Innocence Lost: The betrayal of a father

I have been formulating in my mind a blog about subterfuge, however that will have to wait until next time as there is a more pressing matter to discuss; the parent/child relationship and more specifically, the father/son relationship.

Dispatch: “7B be in route XYZ location for a seven year old suffering from an emotional disorder running away from his mother.

7B: “in route”

Dispatch: “7B be in route code 3. Call has been upgraded to an 11-45, child made threats of killing himself and has jumped over a fence and into a pool”

7B: “10-4”

I arrive on scene, flagged down by mom at the community pool. The seven year old, is thankfully not in the pool, but on top of a slide on the adjacent playground inside the pool complex. A sigh of relief as I realize it was just another case of a parent overreacting and communication error with police dispatch…..WRONG!

What I encountered over the next hour was emotionally heart wrenching. It was tragic. I realized that in the pool or not, this child was drowning and what’s worse, he may have been under so long that irreparable damage had been done.

The long and short of it the child’s father is in prison. In prison for sexual abuse. I’ve seen it before, taken many reports of molestation by family members of kids of all different ages. Generally, as a police officer, you bury those cases down deep with in you, using bad humor and whatever you can so that it doesn’t destroy you. Something about this kid and this situation was different.

As I entered the gate and started approaching the child at the top of the slide I could see him watching me, waiting for me to cross some imaginary line he had drawn that meant I had come too close. “Get away from me!” He yelled repeatedly and tried to talk to him, comfort him and get him to come down. Get him to trust me just enough. An impossible task, even doubly so because of the uniform I was wearing. “I hate police officers! Leave me alone! You took my dad away!”

The boy eventually climbed off the play structure, making a futile attempt to climb a tall fence, then running around before he was snatched up my Sergeant who he hadn’t seen. The boy fought and screamed and kicked but a seven year old boy is no match for a full grown police officer…..no match for his father either.

I took hold of the boy and he battled me for the better part of a hour as I tried to comfort him until our psychological response team arrived, and then a private ambulance. A seven year old struggled without relent and I was physically and emotionally drained by the end of it and still had an entire shift to endure.

Holding that child he felt so much like my son who is just a few years younger. Innocence lost! I felt a momentary rage towards this boys father and wanted great harm done to the monster. My anger was only momentary; the child’s would be indefinite. I prayed numerous times while he was in my arms. I still pray that he will not become like his father.

A few moments of light in a dark time….I heard my Sergeant speaking with the mother and as she was relaying what the father had done my Sergeant interrupted and refused to let her call him “father.” He looked into her eyes and said he’s not a father, then looked at the grandfather who was standing nearby who you could tell had taken on that role, and he said that’s a father!

Last week I saw the Christian movie, Courageous, which if you don’t know is specifically about fathers. There is a dialogue in the movie where the lead character’s friends tell him you’re a good enough father and he replies that he does not want to just be a “good enough father.”

There are plenty of bad fathers out there; enough fathers who are good enough and one perfect Father. We have a responsibility to our children to try our best to be great fathers, to model The Father and, if we can, help the fatherless as well. If I was a better blogger, I’d be able to throw the statistics out there of the failure rate of children without fathers. We can’t do it alone. We need the support of mothers and other fathers, if one stumbles the others help him back to his feet.

Do not violate the innocence of any child and make sure that your children can trust you. Raise your sons to be men. Any male can impregnate a female. It takes a man to be a father.