The evidence report adds credence to my journey, it gives supporting evidence, names, locations, and sets the tone or energy of what I felt towards my father. It takes this inner feeling that I had and makes it public knowledge.
This public knowledge sits so heavily upon me, for years I watched and waited for a reaction that would tell me that others seen my father as Not Normal, yet he was always treated normally, so my feelings that he wasn’t right went unsubstantiated.
I had to look up Unsubstantiated.
1. Unsubstantiated means, unverified: not proven factually.
Synonyms: unconfirmed, unproven, unsupported, uncorroborated
The greatest tragedy is that I waited for an adult or any person to verify that what I felt about my father was true. That my terror feelings were spot on, and yet no one led on to what they knew or suspected.
I was left alone unsupported with this knowledge and my body refused to let go of.
I am thinking what is a deeper wound than the abuse itself is to then have your feelings of the event go unconfirmed.
No one wanted to corroborate what I had experienced and what fills my body with incredulousness is that I now have facts, verifiable facts, and supported data showing that they knew, but kept this information from me.
When I need an adult the most, they failed to support me.
Here is what I read yesterday…
“Jenich spoke with Marvin Heinonen, retired Houghton County Protective Services Manager. Marvin informed myself that indeed Ray Huhta has been under suspicion for at least THIRTY years for sexual assaulting his own children and most of the young girls in the Saint Mary’s Location neighborhood north of Hancock.”
(a paragraph has info on a victim, so I am excluding it)
“Marvin Heinonen said back then and even into the later years when Ray Huhta was suspected of molesting girls, there seemed to be a cover up all the time, meaning people in the church and family members would not believe that Ray Huhta could be doing this. Marvin said the information kept resurfacing for years that Ray Huhta is a pedophile, molesting his girls…”
One victim wrote in her statement about her family contacting Peter Torola of the Apostolic Luthern Church that she was molested by Ray Huhta. She recalls Torola’s response to her, “What is your motive in telling on Ray Huhta?” She also stated that three more victims approached minister Pete Torola after she left the area and nothing was done.
Another victim said her parents confronted Ray and he denied the whole time, from that point on her family’s children were forbidden to go to the Huhta house.
What was more horrifying to learn so many years ago, was not only did I have to find peace with having a pedophile for a father, but I also learned that so many knew and did nothing. That 30 years ago he was suspected and the girls told to stay away…
And some knew 40 years back and at the time wanted to know the ‘motive’ for telling on Ray. Telling on Ray. Really?
Imagine that? Like we are gossips?… And how telling is it that Pete Torola didn’t disbelieve it, he just wondered about the motive for telling.
Perhaps he had a motive to keep it silent…for a child’s only motive is for you all to see what we see, for you to change your ‘normal’ definition to not normal.
I guess I wasn’t prepared to hear the details of the little girls, and had braced myself, but I hadn’t expected the stories held bits and pieces of how uninterested the adults were about the children in the Huhta house.
I am not meaning to lessen the girls in my neighborhood who were abused by my father, but what stands out is that their parents warned them away from our home, but no one came and took us out.
I have six sisters…plus eight brothers, and we lived with the Pedophile and his wife. That was our only home.
We were left there knowingly.
Somehow, I would feel slightly better if no one knew…if we had gone underneath the radar, an incest nest undetected, but instead it was operating in full plain view and many just turned their heads away from the Huhta children living within.
What does a person do with this information?
How do your process the minister’s neglect or Protective Services suspecting but without follow through or neighbors keeping their children away with no heed to us living full time with a ‘suspected’ pedophile.
Surely these are actions of an enemy and not of a friend.
I am not bitter or angry, but I am wise and now validated, vindicated…but it is a hollow victory.
You find out no one was standing for you…you never mattered enough.
The main reason I am working with Tom Rosemurgy, is I refuse to be one of the adults who knew and turned away…
I M Perfect lady 
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