Jill Crokett: The True Story of My Abduction and Rape

Jill Crokett: The True Story of My Abduction and Rape

 

By Jill Crokett

 

 

It is hard to talk about it. My therapists over the years have all said it would help to open up but I’ve never be able to, so I’ve decided to try writing about it and see if that has some therapeutic effect. We’ll see.

 

Thirty years have gone by and it’s still like yesterday in my mind. I was barely nineteen, in the summer of 1976, and I felt as if I ruled the world. No harm could befall me.  I had left my mom, aunt, grandmother, and two cousins in southeastern Texas in order to fulfill my childhood dream, my fantasy really, of living near my dad, his new wife, and my half brother, just north of Seattle.

 

I was eight years old when my parents divorced in 1966, and my mother, with me in tow, returned to her hometown in southeast Texas.  Taking this eight-year-old girl away from her daddy was emotionally traumatic, and for the next ten years I only saw my dad for one week a year each summer.  As a girl I often pretended he was there to share in the details of my everyday life.  Dad, who had a good job with Boeing, always remembered to send something special at Christmas, and he never forgot my birthday, but the detachment hurt, and I tended to idealized him in his absence.  My mother never spoke his name, and I learned at a young age never to break her unspoken rule of never talking about ‘him’. 

 

For years we lived on mom’s modest lab technician salary from the local hospital.  During those lean years I often dreamed of having a real dad I could live with and finally, in the Spring of 1973, mom remarried.  But by when I was almost sixteen.  Up until then I had come to believe that mother just didn’t like men, that SHE had a problem with relationships, with marriage, but my step-dad Ron eventually led me to see things differently.  Ron was great; a good, decent man, and a very good husband.  My problem was, he just wasn’t a dad.

 

Mom married Ron, when I was in the tenth grade.  Our lives changed dramatically, but Ron never replaced my dad.  Oh, sure, we moved to a better neighborhood, and mom drove a car that wasn’t falling apart for the first time that I could remember.  Ron even bought me my first car (a dark blue 1969 two-door Chevy Malibu) for my seventeenth birthday in 1974.  But for me, Ron was always “Mom’s new husband” and never “my new dad.” 

 

When I look back on it now, I, a rather busty, sexually developed teenager, unknowingly probably intimidated Ron from getting too close, or maybe even Mom subliminally discourage him.  She could be rather possessive.  Or maybe I was just too old to connect with a new dad by then and didn’t know it. 

 

After they married, occasionally at night I thought I could hear Ron making love to my mother behind their closed bedroom door.  Well, let me clarify that. I did occasionally hear my mom faintly moaning, or possibly breathing forcefully, in their bedroom late at night.  It was a little strange, I mean since I had grown up thinking that mom didn’t like men all that much.  I mean, she rarely talked about them, and she never talked about dad. But my misconception about her and men was put to rest when I came home from school one day about eight months after she remarried.  I can’t remember if it was field hockey or cheerleading practice that was canceled that day, but there I was, home early.    

 

As soon as I walked in the back door and stepped into the kitchen I heard what I thought was my then 41-year-old mother crying.  Concerned, I naively walked back to her room and opened the door.  In a flash of visual images I would never forget, I saw Ron’s tanned, sweaty back.  I saw his bare, white butt cheeks rapidly pumping up and down. The bottoms of mom’s feet were oddly facing the ceiling as her calves rested on Ron’s shoulders.  Her thighs were spread wide open with her knees to either side of her.  Her head tossed side to side as her hands grasped the bed sheet.  

 

Totally embarrassed at walking in on them making love, I quickly but silently shut the bedroom door.  Lost in their passion, they had never noticed my momentary intrusion.  Stunned, I stood motionless in the hallway, not wanting them to hear me.  Mom continued to scream like I had never heard before. It was not the muffled moans I had previously heard coming from her room at night. No, this was total sexual release that she obviously reserved for moments when I was not around.

 

Mom’s abandon went on for several minutes as I tiptoed away, slowly moving down the hallway.  I thought my heart would jump out of my chest.  I was shocked to hear my Mom, an ‘oh darn’ and ‘oh shucks’ churchgoer, use words I’d never heard her utter before. 

 

Hearing my mother scream “oh god fuck me, oh god fuck me, hard, fuck me hard”, then, almost crying, sob “It’s too big, oh god, oh god Ron, it’s so big” as Ron pounded her was certainly an eye opener for me.  She finished with a flailing wail as the headboard rattled.  I quietly went out on the back porch and sat on the steps.  For the first time I realized that they had their own life, their own dreams, and I felt I wasn’t a part of them.  Ron would never be my dad, how could he?  He was mom’s lover, and she would never let him get close.  But it wasn’t fair, because she had kept my dad away from me too.  Such were the thoughts of an insecure sixteen year old girl.

 

Over the next year I made it clear to my mom that I wanted to go to college in Seattle.  She wouldn’t hear of it.  Out of the question.  But the more she wanted to keep me from my father, the more I resolved to leave Texas for Washington State.  As I neared graduation in the Spring of 1975, and my 18^th birthday approached, Ron attempted to appease the situation by offering to pay my tuition in full if I stayed in town and attended the local college for my freshman year.  With a smile, Ron told mom “if we keep her here one more year, she’ll fall in love, get married, and never leave town.”  He was wrong, but his plan did work for a year.  Yes, I reluctantly postponed my dream and took Ron up on his offer, but, unknown to Ron, the real reason I took his offer was, by that time, I had nailed a super-cute boyfriend I met while working at the local country club, and I was beginning to study male anatomy with him in my spare time.

 

About a month before my high school graduation I used all my charm and most of my 18-year-old natural assets to land a fun weekend job as a hostess and greeter at a swank local country club.  It was a goldmine for flirtations with cute guys, and it was the pie job that all the other girls were envious of.  I met my boyfriend for the next year my first night on the job.  His grandparents were charter members, and his dad was on the club’s board.  I know they sound like snobs, but his family were all super nice to me that year.  It was in that freshman year, working at the club on weekends, that I refined my social skills with men. I found I was a natural charmer.

 

By the end of my freshman year, as the summer of 1976 approached and my boyfriend began to bore me with talk of marriage and a country club reception, my dad convinced me to move to Seattle.  I had just turned nineteen, and I was ready to go.

 

Mom cried for days.  Ron checked and rechecked my car, and he even bought me a new set of tires.  I broke up with my boyfriend over his jealousy after he learned I had dated another guest from the club, but I in fact had planned it, having wished to break up with him before I left.  

 

Some of the club workers, even a few members, threw a small goodbye party for me one night after closing in the club lounge.  I had worked there a year, had made a lot of friends, and everyone loved me.  And why not?  I was 19, five-foot-five, pretty, medium length blond hair with bangs, had natural D breasts, clear skin, beautiful teeth, was a poster for health, and always smiled.  I could have had the world on a leash and didn’t know it, all I wanted was to be with my dad, to be part of his family in Seattle.   

 

The day before I left for Seattle I received notice that my freshman college credits had transferred to my new school in Seattle.  Barely nineteen, I backed out of the driveway as mom stood and cried.  I was ready to take on the world.