This is Rodney King. Many of you remember him and like him or not, I sometimes think that I'm a lot like him in some ways. You know what his situation was like on that video. You know you took a side. You know what happened afterwards. You know how he reacted. You know what kinds of things happened because of it. You know what kinds of thing can occur...and yet, you wonder, what did it all mean?
Yeah, sometimes I feel like Rodney King.
Okay, yes, my situation with Lori is a ton different than Rodney's was with the LAPD and yes, I have my opinions about his situation too, but in the long run, let's face it, it was a whole lot more about than what was captured on that videotape and what happened when the police officers were not convicted...wasn't it? It was about frustration and about a community that was fed up. It was about years and years of anger and it was about what Rodney saw afterwards going on in his community and wanted to stop. "Can't we all just get along," became the mantra of the man at the center of the controversy and yet we still look at what happened and wonder, what should have been justice? Can there really be justice for decades of mistreatment of a community that has been scarred by the actions of a police department or a girl that has been targeting gay men with disease and hate?
I'm the guy that called attention to the girl that hates gay men and the police department that has been using her....how do you think I feel knowing what I know and knowing what it is going to cause? I feel a whole lot like Rodney King here. I know that Rodney passed away a while back and I always wanted to have a chance to speak with him about his place in history for his community knowing that he was famous for being beaten. I too am going to be famous for being beaten, diseased, shot at, tortured and raped by a woman and a police department...it isn't the most celebrated of celebrities that you can be, you understand? It's not glamorous, it's not pretty. It isn't something that most men would want to be known for, would you? I'm going to be known as the gay guy that got bullied by a short big mouthed little immature girl and her fat assed gay brother for most of his life. Is that something that you would want to be known for?
I often wonder what Rodney thought of as being known as the guy that got beaten on that videotape...and the guy that "caused the riots in L.A. and all over the country". The "black man" that was at the center of all that civil unrest. It's not the most pleasant of roles you know? I have to stand up and say that I was raped by a midget girl with HIV twice; a girl I didn't like my whole life because she bullied me and my family since I was nine and I have to do it for my whole community. I, too, am a private person. I never asked to be this person. This was thrust upon me but if I don't say something some other little kid is going to live a life like mine...and that's too much to bear. No kid should have to live the life that I've had to live. It was awful being someone that knew someone wanted to kill me most of my adult life and my teenage years. It was horrible. I hated it.
I understand the significance of my role. I know that taking on a police department with thirty years of involvement with this crime is huge. I knew it when I started. The problem is that I have forty years of experience with it. I know what this is like. They may think that I can't do what I can, but I also deserve to have a life too. I've been dealing with this brother and sister trying to hurt me since long before they ever showed up in Palm Springs. My father was jailed with a lie. He might never have been able to have raised me because of it. Because we were able to fight her lies and win, I was spared that indignity but not the indignity of the rumors of living in a small town and what that was like. Lori took it upon herself to punish me every day since his not guilty verdict for what did not happen...it started on my first day of high school and has lasted until right now. I've never escaped her reign of revenge for that. She's never let me forget it and have my own life.
"Not guilty" in a three year long court battle for my father's innocence in a case that made him look like the molester of a male student was in the papers for years. It was so horrible. Lori put newspaper articles in our mailbox with highlighted words like "sodomy" and others. I use to go to the mailbox as a ten year old and fish them out so my mom wouldn't read them.
My mom and dad had to move to San Bernardino for the trial...they put our house up for collateral.
It was horrible.
The not guilty verdict lasted only as long as it took for me to walk on to campus and for Lori to stomp up to me and call me out as a "FLAMING FAGGOT" before my first class on my first day of high school...she'd waited all summer to do that. It didn't end for four more long years...a year later she would allegedly infect me with HIV. Then she would tell everyone I gave it to her brother or her....a lie I still have to fight every where I go. She's told boyfriends, girlfriends and fraternity brothers this lie...revenge for something that didn't happen in my father's courtroom.
So if any of you really want to know what this is like, it's like Rodney King before the beating...knowing that what is about to come is going to exonerate my father forever, my sister's husband's death forever, but make me the "guy that got raped by a girl bully twice and was tortured for forty years" for the rest of my life. Don't be jealous of me...it isn't a position that any of you should ever envy.
It's been a life of struggle.
One the one hand, I get to do something for my father that nobody could ever do. I can remove all doubt in this tiny community that he lives in for the rest of eternity. I can also show everyone that my sister and Lori's uncle really had very little to do with the death of my brother in law. I can alleviate the pain for my entire family and let my mother know that what she's had to live with her entire live was about someone else hating her family. Even my HIV wasn't anything that anyone believed it was, not that it matters...it might to them. In the end, I get to help a whole lot of people understand what this was about. In the end it was about a little girl who hates everyone. In the end it was about a police department that cheats for arrests and promotions against the gay community for funding.
In the end it does more good than harm.
In the end, I'm the guy that got raped by that girl.
Rodney King will always be known as the guy that got beaten by the police that started the riots.
I don't know how comfortable I am with being THAT GUY. I do know that I don't have a choice. I do know that my obligation is more than a choice. I have a legal obligation to tell the truth. I can't allow anyone else to be hurt by this crime and not say something about it.
I often want to ask some of the genius community out there, "What would you have done differently?" I know that there will be better solutions and obvious ones. I know that I will be second guessed and ridiculed and there will be people that will say, "Why didn't you just tell us who she was and what she was doing?" The problem is this. I've tried that and almost ended up in jail for it. Nobody stands with me on this. I've tried to tell you her name a million times and the last time I did that the City of La Quinta filed a restraining order against me and Commissioner Larry Best issued a warrant for my arrest for it. I've seen so many of my friends go to prison for challenging Lori. Nobody is willing to stand against her for fear that the Palm Springs Police will throw them in prison. You don't believe me?
Chief Bryan Reyes himself once appeared in court to warn me on the record that if I continued to try to have a restraining order issued and served against a woman living in one of the apartments where we found evidence of this crime that she would press criminal charges against me...and (he would have me arrested). This is the guy that was suppose to be investigating my rape case at the time. Here I am investigating the rape that he refused to investigate and he's in a courtroom admonishing me for trying to legally serve a restraining order through the sheriff's department on a woman that doesn't even exist. He literally appeared for a woman that does not exist. My information, based on fact, showed that the woman I tried to serve, did, in fact, live there. There is photographic evidence and there were people living in that complex that could identify Lori. She got away with sending him to the courtroom to threaten me.
You see, I've been on television warning people and the PSPD says, "He's got mental issues" and "there is no rape case being investigated" but the ACLU wrote a letter on my behalf and I filed a rape report. You see what happens in Palm Springs is, if you speak out about this crime, you end up being put in jail. I was arrested six times without any convictions because I got raped and reported it. Twice on the day after I reported the rape!!! Don't fault me for not screaming out her name to all of you...I would love to...the police will arrest me if I do. They do anything to protect their dirty little secret.
The dirtiest of them all is the Chief of Police who has known about Lori for a very long time.
There is nowhere else to turn in Palm Springs because the police work under complete autonomy...there is no internal affairs. There is no other way to have Lori investigated. There is no other way to have this investigated. It is a police state and if you speak out against them, you end up in jail. I should know. Christopher knows. Jonathan knows. Anthony knows. Almost all of these victims know because that is what the police do to keep you all from finding out. They arrest the gays to keep the urban legend from being found out. It's a complete whitewashing of our community with HIV and criminal records. You aren't safe there.
Don't fault me for not screaming her name out to you, I would love to. I wanted billboards with her picture on it. I wanted to tell everyone about hearing voices on billboards and I went on television to talk about it. I've put my ass and reputation on the line so many times that I've risked my entire life on it. I know that I'm right and so do the police....it's just how far am I willing to go to tell all of you her name? Prison? No fucking way. I won't go to prison because nobody else will take up the cause in my absence.
That's how far I'm willing to go just so that I can be the guy that got raped by the girl that bullied him in high school. Think that is something to be proud of? Think again. It isn't something that anyone would do for fame or fortune...I do it because it is the right thing to do and because it is the law. That's the only way I can live with myself and know that I can look parents in the face that lost their kids and say, "I honestly did everything I could to save your child from Lori and the police." Can you say that Chief Reyes?
I doubt he can.
