Cowardice and Betrayal
It would be difficult, perhaps impossible, for those who care about me to imagine the terror and the torment inflicted upon me by the old man, try as they might. He is an emotional butcher, a genuine child abuser, and a pathetic, cowardly little man nearing his eighth decade who still needs to blame someone else for his inability to reconcile bloated expectations and distended self-image with harsh reality. Those who don't care, simply choose to believe his denials. In any case, they reason, he is incapable of such brutality, because they were treated so differently. Thus I am reminded that genius is contagious to the extent it is confused with stupidity.
While he and my mother were consummately ignorant about parenting, he certainly knew how not to leave bruises. But there is no excuse. It was criminal, and not only did she did not defend me, she has done her clumsy best to cover it up or ignore the abuse ever since. Recent confirmation that he was never my biological father, while a relief in some inexplicable way, was, I suspect, not an uncharacteristic moment of honesty born of regret, but a perverse and thoroughly sick attempt to justify his behavior toward me. He's all yours mother.
And those of you who still defend him, knowing he told our sister, "I hope you rot in hell," even if only by your silence, don't insult us all by saying it has nothing to do with his money. We are not stupid. Your silence, and your acquiescence, though costly for the buyer, has only cheapened you. When an unjust burden could have been lifted, a relationship restored, a false accusation shown for what it was, or when just a word would have defended the defenseless by speaking up, your silence was not golden, it was, and is, yellow.
As God is my witness, my conscience is clear. Where I have wronged anyone, and recognize I have done so, it has ever been, and remains my practice to apologize, to anyone. This is a matter of a clear conscience, without respect to a person or persons, and is nothing more. I would not shrink from apologizing to those I may have wronged even as I write. On the other hand, the thin-skinned among you, and those of you who think more of yourselves than you ought, likely because of inherited physical attributes, and the fawning of small-minded parents, rather than for something you had to earn, are eager to demand apologies, but rarely, if ever, offer them. Silence can be deafening by its absence, but character overwhelms silence - every time.
“ but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea." Matthew 18:6 (NASB)
"You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies." John 8:44 (NASB)
"A false witness will perish, But the man who listens to the truth will speak forever." Proverbs 21:28 (NASB)
"For we know Him who said, “VENGEANCE IS MINE, I WILL REPAY.” Hebrews 10:30 (NASB)