Alison Arngrim is best known for playing “Nellie Oleson” on the television series Little House on the Prairie. Millions of fans of the show still have dramatic reactions when reminded of the mean little terror with blonde curls from the Prairie. In real life, Argrim is a delight. Yet still, as many know, she is formidable indeed—in a “Nellie Oleson” kind of way—when she is fighting for a cause. A national board member of PROTECT, Arngrim became the foremost national spokesperson for the Circle of Trust campaign, lending her celebrity, and her own experience, to the battle. Here, Arngrim shares much of the inside story behind Senate Bill 33—as well as her belief that it is a major victory in the struggle for children’s civil rights.

It is by miracles that we have lived to see this.

So what does this mean? It means that we have been declared human.

It’s really almost impossible for me to describe the enormity of this event. To explain, what the passage of SB 33 “means,” one unfortunately has to look back at the horror of what the incest exception itself “means.”

Just like being molested, this wasn’t an accident. They did this one to us on purpose.

Let me back up. I have spent the better part of the last year and a half having the same conversation with people over and over. “So what are you doing?” “I’m working on a bill to overturn the Incest Exception.” “The WHAT???!!” “Please tell me you didn’t just say Incest Exception.” This would be followed by an explanation, met again with horror and disbelief, often ending with me producing a copy of Section 1203.066 from my purse, so they could see I really wasn’t making this up.

After they finished screaming, swearing, and sometimes crying, they would ask how they could help.

These were my conversations with what we like to refer to as “normal people.” These were not my conversations with people in Sacramento.

Everyone I met in Sacramento knew all about it. They didn’t bat an eye at the mention of granting people who rape their own children an exception to the normal course of legal action and punishment. The only excitement I ever got out of them, was when I had the utter audacity to suggest changing it.

Depending on whom I was talking to, there were several reactions. Sometimes it meant the meeting was simply over. They suddenly remembered a pressing appointment. They heard their mother calling. They couldn’t get out of the room fast enough.

Others, sighed, rolled their eyes and fidgeted. They began to hem and haw, “It’s very complicated. You wouldn’t understand.” I wouldn’t understand? Which part about getting raped in my own home by my own flesh and blood wouldn’t I understand?

Another popular one was, “Perhaps we should mount a study.” A study?? (I was later told that “Perhaps-we-should-mount-a-study” is Sacramento-ease for “— off.”)

Personally, I liked the ones who were honest.

“Nobody in Sacramento gives a shit that you were molested.”

Ah yes. Thanks for letting me know. My tax dollars at work.

But the law, the reasoning behind it and the level of fight we were going to have to put up, was explained to me, with blinding clarity by an influential lobbyist for criminal defense lawyers:

“You’ll never get this out of Public Safety. We have a deal in place.” He explained that people, (OK, defense lawyers, which your definition of “people” may or may not include), had gone to a lot of trouble to keep this in place, and it wasn’t going anywhere. He explained the enormous convenience of being able to “plead out” almost all of one’s molestation cases without ever having to mount a defense. He explained the power he and other defense attorneys had with the majority Democratic Party in Sacramento and which Senators he claimed they “owned.”

He then went on to elaborate about how the problem of child molestation was “over rated,” that “you people get hysterical cause some guy walked out of the shower naked.” and how it really annoyed him when as he put it, “you women come up here, a bunch of mothers and victims with your personal problems.”

[Editor’s Note: Ms. Arngrim does not exaggerate. PROTECT has heard legislators (and in this case a lobbyist) in three different states spontaneously bring up the scenario of walking out of the shower in front of a child during discussions about sexual abuse law. For some unknown reason, this particular fear—presumably of false allegations—is invoked more often than the McMartin preschool case].

I asked him to show me where in our proposed bill it mentioned the word shower. I showed him where it said, “substantial sexual contact,” “multiple victims” and “rape with a foreign object.” I couldn’t find the word “shower” in there, even once.

I then explained to him that PROTECT was not your usual group of “victims” that in fact many of us were not molestation victims at all, but doctors, lawyers, professors, CEOs, social workers, assistant attorney generals and police chiefs. Quite a number of people you would do well not to go around addressing as “mom.”

But it wasn’t like he didn’t want to help. He offered to negotiate.

“OK. I’ll make you a deal. How about we give you the step-fathers?”

How could this be? How could actual live human beings, in this day and age, be having these kind of conversations? How could someone possibly consider rape of children by their own parents, something to be negotiated?? How could they talk about making a “deal?”

Because that’s what this was. A deal.

In 1981, a group of convicted child molesters, their therapists, friends, families and lawyers, descended upon Sacramento and asked for “a deal.” They claimed that people who raped their own children weren’t “real child molesters.” They shouldn’t be held to the same legal standard. It was a special case, requiring special circumstances.

But wait a minute—aren’t most molesters known to or related to the victim? Doesn’t “stranger molestation” make up less than 10% of molestation cases? If you make an exception that says only people related to the victim don’t have to go to jail, doesn’t that mean you just gave a pass to more than 90% of all child molesters??? Yes. That’s right. That’s the point.

If it was really about all the various ideals they blathered about in 1981 “family reunification,“ “keeping the breadwinner in the home,” etc.—why doesn’t it just apply to fathers? (Fathers with jobs for that matter). How come it includes uncles, brothers, cousins, grandparents and “anyone living like a family member in the home?” Are we desperate to "reunify" nieces and uncles? Prevent financial ruin by keeping the cousin in the home? And “member of the household?” Wait, doesn’t that describe practically everybody who ever got close enough to molest anyone? Well, yes, it does. That’s the point. Pretty much the only child molesters not protected by this insanity, would be total strangers, swooping in by helicopter.

As the man said to me, “Look lady, we’re defense lawyers. We keep people out of jail. That’s our job.”

Well, OK, so I can see how a defense lawyer could think this was a great idea. But how on earth, could elected officials, who are supposed to represent the voters, fight to keep this on the books?

Laws get changed by people.

People get sick and tired of something, they let their representatives know. If the people they elected don’t satisfy them, they vote new ones in who will listen to them. This is what they mean by “government by the people.” Sounds simple enough, but first you have to be considered "people."

Say what? Yes, you see that was the problem. In all the arguments I read from 1981, in all the ridiculous conversations I had in Sacramento, and in all of the mad hatter’s tea party committee hearings I went to, they did everything they could do avoid talking about actual people.

There were many things that were defended, honored and held in high esteem. They included the idea of “family reunification,” the image of “the breadwinner,” the fantasy of “rehabilitation,” and my favorite, the concept of “judicial discretion.” (Why is that my favorite? Because first I was told this bill could never pass because it was offensive to the concept of “prosecutorial discretion.” Then the prosecutors gave us their endorsement. The next day I was told the problem was “judicial discretion.” Must have been a typo.)

Never, ever, did anyone mention people. People who rape. People who get raped. People who are forced to live with their rapist. People who contract sexually transmitted diseases including HIV. People who develop post traumatic stress disorder and people who commit suicide.

Because we were talking about children. And children, children molested by their own parents, were not people in the eyes of the law.

It got really weird to listen to my so-called representatives talking as if I didn’t exist. It was a lot like reading about the Dred Scott decision. Which basically said, “yeah this would all be great if you were actually a person, but hey, you’re not. So no, you can’t sue.”

I remember when I read that it wasn’t until 1962 that a woman could sue her husband for injuries he caused by beating her. See, a woman couldn’t sue her husband at all. They said since she wasn’t a separate person, it would be like suing herself. Nice concept. Except she wasn’t the one who slammed her head into the wall and broke both of her arms.

They had the same deal going with incestuous molestation. In this case there was no “child.” There was no “victim.” The “concept” was that there was a “family unit.” The “unit” got sentenced to therapy. The child who had been raped was under just as much “obligation” as the rapist. This meant a rape victim could be threatened with incarceration for refusing to participate in therapy with her rapist. Because they weren’t a separate person. They weren’t a person at all.

That’s why the people in Sacramento were so rude to me. People change laws. I wasn’t a person. I was an idea. An idea they didn’t like. I was a “theoretical construct,” demanding to be treated like a human being. I was suggesting that people who are molested by their own relatives are in fact a group of disenfranchised citizens, being denied legal and political redress.

I was making things messy and complicated. I was being difficult.

Funny, that’s just what the guy who molested me used to say whenever I said no.

But this time, I was bigger than they were. Me? Well, no, not me. Us. Like I said people change laws. And the trick was to show our lawmakers that we were in fact, people. But not just any people. Very loud people. Very unhappy people. In very large numbers. People who vote and who belong to powerful political organizations. People who are not going to go away. People who are not going to shut up.

Ah yes, the not shutting up. The first committee hearing, we were virtually kicked to the curb. I was definitely expected to go away and shut up. Instead I went away and went on Larry King Live. This may well have been one of the truly great, not-shutting-up moments in history. Certainly in the history of the battle against the incest exception.

Because ideas don’t go on Larry King. People do.

And Larry told all the other people who were watching to go to the PROTECT website. “That’s w-w-w-Protect-dot-Org!!” he shouted, again and again.

And to the website they went.

So many people went to the PROTECT website that night it temporarily crashed the server. And there they saw the names and phone numbers of the people in Sacramento who had defended the incest exception. And then they called them. They called them, alright. They called them a lot of things.

So what’s so unusual about that? Don’t people call up politicians and holler and complain all the time? Yes. But never about this. The incest exception was supposed to be a secret. Everyone was supposed to go quietly about their lives and not question its existence. It most certainly wasn’t supposed to get discussed on Larry King.

Everyone was much more polite when we came back the next year with SB 33.

It was still an uphill battle. We still had to argue with them day and night for a year, and call in reinforcements from every political quarter we could muster, but I must say, they sure were a lot more polite. They had to be. We were people now. People who go on TV.

Thanks Larry. You rock. Yes, the revolution will be televised. It will be on CNN.

So we won. Big time. The final votes were 77 to 0. 40 to 0. Unanimous. Everybody to Zero. I guess some “deals” just don’t stay in place forever.

Yes, the evil law got changed. Yes, people who are raped by their own flesh and blood are now legally equal to people raped by strangers. Little five-year-old girls won’t have to sit in so-called “therapy” and be "confronted" by their attackers about how they feel about “sex with daddy” or be threatened with incarceration in juvenile hall for refusing. Children won’t have to hear, "Go ahead and call the police again. See, I told you they wouldn’t do anything."

And whenever one law gets changed, other laws, and whole attitudes and court systems follow. Now incest can’t be “written off” as quickly with, "well, hey, it couldn’t have been that bad, they just gave him therapy." The legal and social repercussions of this, will hopefully be as huge and lasting, as the ghastly repercussions of the incest exception that doomed so many children.

But as we say in Hollywood, what’s in it for me?

I was not a “victim of this law,” as were some of the young women who testified. I was unfortunately, like millions of others a victim of the completely idiotic attitudes that fostered its creation and were perpetuated by it. My case never went to court. I didn’t get sent to any awful sessions with my attacker.

But in the 23 years of this hideous “exception,” the attitudes that wrought it have filtered down to thousands of people who don’t even know of the law’s existence. That’s why I’ve had to listen to stuff like, “well, at least it was someone you knew.” “Oh, I’m sure he really loved you” “He didn’t mean it.”

And “For god’s sake it’s not like you were raped by a stranger or something!”

No, it was much worse. And I wish I didn’t know him, and of course he bloody well “meant it,” you idiot, and if that’s your idea of "love", you can keep it. (Seriously if that is how you would treat someone you love, thanks for the warning. I’ll do my very best to stay on your bad side, OK?)

So what did they say to me today and why am I in such shock? Why am I crying? I didn’t cry on Larry King. I didn’t cry at any of the committee hearings. Why am I falling apart all over the place now?

The whole state of California, the entire state legislature, (including several of the aforementioned elected officials who had gone out their way to oppose us), all jumped up at once and startled me, by positively yelling:

“We’re sorry. You were right. He shouldn’t have done that to you. It wasn’t very nice. Not only that, it wasn’t even an “accident” or something that “just happened.” It was a crime. You were hurt just as badly as someone who was assaulted by a stranger. Well, worse, really. And you have every right to be just as angry. In fact, even madder, cause we all acted stupid and pretended this wasn’t important. That you weren’t even a person. Sorry. And ditto for all those friends of yours, there. As a matter of fact, we’re so sorry, we’re going to see to it that no other children have to put up with this nonsense ever again. OK?”

OK. Apology accepted.

And now I just can’t stop thinking of that story in Andrew Vachss’ book “Another Chance to Get It Right,” about the little girl testifying at the trial of her rapist:

“No more?” she asked.

“No more.” I told her.

Today they finally said, “No more.”

I’d been waiting a long time for that one. So yes, after holding it in for a year and a half, after being treated as less than human, a second-class citizen, having my civil rights and the civil rights of millions of others dismissed as a nuisance, having our degradation and suffering dismissed as an annoyance, to be suddenly declared a human being and a citizen of the state of California, knocked me flat on my ass. I cried for two days straight.

And then my friends at PROTECT had to go and put that new picture on the website, that looks exactly like me when I was a kid. Just in case I might have possibly missed the point.

So I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t do this sooner. I’m sorry it took us all so long to get declared human.

I’ll never be sorry for anything I had to go through or put up with during this whole crazy fight.

But, I’m sorry for everybody who got totally screwed by the old law that we were too late to help. I’m sorry for everyone who just couldn’t hang on, who didn’t live to see this. I’m sorry we couldn’t do more for you.

And yes, I’m sorry I couldn’t have done more for one small blond girl in particular. But I really think she’ll be OK now. If I can just get her to stop crying.

But then, I guess she’s only human.

Copyright © 2005 Alison Arngrim. All rights reserved.