Those words came from a 24-year-old Alabama woman, reflecting on what happened to her from the ages of around 4 to 8. (The Washington Post does not name sexual assault victims.)
Raymond Earl Brooks had adopted the victim’s mother. To the young woman, for several years, Brooks was her adoptive grandfather. Then, while she was still a small child, he began molesting her.
She told AL.com, “I don’t remember when it started happening but I know it was for a very long time. It was long enough for me to think it was completely normal and made me to feel that he actually loves me in a different kind of way than my mother and father loves me.”
In 2002, Brooks pleaded guilty to sexually abusing the woman and was sentenced to five years in prison, the Associated Press reported. But, according to the Alabama …show more content…
And justice, not just someone’s child, becomes a victim too.”
Perhaps the loudest voice saying the father was not a hero belonged to Hays.
“People here are calling him a hero for killing a child molester,” Hays told the Associated Press. “I’m calling him a psychopathic lunatic for endangering people’s lives, including mine.”
Hayes told HLN, “There were five or six people in the store. If the gun had been six inches over, it probably would have hit a 12-year-old-boy.”
Added Hayes, “They are making it like it’s okay to go up to a public place and leave your motorcycle out and shoot into an occupied business. I was able to go home and tell my son I loved him that night, and I almost wasn’t able to do that.”
The daughter whom the father was trying to protect has not found happiness or peace in the ordeal — just the opposite.
“I’m going through hell,” she said. “Everything comes back to me as to why this has happened. I feel like it’s my fault. I’m sad but yet