Call Me Lucky Page #8

of childhood sexual

abuse and...

you have male survivors

and you have female survivors

and generally the

two mix quite well,

at least in my experience.

But there are, you know,

both men and women

who don't want anything to do

with the opposite gender,

you know, the gender

that they were abused by'

and unfortunately Barry

encountered a couple

of these people in Cleveland.

When Barry went to Cleveland

he kind of stopped

doing comedy

and was looking for

other survivors,

people like him who had

been raped as a child.

And this was when AOL

was in its infancy.

And they had all

these chat rooms.

- You know, Barry called me

up one night and he said,

"Lana," he said'

"Go here and then go here. "

You know, "Look at this. "

And I, I just went...

Wow, I couldn't believe,

you know, what I was seeing.

- What he ended up finding

was people exchanging

child pornography.

- You know, it's the

first time these people

ever had a community.

You know, I mean,

you really could never talk

to other child

molesters or whatever.

And they're emboldened

and living it up,

and when I first

stagger in there,

I do what any

normal person would do,

I just go,

"Are you people crazy?"

- Somebody would in

good faith send you a file

and expect something in return.

- They very often would start

sending me child pornography

to show me how much

fun I could have.

- He had gone to AOL

repeatedly and said,

"Look what you're hosting,

this horrible stuff. "

And they would just, you know,

patronize him and say,

"Thank you for your help

with this" and do nothing

'cause they were making

a ton of money off of it.

- You know, we're used

to broadband, okay?

I mean, you know, this...

when we were on dial-up modems,

this was not a flat rate,

and if you spent a certain

level of time online,

you got charged more.

- And one of the main things

that these child molesters

talked about in these

rooms was, you know'

they're spending a thousand,

$1,200 a month to be on AOL.

- So Barry poses

as two children

and stockpiled all

this information

that was evidence...

crime evidence.

That's what child

pornography is.

- I make an account,

and I make it two kids,

and they say

"Our parents make us share...

our stupid parents

make us share an account. "

- I just can't imagine kind of

locking yourself away

and pretending to be,

you know,

one of these people that

caused him such misery

in order to set them up.

- If you've seen

child pornography...

when you've seen

a picture of a little kid

with curly red hair

getting raped by a big guy

who looks exactly like him

with curly red hair,

and the look on the

kid's face and his eyes'

you can see, like,

the humanity leaving the kid...

The loss, the...

he's just shutting down

as much as he can

while still being alive.

- I know that

seeing what he saw

was something that he

couldn't get out of his head.

- You know, he damaged himself

to, like, save these kids.

And, you know, you talk about

things that you can't unsee,

and he saw so much

horrible stuff.

- I think that one of the

things that's so extraordinary

about this is how

physically sick Barry was.

- He told me he got down to

something like 155 pounds,

which, you know, was probably

a good 100 pounds lower

than he had been.

- He had a haunted,

hollow look.

I've never seen anyone transform

to a shadow of a person

like I saw him transform.

- As with most people

who have been abused,

different things are gonna come

back to you at different times.

Somethings going

to trigger a memory.

A difficult, painful memory.

And I know that this did.

I know that this did that-.

- This guy contacts

me and he says,

"I want you to take a pair

of your underwear

and pee on them,

and... do you know what a Ziploc

bag is?" I said, "Yeah. "

"Put them in a Ziploc bag

and mail them to me. "

And I said'

"Sure, give me your address. "

I became aware of Barry

because my immediate

boss instructed me

and another fellow prosecutor

to go out to his house

and to speak to him.

He had something to (ell us.

We drove to Lakewood.

It wasn't too far away.

It was in an apartment complex.

I remember we had to pound

on his door a number of times

to get his attention.

He finally came to the door'

and we were met by a man

who was fairly striking.

He had dark hair.

Unkempt, for sure.

- You know, here's Barry

with a Che poster up.

A lifelong LSD enthusiast.

I'm sure they...

I don't know what

they thought of Barry.

- He had been looking

on the computer

and researching the sharing

that was taking place.

People were talking to

each other on computers

and at the time our office

didn't even have computers.

We couldn't understand

what he was talking about.

How were people communicating

with each other on computers?

- Yeah, you can even talk with

people all over the world

on chat lines.

- Don't they have chess games

and stuff like that, too'?

- Yup. They got more stuff

than you can imagine.

- It was clear that

he had knowledge

about what he was doing,

but when we saw him,

it didn't make sense.

He was a man that I could

describe as crazed at the time.

He said that they were

sending images of children

who were being raped

and images of children who

were having sex with adults.

It's something that we

had never heard of before.

We were shocked.

We were astonished.

I mean, I left there

fairly shaken

and not knowing how our office

was going to deal with

that into the future.

He essentially left us

with a big problem.

- I was thinking Frank Capra

but feeling Don Knotts

as I began my testimony

before the U.S. Senate

Judiciary committee.

My hand trembled so rapidly

that there were small craft

warnings for my water glass.

- There's no excuse in

presenting pornography

where children

can get ahold to it.

- Senator Strum Thurmond,

Pterodactyl, South Carolina,

Thurmond's genius may

be that nobody ever

knows what the hell he's saying.

The indecency.

The lawlessness of pornography

being presented where

children can reach it

should not be allowed

under the law.

- I unsuccessfully stifled

a huge grin

as he blathered some

senatorial cordiality

that he was appreciative that'

"This

here hearing was important

'cause it concerned children. "

- Our children are the

future of this country.

- Senators Russell

Feingold of Wisconsin,

Mike DeWine of Ohio

and Paul Simon of Illinois

all boasted of their

unfamiliarity with the internet.

This being 1995.

It seemed as if they took

a certain manly pride

in how low tech they were.

- Most of the Senators who voted

wouldn't have the foggiest idea

how to get on the

internet in the first place.

- My children,

if they were here'

would tell you that

I'm computer illiterate,

so you're gonna have to kind of

take" walk me through this.

- I have to say there is

no one in this room

with the possible exception

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