WEBVTT

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Have you ever met a monster?

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Someone so scary they alerted
the reptilian part of your brain?

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One morning, I was going to my job
as a criminal justice reporter in Denver.

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I stepped into a crowded elevator,

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faced front,

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and got the sense that someone
behind me was watching me.

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So I glanced over my shoulder

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to see this man staring at me
in a very calculating way

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with cold shark eyes.

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So I stared back,

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and my look said "rude person,"

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and he didn't drop his eyes.

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So I ended that contest
and turned back around,

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alarm bells sounding in my head.

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I instantly decided I didn't want him
to know which floor was mine.

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So at the next stop,
just before the doors came together,

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I darted out at the last minute.

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I flew up the stairs
and ran into the newsroom,

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my heart pounding.

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The fear of monsters is instinctive.

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In Denver, in 2005,

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reports of a serial rapist
had residents so frightened,

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some were carrying baseball bats.

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Police released a name, Brent Brents,

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and the media scrambled to find out 
whatever we could on this guy.

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A reporter at the rival newspaper got
Brents' sister in Arkansas on the phone,

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and she said,

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"He deserves whatever he gets,"

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before hanging up.

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One sentence, but we'd been scooped.

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"Get thee on a plane
to Arkansas," editors said.

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"Find his family
and get them to talk to you."

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So I did.

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His mother described Brents
as willful, intelligent.

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He'd grown up hunting and fishing;

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ran track, wrestled, boxed.

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He had a learning disorder

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and became frustrated,
then angry, in school.

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He started smoking pot
at age 10 and drinking,

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and that's when he began
beating his mother.

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At 13, he flipped a switch
on a railroad track

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and was sent to juvenile detention,

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where he was in and out
until the age of 18

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when he was convicted
of raping two children.

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He served 16 years in prison
and was released without supervision.

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His sister remarked that Brent
had a lot of anger toward their father,

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who had died the year before.

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So I turned to the mom and said,

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"I'm sorry to ask,

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but this is a standard question
when someone sexually abuses others:

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was Brent ever abused as a child?"

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There was a long pause,

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and then, looking down, she said,

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"Brent makes up all kinds of lies."

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Police caught him
a few days after Valentine's Day.

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At the start of that weekend,

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a detective had told him on the phone,

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"Turn yourself in, you little punk."

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Brents essentially replied,
"Come find me."

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That weekend, he raped five victims,
including two children,

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and nearly beat a young woman to death.

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The DNA from those cases
was processed within hours,

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and the manhunt that followed

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ended in a dramatic car chase
into the mountains,

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where police captured him at gunpoint.

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This kind of story
causes a media feeding frenzy.

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Reporters flocked 
to the jail, but I didn't.

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I didn't think it would do any good.

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Instead, I sent him a letter
on plain stationery, handwritten,

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two sentences:

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"Dear Brent,

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I went to Arkansas, where I met
with your mom and sister.

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If you were to ask them,

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they would say I treated them
with dignity and respect,

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and I would do the same for you."

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I then gave him the phone
number to the newsroom

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and told him to call collect anytime.

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Because I figured
he'd be getting a lot of hate mail,

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on the back of the envelope, I wrote,

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"Please don't be afraid to open this."

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At the end of that week,

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police issued a statement
about another confirmed victim of Brents.

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And since they'll protect the identity
of a victim of sexual assault,

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they'll only release the cross streets
that are close to where it happened.

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"Get thee to those cross streets,
you and a photographer," editors said.

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"Find this anonymous victim,
and get her to talk to you."

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Right.

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So off we went to those cross streets,

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and we found a sea of rental units,

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like giant Legos.

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We knocked on doors
for hours, with no luck.

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It was close to getting dark
when we saw a woman out walking her dog.

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Dog walkers are always great
for information,

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and sure enough,

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she said the handyman had told her
about a woman who'd been attacked.

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She gave us the handyman's door number,

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and he gave us the victim's door number.

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I knocked on the door,
and a man answered,

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and I could see this tiny,
dark-haired woman hiding behind the door.

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And I identified myself,
and she came out and said,

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"You scared me."

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Her name is Margaret,

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and she told me her story.

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Her attack had happened
nearly three weeks earlier,

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and she still had the yellow outlines
of bruises on her neck.

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Brents had rushed her at her front door -

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she was coming home from running errands.

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She fought him,

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and he beat and choked her

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and then raped her.

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Margaret pointed to her couch,

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which had a big chunk
cut out of the upholstery.

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The police had taken it for evidence

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because that was where
the rape had happened.

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And when you can't afford a new couch

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and you can't afford
to break your lease and move -

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and Margaret couldn't -

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then you're forced to live
with reminders of your worst nightmare.

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The police had told her

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the DNA from her case
would take about two months to process.

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They gave her no hope of solving her case.

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And then she saw a story
about Brents being wanted

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and recognized his mug shot
as her attacker.

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One of the last things she said to me
that night really struck me.

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She said, "I hate him.

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Yet I still feel sorry for him.

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An animal - poor creature."

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A week later, Brents called me.

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One of the first things he said to me was
"I'm not going to give you anything."

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I love it when people call me and say,

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"I'm not going to talk to you."

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Okay.

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He then said,

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"I have one question for you,

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and anything further
depends on your answer."

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And he said, "People say
they hate me, that I'm a monster.

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Do you think so?"

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And without thinking,
I said, "No, I don't.

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You've done monstrous things,

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but I don't consider you a monster."

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And that's how we started
a correspondence.

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In one letter, Brents wrote,

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"Don't trip - I've actually stood
two feet away from you in an elevator."

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And rolling my eyes,

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I pulled out a piece of paper
to fire back a response of

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"Don't BS me. We had a deal
to always tell the truth."

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And I realized that had been him
behind me on the elevator that morning.

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The man whose very presence

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had caused me to run to the newsroom
like a frightened rabbit.

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It turned out that Brents
had followed my work.

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A few months before
he was released from prison,

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I had co-authored a three-part series

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into how the military mishandles cases
of sexual assault and domestic violence,

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and that had resonated with him.

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Not because he was a perpetrator,

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but because the angry man-child within him
considered himself a victim.

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This is a picture of Brent in first grade.

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His father had been raping him
for three years by then.

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A few weeks after this next picture
was taken, when Brent was 12,

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his father beat him so badly

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that he suffered
what medical records described

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as "a left orbital blowout fracture."

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His left eye socket was broken.

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Records and interviews with family members

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indicate that his father
was a violent, sadistic man.

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The two children from his second marriage

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were both removed from the home
because of his abuse.

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And Brent and his brother
were both returned,

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although it's not clear why.

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Brent's father told him

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that he himself had been beaten
and sexually abused as a child

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by his father, Brent's grandfather.

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And so the pattern repeated:

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pain, degradation, shame.

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Brent Brents did to others
what had been done to him as a child.

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And while he was still a child,
like many victims he blamed himself.

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He once wrote,

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"I don't remember much
of when I was real young

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except fear and shame
and lack of courage."

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Brents told me that after
that detective said to him,

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"Turn yourself in, you little punk,"

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that he, Brents,
had worked himself into a rage.

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Then he'd gone and committed
his final horrific crime spree.

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And I'm not saying

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that these factors are an excuse
for the violence Brents committed.

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He made choices.

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He absolutely deserves
to spend the rest of his life in prison.

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But knowing what happened to him

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does help explain why someone like Brents
could commit such violence

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with such a lack of empathy -

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that his brain was predisposed to it

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and the abuse inflicted
on him was his model.

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It's human nature

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to want to distance yourself
from someone like him,

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label him as a "monster,"
dismiss him as evil.

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We don't want to have
anything in common with such a monster

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because then it could mean that we too
are capable of monstrous things.

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But putting a rapist in the category
of "monster" may make us feel safer today,

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but it's more dangerous for tomorrow

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because then we won't believe
that the "monster" can be a neighbor,

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a co-worker, a trusted friend.

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And that enables them
to hide in plain sight.

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The dominant theme of how to prevent
sexual assault today

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is cloaked in helpful advice like

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"Don't walk alone, don't drink too much,
don't put yourself at risk."

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And the message, primarily to women,

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is "Don't get raped."

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How about we turn our focus
to a different population instead and say

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"Don't rape."

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And then why don't we take it
one step further

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and ask ourselves

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what are we doing wrong as a culture
that we continue to produce rapists?

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Because whether it's the ex-convict
who attacks strangers,

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the college boy who rapes his girlfriend,

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or the celebrity who drugs
and assaults his victims -

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they all choose to exert anger, power,
and control over someone else.

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And with that choice,
they are all the same.

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And they all leave pain in their wake.

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I've interviewed more than 50 survivors
of campus sexual assault

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in the past two years alone.

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And the details I learn
about their perpetrators

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paint a picture of so many young men
being deliberately predatory.

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They isolate their intended victim,

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they ply them with drugs and alcohol,

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they lock doors,

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they ignore tears,
they ignore pleas to stop,

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they ignore the fact their victim
is limp with fear or is unconscious.

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10 years ago, Brent Brents
was sentenced to 1,509 years.

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Today, all over this country, we're seeing
new generations of serial rapists.

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Why is this still happening?

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Why do we continue to reinforce
the message to our boys and young men

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that their worth is linked
to their ability to dominate?

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What if we prized compassion
more than power?

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When they're little, we tell our kids,

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"Play nicely in the sandbox."

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They get older, and we say,

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"Don't get in fights in the playground.

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Take a breath, count to 10, walk away."

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Then they get older still,

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and we teach them about the biological
aspects of sex: health and reproduction.

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What if we were to evolve
those conversations with our youth

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and teach them how feeling shame,

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how feeling powerless, feeling angry -

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all of which cover up hurt and rejection -

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could cause them to want
to dominate someone else?

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And that they can learn
to recognize triggers and not act on them?

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At least start that conversation.

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And then speak up
if you witness predatory behavior -

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and you'll know it when you see it.

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Don't make excuses for it,
don't look away, don't cover it up.

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And because sexual assault
happens on a continuum,

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starting with verbal harassment
and escalating to a physical attack,

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speak up if you hear or read a joke
about sexual assault or victimization.

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It's not funny; it's not sexy.

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It's dangerous.

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If someone confides in you
that they've been sexually assaulted,

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believe them.

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False reports are so rare,
so yes, believe them.

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Listen to them without judgment.

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Help them find resources

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and then support
whatever they decide to do.

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For victims, Brents told me

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that group counseling for sexual offenders
in prison does not work.

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For an inmate even to be seen
going to sex offender group

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puts their safety at risk.

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And once there, they don't want
to be seen as vulnerable.

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It's difficult to change
when you're living in fear.

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And if we really do want
to help them try to change,

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why not offer more
of the respect and compassion

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that can be felt with
one-on-one focused attention?

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Something a damaged person
desperately needs.

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Instead of building more prisons
and focusing on punishing perpetrators,

00:13:46.857 --> 00:13:49.277
why don't we try to prevent them?

00:13:50.284 --> 00:13:51.429
Brents has often said,

00:13:51.429 --> 00:13:55.196
by the time he was nine,
his brain was broken.

00:13:56.963 --> 00:13:59.816
What if someone had intervened
in his life early on?

00:13:59.816 --> 00:14:02.078
A neighbor, a teacher.

00:14:02.553 --> 00:14:07.387
How could no one have noticed
that boy who went to school with bruises,

00:14:07.387 --> 00:14:08.686
smelling like urine

00:14:08.686 --> 00:14:10.827
because he had wet the bed
the night before

00:14:10.827 --> 00:14:13.016
rather than creep
down the hall to the bathroom

00:14:13.016 --> 00:14:15.196
and risk waking his father?

00:14:16.366 --> 00:14:18.489
If you help an abused child,

00:14:18.489 --> 00:14:23.748
you could be preventing a lifetime of pain
for more than one person.

00:14:25.092 --> 00:14:28.534
So many people today
live in what I call "garage houses,"

00:14:28.534 --> 00:14:30.914
where the garage is the dominant feature.

00:14:30.914 --> 00:14:32.783
They drive up to their garage at night,

00:14:32.783 --> 00:14:35.852
the door goes up, the car goes in,
the door goes down,

00:14:35.852 --> 00:14:38.979
and they stay inside
until they leave the next day.

00:14:38.979 --> 00:14:41.855
They can't tell you the name
of the family down the street.

00:14:41.855 --> 00:14:45.095
They won't interact,
and they sure won't intervene.

00:14:45.737 --> 00:14:51.167
What if we dared to care
without hesitation, without condition?

00:14:51.977 --> 00:14:53.006
It's a harsh truth,

00:14:53.006 --> 00:14:56.368
but our society cares more
about sexual assault victims

00:14:56.368 --> 00:14:58.967
if they are the right kind of victim.

00:14:58.967 --> 00:15:00.736
Remember how police told Margaret

00:15:00.736 --> 00:15:04.034
the DNA from her case
would sit on a shelf for two months?

00:15:04.804 --> 00:15:07.565
When Brents attacked victims
in a high-income neighborhood,

00:15:07.565 --> 00:15:10.152
that DNA was processed within hours.

00:15:10.742 --> 00:15:15.343
Lady Justice might be blind,
but she can sure have a champagne taste.

00:15:16.973 --> 00:15:18.484
I stayed in touch with Margaret

00:15:18.484 --> 00:15:21.497
as her case wound its way
through the court system.

00:15:21.497 --> 00:15:25.246
In July of 2005, Brents
pleaded guilty to her attack.

00:15:25.691 --> 00:15:29.767
Like many survivors who struggle
with post-traumatic stress disorder,

00:15:29.767 --> 00:15:32.553
Margaret was terrified
of leaving the house.

00:15:32.553 --> 00:15:35.934
She had nightmares, flashbacks.

00:15:35.934 --> 00:15:38.083
She couldn't hold down a job.

00:15:38.083 --> 00:15:40.114
Her marriage fell apart.

00:15:40.784 --> 00:15:42.067
The day before the hearing,

00:15:42.067 --> 00:15:44.737
Margaret asked me to deliver
a message to Brents for her,

00:15:44.737 --> 00:15:46.042
and I agreed.

00:15:46.042 --> 00:15:48.194
And this was her message:

00:15:48.194 --> 00:15:49.739
"Tell him ...

00:15:50.539 --> 00:15:52.015
I forgive him."

00:15:54.419 --> 00:15:56.416
It's stunning, isn't it?

00:15:57.157 --> 00:16:01.205
How could she forgive this man
who wounded her so?

00:16:01.205 --> 00:16:04.210
Who nearly took everything from her?

00:16:05.050 --> 00:16:06.063
And she said,

00:16:06.063 --> 00:16:08.626
"I'm not thinking of the man
who tried to kill me.

00:16:08.626 --> 00:16:12.323
I'm thinking of the little boy
who had the same thing happen to him."

00:16:13.213 --> 00:16:15.792
And she said, "Hating is not hard.

00:16:16.230 --> 00:16:19.861
But if I go on hating him,
I will never get over it."

00:16:20.981 --> 00:16:21.989
And she added,

00:16:21.989 --> 00:16:25.701
"If it was me, I would want someone
to try to help me or listen to me

00:16:25.701 --> 00:16:29.350
and not just look at me
like I was an animal or a monster."

00:16:30.721 --> 00:16:32.941
She inspires me.

00:16:33.410 --> 00:16:38.021
If Margaret can forgive Brent Brents,
we can forgive anybody.

00:16:39.691 --> 00:16:43.558
This case had a profound
effect on my life.

00:16:44.218 --> 00:16:48.051
It taught me that we are all connected

00:16:48.051 --> 00:16:52.546
and that turning our backs on others
is really abandoning ourselves.

00:16:53.466 --> 00:16:56.594
It made me realize I didn't like
the reporter I had become.

00:16:57.174 --> 00:16:59.222
It was actually Brents
who pointed out to me

00:16:59.222 --> 00:17:01.302
that he and I had something in common:

00:17:01.302 --> 00:17:02.876
we were both driven.

00:17:04.266 --> 00:17:07.342
I quit that job shortly after
his case ended,

00:17:07.342 --> 00:17:09.852
and I will never again work in a newsroom,

00:17:09.852 --> 00:17:11.945
because the desperate
competition for ratings

00:17:11.945 --> 00:17:14.698
is unhealthy for me in many ways.

00:17:15.478 --> 00:17:19.593
And I no longer knock
on a survivor's door unless I'm invited.

00:17:20.922 --> 00:17:22.979
I started that correspondence with Brents

00:17:22.979 --> 00:17:26.915
because as a journalist who has spent
a lifetime covering sexual assault,

00:17:26.915 --> 00:17:30.282
I wanted an answer to the question "Why?"

00:17:30.830 --> 00:17:34.442
He began as a bug under a microscope,
and that's what I told him.

00:17:35.798 --> 00:17:40.682
Brent Brents became a lesson
in humanity and compassion.

00:17:41.956 --> 00:17:45.822
Even so-called "monsters"
have things they're afraid of.

00:17:46.292 --> 00:17:48.330
Brents wrote me about his.

00:17:48.920 --> 00:17:49.928
He said,

00:17:49.928 --> 00:17:53.265
"My biggest fear is that I will die

00:17:53.265 --> 00:17:57.222
without ever having done anything good."

00:17:58.782 --> 00:18:00.803
And that's why I tell this story.

00:18:01.663 --> 00:18:03.564
Thank you for listening.

00:18:03.564 --> 00:18:05.153
(Applause)