Harry 6/5/2024 Forsythia

The speaker apologizes for the delay and explains that they have been busy. They express gratitude for the opportunity to chat and discuss four questions posed by the listener. They address the listener's question about whether the abuse only occurred on weekends and explain that it could happen at any time. The speaker shares that they believe the abuse was motivated by resentment towards their presence in their mother's life and Bruce's hidden mental illness. They describe the ritualized process of the beatings, which involved accusations of biblical violations, memorization of the book of James, and being beaten with forsythia branches. The speaker mentions the fear they felt in the household and the physical and emotional pain of the beatings. They reveal that their mother never intervened and acted as if nothing had happened. The speaker shares their belief that compliance was necessary to protect their mother and describes how even minor infractions could lead to beatings. They e Hey, Harry. Good to join you again. I got your e-mail. My apologies for the delay. It was an exceptional weekend for us and been intensely busy over this period of time, but it's slowing down. So I welcome these opportunities to chat like this and was actually up in Nashville thinking I wonder when Harry's going to send me something else I can dig my teeth into. So this is quite the blessing on my end. So thank you for that. Don't look. I saw you opened your e-mail by saying to forgive you. There's no need to forgive anything here. In for a penny, in for a pound as far as I'm concerned. You're sticking your neck out on this. I'd be foolish to not give you everything I have. So with that said, let's dig in to these four questions that you've posed, and I'm glad to explore them with you. You would ask is this something that was only done on the weekends? As far as Bruce striking me with these forsythia branches, flatly no. No, this could happen at any point in time. As a matter of fact, that was for me at least, that was one of the elements of terror that came about. There's the old idea of the whipping boy. I wouldn't presume to compare myself to royalty certainly, but you know where they bring the person in and they're essentially beaten so that the prince doesn't have to be beaten. And in my case, I suspect on one level that when Bruce would do this to me, even though he would state some kind of reason, the reason wasn't always accurate. It wasn't always very specific. I think that there was an undercurrent, well maybe a couple. First off, he resented the fact that I was in my mother's life. And secondly, I think that because of his mental illness that he had kept hidden for so many years, anything could set him off, particularly at work, you know when he had to engage with individuals. And maybe his mask would fall a bit. And of course, I was convenient. I wouldn't say anything. He could do anything to me that he wished. And to kind of paint the scene for you, the way it generally went down, I would be accused of some violation, some biblical violation, you know, regarding something that I had done. And you ever been in a position, Harry, where particularly when you were a kid, that you were in the presence of someone that would make you so terrified, so self-conscious that you would screw up? You had that indwelling fear. And that's what it was like for me in that household. Always fearful. Always hoping that I wouldn't do something to set him off. And it was almost ritualized as well. So, you know, it would generally go that if he had identified some kind of infraction, there would be a Bible verse that would accompany it as almost like validation. And then everything for him led back to lying for some reason. As a matter of fact, if you've ever read the book of James in the New Testament, that was like his primary source of material. And I was made to memorize the book of James. And that's a shame because I still to this day cringe every time I go to a homily and the priest might reference James. I still cringe. And you know, it's got one of my favorite verses in all of the Bible. And it talks about how life is but a vapor. And that really applies in my life when it comes to death. I understand how frail we are and how it can be snuffed out or kind of blown away by some crosswind that we don't anticipate. And so I was made to memorize that chapter. And, of course, after I memorized it, if I violated any one of those five chapters or any, you know, any verse within there, that could be held over my head as an infraction. And, again, justification, it cycles into the beating. And so these, I would have to be admonished biblically. And then following that, there would be the collection of the forsythia branches. I'd come back into the house. We had a separate annex to the house. It's like an add-on to this old ranch house that they had. I would have to present him stripped down branches, all the little tiny green leaves that are in flowers. And there had to be a minimum. It had to be an odd number. It was either three or five. And I said that he could braid them together. And then the procedure was, it was broken down like this. I would be told to go to my bedroom, which was on the far end of the house. It was actually a front bedroom. I would be told to take my pants off, wait on the bed. And we had hardwood floors in the house. And this guy always wore slip-on floor-shined loafers. And he would, it was like his standard business dress. And he would only take off his jacket, leave his shirt on, and have his trousers on and those shoes. And you could hear them coming down the hallway. And here he would come with his flail in his hand. And he'd say, where's the belt? And I would have to produce a belt, a leather belt that I kept there. And he would tie it or buckle it around my waist with the buckle in the rear. And he would slip his hand into the buckle. Now, it's like a breaking bridle on a horse almost. If you see, like with, if you've been to rodeo before, you've seen guys riding the bulls in the Bronx, and they hold on to this thing. And I was that animal. And I had to lean over the bed. And he would begin to essentially strike me at that point. And it hurt worse than anything I could really describe because it was like little pins that would go into your flesh and just kind of rip. It was, I think, partially sexualized to a great degree. He would beat me all around the room with this thing. And, of course, I'd be trying to get away. Particularly the older I got, the more robust I was muscularly. And you develop a quicker muscle twitch as you get older physiologically, and it's harder to restrain. But early on, I would submit and just lay there. Beaten. You'd ask about mama. Everybody asks about mama. She never came back there. She habitually stayed in that annex, which ironically they refer to as the family room, had a big fireplace. I'll send you a picture of it. With a gigantic portrait of Christ over the mantle of the fireplace. And she would stay in there. You know, Harry, she'd get up the next morning and act like nothing had happened. She would, I would just lay in the bed afterwards. She had to have seen the blood on the sheets, Harry. They'd have to be washed. But I would sleep on them. And it hurt. I would sleep on the sheets. I would sleep on the sheets. I would sleep on the sheets. I would sleep on the sheets. And it hurt. Every now and then, if I, during the process of this, if I, if I got, you know, kind of crossways as I was fighting against him and fell to the floor, he'd start kicking me to have me get back up. And all the while, you know, he would admonish me by telling me things that I was going to be just like my father, that, that I'm a liar over and over again, you know, and the smallest infraction could get you beaten by him. You know, and it could be things like, and I don't know if you remember this from your school days, but when you had signed papers, for instance, and I would always be terrified. I was, I was actually a really good student. I was pretty bright. But, you know, if you got, for me, if I ever got a C, you know, you were, you were in dangerous, dangerous territory at that point in time. I had a D, prepare. It's on the way. Any kind of thing that he perceived as a, some kind of snide remark or, and I'm sure that I made them at some point in time, but I was really subservient to this guy because I was terrified of him at all times. And one of the, one of the things that terrified me was that I felt as though that if I did not comply and that something bad was going to happen to my mother and that our life was going to change. You know, the thing about it is that he had, you know, when, I think back now, you know, is the age that I'm at now, and I think about, you know, all the stuff that I do and crime coverage and behaviorist. As a, well, I'm not a behaviorist, but my friends that are, you know, forensic psychologists and everything. What they do to gauge, gauge the criminal, criminal behaviors, there's two, two constructs within the law. Your daddy would have known this very, very well, and you have what's referred to as actus reus, which is Latin for the guilty act. And then you have another thing that's referred to as menis rei, and that's Latin for the guilty mind. And then if you have both of those, you have what's referred to as concurrence. So if you have concurrence, that means that you're not insane. You know, someone can have an actus reus where they do some kind of crime or harm somebody and not be fully aware of what they're doing. Bruce had menis rei. He knew what he was doing was wrong, and I'll tell you why. I had two stepsisters that were his daughters from previous marriage, from a previous marriage. And we would get them, I think, every other weekend. And I looked forward to those times when Erin and Dean would come. That's their names, Erin and Dean. And it's not that I necessarily adored these girls. It was the fact that he wouldn't do anything to me while they were there, never. And it's almost like that little island of peace in a raging river that you can kind of swim to. It might not be the best island in the world, but it's a safe harbor for a moment or two, for precious 32 hours or whatever it is. One time when my mother's father came to visit us, he and his wife came over from Louisiana to Georgia to visit us. I've actually got a picture of this. I've got to shoot this to you so you can see. When my mother's father, I called him Papa as well, arrived, we were in the midst that week of a series of beatings that were going to take place. I know that sounds nuts, and it started after church on a Sunday night. And it was going to be every day, and it was him beating the gospel into me, essentially. And it happened that my grandfather and his wife were going to be arriving, and Bruce had no awareness of it. And they arrived on a Thursday. So that particular week, the reason I remember this so well is that he beat me on a Sunday night after church, beat me on a Monday evening, Tuesday evening, and Wednesday evening. And it wasn't necessarily as ferocious as it normally was, but guess what? When Papa arrived, he, Bruce didn't put a hand on me. And that went on, I remember begging my grandfather to please stay. That, you know, I would love for him to stay and hang around. For just a few extra days. I knew that he would buffer me in some way. He wasn't a big intimidating man, as a matter of fact, he was kind of a short guy. But when I realized that there was a break during all of this, I knew that somehow would provide me protection. And when you're that age, I guess I was probably maybe 11 or 12, there ain't no protection. There's no way to really defend yourself under those circumstances. I hate him so much, Harry. Even as an almost six year old man, I hate him. I've tried so desperately to do the opposite with my children. As for my mother, I don't understand it. My wife, for instance, who's very protective of me. Kimmy absolutely despises my mother. My mother, she has like this love hate. She's aware, my wife is aware of all the intimate details. Many times she'll say, because she's feisty. She doesn't take anything from anybody. She was like, I would have come to your home, crawled in your window, and taken you away from all of that, if I knew that it was going on. I would have found a way to protect you. Abusers are, it's a nutty thing. The world, when I cover these cases, Harry, and I see these cases, and I've done a lot of them on my podcast, I feel compelled to do them when I have dead kids. And I'll talk about the forensics of it. I wouldn't admit this to anybody else. When I speak into this microphone that I'm talking into right now, when I tape for those cases, it's my way of saying something that was never said on my behalf. I don't understand why people destroy kids. I've never understood it. I've always had an affinity for children, even as I stand over their bodies in the morgue, over all those years. And now the day when I cover them in the news, it's just like, they're going to be my wife, no questions asked. We'll find a way, we'll do something. Don't destroy a child. But I'll close with this. And I don't remember if I wrote this in blood beneath my feet. It's really hard for me to go back and read the book, just so you understand. Don't hesitate to ask questions, but it's hard sometimes. But I will leave you with this. When I would lay in that bed and I would think about it, even at that age, everything that was going on, I didn't understand it. It's an empirical impossibility for a child to be able to understand it and to make sense of it. I had worked out a system in my mind that for every stripe I received on my legs and my back, for every punch and every kick, I felt as though that God was saying to me that all of the really bad stuff is going to happen to you now. And that all the good stuff is coming. And that's been fulfilled in my life. It truly has. It's rote for people to say, I'd walk through glass. I'd walk over broken glass for you. I'd do this and I'd do that. That hasn't necessarily been my journey. It's moving past all of that stuff and coming through everything to know that the sweet Lord above has taken mercy upon me. It has blessed me immeasurably with my family, my career, the profile, whatever the hell that means in the media and entertainment that I have now. I see it as a blessing for the price it was paid on the front end for me. That's the only way I made it through. I kept telling myself that there is a better day coming. It's going to happen. All this bad stuff is happening on the front end. It's going to happen. God bless you, Harry. I appreciate you more than you could possibly know. I'll be around if you want to chat. I've got my phone with me. I hope you and your beautiful family are doing incredibly well. Incredibly well. I hope to talk to you again real soon, my friend. Bye bye.