Unsafe

What a weird weekend. I have a new {D} story.

Purely by happenstance, I met someone who used to work in {D}’s condo building. I had been telling him about what happened to me and explaining the situation. I mentioned the building {D} lived in. There are six buildings total in the complex, so we talked a bit and narrowed it down until it turned out he had worked in {D}’s building

Then I asked about the timeframe. I said, “Before or after Covid?”

He said during and after.

{D} moved there in 2019.

So he asked me the name.

When I said it, he got this look on his face. Not shock exactly. More like recognition. The kind of look where you can tell someone suddenly knows exactly who you’re talking about.

He told me right away that he didn’t know anything about what had happened specifically, but the staff were all aware that something with {D} was happening. He definitely knew the name.

And he almost didn’t tell me anything.

You could see him debating whether he should say something at all. But eventually he did.

Apparently {D} was very well known to the staff in that building.

Now to be clear, I can’t independently verify what I was told. I’m repeating what someone who worked there formerly said to me. But the reaction when he heard the name — that pause and that look on his face — stuck with me.

First there was the drinking. According to him, it was well known that {D} would come in drunk and struggle to find his own door, sometimes needing help from staff just to get inside his unit. That alone made him memorable.

And {D} actually told me something similar once. We were discussing my decision to drive him home the night of the video because I was afraid he wouldn’t make it through his building. He was that drunk. At the time he told me the staff would sometimes carry him to his unit when he showed up like that.

But that wasn’t the part that stuck with them.

What the staff remembered was how he treated the women who worked there.

The female staff were allegedly afraid of him.

He would apparently say sexually inappropriate things to them — things that made them uncomfortable and feel threatened. It got to the point where male staff members were instructed to step in when {D} stopped at the desk or tried to talk to the women working there.

Think about that for a second.

A residential building had to make sure male employees were present because the women on staff felt unsafe dealing with {D} alone.

Not awkward. Not annoying.

Unsafe.

They saw him as a sexual threat.

And I just sat there and said, “Yeah. That sounds like something {D} would do.”

Which is its own special kind of fucked up.

Because when someone tells you a story about a person and your immediate reaction is not surprise, not disbelief, but recognition — that tells you something too.

I don’t really know what to do with the information.Try to verify it? How would I even start doing that? What purpose might it even serve?

Right now it’s just something I’m putting in my back pocket. One more piece of a picture that seems to keep showing up in different places.

For now it’s just another moment where someone heard his name and paused.

And that pause said a lot.

I've heard "creepy" from his staff at DOI.I've heard "weirdo rapist lawyer" and "known to be a creep back in Vermont." now we are at "uncomfortable" and "threatening." 

I am completely livid that someone can make women feel that level of discomfort and still be walking the fucking streets when video of him doing the actions that fear stems from exists.

What the actual fuck is wrong with a system where he is free and can still cause that kind of fear in women.

What. The. Actual. Fuck.