My memories pick back up later in life; a bit before Rob Evenboer (Bill and Claudia’s son) was born. When I was in pre-school. I was largely neglected at home. I would frequently join Bill on his jobs. When he was a delivery driver who delivered goods to farms, he would watch me walk up to electrified fences and touch them. He would laugh at me when I got electrocuted. Then he would hit me. Sometimes he would have me shower with him so that he could urinate on me. Things went on like that until Bill and Claudia’s son Rob was born. Then the sexual abuse began, about the time when Rob turned about 3 or 4. Bill would hold me down while he and Rob would strike across my penis. Sometimes they used their hands. Other times they used the sword from Rob’s Armour of God playset. They called this “game” Slice the Water. I would scream “no” and “stop” while they "played" with my penis. Often, Claudia would sit and watch and laugh at me as I screamed “no” and “stop”. She was an active and knowing participant even if she never actually "played" with my penis. She never stopped them and she never helped me despite my pleas. But she had no problem telling me I was possessed by daemons when I acted out.
Around age 9, I had to start a lawn mowing business to help pay for their family’s needs (e.g.; rent, food). The fact that I was a bread winner for their family had no barring on the abuse. It continued for years. I was contracted to mow lawns for one Gary Lynn Walton (whose father eventually sold his business to Bill Evenboer) around Portage and Kalamazoo. I worked about 20 hours a week on top of attending elementary school and the sexual, physical, and religious abuse. Through all of those years, and beyond, I was told that I was filled with daemons and evil spirits. In this time period, I prayed often. I prayed silently that the abuse would end, but it never did. So, I chose, without prompting, to be baptized in the Protestant manner. Despite my baptism and my prayers, the abuse still continued. I even began giving 10% of my money from the lawn mowing job to Agape Christian Church of Kalamazoo. Every Sunday, adults would watch, grinning, as I gave money to their church. As a child. No one ever questioned. No one ever said I didn’t need to. They just watched and grinned. And still the abuse continued. Their god would accept my money, but wouldn’t help me. The abuse continued. I was sexually abused by Bill’s nephew Travis, who would try to get me to take my clothes off and would wake me at night by touching my penis. Claudia’s brother Stephen once stuck his finger knuckle deep in my anus. I frequently had my pants pulled down in front of the family by Bonnie and Ann Cavanaugh (daughters of Claudia’s sister Pam). Everyone would laugh. Once I tried to pull one of their pants down to see if people would laugh. I got yelled at. The only two people I truly had any trust in was Claudia’s father and Bill’s mother. Neither hurt me or harmed me. Claudia’s father nurtured my intellect. Bill’s mother treated me like…well, a human child.
In 7th grade, the family moved us to Portage. I didn’t adjust well to the near-all-white, far more affluent world of the suburbs. I was bullied at home and at school, often by teachers and students equally. Nothing changed much in high school. I lost my grip on my sanity. I stopped trying at everything. I let people sexualize me, showing my penis when people told me to. I let teachers throw me into lockers. One teacher, Mr. Flaska, had a particular hatred of me. For some reason, every teacher assumed I was gay (I wasn’t, nor was I even bi-curious). I smoked weed a couple of times. I tried doing acid, but always ended up buying fake acid that didn’t do anything. I tried some amphetamines. Nothing really helped.
At age 17, I had my first girlfriend. We ended up engaged. When we told the people who raised me, they laughed and Claudia said (in front of my fiancé) that she was engaged once before she was married. They eventually convinced me to leave my fiancé. I often tried to move away from Bill and Claudia, but nothing stuck. I always ended up in financial straits and ended up back in their house. At about age 19 I started drinking. I quickly received my first Minor In Possession by Intoxication. I went through a diversion programme. I ended up going to AA a lot. I also converted to Islam. There, I met maybe my one true friend that I had in my life (Haniff). As I got close to age 21, I began drinking again. I was constantly getting fired from jobs despite my sobriety. In high school, I was fired from Harding’s Market for putting 3 stickers from my price gun on the wall (which was apparently worse than the underage kids drinking in the cooler). I was fired from Sam’s Club for trip to seeing the woman who raised me’s grand mother (Florence Picardi…one of the few people in their family I didn’t have a problem with). The manager had approved the trip, but then fired me because she said it wasn’t approved.
Around this time, I also gained a stalker. Her name was April Morris. Her brother Mark Morris introduced us. I wasn’t interested, but they seemed nice and innocent enough. When she showed up to my work, I didn’t think much of it. When I was 21, I moved in with someone I started a band with. The Morris’ had a band too (a strange, cultish family band, to be frank). I thought nothing of it when they showed up to our shows. Soon she began grabbing me and trying to get me to dance with her, which I politely declined. She would take jobs where I worked. I told her to think of me as a brother, but she wouldn’t leave me alone. One night, when I was 26-ish, she asked me to walk her to her car. It was late, and I begrudgingly agreed because I didn’t want her to get hurt. My kind gesture was taken as an invitation for her to force herself on me. She grabbed me and tried to force me to kiss her. I pushed her away and told her to get out. I don’t know what else she would have tried. Unfortunately, she didn’t let up. Even when I moved to other states, she would randomly call me. Finally, when I was 30 and moved to Oregon, she left me alone. If I'm lucky, I'll never have to see her nausea-inducing face or hear her nausea-inducing voice ever again. Some people don't deserve forgiveness.
Between ages 23 and 30, I moved frequently about the country hoping to escape Bill and Claudia. I moved to New York multiple times. I lived out of a suitcase for a while. I lived in apartments with roaches and rats. I moved to Oregon in 2007, then moved back to Michigan in 2009.
In my teenage years, I came to believe that I would be dead by 30. In 2009, in Michigan, I tempted fate. I tried to commit suicide. The attempt was unsuccessful. I woke up in a hospital room surrounded by people. Two of them were Bill and Claudia. They had me sign some papers. In fact, since I was about 6 years old, they had been making me sign papers. Often, in my 20’s, they would get me drunk and then have me sign papers. Anyway, after I was recovered in the hospital room, I was taken to a mental health facility. Bill and Claudia never came to visit. Which was fine by me. When it was time to leave, I left shoe-less. Claudia picked me up, dropped me off at their house (that was filled with alcohol), and she and Bill immediately left for a Christian conference. The day I got out of the mental health facility, they left me on my own. Apparently, Jesus needed them more than I did. Apparently I'm stronger than their god. I drank a lot that night, and most nights after. The closest I ever got to an explanation (or apology) was the time Bill called me into his office so he could yell at me because he was still hurt that kids made fun of him in high school because he has a small penis. Somehow that was my fault, even though I wasn't even born when he was getting made fun of for his small penis.
At 30, I was still alive. So, I left for Oregon to study mycology. Science was always my passion even though Claudia always told me Jesus told her that I was supposed to be either: a) a post office worker, b) a guy who wrote stuff in greeting cards, or c) an elementary school teacher who wrote short stories and poems. I tried to do the artsy/writer thing in my 20’s and teens, but was miserable. I hated every second of that kind of thing.
Initially, upon moving to Corvallis, I was in the throes of alcoholism. I tried to justify it by saying it was just me trying all the “great craft brews”. It became harder to justify when I started moving straight liquor only. Within a year, I was drinking a 750 mL bottle of whisky or vodka every night or every other night. Somehow, I didn’t fail out of school. I struggled, though. I developed hypertension. I gained an unhealthy amount of weight. I was still struggling with the abuses heaped upon me in my past, as they were never addressed or dealt with. I started going to OSU’s counseling and psychological services (CAPS), as well as their student health service (SHS). Around this time, I was also starting to openly admit I was mixed race (especially after a few incidents where I was called a n__er by fellow students). At one point, when discussing the abuse I underwent in my youth, the psychologist I was seeing at SHS (Dr. Lazeroff) decided to say “Maybe they were trying to help you” in response to me telling her about the attempted murder and the sexual abuse. I got upset and left and threw a plastic coffee cup at a wall. For this, they called the police on me. Like an idiot, I kept going for help from people who obviously had no desire to help me. At CAPS, the person I was seeing (Jim Gouvier), decided after a year to (and I quote) “wash (his) hands of (me)”. Because I told him I was my higher power for quitting drinking, and I’d never believe in Jesus or Buddah or Allah or any of that. So, my psychological counseling ended. I was right, though. Making myself my own higher power was the key to me quitting drinking. Coming to terms with my atheism and also embracing math made me a better person, and it gave me the strength to go on. )I'd like to say Jim and I made out peace later, though. We're cool)
While things didn't get much better after that, the combination of mathematics and nature and working out did have a fairly positive effect on my life. I got through my day-to-day life. I enjoyed most days, despite constant intrusive thoughts and memories. I stopped communicating with Bill, Claudia, and Rob and I was much better without hearing their voices or reading their bullshit emails.
At age 41, I graduated from Oregon State with over a 3.0 in Mathematics, and managed to get accepted into one of the best grad schools for my interests (Geometry and Topology) in the country. (if not the world) I was never congratulated (certainly not by Bill, Claudia, and Rob...but from no one else either), but I was excited none-the-less. Unfortunately, it didn't work out too well. I had been charged with (amongst other things) simple assault... for throwing an envelope at a table. I did this because the lady at the check-in counter wouldn't let me in because...I don't even know. She started making excuses, saying things like the people who showed up after me were there before me. So from May 2021 to now, I've been in e-court hearing for throwing an envelope with three sheets of paper and a return envelope (no staples or anything) at a table**. I also had to live in student housing with 20 somethings who preferred treating me like their personal servant rather than a room-mate. My class-mates weren't much better.. At best, people spoke to me out of pity. At worst, people actively let me know I wasn't at their...level, I guess. While I loved the math itself, nothing else about my time in Stony Brook has been especially positive I will say there were cool people who engaged me, btu I always had the sense that...inclusion didn't include me. I loved the classes I took and the talks I got to go to. But at the end of the day, I just never felt like the majority of my peers considered me a peer.
And that's where I'm at. I'm considered a bad person by society because...I do math? Meanwhile, society seems to revere Bill Evenboer, Rob Evenboer and Claudia Evenboer and their families because....they're child molesting real estate agents. That's who they are. They can go to church all they want, but they're child molesters. They're degenerate pieces of shit. For anyone who does business with them, that's who you're doing business with. Trash human beings.
I don't know what's next for me, but I know I'll never put myself in the position where I ever have to see Bill, Claudia, or Rob ever again. There will never come a point where I forgive them. That ship sailed a long time ago, and they've never shown an ounce of remorse. And there will never come a point where I believe in any gods or deities again. That ship also sailed very, very long ago. I'm a (much) better person in a (much) better place without religion or spirituality. And without the trash people from my past.
I think I've come to a point were I feel comfortable talking about this in a more public forum. I think the recent mass shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvakde,, Texas made me feel like it was important to... I guess show that someone can go through dark things and not choose violence. For as much shit as the family who raised me put me through, I'd never choose violence against them. And I certainly wouldn't project my anger at them in a violent way towards others. I used to do that when I was younger, and it never helped. Projecting your anger onto others who did nothing to you is, in my opinion, just you doing what was done to you. You're perpetuating a cycle. I think a lot of people who go through trauma and abuse are like me: they spend time trying to find that thing (or those things) that anchor them and give them purpose to create a better life. And sometimes, when they get to their healthy place, they might use their experience to help others who went through similar abuses and traumas. (And I personally believe you have to help yourself first when you're a trauma/abuse survivour. It's nice to help others, but unless you're in your healthy place, and you feel secure and settled in that place, it's like two people with broken arms trying to put casts on each other. No-one's going to heal properly.)
I know that not all mass shootings are motivated by past traumas. But it does seem like an alarming amount of them are. And I think it's important for people who might feel that shooting/killing people will somehow make things better, or win them some sort of vengeance or whatever. The "If I have to suffer, you all have to suffer" model never helped anything or anyone.
For all I've been through, when it's inevitably my time to close my eyes for the last time...I want to do so with a clean heart. Not some last minute plea-bargain with a consistently inconsistent magic sky master, but a true clean heart. Where I can say, even despite some bad choices and some poor coping abilities that unfortunately hurt others. I ultimately apologized to the people I hurt and I lived a positive, productive life. If my life has a positive, helpful impact on others, more the better Especially as an atheist, I think that's the best way to leave this life. It doesn't mean you have to be (or should be) a punching bag. But standing up for yourself certainly should never have to involve harming, much less killing, innocents.
** I'd like to say that the Corvallis police, the Benton country court system, and my lawyer have all been cool and as helpful as they can be. The Corvallis police were super helpful in getting me in kind of last minute (during COVID no less) to get my fingerprinting done in time so I could come to Stony Brook. I also understand they rejected a request that I be locked up for a night or two. My lawyer actually did say congratulations to me on getting into Stony Brook. The courts have been cool about doing hearings online (in general, not just for me...but still).
Update (19 Oct. 2022):
I'd like to add that I didn't write this because I was hoping to get anything out of it aside from maybe explaining why I am....the way I am. At least in part (because there's more to me than just "victim of serial abuse of all kinds, up to and including attempted murder").
I've said it in this blog in other posts before, but I'll repeat it here: I find prostituting my pain to be beyond distasteful. I don't want to sell my story. I don't want to write and/or profit off of a book or whatever about all this I don't want to give self-help talks or any of that bullshit. And I most assuredly don't want people to give me a job or a degree because of this. I want to be a mathematician, not the "mathematician who survived X, Y, and Z". There's a difference.
I didn't write this to try and get friends or significant others or any of that. I've been at the point where I don't even care about those things for a long time; well before I wrote this piece. And it's been way too late for the family who raised me (or for my stalker) to apologize. That ship sailed a long time ago. There's no forgiveness for them. I wouldn't hurt them, but I won't ever connect with them again.
This piece was about getting it off my chest, and letting people know who the family who raised me (and the girl who stalked me) really are. That's it.