Name: David Holthouse on Confronting Childhood Abuser, After Once Plotting to Murder Him
Uploaded: 2021-05-06T17:20:47.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'David Holthouse on Confronting Childhood Abuser, After Once Plotting to Murder Him' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-05-06. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'David Holthouse on Confronting Childhood Abuser, After Once Plotting to Murder Him' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-05-06. Transcript available.

- The Joe Rogan Experience.
- Well, there was also some pretty heavy moments
in the documentary, the series,
where you talk about yourself.
- Yeah.
- And you talk about your own experiences
as a child being raped.
- Yeah.
- Which is unexpected and very intense.
And how difficult was that to sort of express on camera?
- Well, I'm pretty comfortable talking about that.
- Yeah.
- About being raped when I was seven years old.
But it was relevant to this show,
because it came up to your earlier point
about the sort of topics,
what a dark world it was up there, right?
And so it's like, why am I drawn to those kinds of stories?
And why have I spent so much of my professional life
steeping myself in dark worlds, criminal subcultures, right?
So that was why that particular part of my life story,
I think was actually relevant to this series.
But to answer your question, how difficult was it?
Not very difficult.
It was difficult for me to go public with that story
for the first time, which was in 2004.
I mean, I'd lived with it as a secret,
like pretty much my entire life.
But the decision to write about it was,
that was a very difficult decision,
a very difficult thing to do.
But since then, I've gotten pretty comfortable
talking about it publicly.
I mean, that story's been adapted as a play.
- Really? - It's been produced all over the world.
- A play? - Yeah.
Yeah, it's called Stalking the Boogeyman.
I wrote an essay called Stalking the Boogeyman.
And that's kind of when I went public with that I was,
that I'd been raped when I was seven.
And then I had then planned to kill the guy
when I was in my early thirties.
Like that was the subject of the essay.
And then that was adapted as a play.
And it was on, you know, This American Life.
And so I've gotten, I've gotten comfortable
with talking about that over the years.
- Were you approached by law enforcement
when you kind of went public about wanting
to stalk this person and kill him?
- I got fucking arrested.
- You got arrested? - I got arrested.
- Really? - Yeah.
After the, after the, the first essay came out,
the cops, the cops arrested me.
Because I, I, I'd admitted stalking the guy
and planning to murder him.
I mean, I'd admitted to criminal behavior
in the, in the piece that was published.
- Had the guy ever been prosecuted for what he did to you?
- No, no.
He was a juvenile when it happened.
And also like the statute of limitations,
it happened in Alaska.
The statute of limitations expired.
And also it's, you know, it's my word against his,
you know, at that point.
I mean, so I have since gone to the police
and filed an official police report.
Um, but I mean, I withheld his name
in the first piece that I published and I let him know.
Cause I mean, I met with him in person
as part of the reporting, if you will, of that piece.
- What was that like?
- Um, it was a pretty uncomfortable conversation.
You know, it was a pretty uncomfortable conversation
cause I'd been following the fucking guy for months,
like planning to kill him.
And I didn't tell him that when we met.
- How old were you at the time?
- Let's see, I was early thirties, 32, 33.
- And how old was he then?
How old was he when it happened?
- He was, he was at the, when it happened,
he was in his, uh, late teens.
Was still, still a juvenile though.
So 16, 17.
Um, so he was a bit in his early forties
when I was stalking him.
And then when he and I met.
- How'd you meet him or how'd you arrange it?
- Well, I sent him a letter.
I sent him a letter, uh, like I sent him
a registered mail letter, a FedEx letter.
And I just made sure he was going to get this letter
and that I knew he'd gotten it.
And there was a couple of reasons for that.
One is by that time I'd planned to publish this essay
and just for like legal reasons needed to let him know
that this was, I needed to give him a chance to comment.
Okay.
Even though in the letter, I didn't tell him
that I was planning to write the piece.
I was just like, listen, I remember what happened
and you and I need to meet, okay?
And if you don't respond this letter,
I'm going to show up on your doorstep
and have a conversation with your wife.
So he responded like pretty quickly
and we set a meeting, uh, at a restaurant
and then I switched up the location several times
and we met on the 16th street mall.
- Why did you switch up the locations?
- I thought he might be dangerous, you know?
That's just like basic sort of.
- But you still met him.
Like I don't understand, what is the purpose
of switching up the location?
- I didn't want him to be able to set up
on the location at all.
I didn't want him to have other people
waiting for me there or, or Tim.
And I, frankly, I just wanted to keep him off balance
the entire day so that he would be,
he wouldn't, he wouldn't have a possibility
to sort of arrange anything, okay?
So we met on the 16th street mall,
which is a pedestrian mall in, in downtown Denver.
And, um, yeah, I just, yeah.
I mean, that experience obviously is, is branded in my memory
pretty clearly.
- You're a big guy.
Uh-huh.
- What, is he a big guy as well?
- Not really, no.
I mean, he was a lot bigger than me when I was seven.
- Of course.
- You know, that was one of the first things
that crossed my mind, is I could just fucking dismantle this guy.
- Right.
- Uh, but we just, we walked around the block a couple times
and I had-
- And talked while you were walking?
- Yeah, and I had a, I had a hidden recording device
and a bike courier bag and a pistol, uh, that I was carrying.
- Were you still thinking about killing him?
- I knew I couldn't get away with it.
See, I, I, I, I planned to get away with it, you know.
I think I would have gotten away with it.
- What did he say?
- He apologized.
He apologized and, you know, he said
that, um, you know, that he'd been,
that he'd been select sexually assaulted when he was a kid,
but it, which is one of the most infuriating things to me.
When child molesters, or let's call them what they are,
men who rape children, when they put that out there
as an excuse or a rationalization or a reason
for their behavior, because, uh, that just infuriates me.
But he apologized.
He said that it happened to him when he was a kid and he swore
that it had only happened with me, that I was the only person
that he'd raped when that person was a child, right?
Up and like repeatedly.
And, um, I, I had been going back and forth on naming him
in that essay and I, his telling me that it, I was the only one.
In the end, I decided not to name him like up to when, again, to that point of,
they have to take the story away from me.
It was like, we were just like an hour from the print deadline and I still didn't
know what I was going to name him.
And my editor, Patty Calhoun at the Westward, she was like, just go block
yourself in a room for 30 minutes, write both endings, and then just, we just
got to pick one, man.
Just like go with whichever one feels right.
So I wrote one ending that ended with his name and one ending that ended with
how the essay actually ends, which is not naming him and him just sort of
disappearing into the crowd on the mall.
And went with that one.
That one felt right.
It felt like a better ending.
And it also, it kind of spoke to a point that I want to make, which is that
they could be anybody, you know?
And I also wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Wow.
You're a good man.
That's a powerful thing to be able to forgive someone for such a horrific act.
I'm not sure I have forgiven him.
Well, enough to not name him.
Yeah.
That's just to give him that.
That's a lot.
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