Yesterday 9:17 pm
Schwarz described their biological father as inconsistent and said Pressler quickly embraced Duane like a son. How lucky, she recalled thinking, that a prominent judge from a privileged family took a special interest in her kid brother. She and her stepbrothers joined Pressler’s high school youth group. When Duane was still in eighth grade, he came, too, tagging along on their weekly confabs at houses scattered across the Houston area and shuttling with them to Colorado for church camp even though he was too young to officially join the group, according to his family.
It wasn’t long until Duane’s behavior changed, his family said: His grades slid, and he started smoking and drinking, occasionally telling his sister about the out-of-body experiences he had when he looked in the mirror after a few beers, as if he didn’t quite recognize the boy with the almond-brown eyes staring back. At first the family chalked up their youngest’s mounting problems to the natural consequences of divorce and assumed the occasional bruises on his arms were from roughhousing with his stepbrothers. But Duane was never quite the same.
Years later he would allege that by the time he turned fourteen, Duane was being lured to Pressler’s home, where Pressler would sexually assault him, a few times a month. Often, Duane said, Pressler would tell him how “oppressed” and “under attack” he felt and that the rapes were part of God’s plan. Duane made it a few semesters before dropping out of college and by the mid-eighties was in the throes of addiction. Over the next three decades, as he rotated in and out of prison, his mentor built an empire.
https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-polit ... onvention/
It wasn’t long until Duane’s behavior changed, his family said: His grades slid, and he started smoking and drinking, occasionally telling his sister about the out-of-body experiences he had when he looked in the mirror after a few beers, as if he didn’t quite recognize the boy with the almond-brown eyes staring back. At first the family chalked up their youngest’s mounting problems to the natural consequences of divorce and assumed the occasional bruises on his arms were from roughhousing with his stepbrothers. But Duane was never quite the same.
Years later he would allege that by the time he turned fourteen, Duane was being lured to Pressler’s home, where Pressler would sexually assault him, a few times a month. Often, Duane said, Pressler would tell him how “oppressed” and “under attack” he felt and that the rapes were part of God’s plan. Duane made it a few semesters before dropping out of college and by the mid-eighties was in the throes of addiction. Over the next three decades, as he rotated in and out of prison, his mentor built an empire.
https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-polit ... onvention/