Ok, here is the entire story. First some background: My neighbor, I'll call her Mary here, though that is not her real name, was good friends with my sister. Mary and my sister were in the same grade in school, that is how they met. I think Mary moved to the neighborhood when she was seven or eight, so I would have been about 14 when we first met. Mary was always coming over to the house to play with my sister. Mary and my sister remained friends all the way up to high school, then they began to drift apart. By that time, I had graduated from high school and was hired as a reserve police officer with LAPD. I was attending the local community college part time, and I was working part time, waiting until I turned 21 when I could become a full-time officer. In fact, when the incident occured, I was going through the process to get hired full-time. Even though Mary and my sister were not as close as they once had been, she came over to the house on almost a daily basis. She did not want to see my sister, she came over to see me. I think that she had a crush on me. She would come over to the house, and ask me to "help her with her homework." Instead of asking me about her schoolwork, she would ask me if I thought she was pretty, what kinds of women I found attractive, would I ever consider going out on a date with someone like her, and other questions along those lines. All the time she would be asking these questions, she would try to touch me. Each and every time, I pushed her hands away. Although I did think that Mary was pretty, I was not ever sexually attracted to her. She was underage, and she was not my "type". Even if I was, I would never have acted on those feelings. Not only would it have been illegal, it would have been immoral as well. While I am far from being a saint, I do have a solid moral compass. When she was not talking to me about sex, she would complain to me that she does not have any friends. She would tell me that I was the only person in the world she could talk to. This was the reason I never told Mary to get out of my house and not come back. I really and truly felt bad for her. When I was in high school, I did not have very many friends either. I was never invited to the "cool" parties or events. I could empathize with her situation, since it was not too long before that I was in the same boat. When I could see her getting upset I would pat her arm, or her shoulder, or her back in a "there-there" type of gesture. I am of Italian decent, and we Italians tend to be "touchy-feely" people. This is what I meant when I said that I had touched her arm, back, and shoulder in the past. My intent was for my touch to comfort her, not to induce sexual arousal. I genuinely felt compassion for Mary. Also, my hands only touched her arm, shoulder, and back. They never came near her breasts, buttocks, or vagina. This post is getting way to long, so I was make another post that will discuss her specific allegations. .
|