Dealing with the Past
After Dan Rappe was sentenced, and I found out about it, I was instantly back in that time in my life when I was a 20 -something ;>.
Back then, I was an early 20′s something. I had no trusted family to speak to about my situation. I had little life skills. I had been introduced to the harsh reality of the darkest parts of a criminal’s mindset…and was emotionally and psychologically completely unprepared for what I was dealing with.
I have insomnia and nightmares again. Many, many new memories flooded to the surface, perhaps from a conscience now better able to deal with them. Strange how the mind works to protect us.
Gratitude
Now, I’m left with an overwhelming sense of gratitute for Patrick Fitzgerald’s Office and dedicated staff; for the US Marshalls who hunted him down; for the US Attorney who, out of compassion for me, contacted me to let me know that justice has come for Dan Rappe – at last.
I sent a thank you letter to the fine members of the law enforcement community who caught him. The following text was included in the letters.
“From a layperson’s point of view, I’d guess he is one of the most difficult types of criminals out there to locate, for several reasons. I know Dan to be highly intelligent, and suspect his IQ to fall into the genius category. He seemed to have a highly developed ability to read people’s intentions within seconds of meeting someone. I believe this helped him to not only choose vulnerable people to befriend and betray, but also to know when someone was becoming suspicious and therefore, avoid further contact with that person.”
“When I read an article about him contacting his girlfriend from jail and having her erase hard drives, it brought up a lot of memories of his computer skills and use. I work with some very talented programmers but I’ve never met anyone who came close to Dan’s gift. He could make computers perform functions at his will; he could fix coding errors Microsoft support had told me were un-fixable. I have no doubt in my mind that Dan knew how to wipe machines to DOD standards to prevent the feds from getting the evidence. Were he to have used his skills for honest employment, he probably would have had a very lucrative career.”
Skills Used for Monstrous Reasons
Even back in those days, Dan was able to use the darkest parts of the Internet with perfect anonymity. The Internet was still largely text based in those days. A user had to understand a lot of computer syntax to access content. I shudder to remember that even back then Dan was using ip sanitizers and surfing, chatting, posting to bulletin boards, compressing and sending files, and getting and manipulating files with complete anonymity, which I’m sure continued to benefit him since he was able to hide so well from search engines.
He showed me how to get large binary files, such as compressed pictures, which was a highly specialized skill back then. I realized at the time that he must have spent a lot of time to have acquired his depth of knowledge. He knew how to locate desired information (there weren’t many search engines back then, and the ones out there weren’t very robust), and how to work with the various data types that required different skills to be able to load onto a local machine. When he was showing me these things, I didn’t understand why someone would want to be anonymous; I was just so impressed that he could do it. I can’t find strong enough words for the feelings I felt when I figured it out.
Its because of my revulsion…and no small about of guilt…for having allowed Dan access to my computer and internet accounts that I spent a lot of my free time learning Internet skills. I did this so I could try to track him down and hopefully, put his name out there where anyone looking for him would find at least SOMETHING that indicated what he was. I knew they wouldn’t find anything else out there since he had been successful in remaining a ‘404’ (not found) in search engines.
I wrote my online article in a way that would, at the time, make it hard for him to use his real name and make him pop up high in the search rankings. Alas, the demands of parenting and work made it lower on my priority list for updating, but after I process this information a bit more I will update that article.
Sadly, after reading the indictment, I fear that my efforts really served only to drive him further underground.
My obsession with making it hard for him to find easy prey on the Internet had the silver lining of giving me skills which have turned into a career, and that is why I am a webmaster now. I still report suspected abusers, but the majority of my online activity is now being engaged in prevention, awareness, and activism.
All these years, I have spent at least several hours a month hunting for him in the online papers and on the web. I used to spend a lot of time to going into all the parenting bulletin boards and chat rooms I could find online and tell what I knew; once I had a women email me that she had contact with him through a ‘friend of a friend’ type thing and vowed to alert her friends as to his real life. She indicated that he had access to kids in their circle of friends. I begged her to out him to all the parents; I hope that she did.
There has been several other pedophiles I’ve run across in the ensuing years and I’ve made it a hobby to report them and out them publicly where and when I’m able. I hope all will do the same.
I think of the fear, anxiety and stress in my life because of my experiences with him, when he really didn’t do all that much to me- comparatively- and I have tremendous empathy and pity for his victims for how much worse they must feel.
I hadn’t let myself look back to that time in my life for quite a while. While its stirred up a lot of the old feelings – and brought up a lot of new memories that I apparently hadn’t been ready for previously- I am so grateful to see the hunt for this predator come to an end.
I have to admit that when I read the indictment, it left me shaking.
It was like reading that all the bad dreams I’ve had, and the worst fears I’ve worried about and tried to prevent have come true. What he did to that poor child! I don’t mean just the physical abuse, but the complete mental torture. I know how I felt after just a few months with that man, and I was a consenting adult…and to think that he was able to do that mind game to a child…
…my mind still can’t go there.
My paramedic years cured me of being able to be physically ill from those things that probably should make us sick, such as this; but I’m not immune from feeling rage, helplessness that Dan was abusing that child all these years, when he could have, should have been stopped years ago. When the safety net of the justice system failed miserably and allowed a predator to go out into the world, with better education and skills than before.
…and if they hadn’t caught him, there is no doubt he would have continued, and probably moved on to a younger victim once his grew out of Dan’s preferential group.
The U.S. Attorneys in Patrick Fitzgerald’s Office are heroes.
As are the US Marshals who hunted him down.
…May God Bless Them and Keep Them Safe.
…and may our entire society get educated and become active, so criminals like Dan won’t have such an easy time inserting himself into a position of trust in someone’s circle and use that trust to hurt children.
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