The Franklin Files

CHAPTER III
REGARDING NINA


     Some of you may have been shocked when I revealed that I had been having sex when I was nine years old with a nine year old girl, and I didn't say much more than that.

     I will explain more about that later. I will describe what I remember at the time that it happened, and I will also describe my perceptions of the event later on as an adult because my perceptions of what happened changed when I looked back on it at an older age with adult reasoning.

     I will also give you Nina's side of the story as well. I have been in contact with Nina in the last couple of years and we have talked about what happened.

     I don't feel that it is necessary at this time to go into more detail about it, except to say that Nina has told me that she was the one who instigated the sexual encounters, and that it was all her idea.

     I feel differently, and I really appreciate Nina's friendship. She was without a doubt my best friend growing up, but I feel that the sexual incidences that occurred were not her fault; I don't feel that they were either of our faults.

     I believe that these sexual encounters were actually being instigated by at least one person who was much older than we were and I strongly suspect that in addition an adult was also responsible for instigating or inspiring these events to happen.

     I believe that Nina is noble for taking all the blame for the events that happened but I do not believe that she was at fault. She was nine years old at the time, the same age as me, and the sexual encounters we had were simply too far advanced to have been the idea of or have been instigated by either one of us.

     There was an additional incident that I can prove an older teen-ager was involved, and this teen-aged girl (who I perceived as an adult at the time) from what I discovered in my investigations; actually talking with her step-father, has had a long history of problems in her life, and Nina and this girl were friends, and I feel that Nina may be protecting her to a certain extent.

     At any rate, I believe that Nina has the best of intentions, and again she is very noble to take full responsibility for what happened, but I simply don't believe it is possible that the events that occurred could have been instigated entirely by her and her alone.

     I will talk more about this later on in my book, only because it came up in therapy as a possible explanation for my PTSD and Panic Disorder that developed over time.

     I will say at this point, that the doctors as well as myself do not believe that the sexual incidences that occurred between Nina and I were particularly traumatic. They would not have caused these disorders, especially in light of evidence that I experienced real trauma later on.

     I never blocked out any of the experiences between Nina and I, nor were there any other symptoms of trauma at that time.

     I stated that Nina and I had a "falling out" as friends because of these events; but that was due to my reaction involving the active participation of an older teen-ager becoming directly involved in our sexual experiences who I perceived to be an adult at the time.

     In addition, during one of these sexual encounters in which the older teen-ager was observing Nina and I engaging in sexual acts with one another and suggesting sexual acts, Nina herself experienced a very negative and dramatic reaction which could have been traumatic to herself.

     As a result of feeling bad about Nina's negative reaction as well as my feeling at the time that this older person should not have been involved, as well as an intuition that there simply was something not at all right about what was happening, and also personal conflicts going on with me of an emotional nature having to do with keeping all of this secret, I voluntarily broke off the friendship with Nina. 

     I don't think I made an official declaration of it, I just simply stopped playing with Nina for about a year.

     I did have emotional conflicts as a result of these circumstances. I felt bad and at that time I felt that I had lost a good friend, and I blamed this older teen-aged girl, whose name was Raquel and who was fifteen years old at the time.

     However, these are typical kinds of feelings kids go through when they get into conflicts with other children or when friendships come to an end, and the feelings I had at the time may have been a little more complicated due to the sexual nature of the events and the secrets that I was keeping, but I want to reiterate, I do not feel that these circumstances amounted to anything that could be accurately called trauma.

     Later on I will describe what happened in more detail, but I want to be fair to Nina, and so will also include her side of the story as well. 

     Needless to say, I believe that there was an adult who actually instigated sexual activity between two children of a very advanced nature and that Nina was no more to blame for what happened than I was.

     I also do not any more necessarily blame Raquel (the older girl). There was at that time a suspicious individual who lived next door named Craig, that I strongly suspect was the one who manipulated Raquel who in turn manipulated Nina and I.

     It is this person Craig that I strongly suspect with pre-meditation manipulated things "behind the scenes" so to speak, to inspire two little kids to start having sex with each other, but I can't prove it so that is all I will say about it at this time.

     Just suffice it to say that at this time that I was friends with Scott my perception was that Nina and I had recently experimented with sex (of a very advanced nature), and that it was her idea, and then Nina told Raquel and then Raquel became involved and then I freaked out about Raquel's involvement, especially since at one point Raquel suggested Nina perform a certain sexual act that she really didn't want to do, and it caused Nina to have a strong, negative emotional reaction later which Raquel then blamed on me.

     For these reasons I ended the friendship, and was also going through a morning process over the loss of that friendship, which I didn't blame on Nina at all, but rather on Raquel and this intuition that I had to get out of that whole situation.

     Like I said, later on about a year later, I went to visit Nina, and when I discovered that Raquel was no longer living next door and no longer her friend, I felt it was safe to resume our friendship.

     We remained friends for several years after that, and we never mentioned or talked about what had happened before, and we never again experimented sexually with one another.

     In a way, Nina and I are still friends today even though we live many miles apart from one another. 

     And if you are reading this Nina, I just want to say how much I appreciated your honesty and your willingness to talk about these events after so many years had passed by as well as your mother's willingness to talk with me also.

     It seems obvious to me that you work a good program, and that you're character is outstanding, and makes me feel good as a person that I had the good sense to pick a person to be friends with when I was a child, that would develop into a person with such integrity and strength of character.

     By talking with Nina and her mother I was able, after some time, to rule out in my mind that there was any connection between these events and the events that would occur with Scott and his family.

     Scott and his family are another story. They refuse to even talk to me. They are unwilling to provide any information or be of assistance to me in any way.

     I have given Scott and his family opportunity after opportunity to talk with me and work things out, and they have denied all of these opportunities, and so I am forced to present my side of the story and only my side without their aid or cooperation.

     I did feel that this chapter was necessary to write, because I did tell Scott about these incidences that occurred between Nina and I and it is a part of my story, but I did not want the reader to jump to any conclusions due to lack of information or commentary about it.