns out serendipitously or coincidentally my dad was sex offending himself at that same time that I was being groomed or being assaulted by the neighbor so I just found those two timelines um so strange that he had been doing it all along and I had no idea because again he went to work every day he provided for our family he I would consider him a very clean-cut wears a suit and tie very charismatic a magnetic smile could talk to anyone but he had been sex offending for years throughout my whole childhood and your mom his wife didn't know no I really believe my mom did not know I think that certainly as an only child my parents had their different roles in their marital relationship I think I would call my dad the happy and my mom the hammer my mom was very regimented and she expected a lot of me as an only child and had boundaries and restrictions and rules and my dad was Disneyland my dad was the candy Giver the vacation planner the let's go on the boat and listen to music he was the Entertainer and my mom was an intellect she was a teacher in the Chicago public schools and she took her work very seriously she gravitated toward lower socioeconomic neighborhoods they were tough neighborhoods she practiced tough love but she really concentrated and focused on the students I believe needed it the most she was a surrogate mother grandmother Priestess counselor so she spent an inordinate amount of time in those schools in the inner city of Chicago so I was a latchkey kid and I was alone a lot but I think that going back to your question if my mom had any inkling I think it was manifested in different ways so I think that when I first started recognizing the marital Discord or a lot of yelling was really more in my adolescence not so much in my early childhood but I just thought it was dovetailed with my mom being the hammer because she had so many rules but she'd yell aloud at my father and threatened divorce and I remember one time in particular he had taken up a racquetball he was a very athletic person and I don't know if he was late or what was happening but he should have been somewhere and he wasn't and he was playing racquetball and he was in hot water when he came home and she just screamed at him and he would just take it he wouldn't scream back or get physical or he didn't even raise his voice she would just pound her fist and yell at him and he would she was accusing him of cheating on her and she took the racket out of his racquetball bag and flung it against the wall and I just remember that hole that hole in the wall being there for months and months and months I guess just as a reminder of don't step out of line come home when you say you're going to come home but I I could now as an adult it makes so much more sense her agitation and her sense of being triggered um we moved a lot maybe her intuition was telling her that something was going on yeah maybe she didn't know exactly what it was but she could sense that something was yeah I think that she instinctively knew something was wrong but she stayed with him and I don't know why that was I never got really a chance to ask her because she died of cancer when she was 49 years old so I was 22 and um there were pockets and moments in their marriage that became a little strange again as a as a preteen as an adolescent for example during the holidays instead of having a pair of earrings or I don't know something else under the tree a material item to open a box he started giving her envelopes of money for Christmas and I thought that was really odd and I just remember she would count it and kind of Nod and then just tuck it away and I thought what is happening here there's some sort of transactional relationship but now all I can think of the theories that I can think of as an adult looking back was she saving to get out of that marriage was she was she trying to have a way out I don't know she she earned an income but not a lot as a public school teacher and we're a Catholic Family my father was a very Pious Catholic so he went through all the the Motions of of going to church every Sunday all the while sex offending so how is it for you I mean you found out at what age that he was doing this um I was a young mother full-time teacher so our daughter was just coming up on a year old you're an adult already yeah so my mom had had died of cancer and my dad quickly remarried someone significantly his Junior which I didn't like I just remember um him introducing me to her they met at the grocery store and he had been in her checkout line for a while throughout my mom's cancer and I think you know he kept buying tuna fish and I said why are you buying all this tuna fish and I think it was just to go through her line so that was the only thing that he thought to Bry was constant cans of tuna fish but the first date where he introduced me as a young adult I was in my 20s to my step my future stepmom was at a comedy club and that was probably one of the worst places you could have taken me as a as a young adult I didn't laugh once I I think I squeezed my then boyfriend now husband's hand until it was you know white I just I didn't want to be there at all this wasn't my mother it was too soon we just had buried her it was like my dad lost his compass and he clung on to this new woman so tightly and that's common when there's trauma when you have a sense of loss when you've lost your partner they were married my mom and dad were married for over 25 years so I understand it I understand that spiral was happening but I wasn't accepting it at the time yeah we got sex offenses were before that marriage during during that marriage before during and well after he was the thing was going on when you were a kid too oh yeah uh and the reason why I know that is because of the book I never would have known until I started asking questions and inquiries and I interviewed attorneys social workers Corrections Officers family friends um sometimes literally dry heaving at the at the keyboard retelling their stories transcribing their stories is it was it was horrific you know because my dad I loved my dad and you know we ran Marathon together and he came home and and he set out the cereal bowl and then the spoon and the list and everything was in order and when he dropped to his knees on the day that he told me that he was going to turn himself himself in because he had touched a six-year-old girl it was like I had a not a body experience and this is very common for daughters or Sons or grandparents or siblings when a sex offender will tell a half truth or part of the truth or be a little opaque and give a little bit of a confession not a full confession because that's too hard that's too ugly that has too many warts and bruises it's hard but he told a little bit enough that obviously landed him in jail in prison but we were sitting in the living room it was a weekend like no other he and my stepmom were living in a different state Wisconsin so it's just a couple hours drive from where we were living but when they came out of the car that weekend which was just supposed to be a casual barbecue watch football weekend something was dramatically off I thought maybe he was sick or maybe they were getting a divorce or maybe he was bankrupt I mean I I had all those things went through my head because of his demeanor he wasn't the buoyant Smiley let's have a great weekend dad that I knew and he got down on his knees and he started crying and he put his hands in he put his head in his hands and I thought what is happening here and he said I just I just touched this little girl but you know what I Danica I only touched her on her underwear what how do you even qualify that I mean I had a little girl who was napping up in the room you only touched her on her underwear what are you saying I don't anything else could you have laundered money or being a drug addict or anything else but I will never forget that phrase it is seared into my memory I only touched her under underwear and that's that's grooming that's that's sex offending that's not necessarily penetration or touching private parts or touching girls or boys inappropriately but that seeing how far you can take it that's building trust um as an authority figure as an adult as a caring person um and yeah that that that should land you in prison but he was still my dad he still had a beating heart it was this incongruous relationship I loved my father I hated what he did so I was at this Crossroads as a wife and a mother and a faculty member and all the things do I choose to abandon my father do I make a choice no longer to speak with him or communicate because that's a pretty that's a choice I could have made lock them up and throw away the key A lot of people say that about sex offenders with validity they're probably the most hated group in a segment of society yeah I think I think you interviewed you were saying guys I've researched this the the trailer park yeah in Florida yeah St Petersburg yeah there's an article called pariahville about that same trailer park and I I'm but they're everywhere they're everywhere yeah yes they're not just down in St Petersburg Florida no they're everywhere because we're just figuring out how to house them yes because when you are a registered sex offender upon transition from you know a jail or a halfway house or a prison federal or state there has to be somewhere you go and depending on your family or who's left standing there supporting you waiting for you or not um where are you going to work I mean my dad when he went to jail he didn't go to prison right away you went to jail and he was trying to find a job he lived in a trailer in Wisconsin and there was a lot of vigilante justice in that town because that was the town where he committed his his offense he admitted to that right touching the underwear and he would often go outside of his trailer and there was a bag of feces waiting for him or he would get cat called or um called names horrible horrific names that I won't repeat while he was jogging he was he was a runner and his parole officer would show up and say you have to you have to change your running route or this is too close to the school or whatever it was there's there's I think being a sex offender I'm not diminishing it or supporting it obviously in any way shape or form I'm a victim of abuse myself but your world becomes very small when you're on the registry and it's very difficult to find a job to find housing much less any type of social life any friends you know good luck dating anything like that what have you learned in doing research for your book about them I learned that there are different layers of sex offending and I think the commonality is just to put them in one container and usually it's a container far far away on an island right away from my neighborhood my school my area I did learn that not to generalize but from the research that I I was focusing on geriatric pedophiles elderly sex offenders because my father was over 60 when he was incarcerated and I thought at the time this was a one and done because he told me and he told the the officers that this six-year-old girl is is the one that he offended and he was convicted and he was sentenced and he was charged with three felony counts of first degree sexual assault so basically he would spend the rest of his life in jail or prison excuse me but what I learned is that when I looked back at at my father's actions there was a lot of coping mechanism something happened and I don't know what happened or maybe it was a series of events that happened in his life but when I was going back into his particular life and researching and and talking to family and friends and experts he sang on the radio when he was a kid he's saying for I think it was called the Morris B sacks Amateur hour in Chicago and he was a tap dancer and he was the youngest of three boys and I think in his blue collar Factory family he was The Golden Child and I think there was a lot of pressure on him because of that and in this kind of grooming in and of itself of singing and Performing he kind of put on a different face he learned how to work a crowd and how to be charismatic and how to act basically from a very young age and then kind of as as things progressed uh his brother died suddenly in a car accident his middle brother and obviously that trauma has root in the family his father was an alcoholic my grandmother worked at a at a department store so they were they were probably right above the poverty line and my dad talked about that a lot and just not knowing where the next meal was going to come from and and just having a lot of hardships having hand-me-downs and wearing his brother's clothes and they had holes in them or he could he could feel the street beneath his shoes he never never had a new pair of shoes or jeans or socks it was always hand-me-downs and so I think that shaped his formative years and when he did go to college to study architecture like his older brother who was wildly successful I think he was always in that shadow in that sibling shadow and he dropped out of college and I think that pressure was too much so he started selling pencils and encyclopedias door-to-door but his whole life was pushing pushing the boundary pushing the envelope of you told me I I was gonna be nothing and I was going to be an alcoholic maybe like my father or not have any money I'm going to prove you wrong I'm going to prove all of you wrong and he did and I guess in his corporate life but we moved a lot and now that I researched for the book I think we moved partly because of his job trajectory but I think we moved mostly because he was offending and people in the neighborhood found out and then we just picked up and moved and then he would start grooming again and then we just picked up and moved so we did that until he couldn't do it any longer but he was 60. and there was this whole because one of the attorneys that I interviewed said why don't you have a Graphic in your book of a timeline of the of the victims that you know of and it started in the 70s but maybe beforehand I don't know about my father's fully about my father's sexual deviance or exploitations because he never admitted it in those 500 letters that I referenced earlier I dug for it I asked him I even as an English teacher one summer I assigned him homework I said Dad if you could just write me about just just your life just you know what what were the best parts of your childhood or what were the most memorable memorable parts of your childhood did you ever go on vacation you never really told me about that and he wrote me probably over 25 pages of what he called installments of his life these installments of his life in every installment it was like this extrinsic motivation of well I remember when I first started in Cub Scouts and then I was in Boy Scouts and then I earned Eagle Scout which is the most prestigious award you can earn as a scout and then when I sold pencils you know because I he he even glossed over College he said well I was the social chair in my in my fraternity and he didn't say I dropped out of college or none of that you know I was a social chair in my fraternity and I met your beautiful mother and she was the prize your mom was the princess at University of Illinois she was a synchronized swimmer she had legs like a ballerina and and she had so many dates when I met her and I said put that date book away I'm going to be the only man in your life so it was always about the gold star the award the trophy the accolade was he overcompensating was he trying to fill a void that he couldn't fill so it just continued so um my mom kept some scrapbooks of his corporate life and it was a picture of an internal newsletter about him being promoted or it was a trip to Switzerland or a trip to Taiwan he was a domestic and international marketing person he he sold office supply office supplies and he would come home for example from Taiwan and of course now I'm dating myself but he brought home this Walkman this yellow hard plastic Walkman and it was the first mobile music of the time you could walk around and listen to music and all my friends on the Block thought my dad was just he was it because he was bringing me all these eccentric and cool products from around the world so I think he really thrived on that but I think it was all a mask for what he was feeling inside what have you learned what did we not understand about sex offenders we all make assumptions about them but what do we What would the rest of the public be surprised at learning about them I think the common denominator that I found is love is that they feel somehow unlovable or not worthy and in that lack of self-worth it manifests into evil and it transforms into control and dominance and Trust and it's an illness I mean it's it's in the American Psychological Association as a mental illness and I do believe that that's the um misrepresentation of sex sex offenders that my mom died of a physical illness she died of of cancer that metastasized to her bones and her organs I believe my dad died of a mental illness and next week is mental Global Mental Health Awareness Day October 10th every year and I think it's those times and everything in between that we really need to pause because there are so much Social stigma against sex offenders with good reason they are harming innocent lives but they're still people and I just don't know that a state or federal prison sentence is moving the needle I don't know what the Panacea or solution is but is it Rehabilitation is it castration is it therapy I mean my dad went to a handful of sex offender therapy sessions before he went to prison once you went to prison that was cut off I was no longer available so those 18 sessions where his certified expert counselor said he's good to go I mean I I don't understand that it's it's a Continuum it's it's a it's a lifelong work is it something that's curable you think no I I don't think so personally um I think it's a lot of I think it possibly could be curved I think a lot of it is impulse control this impulsivity and this grade of I I touched your underwear and then I had her sit on my lap and then I touched her up above and then you know I mean I think it just goes and stages I don't necessarily think it's all at once like many people do but again there's different degrees now there's tears that Adam Walsh act um in 2006 I believe in my father's sentencing and everything was predated that so there were no tears at that time but if you read that act and you look at the different tiers of sex offenders which which varies from state to state but at least it it gives a little more information about what it could be and that's what I that's what I would say about sex offending is be open with your family with your children with their cousins talk about it and it's not necessarily again the Boogeyman in the dark it could be like you've interviewed the police officer or the really nice next door neighbor and if that person is going to Great Lengths to interact with your children I would all pick them up from soccer or I'm just you know what I'm taking my daughter out for ice cream I'll just take yours too if that seems off to you instinctively it probably is and certainly you can look on the Nationwide sex offender registry and see you know in your neighborhood how many sex offenders there are but I think it's definitely worth the discussion those are the ones that have been convicted yes there's a lot that have never been caught those are the ones that have been convicted and are documented and even then even then I mean the story is it goes on with my father but he was granted a state transfer which is highly unusual and he was given a second chance and he moved in with his brother in Georgia and I never really knew if he registered in Georgia I think he did because you you have to register if you're moving from state to state you have to register in every state but he was given a second chance and it didn't take long and he started grooming a girl in the neighborhood right he lived with his brother and then he convinced his brother you know what we're good I'm good I'm gonna get my own place enough of The Odd Couple uh I'm gonna I'm gonna strike out on my own and and he started offending again and that's when things really turned upside down for our family and this can happen to any family but you never think it's going to happen to your family I try not to give my opinions on these kind of topics in my on my channel but it every time I hear these stories they do so much damage to young people and it seems like castration which is whether it's chemical or however they would do it seems like such a sensible solution is it not because that they wouldn't be they wouldn't have the drive impulse they wouldn't have the impulse to do it any longer and doesn't ruin their life they can still do everything they want to do but they just can't do the one thing that Society hates them for yeah I I definitely see that point of view I think that many would believe that that's cruel and unusual punishment is there a different way about I know I know what you're thinking I know the only reason I say that is is part of my research I bumped into this advocacy organization and it's called prison families Alliance and I co-facilitate sex offender groups families of sex offenders support it's called support for families of sex offenders and the primary audience that shows up twice a month on Zoom from all across the United States females right mothers some some sex offenders that have transitioned out in our own halfway houses Etc sometimes they log on but these mothers are in so much pain because of the collateral damage that their sons have caused and a lot of it is pornography clicking on the wrong button mining down in the middle of the night and on a computer clicking into a sex trafficking website convicted sex offender so now these mothers are saying what can I do to help my son How can I make this better how can he's he's 19. he's 28 he's 34. I don't believe that any of those mothers would say castration is the answer that's a good point so I think that's where the tears come in maybe yeah yeah the different tiers of sex offenders yeah it's not a one-size-fits-all right and it's I think it's easy to paint with that that broadband like down in St Petersburg there are a whole lot of sex offenders convicted in in the they had they were forced to live in this trailer park or places like it that were 20 year old kids who met a girl who told him that she was of age she was actually 15 16. and next you know he got caught in a he got caught yeah my dad definitely didn't fit the age range of you know being a 60 plus sex offender not that he didn't fit but in in terms of getting convicted and and going to prison so late because certainly he got away with it you know for all those years which is a tragedy in and of itself because there are so many people including my family members and Friends if possibly they would have spoken up I mean they spoke up when I wrote this book I I'm over 50. this happened to my friend when we were in grade school she said nothing to me nothing to my father why was that I think a lot of victims don't tell the story but a lot of victims like me who have fathers who are convicted sex offenders also don't tell the story so I think that the danger is living in silence you know that's where shame thrives in silence and it took me over 20 years to not only tell my story but to write a book and I I'm now speaking at several universities to criminology classes I spoke to a prevent child abuse America conference these are future DCFS workers and nurses and social workers people in the field who see the victims clinically and that's a whole different segment and how they their interpretive lands and how they view sex offenders and then I'll address a victimization class or criminology class or a social justice class at University of Illinois or Eastern Illinois University or North Central College and these are students who are studying to become Corrections Officers private investigators and when I start my presentations in that academic environment which is my bag I love that population I say who was a sex offender what what optic comes to mind when you think of a sex offender and students can be very transparent and and very candid and they'll raise their hand or they'll shut out loud trash scum disgusting and then I hold up a picture of my father and sometimes I'll joke and say did you read the book but most the time I'll say well this is this is my father he was a marathon runner he was a husband over 25 years he was a successful corporate executive he was a sex offender and then it inverts that perception it educates it informs it opens up a dialogue and sometimes in those groups of students sometimes victims of sex offenders will either email me or I give out my phone or phone number text me and say I haven't told anyone this and since I was seven or eight or nine and I'm telling you so now all of a sudden I'm the recipient of people who um are victims and that has definitely been a shift I didn't necessarily set out to tell my story for that to happen but it's not only people divulging and sharing and getting it off their chest but it's other deviations of that it's well my husband cheated on me and I needed to tell you that because I haven't you know now that I know that your dad was a sex offender I feel I like you even more I can tell you anything you're fallible right because I think that we all put on a mask as humans when we move around in the world and we want to be seen a certain way but there's there's perception and there's reality right so I think hopefully my book can be a touchstone to people who are walking around in the grocery store or out in the street or at a football game and it's someone multiple people are suffering at that football game you just don't know it because I'm not going to bring up that my father is incarcerated while I'm leading a Girl Scout meeting or a leader on the parent board at school or at a cocktail party or walking my kids to school our daughters knew nothing that my father was incarcerated and that's a choice that we made not everyone makes that choice but we made that and that was hard to to carry that burden was hard to carry what was the most important lesson for for us all to consider when we're dealing with this topic I think um when you're thinking about sex offenders I think that you need to be more open and less closed off and quick to judge I think that tolerance and acceptance again not for the crime it's not what I'm advocating but that individual who committed that heinous act of Deceit and disgusting Behavior who made that choice made it for a reason something inside is is not right it's not happening is they need help and how can we help people that are on the margins that are invisible that we pardon when we're hating them when we're hating them how can you help people when you hate them yeah how can we help someone who we he believes so strongly is our enemy which I understand but as a as a daughter of a sex offender who has carried that collateral damage for so long it's it's hard to to carry that and it's important to let other people know that they're not alone as a victim or a perpetrator all right Danica thank you so much for informing us on all this this is very interesting thank you for having me thank you very much

Channel: Soft White Underbelly

Views: 1,569,163

Keywords: soft white underbelly, swu

Id: I9mYgkc66UE

Length: 44min 57sec (2697 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 20 2022