Then The Daughter The Convicted Pedophile Raped Speaks Up

It was 1996 when police arrested Jim and Justine and charged them with prolonged sexual abuse and exploitation of their 13-year-old daughter, Amanda.

At the time, Jim claimed that he didn’t think he was doing any harm to his daughter, and that in those days, child molestation was considered “something people joke about” — citing comic book “Chester The Molester” as supposed cultural evidence of this.

But the repercussions of that abuse — which began when his daughter was just 11 — would haunt Amanda into her adulthood, sending her life sideways as she attempted to self-medicate and escape the pain.

Now, 20 years later, Amanda and her biological parents meet again — Amanda for an apology, her parents (particularly her father) forgiveness.

Appearing on Wednesday’s episode of “Dr. Phil,” Amanda says her parents would routinely photograph her in “provocative” situations and video tape her performing various sexual acts— sometimes with her father — with the plan to sell the tapes across the world.

She tells Dr. Phil: “Jim told me with the money we could make, I could go to college”

Amanda adds that she never saw any of her supposed earnings.  Her mother, on stage with Amanda already, begins weeping, presumably overwhelmed with guilt and regret at her part in the abuse.

Then Dr. Phil brings out Amanda’s father.  The audience is silent as he walks out, the tension at its peak.

Amanda starts in on Jim, at first tenuously, seeming to barely contain her rage:

“Where to begin?….  How could you?”

Amanda begins to ask questions directly to her father — reluctantly, at first — saying she’s “dreamed of this moment,” but adding:

“Truthfully I would have preferred if you had been six feet under.”

Jim says to Amanda as she stares at him in anger and disbelief that he’s ashamed that he only remembers abusing Amanda four or five times when it was obviously a regular routine in the family.

Looking straight at his daughter, he says:

“It should have been burned into my memory as much as it was into yours.”

As Amanda recounts how her life spiraled out of control into adulthood — addiction, work as a topless dancer, even the creation of an alter ego to escape the pain she was experiencing — it’s clear that the memories left significant scars with lasting impact.

But the most chilling moments in the episode come from a one-on-one interview with Jim taped earlier, in which the former convict claims that during the early 1990’s, “sexually abusing children were things that people winked and joked about.”

Unbelievably, he goes on to complain that he’d been “exploited, taken advantage of [and] beaten up,” in prison.  He also protested that he had never been aroused by his daughter, but rather was interested in the “mechanics.”

But Dr. Phil doesn’t pull punches responding to claims that Jim didn’t know what he was doing to his daughter, saying directly to Amanda:

“To suggest that he was in an environment where parents didn’t know it wasn’t okay to rape their children is insulting your intelligence, it’s insulting to your experience, it is a complete insult to this entire experience between him and you.  Now he’s either that naive, or he’s just thumbing his nose at you because that is an idiotic statement.”

To watch the entire episode, which aired on Wednesday of this week, check Dr. Phil’s website for listings.

The New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault, which collects statistics nationally, reports that 46% of children who are sexually abused are the victims of family members.

It also reports that 61% of American rape victims are raped before the age of 18, and unbelievable 29% of all rapes occurred before the victim was 11.