Trauma, Revenge and Redemption-Clark Fredericks

a few months ago uh i had a lot of stuff in my personal life going on and it uh it triggered all my childhood trauma and i went back to therapy and i i founded emdr therapist and emdr therapy helps you to process the trauma that's stuck in your brain and you have to go through a trauma timeline before you actually do the emdr therapy and a few weeks ago we were doing my trauma timeline and my therapist could tell i was getting wound up and agitated and she said to me what are you thinking right now what are you feeling what's going on with you and i said to her i wish the scumbag who molested me was in the room right now so instead of the violent bloody confrontation we had last time i could ask him this time where the [ __ ] it all went south for him how could he sleep at night abusing young boys where did he lose his humanity where did hunting children become his passion and and how could he how could he live with himself how could he have a cup of coffee quietly in the morning and not be eaten alive by what he was doing i told her i just i'll never get a chance to ask those questions but i want to know just where it all turned for him my trauma starts in the little town of stillwater new jersey it sounds calm and peaceful and tranquil the palmskill river runs right through the center of town and it looks like an ideal place to grow up it's very rural hunting and fishing and sleigh riding and skiing we have a ski resort in our county but we also had evil hiding in plain sight in our county i had an older brother six years older than me who was in the boy scouts and his boy scout master dennis pegg befriended our family and we took him in my parents owned a restaurant back then and we had these big sunday night meals and he would come over and drink wine he was lieutenant in the local sheriff's department and he worked at the county jail as a lieutenant and he would tell stories about beating inmates and i was born with a hole in my heart and at age six the doctors came to my parents and said you know we've been monitoring clark for six years plus and his whole has grown to the size of a silver dollar we have a six month window to operate so at age seven i had open heart surgery at mount sinai here in new york city and it was a life or death operation and i have keloid condition where my scars raised up and my parents were so proud of me for surviving this surgery that they used to have me lift my shirt to all their friends and collect a quarter and they'd be like it might my scar looked like a zipper they'd be like show your zipper it was almost like a peep show i was doing and one of their friends was this scout master slash lieutenant dennis pegg and i had lifted my shirt for him and it was about three four months after my surgery it was a hot summer day and i came in from outside we had a big patio out back screened in patio a bar a huge back back lawn and i came in for a drink and to watch tv for a minute and there was a knock at the door the tv room was right next to the front door and i hear dennis pegg's booming voice and i idolized dennis pegg next to my father he's who i looked up to the most he was the scout master he was the lieutenant he always had a badge and a gun on him and i shot up out of my seat and i let him in and he's like hey little buddy and he tussled my hair where is everybody and i said they're out back he's like oh let's sit for a minute so we go into the den and sit he's like i got a quarter for you can i see your scar and without thinking i'm like sure then and i lift my shirt up to my chin and he goes to me he goes how about i give you a dollar if you let me touch your scar i've never seen a scar so raised up like yours and i'm like sure then and he takes his big meaty fingers and he starts going up and down my scar then he goes below my scar line to my abdomen and he starts probing it right around my belt line and he's asking is your stomach sore from the surgery and i'm like no after a minute of probing and rubbing he's like okay he's like here's your dollar he's like this is our little secret he goes we can't be buddies if you can't keep a secret and i said i can keep a secret then and he's like all right here you go i'm going to go out back and see everybody i said okay and that was his first physical grooming act and he had me the prick had me because i i i was good at keeping secrets and that would come back to haunt me i lived at a lake community in stillwater called paul and skill lake and back then in the early 70s as soon as you could learn how to ride your bike your parents told you be gone and be back at dinner time there was a damn area down at the lake and there was ball fields and basketball courts and jungle gyms and then you had the lake where you could swim and there was fishing and all the young kids congregated down at that damn area and that became dennis pegg's trolling ground he would spend hours with us fishing teaching us how to fish where to fish how to bait our hook he did he would stop by our house all the time but he did all his one-on-one with me out of the watchful eye of my parents down at the lake where they couldn't see my parents told me back then never get into a stranger's car they didn't warn me to never get into their best friend's car who happened to be a predator at nine years old he's inviting me into his pickup truck down at the lake to split a six-pack of budweiser canned beers he tells me a story that his friend just bought a farmhouse and there was an old desk in it and he opened up the drawers and it was filled with pornography come come sit in my truck i grabbed a bunch of the pictures out of the desk let's look at him and he's all giggly and laughing i'm like okay you know i'm thinking i'm going to see some naked women i get in his truck and he he he hands me polaroid after polaroid of close-up of penises and i'm like then where's all the women he's like oh those must have been in the other drawer i'll get i'll i'll get some out of the other drawer next time aren't these funny though look at these and i'm like you know and he's he's gauge gauging me and he's testing me he tells me back then back then the marlboro man was the epitome of cool he was on the back of every cover and dennis is always taking trips out west and on a trip out west he tells me he meets the marlboro man and he goes to me wouldn't you believe it the marlboro man is gay and it didn't bother me at all he was a great guy we hung out for three nights and and and hiked and we went to dinners and he was just such a great guy i don't know whether the marlboro man was gay or not but dennis is is trying to normalize i think mail on mail behavior and he's trying to test me also and everything that beers the marlboro man these are secrets this is just between you and i everything was a secret and on the other side of stillwater on the other side of palm street lake there was another area for fishing it was fishing all along the river but it was by the grist mill in stillwater an old grist mill there was a bridge and dennis would be like the fish aren't biting here let's go over by the grist mill throw your bike in the back of my truck and we'll go over there now dennis lives just up from the grist mill dennis's house sat on a perch overlooking the elementary school stillwater elementary school he could see when all the little league baseball games were going on and he'd come down from his house and stand at the fence and watch all the little boys playing baseball but dennis would tell me throw your bike in the back of my truck we'll go over to the bridge by the gristville and fish and he would always seem to slip in the water fall off a rock soak his shoe or his boot or his sneakers whatever he's wearing and be like i fell in i got my feet wet come on let's we got to go up to my house let me let me go up and change and then when we get there and give me a beer and he's getting me comfortable going to his house at 10 he starts doing wrestling matches with me and again this is our little secret buddy he would let me be on top like i'm pitting him he is a 265 pound hulking monster of a lieutenant in the sheriff's department but he would let me pretend like i'm pinning him and then something would switch in him you could you could actually see his eyes change and they would dilate and he would get aggressive and get me on the ground and get on top of me and start gyrating on top of me at 11 we end up at his house and he tells me let's have a glass of blackberry brandy and he fills a glass of blackberry brandy up chug it chug it down and it's burning me and he's like just finish it finish it and then take a swig up here he's got i'm 11 years old and he's got me chugging a glass of blackberry brandy and drinking a budweiser beer right after it and he's like we're going to play a game called bumping logs and he's like i'll be right back and he goes into his bedroom and he comes back out and it looked like he had stuck something down into his shorts he always wore those cargo shorts with the pockets and i just thought he had stuck something into his shorts i'm drunk i'm 11. i'm trusting of this guy and he says stand up and i stand up and he pulls me into himself repeatedly and he's like your log's not ready yet let's get your log ready and he sets me down on the chair and he goes close your eyes and whatever happens don't open them and in the blink of an eye he slips my shorts off me and starts giving me oral sex and my eyes instantly open and he's got his penis out jerking off and i'm frozen in fear i'm gripping the side of the chair and i can't breathe and my mind is racing and i'm paralyzed i'm freaking paralyzed and as a grown man that that's what haunted me my whole life is that i i froze whenever he touched me he finished off gave me another beer told me this is our little secret what happened here today and to the best of my ability i just tried to put that out of my mind if you want to say i was lucky i was lucky that i didn't live with my abuser i could go months without an encounter down at the damn area of seeing him i've heard from so many people that lived with their abuser and on a weekly or daily basis they're getting abused and it's just horrific at age 12 he concocts this giant story that he needs my help and it ends up with me being at his house and driving to his house he picked me up down at the lake area i'm like i'm freaking out going back to the house and we got there and the house was boiling it was a summer day but it the house was excruciatingly hot inside almost as i look back on it now i wonder if he didn't have the heat turned on and we get in there and he has me chug blackberry brandy then he fills it up again come on come on come on have another blackberry and i was so nervous going back to that house i actually wanted to have a a drink and a budweiser my second glass of blackberry brandy and we end up on his bed and we end up with our clothes off and i end up with him behind me in a bear hug with him behind me and he starts raping me and i start screaming and i start crying i grew up as an altar boy in the episcopal church but in that moment i wondered where god was god didn't come to strike this piece of garbage down as he's raping me and i'm crying i'm screaming i'm crying and this [ __ ] whispers in my ear my 12 year old ear just another minute just another minute so he can finish himself off i felt like the only person on the face of the planet i know people feel alone sometimes in their life they isolate themselves at that moment i felt like i was the only person on the face of the planet nobody heard my screams nobody came to my rescue it was just me and this evil entity raping me and what happened next to me was worse than the rape that just occurred he sat me down cleaned me up like a nice guy sat me down at his kitchen table got me a beer like two lovers who just you know had a a great romantic experience and you know let's have a beer afterwards and he had what's called a [ __ ] dog [ __ ] dogs have a long drawn out howl and his dog heard my cries and screams during the rape and started howling and would not stop howling dennis witton got his dog brought it right in front of me and said i want to show you what will happen if you ever open up your mouth about what just occurred and he took his big meaty fist and he started punching his dog punching his dog punching his dog and i'm screaming dennis please stop stop stop and he's punching and punching and punching and punching and his dog lay in a peep at my feet and to me that was worse than the rape because i felt responsible for that dog because it was only howling because of my cries the guy i looked up to next to my father the most has just done the unthinkable now he's beating his dog to death unconscious to ensure my silence he dropped me off down at the lake reiterated don't you say a word and i didn't want to be near the dam area where all the kids hung out so i ran down the river with my bike i ditched it in the weeds and i ran down the river and i just was rocking along the river hugging myself and at that moment my 12 year old mind said we are never going to talk about this talking about it is equal to reliving it and we definitely don't want to relive what just happened i had gotten a dirt bike for christmas the previous year and i wanted to avoid going down near the dam area at all costs so i started hanging out the rape occurred the elementary school stillwater elementary school went up to sixth grade they built a brand new high school a few years prior and they put seventh and eighth grade in the high school so i got raped the summer where i graduated elementary school and before i was going to start seventh grade and to avoid the damn area i started riding my dirt bikes with older kids around the lake and they all smoked weed and i began smoking weed on a weekly basis i had no coping skills for the trauma in my brain and i needed to dilute it somehow and we did that for me if you had told me three months prior in sixth grade at the elementary school that i'd be smoking weed i'd have laughed at it was so far out of my little brains realm of possibility and yet now i've been raped i've had this dog beaten unconscious dead in front of me and i don't know how to process it and i'm smoking weed on a regular basis my mother worked at the new high school in the library so every day i got to crank on my my smile for her for the teachers for my classmates i built up this big outgoing personality and charm and it was all a farce it was just to fool everybody i let my guard down one time seventh grade in english class we got given an assignment the teacher gave each student a letter of the alphabet and said you have to write a one-page essay using that letter to start as many words as possible in your story i got given the letter s and i wrote about being a slave on a ship where the shipmaster was a gay guy who every night would try to come into my bunk to molest me and i had to keep a metal pipe at my side to beat him off with this is what my essay was about and it raised no red flags with the teacher she she gave me an a and said use more paragraphs next time and after that i was sealed shut if people look for signs and children of abuse a few years bef earlier i started playing with fire a lot pouring gasoline on stuff lighting it on fire i lit our backyard on fire i let the corner of our house on fire seventh grade i get arrested i get caught shoplifting cigars out of uh out of a store at the mall our local mall those are both signs of sexual abuse arson and shoplifting i came home from school and i thought i was real cute i had a little safe in my room but you could either use the combination to open it or you could just pull it real hard and it would open and that's where i kept pot rolling papers in a bowl and i come home and all three of those are sitting on my bed and my father walks in behind me and he says i am not putting up with this [ __ ] with you i already researched a military school down by philadelphia you keep smoking that [ __ ] and i'll send you to military school so he missed an opportunity to try to open up a dialogue with me about why the [ __ ] i'm doing this why the [ __ ] am i starting fires why am i shoplifting why why am i smoking weed at 12 years old instead back then as was the norm he took the authoritarian approach and he missed an opportunity to get me to open up he did about a year after the rape sit me down and say i want to ask you something i'm hearing rumors about dennis pegg molesting inmates at the jail he's like he's he he was taking inmates home to mentor them and when he would get the inmates upon their release young male inmates obviously when he would get them to his house in the middle of the night he would pounce on them and some of these inmates ran out of his house and were hitchhiking and the little stillwater's a little little town and they were hitchhiking in the middle of the night in stillwater getting picked up by the residents and saying this guy offered me a place to live to get my life back on track in the middle of night he's on top of me trying to sexually molest me and it spread around our town like wildfire and my father caught wind of it and he sat me down and he said has dennis ever touched you this is really the only regret i have in life i you know i've led a really screwed up wild life but i uttered to him no daddy never touched me i could have began healing right then if i just could have found the courage to open up back then there was no agencies to treat abused children the only ones you went to were the cops and he was he was law enforcement and i didn't know who to trust or who to turn to so i said no daddy never touched me about about another year after that my father went to the local dunkin donuts in our town and the waitress was from our town of stillwater and over a cup of coffee she's telling my father how her son who's a classmate of mine in the boy scouts was raped by dennis my father comes home tells me the story and this time he says before you answer my question i just want you to know that you'll never have to talk to the police you'll never have to testify in court i will go take care of dennis myself you just tell me has he ever touched you so is my father telling me he's going to murder dennis go beat him up i don't know it's one of those two and as tempting as it sounded i just couldn't bring myself to tell my dad and i said no daddy never touched me i go into high school access to alcohol becomes much easier and i become a heavy drinker in high school i'm constantly at war with my parents we used to go to keg parties in high school me and my buddies and get bottles of yukon jack and it's a hard whiskey and we're drinking yukon jack at parties and getting bombed i got caught on class trips drinking i came into school drunk got suspended the principal called me down to his office and said clark i just don't get you you have unlimited opportunity and yet you squander it your grades are crap you don't excel in sports you don't do anything what's going on with you and i felt this i felt like this bile starting to come up from my stomach through my chest and it wanted out so bad it wanted to just tell him what the [ __ ] i've been dealing with and it got up to here and before it could come out i swallowed it down i just said i don't know i don't know i just shrugged my shoulders i gave up i abandoned i knew i was smart and i knew i could do no studying and get c's maybe an occasional b and that was fine with me i abandoned my studies i abandoned sports i go off to college right after i graduate a few weeks after i graduate high school i get a drunk driving i go off to college i went to northeastern university up in boston mass and i i became a great student i had college down to a science i could study four nights out of the week and i could be a blackout drunk three nights out of the week i went to college back in the 80s where cocaine was like booming and i tried coke for the first time i absolutely loved it it took away my insecurities my self-loathing it made me outgoing i tried other drugs mushrooms psychedelics in college but it was really coke that i loved coke and drinking i met the love of my life we dated northeastern's a five-year school we dated for six years and when it was time for her to when she was ready to take our relationship to the next level she pinned me down and you know i wanted to start a life together and i just i told her i couldn't she goes what do you mean you care i just said i can't i couldn't be intimate i could have sex all i wanted but intimidate intimacy is a totally different thing i just couldn't do it and she said i gotta i gotta i gotta leave you then and that haunted me for my whole life that i missed out on her my twenties i never wanted to feel trapped because trapped how i felt when i was at dennis pegg's house so i went from one career to another i went from one relationship to another i did one night stand after one night stand after one night stand my whole thought process in my 20s was the pursuit of sex if i could just sleep with enough women that'll make me that'll make me feel fulfilled and like a man and take away all the self-hatred and self-loathing that i have and it didn't work after a decade of that i went into my 30s just feeling empty feeling like a big hole was within me and i needed something else to push the pain and the shame back down and i found that in gambling when i walked into those casinos i could literally check my pain and shame and self-hatred at the door and i had an amazing run in the casinos for five six years winning huge amounts of money and then i couldn't wait for the weekends like any other drug you need more and more i couldn't wait for the weekends i needed a fixed earlier in the week so i started sports betting with the mob within six months i was bankrupt had to declare bankruptcy and i got in debt to the mob for a large sum of money from all my gambling winnings and i was putting so much cash into the bank the irs criminal investigation bureau paid me a visit right to my house and did a full audit my later 30s i was importing steroids i got a letter from division of homeland security saying a package addressed to me got caught with anabolic steroids in it and they basically give you a one time get out of jail free card so i've got all these things in my life i had bought a harley i'm running with bikers selling drugs and doing drugs with one percent bikers my life which should have been full of potential i'm just going down one dead end street after another i go into my 40s when i went to my 30s i was unemployed go figure and my brother had a tire automotive business and he asked me to join him and we were going to open up a second shot which we did so i had nothing else to do so i joined him and i go into my 40s and not knowing anything about ptsd something triggers my ptsd and i fall into a huge depression and i don't know how to handle this depression it was like this heavy wet soaking wet blanket on top of me that i couldn't get out from under just swinging my legs out of bed in the morning felt like i had these giant tree trunks and i'd have to talk to myself like a little baby come on clark come on swing your other leg out come on now stand up and walk to the bathroom [Music] and not knowing how to combat this i start drinking before work now i start doing little bumps of coke just to get me through my day working on working in the entire automotive i would work on backhoe tires loader tires truck tires and i herniated a disc in my back and i went and saw a doctor and he prescribed me 30 vicodins and i ate these 30 vicodins in three days and i felt like superman on them and i called them up and i'm like doc those pills worked wonders i'm like i feel like i'm 17 again bro let's get some more there you go whoa that was a little fast there buddy boy he goes i'll give you 10 more and that's it that that simply wasn't acceptable to me so i knew people on the street that i got coke and stuff from so i don't like i'll just you know in my mind i'm like i'll just find him on the street and thus began a six-year pain pill addiction i was like a squirrel gathering nuts i could have i could have 500 pills in my drawer and i'd still be worried because i heard i heard this one time when rush limbaugh after his back surgery got addicted to pain pills i heard this astronomical number that he was taking 40 pain pills a day and i just thought to myself that's friggin impossible it's not impossible i'm taken depending on the strength of the pills i had up to two dozen a day so i'm severely depressed i've got a pain pill addiction i'm drinking before work i'm doing bumps of coke and one day after work i'm in a deli getting a coffee making a coffee at the island and the door opens up and i look up and it's my rapist dennis pegg and he sees me and he yells out to me like we're best friends hey clark and i start instantly going into a panic attack my heart's instantly racing a million miles an hour and my palms are sweaty and my mind just starts swirling and i feel my joints locking up like i did when i was a little kid when he would touch me and walking in right behind him is a young boy about the age he raped me at and that young boy calls him the same nickname he used to insist i call him and i heard that nickname and it just ripped open everything that i had repressed for the last 30 years all my pain and horror and shame and rage and violence came instantly bubbling to the surface and dennis is starting to make his way to me probably to give me a hug or a high five or a handshake and i just ran right by him we shoulder bumped i ran right by him i hopped in my pickup truck i sped out of the parking lot i started going down the road flying down the road i started punching my steering wheel yelling [ __ ] i started spitting on my floor and my life collapsed that day less than two months later i walked out of the family business i was in with my brother i could no longer swing my legs out of bed in the morning it was like climbing mount everest and i said i'm [ __ ] done climbing mount everest and i never looked back and now i got free time on my hands i got pain and hatred and shame and rage bubbling out of me for decades all that filled my mind was hatred rage violence pain shame pornography drugs alcohol that's what i filled my mind with for decades you fill your mind with that [ __ ] for decades no good is gonna happen in your life and my life was about to take a left-hand turn south instead of buying a gram of coke every now and then i'm buying ounces of coke a week i'm using and selling i got my pain pill addiction people think that only the degenerates do heroin that only the homeless people on the street do heroin drugs will lie to you drugs don't care who they go after when my pain pills started running low and people didn't have any somebody said i got some dope man it's a hell a lot better than pain pills are a hell of a lot cheaper and i'm like [ __ ] it and i start doing heroin from the age of 12 when i started smoking weed on a weekly basis i began blowing through all my boundaries i set in life that that that rape the the the bumping logs the the wrestling with a hard on on top of me all that [ __ ] made me so i couldn't live within my boundaries anymore boundaries became meaningless and now i've just blown through another boundary i'll never do i told myself i would never ever ever ever do heroin and now i'm doing heroin i'm doing so much cocaine that i'm popping 8 to 12 xanax a day i'm drinking massive amounts of alcohol i don't care if i live or die so many nights in the middle of the night i couldn't remember how many xanax i popped i'm like should i my heart's racing so from the coke i'm like should i pop more xanax shouldn't i should i take some pain pills instead how many pain pills have i taken i'm like i'll just be like whatever whatever bro and one night i had told a friend i'd lent money to a friend and he was coming over to he was going to pay back the money by power washing and staining the cedar siding of my house and the morning of he was gonna come over on june the 12th i woke up that morning after a three-day coke bender passed out for maybe two hours did a line of coke poured a glass of wine sat in bed put on the news and it was the start of jerry sandusky's molestation trial jerry sandusky was a coach out at penn state and he'd been running a boys camp and molesting all these boys for decades and i saw this guy getting out of his lawyer's car and buck button in his suit jacket and i just started yelling curses at the tv i started spitting on my bedroom floor i just was hugging myself and rocking back and forth on my bed and i was at this point i'm doing so much drugs i'm avoiding family of avoiding friends but that day seeing that trial i had to get out of my house i spent the rest of the day out drinking doing coke popping xanax i stopped at an italian restaurant i always frequented and there was a guy in there who had burned me on a business deal and he and i had words and then i went home to meet my friend who was dropping off the equipment to power wash and stain the house and i told him about seeing the guy who burned me on the business deal in the restaurant and we're having a glass of wine at my kitchen table and my friend says that guy's got to be number one on your hit list and before i could stop the words i just couldn't i couldn't control my mouth i said he's he's actually number two on my hit list the piece of [ __ ] who raped me as a kid is number one and there's dead silence my friend's just staring at me and for the first time in my life i've never told anybody about the ring i just let it out my friend starts asking me some questions who is he where does he live and within 15 minutes we're driving to his house to go confront him i'm like let's confront this [ __ ] i look from outside his house in ran up his driveway his front door was open his storm screen door was shut and there he was sitting there watching tv it's 9 30 at night he doesn't have a care in the world i start going into that panic attack again i feel my joints just it's like a paralysis comes over you even even 30 years later that guy still had that power over me and before i could freeze in his driveway i marched up to that screen door and i ripped it open and here i am a childhood rape victim with his who's just ripped open his screen door at 9 30 at night and this [ __ ] whack job looks over his shoulder calmly as can be and goes hey how are you and it it just seemed like the most bizarre thing in the world to say he didn't like get on his knees and start pleading or say i'm sorry i i always thought you might come by here ah okay you know let's talk he just says hey how are you i go hey how am i [ __ ] let me show you how the [ __ ] i am and i raced across this [ __ ] living room and i had a knife in my hand and i started stabbing at him and he started throwing haymakers at me and a violent bloody struggle ensued at one point he connected with a shot squarely to my draw and i started falling down and i grabbed his shirt with my left hand to hold myself up and i came down with i yelled you [ __ ] and i came down with the knife and i put the knife straight through my hand and i severed all the ligaments and tendons in it the fight lasted just a couple minutes he fell down in blood and i knelt down in front of him and i looked him in the eye and i said it's not so fun raping little boys now is it i slit his throat and people always want to ask me did all your problems disappear when you did that and i'm like are you [ __ ] kidding me i'm like to go murder even though i murdered a pedophile to go murder somebody i had to get down in the gutter like a dog no no it didn't cure all my problems it just added a whole nother dimension of problems to my already mountainous problems i had and before i left that house in my bloody footprints i walked over to the bedroom he raped me in and i spit on his bed i was arrested the next day i woke up the next morning in bed and when i opened my eyes i said what the [ __ ] have you done clark you just flushed your [ __ ] life down the toilet bro in my mind that was so polluted with drugs and alcohol said if we could just get some drugs and alcohol in our system we can come up with a plan and like a lunatic i yelled out to my empty bedroom i agree i got up i poured a bunch of xanax into my hand i took them i went out to my kitchen i poured a glass of wine and i look out the window and my street is lined with at least a dozen cop cars i'm like are you [ __ ] kidding me already and my stomach just dropped to the ground i chugged that glass of wine i poured another one i walked out to the slider in the back of the house and i looked out the back and there's cops hiding behind trees behind rock walls i'm like what the [ __ ] and out of a loudspeaker right here mr fredericks come out of your house with your hands up and one thing i did i had seen a state trooper friend of mine from high school a few months prior in a bar and he's like hey come out to the car i got some hats and some uh state police shirts take a couple i'm like yeah cool before i go walking out i go into my bedroom and i put my state police shirt on i'm like this should get me out of it i knew it wouldn't get me out of it but i just thought [ __ ] it if i'm getting arrested by the state police i might as well get arrested wearing her shirt and as i started walking to my front door i called out to god god who at 12 i our relation my relationship with god changed at 12. it became a relationship of me getting into the riskiest behaviors and calling out to god you owe me bro i'm doing drug deals with people from patterson buying ounces of coke i'm like you owe me bro you better get me through this that was my relationship with god i said to god as i was walking to that front door i'm like god please let one of these cops shoot me when i step out my front door just let it be over i'm done with this life it's over bro and i stepped out onto my front porch i put my hands out and i waited for the crack of a gun [Music] just so i know i'd be out of my misery and i never heard that crack of the gun instead i was taken to the state police barracks and when i was in the state police barracks this lieutenant came in to the holding cell and the first words out of his mouth were i want to apologize to you i go i go what the hell are you apologizing to me for and he goes i've known about this scumbag for a long long time and he goes and i apologize that i could never arrest him he goes i can't build the criminal case based on rumors and innuendos i need cold hard facts and i need victims and whatever he did to you victims to keep you silent prevented me from arresting him and i apologize and he left the the cell and i was like wow at first i felt i felt good you know about him apologizing and then i just started fuming i started fuming i'm like every [ __ ] person knew about this scumbag and yet i got to be the one to put an end to him and now i just flushed my life down the toilet why the [ __ ] did i have every single person around knew what dennis pegg was doing with young boys and yet i got to be the one to put an end to his 45-year reign of terror and i got to pay with my life a little while later that same lieutenant came back into the holding cell and he goes to me he goes look dude he goes my detectives are waiting in another room with detectives from the prosecutor's office and they're waiting to interrogate you you're gonna get pulled out of here in a minute or two if you go into that room and open your mouth you could totally [ __ ] your whole life he goes you're in deep [ __ ] right now you don't need to get in deeper [ __ ] you go into that room you exercise your fifth amendment rights you keep quiet you request a lawyer and you don't say another word and he asked me three times do you understand what i'm telling you and i'm like i got it and without him telling me that i might have just he could he said to me later on i could tell you had mailed in your life i walked back in that holding cell and i could just see the look in your eyes that your life was done and it was i righted a wrong for a lot of people including myself and i just forfeited the rest of my life and this guy didn't want my life to be forfeited so i went into that interrogation room i requested a lawyer and that was the end of the interview i had to get emergency hand surgery and under the anesthesia as soon as i came out of it they took me to the to the jail and i woke up in the middle of the night not knowing where i was and eventually after surveying my surroundings it came to me that i was in the county jail where they put me was in a suicide cell and i was in that suicide cell for four weeks and they had me in the right spot because at that point i just wanted to die i had no desire to keep living i had no desire to do life in prison and now i'm in the very jail you want to talk about how low somebody can sink i'm in the very jail being held for murder of a lieutenant who spent his whole career working in that jail and it seemed like he had been protected so i'm thinking they're going to give me the beating of a lifetime in this place and one by one the guards that would come in to do cell checks in that suicide cell would be like hey look man keep your mouth shut don't talk to anybody i'm hearing a lot of [ __ ] about this guy i didn't know him i didn't work with him i'm hearing he was an animal just keep your mouth shut next guy would come in and say something similar my third day there a guard came in who i knew from the street and he's like my man how are you and i go are you [ __ ] kidding me bro i'm like i'm shitty he's like i know i know he goes do you know what's going on in the community i'm like what he goes somebody started a free clark campaign he's like there's bumper stickers everywhere he goes he goes every [ __ ] car has a free clark sticker on it and i'm like really he's like yeah i go they don't view me as a monster they're like he's like are you [ __ ] kidding me peg was the monster everybody wants to know why he was still walking the street i was like man the sheriff's department when they have a fallen comrade they lower the flag to half mast and they wear blue ribbons they were ordered not to lower the flag to half mass for dennis pegg and not to wear blue ribbons that should tell you what they were hearing about him and then i finally after four weeks in a suicide cell i had to go to three weeks in an isolation cell because i had a cast on and they viewed that as a weapon and they wouldn't allow me into general population with my cast on so until that cast came off i was in a cell by myself isolated i finally get put up into general population and there's these overhead lights that come on in your cell that like shock you awake at shift change in the morning they come on and they literally are so bright and have such a an evil hum to them they shock you awake and i would wake up every morning cursing cursing my existence cursing where i was cursing that light and i called out to god that day i had been unable to pray and anytime i tried to close my eyes to pray just violent images or sexual images would flood my mind so instead i yelled out to god that day in my cell i said god you either have to help me find a way to kill myself or heal myself i can't go on another day feeling like this and like i said i was not a bible toter i had abandoned god and yet that day in my cell i heard an internal voice loud and clear say you have to pick up a book and start reading my case had been all over the country it was on the front page of the l.a times baltimore sun all over it aired in 37 countries around the world i got books self-help books spiritual books meditation books yoga books the bible books from all over the country were coming in to me you can only keep so many books in your cell almost every cell on my tier had my books in and when i heard that voice say you have to pick up a book and start reading i looked at the books in my cell and there was a one tiny little book and i i took that book which i had never even paid attention to and it was man's search for meaning by holocaust survivor victor frankel and i said well it's a small book i'll start with this one and in it he talked about finding purpose in life and meaning in life even in the circumstance of being in a concentration camp and there was a sentence in there that that ignited something in me the sentence was i'm gonna i'm gonna paraphrase it when you're faced with a intolerable situation that will not change you must change yourself and i read that and i'm like all right my situation isn't going to change i could possibly do life in prison i got to change myself and i read that line over and over and over i highlighted it and i would just read when your situation isn't going to change you have to change yourself and i dedicated myself after reading that line to begin healing there's no therapist in jail there's a therapist but it's just to prescribe drugs and my lawyer said don't say anything to the therapist because the prosecutor can can get her records so i'm like alright so i had no one to talk to in there but i decided i was going to start healing i just began reading and reading and reading and i would take maybe one thing out of a book and apply it to myself i read this book the power and now by eckhart tolle and this book was about taking back control of your mind using mindfulness if you had told me when i'm riding harley's doing lines of coke going into strip clubs selling drugs to one percenters that i'm going to read a book called the power now about mindfulness and it's going to change my life i would have backhanded you and said get out of here and yet i read that book i almost underlined the whole thing sometimes i would i could only get through a couple pages it was a heavy book and it was deep and i wanted to i wanted to absorb it and i wanted to take back control on my mind because for 24 7 my mind either was focusing on the past abuse and the murder or it was facing life in prison so i read and i read and i read and i finally picked up the bible and i read the bible front to back after three years of sitting in the county jail i got offered a plea deal enough other victims came forward but they didn't want to and they and the prosecutor even said in court one day and this this is sort of funny that i'm in the jail for murder where the guy worked his whole career and yet the prosecutor's telling the judge i don't think i can get a fair trial your honor coming to work every day i'm seeing free clark stickers on on cars how am i going to get an impartial jury so they finally gave me a plea deal to second-degree manslaughter which carries five to ten years about my fourth month of incarceration my mother came for a visit at the jail and while she was standing in line to come see me her minister walked out of the jail he had been in to see some other kid kid that their parents his parents asked them to go visit their son and he went to see him he saw my mother and he gave her a hug and then he grabbed her by the shoulders and he he looked at her eye to eye and he said joan i want you and your son to start praying on the number five as in a five-year sentence my mother came in for the visit and she tells me the story about praying for the number five and this is like my fourth month that i was locked up i'm facing life i'm suicidal i'm depressed and i say to her mom you gotta pick a number that's a little more realistic a five is not going to happen and she said to me son i believe in god i believe in miracles and i want you to start believing in them too and i knew i was putting her through a lot of pain and i said all right mom i will and from that day forward i started praying on a number on the number five i started asking god for a five year sentence i started meditating i read all these books on meditation and i started putting a five into my meditation i read books on using a mantra to quiet your mind and i would put a five into the mantra i repeated all day long to my in myself to in my mind i'm repeating this mantra so now fast forward to accepting this plea deal and my lawyer prepared me that when we eventually go for sentencing he's like no judge especially on a murder case is going to want to be on the low end they're going to they're going to want to be on the high end of the scale so just prepare yourself i'm like alright i finally go for sentencing and in court on the record the judge gives me a five and apologizes for having to send me to prison for a single day he says i know that you only did what you did because of what was done to you and when i got taken out of that court and put back in the holding cell it just dawned on me that i got the five that i had been preying on that i scoffed at my mother for and i couldn't believe that the impossible became possible i went to prison at northern state prison in newark new jersey in my first day there a therapist came to my cell and said i followed your case on the news and i just saw your name come across the computer i can't believe you're here she goes will you start therapy and i said absolutely i had to finally surrender i resisted change my whole life i thought i was a big bad tough guy i'll just do things my way and i finally my way didn't work obviously and i finally decided to surrender and to let anything and everything come into my life that could take my life in a new direction i had no desire to go back to the animal i had been so here i have to go to prison to get therapy for the first time in my life and my second one-on-one therapy with her she said i run a group therapy class in prison for childhood trauma would you join that and i said sure and i'm in there with latin king gang members blood gang members muslims christians and we all had these [ __ ] up childhoods and we're all sharing our story in front of each other and we're crying in front of each other and we're hugging each other and that group therapy class was the greatest healer i could have ever got in so as shitty as prison is at least i got that group therapy class under my belt my therapist also came to me one day and she said i can't believe it clark for the first time in a new jersey prison they're going to offer a meditation class it's a 15-week vipassana meditation class she goes there's limited seats i want you to sign up and maybe you'll get in so i signed up for it and i was one of 15 people to get in for two and a half hours on a friday night while you got all this insanity swirling around you i'd be in a classroom getting to do meditation quietly and calmly i got released from prison on december 30th of 2016 so basically the first of the year of 2017. and i had led this selfish indulgent lifestyle and i still had a little bit of selfish in me and when i say that because i decided i wanted to file a lawsuit against the boy scouts and i went and saw a law firm and they read me the law new jersey law and the guy said as the law states you have no recourse for a lawsuit and he goes there's advocates who have been working for 15 years to get a new law and they haven't gotten anywhere yet maybe you can join them and your story is so over the top that you can sway some senators and congress people to pass a new law and i'm like meh he goes i got the numbers of the advocates i'll set up a meeting here in my office i'm like cool so i went in for selfish reasons just for myself and i walked out of there becoming an advocate for everyone in the state who had been abused i started meeting with senators lawyers for the catholic church i got to testify before the house judicial committee and two years after becoming an advocate and people telling us you will never get a new law passed in new jersey we got we went from the worst law in the country to the strongest law two years of being an advocate i was in trenton new jersey to see the final vote and it voted it was voted in unanimously when i was locked up in prison i heard that internal voice for the second time as i sat in my cell quietly one day loud and clear saying to me you're going to become a motivational speaker [Music] and i i had been afraid deathly afraid of getting up in front of people and speaking in college i'm doing shots of vodka at eight o'clock in the morning before i gotta go do reports in front of the class and i think it was because i had all this [ __ ] all this garbage inside of me that i'm carrying around like how can i stand up in front of people they're gonna they're gonna see all this crap they're gonna see that i'm a fraud and yet i heard that voice say you're gonna be a motivational speaker i just i threw up my hands i'm like whatever and i thought to myself how's a dude coming out of prison for murder ever going to get a motivational speaking career going less than two months out of prison before i became an advocate one of the pastors who used to come into the jail and teach bible study said you've got to come to my church he wrote me on as in prison he's like you got to come see my church it's a huge church and when i went to see him he's like we're doing a uh a water baptism and he goes we're baptizing people in tubs that were made by new jersey prisoners he goes how ironic would that be for you to get baptized in a tub made by your fellow prisoners and i'm like that'd be pretty cool let's do it and i had to read this testimony in front of like a congregation of like 500 about why i was getting baptized and in the audience was this lady from a place called jenny's house and jenny's house is for abused children and she heard my testimony and she reached out to me and she said april is sexual assault awareness month i'm presenting at centenary college would you like to be my guest speaker i was like absolutely so here less than four months out of prison where i had no idea i'd ever become a motivational speaker this door is getting opened by god for me and from the time the law got passed in new jersey i concentrated more on speaking i spoke in rehab center after rehab center after rehab center i spoke at churches i spoke i went back to the jail where i had been held for murder for three and a half years and got to speak to the inmates there a director of a play off-broadway play called blackbird based on molestation reached out to me and asked if i'd be guest speaker after the play on stage and i'm like absolutely twice i i i went and spoke on stage after the play ended nbc did a documentary on me the producers of nbc did a documentary on my case and i got on the tamron hall daytime talk show and from being on that talk show i got offered a speaking contract by a firm out of la who wanted to represent me as a speaker so that little voice i heard in that prison cell saying you're going to be a motivational speaker and again i scoffed at it sort of just threw my hands up here a few years down the road i just get offered a contract by a speaking firm and i share this stuff to try to give people hope that's the one thing that always kept me going people are like how have you survived all the [ __ ] you've survived and i'm like i always held on to that little glimmer of hope i went through life without any purpose without any meaning all i was trying to do was just stay one step ahead of my pain and now helping other victims open up helping them speak out letting them know they're not alone i always felt alone in the world like nobody else could could understand the pain i was carrying inside well there's a hell of a lot of people who understand the pain i'm carrying inside and i always held on to hope and that always kept me going if you if you can just retain a little bit of hope it can keep you motivated and i stayed motivated when i was locked up i wrote a manuscript of the first half of my life and i i dreamed of like getting a book deal and i wrote three book proposals and and got nowhere with them and out of the blue simon schuster read my last book proposal and just offered me a contract which i just signed a few weeks ago for a book deal i just finished up a multi-episode documentary a producer reached out to me and said your story is amazing it's inspiring i want to give your voice to other people to help them open up and we just finished up this multi-episode documentary filming it and that college sweetheart who i lost 30 years ago who i hated myself that i couldn't commit to her i couldn't take the next step with her after 30 years i finally reached out to her to apologize to tell her why i couldn't commit to her she used to say to me she used to we'd be lying in bed together and i would just stare off into the distance and she would be like this and there would be nothing and she'd be like hey hey hey you're like what she goes where'd you just go i'm like what are you talking about she goes you just left me she's like where'd you where'd you disappear in your mind to and i'm like i have no idea what you're talking about so she always knew there was something troubling me but didn't know what it was and i had reached out to her and explained my story explained how i finally had meaning and purpose to help others now i explained all the good i was doing with my life i'm 10 years sober and we got together for coffee two weeks after i reached out to her and we fell madly back in love so i just want people to realize that i mean i sunk to where i was suicidal i was held in a suicide cell for four weeks i was put into jail for murder for murdering a lieutenant who worked in that very jail it doesn't get much worse than that and yet a few years down the road by holding on to hope and by taking chances and not caring if i failed and throwing as much mud against the wall as i possibly could one thing after another started coming through in my life and now just the opportunity to reach people on a large scale and get them to open up when people hear my story they relate to it you relate to people that have been through the same fire as you and breaking your silence is the first step to healing and i don't mind throwing all my garbage out to the world if it will help the next person break their silence i learned this line in therapy it's from the aaa blue book but it's it's it's so true it's called it says we are only as sick as our secrets i had secrets up to my chin and i was sick i was sick inside so speak out break your silence don't hold secrets in and let's begin healing thank you you

Channel: Soft White Underbelly

Views: 1,402,440

Keywords: soft white underbelly, swu

Id: 9gTedz_OCZY

Length: 77min 34sec (4654 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 27 2022