"The true story of the Steven Stayner abduction case." I never heard about this case until I saw a documentary about it on 20/20 (or something) several weeks ago. Because it all happened around the same time that I myself was learning first hand about sex hysteria in the U.S. (the 1970s), I decided to check it out. I think the interesting thing about "true crime" books from over 20 years ago is that they usually read like a porn novel, and this book was no exception.
For example: "[Steven] tried to pull away from his captor's grip. Brusquely, though the kidnapper shoved the little boy's head down over his exposed, erect penis, Steven's copious tears and entreaties to Parnell to take him home not deterring the aroused pedophile as he repeatedly ejaculated inside the trembling child's mouth."
Really? I mean, REALLY? That's what happened? Is that how Steven remembers it? Or the kidnapper, Parnell? I seriously doubt if that's how it happened at all! It's far too dramatic. But it sure does sell books, doesn't it?
As an experienced "child rapist" and "rape victim" myself I could tell that neither Parnell's nor Steven's accounts of events were very close to the truth. And the author clearly obscured events even further by adding such dramatic flair. In ways, no doubt, what really happened was much worse, but could never be expressed with words. For example, the author never once mentions blood or shit, even after very graphically detailing the first time Parnell anally raped Steven face down on a bed. It was all just lust and orgasm, even referring to the boy as Parnell's "young sex partner".
I learned something though. I realize now more than ever that my own "crime" against the 14-year-old boy that I "raped" (orally) when I was just sixteen myself was more the result of a morally corrupt social system and the "messages" it sends than it ever was my own confused attempt to find a place in this world. In other words; yes, I was a "confused kid" acting out of my misguided need for some sense of sexual identity (as demanded hormonally by nature), but the confusion I felt and acted on did not come from within me as much as it came from the kind of hypocritical social-sexual messages that this book so brusquely illustrates.
Of course it's never as simple as that either, which I will always insist. It is much more complex, so much so that all our attempts to "understand" and "fix" the problem (and/or "the System") are futile. As I've said so many times before, the only cure for crime is love; everything else is just more crime. And this book is nothing more than child porn for the kind of person who condemns child porn in order to tell themselves and everyone else how morally righteous they are.
[J.D. March 15, 2019]
