“It was a moment of stupidity at your expense. Something I regret and I can never take back. If I could, I would. I am very sorry. It was not an accident, it was a moment of selfishness, one that I regret because I hurt somebody else for my own gain.
“It’s true OSTERMAN form. It’s what we all do. Do you want the money?”
That was it. That was the extent of the “apology” I received from ADAM OSTERMAN, the “man” who drugged me and raped me, a whole decade after the fact. “A moment of selfishness”? This man locked on to me and tortured me for two years, then spent eight more years spreading lies; desperately defaming and disrespecting me behind my back. Then out of nowhere:
“It’s true OSTERMAN form. It’s what we all do. Do you want the money?”
And money. Always money.
Who are the OSTERMANS if they aren’t trying to buy somebody’s soul? Their security, their sanity? Their safety, their sense of well being?
That’s not an apology, that’s greasy day old dishwater. I could pick ten words out of a hat at random and create something more emotionally significant than THAT little farce. I certainly hope this is a joke.
***
The fact that I was “raped” by a whiny, wimpy creampuff with slimy, bulbous back pimples (and no belly button) is an awful lot to come to terms with. That ineffectual weakling was deep sixed from my life and discarded a long time ago, how is it even possible? ME? *ME*?!?
*I* am NOT a likely victim on any level. If a man were attacking me, no doubt I would fight back . . . QUICKLY. HARD. I would bite, I would claw, I would holler and kick and jab, generally just make the whole episode so excruciatingly difficult that it would not be worth all the laborious effort. Ninety nine times out of a hundred, an attacker is just going to think: Eh, to hell with the bitch. It’s not worth it.
ADAM OSTERMAN was not stronger than me, ADAM OSTERMAN was not smarter than me. ADAM OSTERMAN’s whole plan of attack was to jump on top of a sleeping girl and start raping her, praying he could get his sleazy, necrophiliac rocks off before she woke up; then she wouldn’t have a chance to fight.
And I didn’t, believe me, I didn’t; we’re talking nanoseconds. I will spare you the amateurish, klutzy, lackluster details, but the whole incident was so bungling and crackhanded and inelegant, that a 22 year old virgin with zero sexual experience whatsoever could not even tell she was being assaulted?
Even as his girlfriend was telling me the truth she uncovered and sending me confession videos, I half still wasn’t buying it: he was such a yellow bellied pantywaist, such a namby pamby nobody! So law abiding! So by the book! Frighteningly terrified of so much as a parking ticket! Aside from a few playground style Mickey Mouse crimes (like selling his Adderall to buy video games and cheap Arby’s on Coupon Day) could he actually have the balls to do such a heinous and appalling thing?
OH, YES! YES! YES! AND YES!
There you have it. The ONE time in his life he had the guts to flipping DO anything . . . and it was me? A super nice girl who had never hurt anyone in her whole life?
***
Everyone on *his* side thinks I HAD to have “known”, but there is simply no conceivable way. Not only did I not fight, run or report, but also I never told a friend, never called a hotline, never cried and never single wrote a word about it~ you can go through my old journals and see that it’s simply NOT there. It’s not anywhere. I had no PTSD, no flashbacks, I wasn’t cutting myself nor was I having thoughts of suicide. I didn’t change a bit after that night, I stayed vibrant, I stayed lively, I stayed bouncy, bubbly and happy! Even my writing stayed carefree, jazzy and vivacious.
I’m not made of steel. I could never have carried a weight like this alone.
The only thing that was a true, real life pain for me was that I couldn’t get rid of this drippy bozo, who had latched on to my friends and family and was constantly buying me crap I couldn’t refuse, like my furniture and the infamous Playboy Bunny Costume. He was clingy and boring, but I joked about it, lightheartedly ragged on him and plastered him all over the internet! We went on trips! We shared holidays! My family bought him gifts and had him at gatherings! It’s really, truly revolting! Looking back, I want to throw up on his entire family.
[ALSO READS AS: I was unknowingly “dating” my rapist, biding my time until my REAL Prince Charming came along! No wonder I’m so freaking “damaged”!]
Oh, Brianne. You moron. Tsk, tsk.
***
Over Christmas, I got all kinds of messages from them. Messages I wasn’t asking for:
Daily this has gotten worse and worse, he’s now saying he will lose his home, his entire line of work and everything he would be capable of doing to make a living if he admitted to raping you that night.
ADAM OSTERMAN is contemplating and making statements like:
“I watch a lot of law and order….I can plead down to a lesser misdemeanor charge of battery…I can’t go on the sexual offender registry…I’d lose my licensure and any and all current or future employment….I could never provide or make a living…I’d be totally destroyed…DESTROYED”
I sat across from him at his breakfast nook table late last night and asked him if he planned to apologize to you and finally admit what he did to you, TO YOU. To his family. He said, “Why? Where would that get me?”
Now that’s ADAM OSTERMAN: “I, I, I . . . ME, ME, ME . . . MY, MY, MY” . . . and that’s when they started offering me money to keep my mouth shut. LOTS of money. Lots and lots of money, all in cash too! I could hear him pacing like an animal in the background, he was yelling:
“How much? Did she say how much? Tell me, Brandi!!!! HOW MUCH?!?! HOW MUCH?!?!”
I said a hundred grand in cash because come on, where’s he going to get that? Where is anyone going to get that?! If you have a gun and you rob a bank, you’re usually only walking away with three to five thousand dollars. Even if you have a hundred grand in your account, you can’t just go to the bank and withdraw it from the ATM; if you’re picturing the vault of your local bank and seeing Scrooge McDuck diving leisurely into a sea of solid gold coins, get that image out of your head right now! The only way you’re getting 100 thousand dollars in cash TODAY is if you rob an armored truck!
I’ve never seen a hundred thousand dollars in cash before. I sort of wanted to see it.
Okay. I’ll take it, ADAM OSTERMAN THE RAPIST! I will just sit here and hold my breath until all that MONEY arrives! Please try and make it snappy, huh?
Your Whipping Girl needs a new pair of shoes!
***
So it was set! I had to agree to give him one month to “consolidate accounts”, then I’d get a “sincere apology” [^ see above ^] and a hundred grand in cash in a black leather briefcase in a public place; it was all very Agent .007. HOWEVER no courts, no police, no SEX OFFENDER REGISTRY and certainly no JAIL TIME! No more public humiliation, no more trashy nicknames, no more blogs, nothing connected to any OSTERMANS. No book and [sic] : “no more coming back for no more money.”
Then he stopped and gave me a friendly, amazingly selfless green light! A real olive branch, I must say:
“No, wait! I can’t take the BOOK from you, I don’t have the heart! You can have your book.”
Gee. Thanks, you f**king prick!
Then ADAM OSTERMAN had a brilliant idea!!! Say! Why didn’t he just ask MOMMY AND DADDY for the money?! MOMMY AND DADDY will do anything at all to save precious baby Adam! Of COURSE they would fork over money in any amount for their darling cuddle bubby! Oooooh la la! Anything at all for that nebbish little man boy! Why didn’t he think of this sooner?!
Okay, Baby Osterman, you go riiiiiiiiiiiiighht ahead with that! You dated a black woman and Mommy and Daddy didn’t speak to you for a year! You (ahem!) “shamed the perfect family by dating a worthless nig nog.“
[White Supremacist JEWS. Go figure]
So what in God’s name will they do to you when you tell them you raped a white woman? Cut you off financially? Stop paying your phone bill? Or *GASP*? Take away your MERCEDES?!?
Hmmm. Not exactly. Mama Bear looked at him with nothing but protective, unrepressed Oedipal love, a withered lioness defending her cub! As Freud always said, a man who has been the indisputable favorite of his mother keeps for life the feeling of a conqueror: WIN, BABY!
While Papa Bear is bellowing in a voice thick with castration anxiety:
“OH, SONNY BOY!!! YOU DIDN’T RAPE THAT DUMB BITCH!!! YOU WERE JUST EXPRESSING A HEALTHY SEXUAL CURIOSITY!”
Then they both went out and hired a sleazebag lawyer worm, a criminal attorney. To “cease and desist” me, of course; they are looking to prosecute anyone who has defamed/ attempted to “extort” their precious, angelically innocent son.
Is it wrong that I’m snickering? Everything I’ve already been through and it’s not enough? They want MORE!?! His blustering, huffy-puffy cartoon of a father especially, Daddy wants me hauled into court and incarcerated, skinned alive and sent up the creek indefinitely so I can’t throw the book at their baby.
All this because they couldn’t potty train Little Hans correctly? Thus ADAM OSTERMAN never learned to control his behaviors and urges and now at the age of 36, he is still allowed to soil himself wherever and whenever he pleases. Whether he’s making in his pants or raping babies, Mommy and Daddy are right there, waiting in the wings to save him!
They’ve got baby wipes. And a lawyer.
“OSTERMANS DON’T LOSE!!! EVER!!!”
[TO BE CONTINUED . . .]
People are reading this, people are sharing this. A lot. A lot.
They just don’t know what to say.
It’s not my “cute and funny” self, I understand. Still I am freaking pissed, I cannot believe these people think I’m not going to *DO* anything.
I am no good at playing the villain, less good at playing the victim. I’ll find a way.
I’ve got plenty of time.
I know him! Don’t know where he is now but he Betta not run into me. Scum bag reaper. Butt ugly too.
My name is not Kent. Kent was the first guy who talked my name is M. Wierd.
Are you commenting from the same computer?
If anything, I feel almost bad for him. I feel bad for all of them, they have to live their whole lives like this.
Empty. Dead. Cold.
They laugh at me now, but I’m glad I have a heart. Everything I’ve ever written about them is TRUE, they can’t blame *ME* for any of it.
The worst I ever did to them was believe a bad lie and keep their precious son out of jail . . .
That is Matthew my son. He is not quite fifteen. Could you tell?
Truth burns. I have seen this more times, parents faced with accepting they raised a rapist/ criminal/ murderer. Some can do it, some cannot.
It’s easier for them to hate and fear a kind/ generous/decdent person than admit they effed up raisin their son.
They want to scare me. After what Precious Junior’s already done to me,what is there left to be scared of? What would I fear?
Nothing.
Make a family tree.
It’s a classic grade-school assignment, designed to get children to talk to their parents and think about their own history.
Bonnie Osterman never could make one. Or to be more accurate, her parents never could bring themselves to help her make one.
She recalls getting the assignment, bringing it home, mentioning it to her mother and father and seeing them break into tears.
“I would just take a zero,” she said. “I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to make my mommy and daddy cry.”
It wasn’t until recently, while reading a book written by the son of her father’s best friend, that she truly understood those tears.
Long before she and her sister were born, her father had two children he never told them about.
Her family tree had two small branches that were snapped off in the Holocaust.
“I had a half brother and half sister,” she said. “I’m 59 years old, and I never, ever knew about that … because he never spoke about it.”
* * *
When she was growing up in Miami, Bonnie Osterman’s family often spent Sundays at the beach with other families from Czechoslovakia. Her dad, Max Zelmanovic, and one of the other men, Aaron Herskowitz, were particularly close. Best friends didn’t really do the relationship justice. Max and Aaron were like brothers.
They had grown up together in a small town in Czechoslovakia. Aaron’s family had taken in Max when they were kids. And at one point during the Holocaust, Max had stepped in front of a bullet meant to execute Aaron. It struck him in his chest. His Hungarian captors, knowing that his leather skills were valuable to the Nazis, had treated his wound and kept him alive.
Bonnie Osterman knew a little about that. And she knew that her father had lost a wife in the Holocaust, that both Max and Aaron had survived, married other survivors, moved to America and tried not to look back.
“My dad and I were buddies,” she said. “We would always talk today and tomorrow. We wouldn’t talk yesterday.”
Although her father never talked about the Holocaust, his best friend eventually did.
Aaron Herskowitz always was a great storyteller. When Howard Herskowitz was growing up, he recalls his father regaling him with tales of adventure, dramatic escapes and daring rescues. It made Howard wish he could go back in time and be a part of it.
When his father said, no, it was horrible, he couldn’t understand. And when he pressed for details, his father inevitably would change the subject. It wasn’t until 1990, when Aaron Herskowitz went back to Europe at age 75 and visited the area where he grew up – and where he lost most of his family – that he agreed to tell his son the rest of his stories.
They talked for hours and hours, the son taking detailed notes, making video and audio recordings of his father’s memories. The result is “Aaron’s Journey – From Slave to Master,” the story of how his father survived Nazi rule and, in a reversal of roles, ended up being appointed overlord of a captured town.
It is, Herskowitz says, a book his father didn’t want him to write.
It also is a book he felt like he had to write.
“As he began to tell his story, it quickly became apparent that all the hours I’d spent listening to him as a boy had not prepared me for the full breadth of the horror, madness and triumph he endured,” he says at the end of the prologue.
Herskowitz, now a lawyer in South Florida, will speak about the book Tuesday night at the Jewish Community Alliance as part of the annual Jewish Book Festival. One of the people in the crowd will be his childhood friend and Jacksonville resident, Bonnie Osterman.
* * *
What she knew about the Holocaust, Osterman learned mostly from her mother and a photo album in their dining room.
Her mother had discovered the album the day she was liberated from Dora-Mittelbau. Recovering from an illness, searching for some warm clothes, she had opened a drawer in an abandoned Nazi barracks and found the album full of images of Jews – one of which included her.
The photos were taken at Auschwitz in 1944, likely by two SS men.
The Auschwitz Album, as it is now known, is in a museum in Israel, the 56 pages and 193 photos protected and preserved like sacred documents.
According to the Yad Vashem website, the album contains the only surviving visual evidence of the process of mass murder at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
“It’s in a vault, like the holy scriptures,” Bonnie Osterman said. “And to me, it was just the photo album we had in the china cabinet.”
She mentions this only in passing, to help explain why “Aaron’s Journey” means so much to her. She knew only a few stories about the Holocaust, mainly related to this photo album her mother found.
“But this story isn’t about that,” she says. “It’s about Aaron.”
Aaron’s story certainly is a powerful one, just by itself. But the 1944 album adds to the significance of the 2010 book.
When Osterman was growing up, people came from all over America to see the album, to find images of loved ones and piece together the past. Her mother even took the album back to Germany for testimony in the Auschwitz trials. And in 1980, after a visit by a famous Nazi hunter, she agreed to donate it to the museum.
In the past 60 years, the album has helped so many people answer so many questions and solve so many riddles. And yet here you have a woman who grew up with it in her dining room, who didn’t learn about parts of her family tree until decades later, when she was reading a book written by one of her childhood friends about their late fathers.
“I am so grateful to Howard,” she said.
Herskowitz talks about the “tragedy upon the tragedy,” the silence of the survivors who spend their lives in a painful paradox. Hoping the world never forgets, wishing they could. And this is part of what makes Herskowitz’s book compelling. Not just the story in it, but the story of it being written by Herskowitz and read by Osterman.
When she got a copy of the book, she began by looking for all references to her father. They’re scattered throughout. But it’s on page 116 that she read about Aaron and Max reuniting in the spring of 1943 and learned about two siblings she didn’t know she had.
Luck had been kind to Max. He’d married his fiancee from Khust in the Carpathians. They’d already had two children, and Max had taken over her father’s leather business.
*Bonnie Osterman has her own children now. So does Howard Herskowitz.
They want them to know not just about the Holocaust, but about their two family trees, forever intertwined by both strong roots and broken branches.*
people ‘connected’ to the holacaust understand human suffering. Wow. #icallbullshittttttt
I will give u 100 k to let me beat his ass in like civilized folk. She is almost dead already, you win.
You want cash? #robbinganarmoredtruck
Who is that? You sound way familiar.