Admired in Life, Reviled in Death

After four years in Pakistan, Alex McIntire and Linda Hamilton (both mother and daughter use the last name of Linda's maternal grandfather) accepted job offers from an English-language school in Quito, Ecuador. In 1978 they moved there with Lisa and Jack. McIntire, Lisa says, continued his visits. Her only respite came during a two- or three-month period when McIntire moved out of the house. (Linda says he was having an affair and briefly lived with the woman and her children.) Lisa claims the visits continued when the family moved to Miami in 1979. Three years later McIntire and Linda separated; subsequently he filed for divorce. Linda says she had been willing to patch up the relationship, but McIntire wasn't interested. “He said I wasn't enough woman for him,” recalls Linda.

During the separation McIntire demanded visitations with Lisa. Once or twice a week Linda dropped her daughter at McIntire's parents' home in South Miami-Dade, where he was living. Lisa says he abused her there, too, each time she arrived. Only after the divorce was finalized, in August 1983, did the assaults come to an end. Lisa was fourteen. She never saw McIntire again.

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When Lisa Hamilton heard the news that Alex McIntire had killed himself, she broke down in tears, screaming in anger. This development did not follow the script she had played in her mind so many times. No resolution came with his death. “I wanted to confront him, but now I can't,” she says slowly, carefully choosing each word. “I don't get to destroy him, to see his life crumble away. I don't have control over it now. I don't get the release, the sentence, the execution, the ruining of his life. I don't fulfill the dream of castrating him. And now I don't get the rest that I need in my life.”

Telling her story, she now believes, may precipitate a resolution. It is part of her healing. She also believes a public airing will help illuminate the devastating effects of sexual abuse on a young child. No one besides other victims, she says, can comprehend the numbing pain she has endured for so many years. Although she is married now, she has had difficulty with relationships. “What is trust? What is love?” she asks.

Maintaining self-esteem is an enduring struggle. At times in her life she has felt compelled to appear unattractive and socially inept. “A childhood victim of sexual abuse, growing up, is faced with living through the present with the frames of childhood obscuring everything that should be new, in intimacy, in relationships, in any socialization,” she explains. “My childhood was stolen. I'm only now beginning to live my life. He may be dead, but for me the story isn't even close to being over.”

In the summer of 1992, breaking years of silence, Lisa told her mother of the abuse. A few visits to a therapist, she says, helped her recognize the healing benefit of coming forward. She was 24 years old at the time and a recent graduate of the University of Kentucky. She and her mother were at a children's museum, accompanying Linda's young son from a later marriage. “I suppose I just didn't want to believe it at first,” Linda recalls. “But then my reaction, like any parent's reaction, was: “Where had I been? Why hadn't I noticed?'” Over the next few months, Lisa and her mother exchanged a series of e-mail messages. In one of them, dated September 28, 1992, Lisa explains her reluctance to speak up earlier:

“I always thought -- afterward -- it wasn't a big thing, that he didn't ever hurt me, that he didn't ever actually try genital penetration, that he didn't put me to shame in public. And then somebody told me I was abused as much as any other abuse case, and I've been confused ever since.”

Later in the same message she tries to ease her mother's feelings of guilt:

“No, I don't blame you for any of it; I can't. What would you do? He's a twisted motherfucker. He likes to play with children. I don't know if he knows how permanent the damage he does, had done, did, still does, is. Children are like clay. I want to stay away from them myself. I won't be held responsible for anything that forms an adult like this one.”