The Moth Presents Hector Black: Forgiveness

so please welcome now Hector Brock thank you for that welcome I the story I want to tell tonight begins in the late 60s when my wife and I and our three little girls we moved to Atlanta because we wanted to be a part of the civil rights movement and the headquarters were there for all the different organizations and we got a job in a very poor black neighborhood and the right behind us well there were a lot of kids used to come over to our house and play and one of them was named Patricia she's 8 years old looks like her hair hadn't been braided in many years and almost that's just terrible and impetigo sores down her legs and she kind of fashioned herself onto our family she was one year older than our oldest girl when it came time for us to leave the neighborhood after two and a half years how I should say she often her mother was an alcoholic and often they had no place to sleep so they'd come over to our house when their mother lost the apartment and they'd spend the night with us and then when it came time for us to leave she asked if she could come with us and my wife and I said yes and we went eventually to rural Georgia and she lived there with us and blossomed she had a beautiful sense of color she made her high school graduation dress painted a mural on the high school wall she went on and graduated with highest honors from Fiske and got a degree in library science and went back to Atlanta working in the public library with children such as she had been often unloved and uncared for she had a house in a changing neighborhood and one night in November she came home late from work and a crack addict who was stealing for his habit saw no light on in her house and went around the back broke in the window stole some things and took him to the local crack house got his first hit of crack he was walking around the neighborhood again and still no light on so Lee wanted a massive dose of crack dose of crack so he took a whole bunch of things and Trish came home while he was gathering him up he hid in a closet she opened the closet the Warren fell backwards and he tied her hands behind her back and I learned later that they had a conversation together which sounded exactly like Patricia she told him to get help with his drug habit she told him where there was food in the refrigerator he told her to put burglar bars on the back of the house and always leave a light on and he asked about the sewing dummies that were in the house and she told her the woman named Suzy's my wife had taught her how to sew and she made bridal gowns as a sideline for income he got a lot of stuff and got a major hit of crack coming by the house again he thought she would be free by now but the lights were still out so he went in again and he asked for sex she said you'll have to kill me first and so he strangled her and violated her body when we learned about this it was the darkest thing that had ever happened to our family we'd known death but not like this at the hand have another human being I'm a Quaker you know I don't believe in violence and I yelled out I'll kill the bastard I was furious free is that what he had done to our child I wanted him to hurt it's very beautiful where we live in Tennessee along a state scenic Wild River and I go walking and these visions of what had happened to Trish would come crashing in on me and I couldn't control them they would just come and haunt me no matter where I was or how beautiful it was around me it was like he had control over me he was pushing my head in the mud I wanted to know after a little while I wanted to know who he was I wanted to know what had happened to him that made it possible for him to do such a deed my first reaction was that he was a monster he was no human being he deserved no compassion from me and little by little I learned a bit about his life they was born in a mental hospital when he was 11 years old his mother took him and his younger brother and little sister to a swimming pool and she was saying God was asking her to drown them as enemies of God he and his little brother got away and stood there while he drowned his little sister in front of him and at one point later on he told me he felt relief that she was not going to be tormented any longer I couldn't help but think what I would be like if the woman who brought me into the world had tried to destroy my life it wasn't that I was trying to excuse what he had done but I I've felt for him as another human being suffering there was a hearing in Atlanta the final hearing in his case I'd written the judge earlier on the advice of a friend of mine who was against the death penalty and told the judge how much we loved to Patricia and how much a part of our life she was my youngest girl couldn't remember life without Patricia at the hearing they read all the charges against him and I just sat with my wife Susan and held her hand and cried and I was thankful I was deaf that I missed couldn't hear a lot of what they said after he was sentenced to life without possibility of parole those of us who knew Trish were given an opportunity to say how the crime had affected us her cousin got up and said I hate you Ivan Simpson that's his name I hate you because you cook took my beloved cousin away from me I hate you because you'll see the dawn and she'll never see the dawn again and I hate you because my taxes are going to feed you she was weeping and then it was my turn and I printed out a statement because I didn't know how how steady my voice would be and again I just said how much we loved her that she was not our daughter by any claim of birth but she was our daughter by every claim of love and at the end I said I don't hate you Ivan Simpson but I hate with all my soul what you did to my daughter and then the very last thing I had to say is as though I was turned around he was behind me and I turned around and faced him when I said my last that I wished for all of us who had been so wounded by this crime I wish that we might find God's peace and I wish this for you also Ivan Simpson and our eyes met for the first time the tears were streaming down his cheeks like I'll never forget the look it's like a soul in hell they were going to lead him away knowing he'd spend the rest of his life he'd die in jail and he asked to come to the microphone and twice with the tears streaming down his cheeks he said I'm so sorry for the pain I have caused I'm so sorry for the pain I've caused that night I couldn't sleep I kept thinking about this and I felt he was a man off the street he had nothing and he'd given me the only thing he had he'd asked me to forgive him in those words and I know he could have said to hell with all you my life is over but he didn't and I I knew then that I had forgiven him and I felt a piece that I hadn't had in a long time and I felt a great burden lifted from me I started writing to him he wrote back and one of the things he said was that he missed God's touch ever since he had killed Patricia he felt as though God had abandoned him but he said he felt he heard God's voice by way of compassion in what I'd said in the courtroom we sent him Christmas package and I said my god what are you doing what are you doing you know sending a Christmas present to the man who murdered your daughter and I knew I had to do it because I think when you forgive someone you start to care about them again and I knew he had no one no one in the world we had a small group of people in Cookeville we thought we'd maybe get together with other people who had lost loved ones to violence like this and I remember one woman whose brother had been killed 15 years before coming in and telling her story who's her brother was a doctor he was killed by a man off the streets to her a nobody and she was as angry as if it had happened the day before and I knew I didn't want that was no way to live that was not life a friend of mine told me that when you hate you take poison and you expect the other person to die and I think that's true my wife and I went to South Georgia to visit Ivan in prison took a long time to arrange it but we felt it was again something we needed to do is so I think what happened there was we were sitting down and talking together for two-and-a-half hours it was just extraordinary and because I'm very deaf I was sitting very close to him he was unshackled chorus and when it got time for us to leave he stood up and I did too and it seemed the most natural thing in the world we had our arms around one another and it was an unbelievable moment that I could have my arms around the man who murdered and I think forgiveness is possible for the worst and I do believe we all need forgiveness God knows thank

Channel: The Moth

Views: 93,165

Keywords: The Moth, The Moth Radio Hour, The Moth Podcast, story, storyteller, storytelling, murder, rape, loss, Georgia, Tennessee (US State), adoption, children, forgiveness, Religious Society Of Friends (Religion), Quaker, violence, God

Id: hLZ95jFdIH8

Length: 17min 48sec (1068 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 12 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/Living_Foot_to_Mouth]

A hauntingly touching story. "When you hate you take poison and expect the other person to die" these are words that will stay with me.