Author's note: this is somewhat based on my real experiences, although slightly fictionalized. It has some strong themes, involving the abuse of a child, but I think i handled it with enough sensitivity that it is readable, but the reader is hereby cautioned in case i have failed. I promise, I will get back to silliness of "The Lucky One" soon.

A Cop’s Story

My name is Mike Murphy. I was a cop. I know, it is almost a joke, an Irish cop. But I was a good cop, I joined right out of high school, graduated near the top of my class, and slowly moved my way up the ranks.

Then I got transferred to the Sex Crimes unit. It is maybe the hardest unit to work in,. You have to go a little crazy just to keep yourself sane, if that makes any sense. See, you have to be able to shut off your humanity, to keep yourself from letting the things you see drive you over the edge. It chews up some cops and spits them out. They end up drunks, druggies, or dead.

I was doing okay for a long time. I was able to keep a clinical eye for the details that can make the difference between a conviction and an acquittal. I helped put away a good number of criminals, and that made the filth I had to wade through worth it.

It was hard to deal with the victims, women mostly, but some men, because they were often in no shape to help you catch the bad guys. But the ones that really got to me, and most of the others who worked with me, were the kids.

Looking at pictures of kids, some incredibly young, with the thousand-mile stare of combat veterans is something you never quite get used to. But I found a way to leave my work at work, as it were, and only rarely carried my stress home to my wife and kids.

But finally, I was assigned the case that ended up making me take early retirement. It involved a child psychiatrist, a man I will call Dr. X, to protect the identities of his victims. When the first child came forward to accuse him, it was a total shock. Maybe hundreds of parents and guardians had sent kids to him, kids with serious problems, because he was
regarded as the best in his field.

But after the first kid came forward, a couple of others did too, and we were assigned to investigate. We were able to get a warrant for his office, and thanks to having a lot of experience in knowing where to look, I was able to find his stash of notes and pictures.

I can’t say for sure why he even kept them. Some of these guys, they are so arrogant they think they will never be caught, and so leave a trail of evidence behind that gets bigger as time goes on, until their own pride trips them up.

Others keep the stuff because it is a trophy, a way to relive the “fun” they had experienced. I think with this guy, it was a bit of both. Regardless, he had kept careful notes on the kids he was using, and had a ton of photos besides, which pretty much made our case a slam dunk.

But pouring over the pictures, I came across the photos of one kid, and the images stayed with me, and I couldn’t shake it. What made the picture odd was the fact that he was a boy, but he was dressed like a girl.

That wasn’t the oddest thing, though. It was the fact he didn’t look unhappy about that. In fact he looked…relieved, fulfilled. It was only in some latter pictures of the same child that he developed a look of horror and despair so common among the other victims.

I felt a strong need to find out exactly why, and worked my way through the Dr.’s notes, to try and match the pictures to what was written. It took some doing, because of the way the notes were organized, but finally, I was able to find out about this child.

At the time, I didn’t understand the term the doctor used to describe this child. “Gender Dysphoria” was not something I had heard before. But, after talking with the police’s shrink, I learned that it meant that this boy was at least in part more like a girl, in his head.

That is why he looked so happy in the first picture. He must have thought he had found acceptance at last, someone in authority who understood his feelings and gave him permission to explore them.

Then, as the notes indicated, the doctor turned that secret into a weapon to control this child, holding the threats of exposure, of being declared insane, and worst of all to this sensitive child, a threat that if his parents found out, they would be damaged and it would be his fault.

After a couple of years of this, the mother of this child moved away, and the child escaped from the doctor’s care. I have no idea what happened to him after that, since that kind of information was not really part of our investigation.

But I found myself wondering about him, and what might have happened to him. He wasn’t one of the kids who came forward, not even after the trial became public knowledge, not even after the doctor was found guilty and sentenced.

I simply couldn’t shake his image from my mind. He looked so relieved to be able to wear a pretty dress, then having that desire turned into a punishment, it had to be a horror.

Did he survive? Is he lost in drugs, or drinking, or madness? Or did he end his life to escape that pain? Or maybe he found help, found friends, found a way to heal?

For that matter, was he still a “he” at all? I have learned about the condition, and many who have it end up having an operation to change their genitals to match what their minds and hearts are.

I probably will never know the answers, but I hope some how, some way, she survived and is doing okay. I send a prayer every night to God on her behalf, and I hope and pray that wherever she is, that she knows someone is thinking of her, and wishing her the best. That may be all I can do. That, and never forget, and fight to make sure something like that never happens to any other child.