soft hand. Judith became a big sister. Her mother and George had their first child together—a baby girl named “Georgette.” While it was, at first, wonderfully exciting having a cute little baby to study with fascination, Judith quickly began to realize that this baby was ruining her life. She was losing her mother to the small, needy, bawling, creature. Her mother was completely wrapped up in the baby’s needs. Helen had quit her job at Boeing to focus on caring for her new daughter. George earned a decent living for the family at Bethlehem Steel in Seattle. It had been thirteen long years since Helen had given birth to Judith, and she needed to re-orient herself to caring for a newborn. Naturally, George and Helen were on top of the world with joy in producing a child together. But Judith felt as though she were pushed to the outside, looking in on this newly-formed trio.
A trio that no longer included herself.
George and Helen sold the small home in Renton and moved. Judith had to leave behind her neighborhood with all its familiar happenings; had to leave behind the lovely garden with the tall sunflower; had to leave Clyde the mailman. The family moved into a single-wide trailer home, situated in a mobile home park in Federal Way, directly across from the Lewis and Clark Theater, very near Highway 99—the strip of highway that would later be famous for being the highway that Gary Ridgway cruised in search of sex acts with prostitutes and candidates to murder.
Then Uncle Si died. He passed peacefully in his rest home in 1957.
As Judith and her mother adjusted to Uncle Si being gone forever, Judith realized the big sister thing really wasn’t working out for her. Not only did her mother love the baby more than her, Judith wasn’t permitted to babysit or even hold the baby because she could go into a seizure at any moment and drop the baby. Everyone knew it was dangerous for Judith to be around the baby. The damn seizures were ruining her life. Sometimes, in fits of sheer frustration, Judith poked baby Georgette or pinched her to make her cry. One time she roughly shook the baby. Judith was in big trouble with her parents.
Judith’s childhood entered a long tunnel of darkness. She was kicked out of school in the eighth grade as, in addition to her seizure disorder, her anger and aggression had increased to an unacceptable level. Teachers complained that “Judy” would do almost anything or create any kind of a disturbance to gain attention, especially where boys were concerned. She destroyed property, broke rules, and slammed her desk to the floor when challenged. She often acted ridiculously silly. Ultimately she was suspended from school for exhibiting indecent behavior in school.
The young, blonde, teenager with a body that was beginning to blossom into the full flower of womanhood, posed in front of a much nicer trailer home, probably the fanciest one in the park, while the man took pictures of her. She wore a bathing suit for him and posed for the camera. He told her that she was very pretty. He wanted to take some photographs of her so that he could have them to look at.
His yard was lovely with neatly landscaped flowerbeds, colorful flowers, a big tree stump. She felt beautiful, posing for the nice man in the pretty flowers.
But then mother found out and got so angry with her! She shouldn’t have gone down to the man’s trailer. Mother told her to never, never go there again. Why did she have to ruin something so nice?
Helen made an appointment for Judith to see a hypnotherapist in downtown Seattle. George and Helen walked Judith into the large, brick building. They waited in the waiting room while Judith was with the hypnotherapist. Judith sat face to face with the therapist, defiant, arms crossed in front of her chest. Nobody was going to hypnotize her! The doctor went back to the waiting room and shook his head. It hadn’t worked. George and Helen asked themselves what they could try next.
A subsequent visit to the hypnotherapist was more successful. While in a moderately deep hypnotic state, the therapist asked Judith to describe a perfect life. Judith, relaxed, compliant, verbally outlined her vision. She fancied herself out parked in a car with a boyfriend, in lover’s lane, and his arms would be around her, and he’d be kissing her gently, placing a ring on her finger and asking her to marry him.
One night Judith woke her sleeping parents and said she had something to tell them. Could it wait until morning? No, she had told them. She went on to describe to her parents’ stunned faces that George’s nephew had repeatedly molested her. She offered matter of fact details of how he had done it. Many times, Judith asserted, when the families got together, the nephew had insisted that she put her hand inside his open trousers and manipulate his penis with her hand. At other times, he had demanded that she take her pants down. Then he lay on top of her, rubbing his erect penis against her pubic area. She said all of this bothered her, and she knew it was wrong. She wanted to tell them about it. George, highly skeptical, asked Judith, “If you really saw a penis, what did it look like?” Judith replied that she couldn’t really explain it but she could draw a picture. After being given pencil and paper, Judith sketched a remarkably life-like image of the male genitalia. George and Helen instructed Judith to go back to bed. No follow up took place after the nighttime confession. It was not spoken about again. Later, Judith wondered if she had simply dreamed the whole thing.
Two years later, at age fifteen, Judith became a big sister again. This time Helen delivered a son, Wesley, named after Judith’s deceased father. By now the family had moved into a house in White Center, near Seattle, so that George could have a shorter commute to his work at Bethlehem Steele in Seattle. Judith retained no memory of the event, however, her mother later explained to her that once she was allowed to hold Wesley when he was a tiny baby. Unfortunately, Judith dropped him like a slippery bowling ball onto the floor when a seizure started. Years later Wesley accused Judith, tongue-in-cheek, of causing his own “grand mal seizure disorder.” In fact, his lifetime of seizures began at the age of ten after a passing car in front of their house had struck and nearly killed him.
Shortly after Wesley was born, with Judith’s temper tantrums escalating and deemed to be utterly dangerous to those around her, Judith’s parents admitted her to the Ryther Child Care Center in Seattle, November 23rd, where she would live and have round the clock care and monitoring. A clear message had been sent to Judith that she was now too dangerous to be around her own family.
Her parents had heard of the Ryther facility and decided they had no choice but to give it a try to see if something changed in Judith. The public school system would not take her back. She was becoming impossible to manage at home with her frequent seizure activity and horrible outbursts. And it was more and more difficult to keep her in the home, safe, with so many boys noticing her maturing, curvy, body and all. Judith thoroughly enjoyed mowing the lawn in her bathing suit, but Helen and George told her she could no longer do that in the front yard. It wasn’t right for a young lady to display herself in that way to the neighbors. Judith had been caught smoking cigarettes behind an abandoned building with boys. She was beginning to engage in sexual activities with young men—something respectable girls absolutely should not do. Judith was undeniably running wild. The Ryther Child Care Center, her parents were advised, had a reputation as being a home with firm, but loving discipline, and nothing but the best intentions for wayward youths. Helen and George were hopeful that this would be the winning ticket for Judith.
Founded in 1883, The Ryther Home was created by “Mother Ryther” (a.k.a. Olive Spore Ryther) who had a vision for a warm, safe home in Seattle where prostitutes, orphans, runaways, pregnant girls, and the like could live and be free from the dangers on the city streets. But the home was more than mere shelter. Mother Ryther insisted that everyone be responsible for household chores; she taught new mothers the skills needed to care for babies, and her ultimate goal was for every guest to reach a point of self- sufficiency. She encouraged everyone in the home to learn skills that would increase chances of finding employment.
In 1934, at the age of eighty-five, Mother Ryther died, having mentored over 3,100 children in her house. However, successors to Mother Ryther continued her work and the facility was open in 1960 when Judith’s parents checked her in. At the time of this writing, the Ryther Child Center remains open in north Seattle, funded by public and private donations, and serving adolescents with chemical dependency, mental disorders, and criminal histories. Prostitution, pregnancy, physical and sexual abuse, and general neglect cases are also admitted.
Judith lived