Paper Man
The facade of abusive men
“Ain’t nothin’ like a little fear to make a paper man crumble”
~Officer Bowers, IT (2017)
This is a follow-up to Odd Grief. Let this serve as a trigger warning for violence and abuse.
If you know me, you know I don’t do scary movies very often - in fact, when I watched the remake of IT in theaters (against my better judgement) I screamed quite loudly several times (little girl screams, too) - it is, however, an incredible film with some of the best acting I’ve seen - much of it from a cast of children. The moment I knew this film was actually amazing was in hearing this line for the first time - my father was a paper man and I was witness to his crumbling.
(spoilers for the film ahead)
For those who aren’t familiar with the movie, there’s a sense of irony in the character who delivers the line being the one to deliver it. He’s calling his son, who he’s just fired bullets toward, a paper man - because he acts like him - a bully, cruel, murderous. His son, being a product of his upbringing and the example set by his father, is his mirror.
IT is a film (and book and mini-series) about fear, which was the primary emotion of my early life.
I remember being terrified of mundane things along with a very severe arachno/needle phobia, but most of all I was terrified of my father.
(Side note: I started writing this one day in Oct 2024. On Dec 9th 2025 I was made aware that not only were his crimes more heinous than I ever imagined, the lives he impacted may have been far more than I imagined)
It turns out that the man I knew was much worse than I was aware, and I was aware of incredible inhumanity from him. Just before Christmas a girl who is the daughter of one of my fathers 5 ex wives contacted me to ask how I was doing….
I've tried to make that contact a thousand times, but I didnt know if she remembered…or if she may associate me with him (reasonably). Finally she did what I could not.
During that conversation I was informed that he had raped her and trafficked her at 10 years old. The age she was when I remembered her. I knew he was awful, I didnt know it was so much worse for others than it was for me.
And then the same flashback that has been haunting me for 35 years started playing in the big movie projector in my head, on repeat. Vivid. Not stuff I can say here.
And then I put the events from this flashback together with this new information…
I have good reason to believe that my father was a serial child rapist, and involved in the trafficking of children for sex through the late 80s and 90s - likely hidden or aided by his many friends in law enforcement.
I have been struck by this new horror, the realization that a memory ive carried a lifetime point to my father as the perpetrator of the rape of at least two other children.
And as I carry his face and his physique. I wonder if people see me and suffer.
In his last days I had the pleasure of remembering him, weak and desperate for another narcotic to feed his addiction, a paper man crying for a xanbar. Paranoid, afraid, alone and surrounded by people with no reason to care about the quality of his life…and though I had once come to the point of forgiveness, I have lost access to that.
So he was a murderer, a child rapist, narcotic trafficker, an incredibly violent abuser, and the scariest man I could ever imagine. Crying alone surrounded by nurses who had already seen evil men pass through their facility - unintimidated by the power he no longer held. Crumbling waste of a man, not worth the paper that legalized his birth.
My heart aches for his victims. Im struggling with horrendous flashbacks now for weeks, making me relive what no one should live once.
If I cant find forgiveness to him, perhaps the best I can do is say to anyone reading this who's life was destroyed by Ronnie Lee Oxley in the Central Georgia area:
You are loved
You deserved better than this
Im so sorry
And Im here if you need to talk.
~ Rev