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Apr 21st, 2005 - 21:10:55
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The Travels of our First Webmaster
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Voices of Spencer Creek
Years ago I worked on a federal agency survey crew as a temporary employee. My main job was to cut a straight line through the brush in the woods with cold steel so the surveyor could see from survey station to survey station. This was strictly a "strong back and weak mind" sort of job and I had no problem filling it.
There were usually four of us on the crew. A surveyor, a point setter and two brushers. We could survey a lot of line through some ugly country in this configuration. One of the other brush cutter/pointsetters was Bill. He was a few years younger than me and had been working as a temp on the survey crew for 10 years. He did not aspire to run the theodolite. He liked to set the finishing nails in the high poles and hold the prism for a laser measured distance at the forward station so he could smoke a cigarette before moving on to set the next highpole.
After a year or two of working on the survey crew, I applied for a permanent job at the agency doing something else. The job was "rigged" meaning it had been specifically written for somebody's buddy. Somehow, I came in first on the numerically ranked list. As a veteran, it was not possible to legally circumvent me to hire the pre-selected buddy. Still, the people working the game tried very hard. I involved the Office of Special Counsel Inspector General.
As a temp, my season ran out that fall and I knew without being told that my file was stamped NOT TO BE REHIRED. I would come back triumphantly as a permanent employee--or not at all. On my last day as I was cleaning and organizing the Suburban we used to travel to the field with Bill, I discovered the boss's brand new yellow rain jacket folded up behind the back seat. I carefully drew a huge target with a bullseye the size of a saucer on the back with a big black magic marker and replaced it to be discovered next spring.
I didn't enjoy being unemployed for one damned day. A private surveyor called me at home and wanted me to come to work immediately. This was due to him talking to my former boss at the courthouse while looking for survey records.
I told Les, the private surveyor, that I might work for him but it couldn't be permanent because I was gunna force the agency to hire me. He said he understood but it was clear he didn't believe me.
Time passed and 20 months later, after a week long visit from two members of the IG office, the agency suddenly saw the light and I was a permanent employee. As luck would have it, my first day fell on an all employee meeting and there was polite applause as the new temps were introduced. My department head denied that he had any new employees so I stood up and raised my fist over my head like a victorious boxer to thunderous clapping, whistling and foot stomping. A lot of rank and file had followed my struggle and appreciated some of our management being forced to hire a black sheep they did not want.
At my suggestion, Les recruited Bill to fill my shoes in the off season and after a few years he quit coming back to the agency survey crew at all. He walked away from over a thousand hours of accrued sick leave. The point here is that stuff always happened to Bill. He did not hunt something down and make it happen. He waited for a permanent job to happen for him at the agency but it never did. Les offered to teach him how to operate the theodolite on the clock but Bill never went for it. Perhaps it would have cut into his smoking time.
I always called Bill once in a while to hear how it was going, making more with Les. The calls got less frequent as time accelerated into middle age. I would always call around Christmas time and send him one of my photoChristmas cards.
I had been to Bill's doublewide trailer in a run down trailer park a few times. He didn't drive so when we came in late from surveying, it threw off his bus schedule. His home life consisted of smoking cigarettes and drinking "Old Millworker" beer and watching TV.
Many of the people in the trailer park were less than model citizens and would frequently leave their children unattended while they drank in the run-down bar up the street or went to score drugs. A generation of children learned to knock on Bill's door and come in where it was warm and eat macaroni and cheese or baloney sandwiches and watch TV until mommy had finished drinking up the welfare check.
No good deed goes unpunished. Several years ago, I got a call from Les telling me that Bill was in trouble and to call his sister. I did and found that Bill had been thrown in jail for being a child molester. I didn't even consider the possibility of this being true.
After talking to Kay, his sister, I found it was possible for Bill to do house arrest in a home with no children, alcohol or guns. Two out of three ain't bad, so I started the process with the Lane County Jail. I swiftly discovered that you could ask two different people the same question there and get three different answers. It takes very special people to work at a jail, I guess.
Never the less, I perservered and eventually a deputy sheriff brought Bill out to the house shortly after Thanksgiving and installed an electronic ankle monitor set up on one of the phone lines. After having been told at least six times that I MUST have $35 in cash to give the deputy or Bill would go right back to jail, the cop forgot the dough when he left and somehow the world didn't end.
Bill hadn't been allowed to smoke in jail for the past several month and had a lot of catching up to do. He filled coffee cans with cigarette butts on the back porch.The first thing Bill did was give me a copy of his police report. I was impressed by the complete lameness of the document. The supposed molestation had taken place three years before Bill's arrest. Apparently the child had been taken from her mother and placed with her grandparents and resumed school elsewhere where she saw a film on molestation. This caused her to remember that she had been molested and after coaching from school officials and police, she fingered Bill.
The police hauled Bill down to the station for questioning a couple times before finally arresting him at work. There was no physical evidence whatsoever. I found it interesting that none of the other dozens of kids who more or less grew up in Bill's trailer reported being molested. Some are now young adults. The girl's brother who was supposedly there doesn't remember any of the molesting Bill was accused of.
I asked Bill if he was guilty of this crime and he said he wasn't. I believe him. Usually when you read about child molesters being busted, more victims quickly materialize but not in this case.
Bill had been in the Lane County Jail for a couple of months and was happy to be out the six weeks before his trial. Not being able to afford any justice, a non-motivated public defender was appointed him. The pro bono defender wanted to offload Bill as soon as possible so he could get back to where the money was.
Although the state had no evidence at all, the PD advised Bill to cop a plea for four years rather than roll the dice on a jury believing his word over a 12 year old on something that supposedly happened three years previously.
Thanks to Measure 11, there is no discretion in Oregon's judicial system for some crimes. If Bill rolled the dice and lost, he would receive 30 years without any possibility of parole. It is entirely possible that Bill's public defender had a meeting with the DA and they worked out the details.
It was very important for the state to have a conviction. The actual concept of guilt versus innocence has little bearing in these matters. If the state fails to get a conviction, then it looks stupid and can be sued. The combined prosecution and "defense" worked very hard on scaring Bill into copping a plea and ruining his life rather than risking 30 years behind bars.
Bill had been downsized at the private surveying company a year or two before being arrested by the police. The woods surveying he liked to do had dried up and it was mostly working in town putting in hubs for big buildings. Bill had steadfastedly refused to learn to run the theodolite or drive and so the new owners of the survey company had layed him off after Les retired. He was pumping gas when taken to jail.
To make a long story short, Bill copped a plea. A whole raft of witnesses had come from as far away as Arizona to testify that they had spent lots of time at Bill's house when they were growing up without being molested. They were disappointed in not being able to tell it to the judge. I think the only thing to have done in such a horrible situation would have been to roll the dice while being prepared to commit suicide in the event of losing. Bill got to share Christmas with his family at our place before sentencing in early January. It was not a happy time.
The first crocuses were up when Bill reported to the Lane County Courthouse for sentencing. He sucked down a half a pack of smokes on the steps before entering the building and the judge sentenced him to 4 and a half years. His public defender slunk away as quickly as possible, avoiding eye contact with his family or me. Justice was not served.
Bill has served most of his time by now. I was made a believer. I will never, ever, under any circumstances, be left alone with any child. I will jump out the window first. Anybody can say anything and you are guilty, guilty, guilty. Nobody is interested in anything you might have to say--unless, of course, it's a confession. If you should go to court and avoid conviction, you aren't innocent--you beat the rap. Kay and her husband quit letting the neighbor kids run in and out of the house. It is a cold world but there it is. Bill will be out shortly but his life is ruined. He will be shadowed by the police state for as long as he lives. I doubt if he will be able to ever get a real job. He will have to register as a child molester where ever he goes. Eventually he may even believe in his own guilt. After a few decades of reinforcement, anything is possible. Don't let this happen to you.
Norm
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