One late night in January 1997, Gina Zhdilkov set out from Los Angeles International Airport in a rental car driven by her then-husband, Roger Greer. They were going to slay, as Zhdilkov wrote in a poem afterwards, “a withered, old dragon,” to set his “captive maidens free.”
The dragon was her father, Herbert Becker, who lay unconscious in a hospital bed in Los Angeles. Zhdilkov, then 35 years old, called him a dragon because he hoarded gold coins in drawers throughout his house. A neighbor had found the 82-year-old widower collapsed in the bathroom of his house in Paso Robles in central California. His son had arranged for Becker to be transferred to a hospital near his home.
Becker had molested and raped Zhdilkov, she says, from age 3 to 13. He had told Zhdilkov if her mother ever found out about the abuse, it would kill her. When her mother died of a stroke in 1993, Zhdilkov started to remember details of her abuse. For two years from 1994, she went to therapy in Salt Lake City where she then lived. By the end of 1996, her therapist felt she was coping sufficiently with her post-traumatic stress that she could stop her sessions.
But Zhdilkov had lingering doubts as to whether she was remembering all her father had done to her. In particular, she suspected he had used her to make child porn. With her father’s collapse, she decided it was time for the truth.
Greer and Zhdilkov pulled up in the driveway of the house in the Paso Robles’ retirement community a little after 2 a.m. In the garage, Greer worked on opening a padlocked trunk. Zhdilkov went through the bedroom, rifling through Becker’s sports jackets. For 23 hours straight, they searched the house. All they found were some pornographic stories. Some of the things he wrote about, she remembered him doing to her. Finally, she sat on the edge of the bed.
“I was crazy to come here,” she said to Greer. “We’re not going to find anything.”
Greer insisted on searching Becker’s closet again. “Bingo,” he said and held up a cloth moneybag. He pulled out negatives. “God, Gina, this is sick.”
“That’s my mother,” she said of one negative. “That’s me. I don’t know who that is.” They were horrific images of little girls, of teenagers, and her mother penetrated with bizarre objects. “You don’t want those images in your mind if you don’t have to have them,” Zhdilkov, now 47, says.
For several minutes, she was in shock. Then, it was as if a dam had burst inside her. She screamed again and again in the voice of a 3-year-old child, “He hurt my mommy.” Greer tried to calm her down, fearing her screams would draw the police. She had to get her father’s blood out of her veins. She flew into the bathroom, desperate to find something to cut open her wrists. Greer forced her to down a large alcoholic drink, and she passed out.
Greer and Zhdilkov burned most of the negatives in her father’s fireplace. She took back to her therapist the images of her and items she recalled her father using to abuse her, such as a pair of handcuffs. Through all this, Greer was constantly by her side. Ten years later, though, in 2006, Zhdilkov learned that the very person who helped her recover from her childhood abuse shared some of her father’s aberrant sexual tastes. It was no longer Herbert Becker she had to expel from her veins. Rather it was the man with whom she found love for the first, and, she prophecizes, last time in her life, her third husband, Roger Greer.
In January 2008, 52-year-old Greer began a 33-month stretch in a Seattle federal penitentiary, SeaTac, for the possession of child pornography. He also has to pay a fine of $2,500. Court documents state he had 600-plus still and video images which “consisted predominantly of … naked, lasciviously posed photographs of prepubescent females.” Through a prison spokesperson, Greer declined an interview request.
Zhdilkov, who is half-Jewish, draws a comparison of sorts between what she describes as Greer’s “complete betrayal” of her with child porn and the Holocaust. “It’s like marrying a Holocaust survivor and after the wife goes to bed, he gets on Nazi Websites and collects pictures of the bodies,” she says.
An experienced therapist for sexual-abuse victims, Zhdilkov gives an eloquent definition and depth to the suffering of the voiceless victims of child pornography: the hundreds of thousands of unidentified children whose visually recorded torment floats eternally around the Internet. According to a 2006 congressional record, Salt Lake City FBI agent Juan Becerra says an estimated 3 million images of child pornography are on the Internet. Much of the child porn comes from Southeast Asia and former Eastern Bloc countries. A 2003 U.S. State Department report noted that children were being kidnapped and even purchased from Russian orphanages for sexual abuse and child pornography. Child pornography is big business, generating $20 billion a year. And that’s not including individuals who trade privately with other collectors.
While some make hefty sums from child porn, others have to live with the consequences. Zhdilkov’s life charts the saddest of circles: from a child-porn victim in the 1960s, when her father would, she surmises, sell photographs of her abuse to supplement the family income to that of an unwitting wife of a man who victimized hundreds of children by illegally downloading images of their suffering off the Internet. She also lives with the knowledge that the images her father took and sold of her may well still be in someone’s collection. Her story, for all its horror and undeniable pathos, offers a window into a complex, murky world that the term “kiddie porn” renders all too simple to digest. Porn comes with associations of freedom of choice for adults who perform sexual acts for the camera. There is no freedom in photographs of terrified, naked children, Zhdilkov says.
Rhett McQuiston, captain of Utah’s Attorney General’s Task Force on Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC), says video clips are highly sought after by child-porn collectors. “One of the most disturbing images I’ve ever seen is a young child being raped by an adult.” Add sound to the image of the child screaming for help and the horror only escalates.
ICAC investigated more than 400 cases in Utah last year alone and sent 70 to the courts. That, McQuiston acknowledges, doesn’t even scratch the surface. “For every one we get, there’s a 1,000 out there we don’t.”
One the FBI got was Greer. His sentencing merited six lines in the Deseret News. But behind that sentencing stand the children and teenagers whom Greer victimized by downloading and hoarding images of their abuse. Zhdilkov wanted to speak at Greer’s sentencing. Someone on the prosecution team told her that, because she wasn’t a victim, it wasn’t possible. “No one was speaking for the victims,” Zhdilkov says. “I went through it as a child. I could at least speak for them.”
Zhdilkov has fought hard to take her life back from her father’s abuse, and now from her ex-husband’s deception. Part of that battle was legally changing her last name in 1994 to Zhdilkov. “I wanted something that was mine,” she says. Zhdilkov was the name of the village her father’s parents came from in Russia. “My grandfather was the safest guy in the whole world,” she says. Pogroms razed the village to the ground almost a century ago. “To this day, there’s nothing there,” she says. “But I survived.”
SNAP HAPPY
Zhdilkov was born in South Central Los Angeles in 1961. Her mother, Mildred “Marie” Becker traced her lineage back to pre-Revolutionary War times. The neighborhood they lived in was predominantly Hispanic. Herbert Becker kept to himself in the detached garage where he spent much of his spare time. “He felt he had the anonymity and privacy he ultimately needed,” Zhdilkov says. “Most of what my dad did was in that garage.” A lonely child, she adored the neighboring Mexican families, particularly watching the mothers cook in their noisy, steam-filled kitchens.
Becker was a machinist and, his daughter says, a loud, hectoring bully. He would take his wife and child down to Tijuana to show them how good they had it. “See how lucky you are,” he’d say as they drove past shantytowns. “He liked to associate with people who were in desperate circumstances,” Zhdilkov recalls, like the motherless girls who lived around the corner in a trailer court. “Looking back, most likely, he abused them.”
Her father molested her at such a young age, she said, “I repressed a lot of memories.” Instead she had nightmares and acted out in ways that today, she says, would be recognized by professionals as signs of chronic abuse. As she grew older, if memories came to her, “I would push them out so fast it was like having a remote control, click, we’re not doing that station.”
When she was 8, her father took her and her mother to an old pond sealed off with barbed wire. It was a secluded area with a rock that resembled a chair. Becker had his daughter take her clothes off. She didn’t want to do it, but her mother was there. “If my mom was there, nothing bad was going to happen,” she felt.
Becker didn’t like her covering herself with her arms. What upsets Zhdilkov about that day even now was that she was smiling in some of the photographs. “I betrayed myself,” she says about those smiles. When she and Greer found Becker’s negatives, there were pictures from that rock session where she wasn’t smiling. “Anyone who could keep looking at that child and keep snapping those pictures was pretty sick,” she says.
Her father had a large-bulb aluminum lamp for lighting his subjects. Whenever she had a pimple, he would drag her under it and invasively examine her. “I always had terrible memories of that lamp,” she says. When she became sexually active in her late teens, “I would have flashbacks during sex when I would feel there is this light being shined on me.” Yet, she never let herself believe that something like that had happened. “One of the sad things about child abuse is that it’s less painful to tell yourself as a child or an adult that you’re crazy, you’re evil, there’s something wrong with you, than to believe your own truth.”
THE MAN OF HER DREAMS
“I can’t stand to look at you anymore,” Becker screamed at 13-year-old Zhdilkov. “I’m going to kill you.”
Her mother screamed as she fought to pull her husband off their daughter. He fell down. “That’s it, I’m done,” he said. He moved into a motel that night and stayed there for eight years.
On Zhdilkov’s 18th birthday, her Hispanic boyfriend proposed to her. They were married in a Catholic Church. The first time she had sex as an adult, she was confused by how familiar it felt. Later, she “blanked out a lot, went elsewhere,” during the act. “Nobody seemed to mind,” she says and laughs. While Zhdilkov laughs often and loud, it’s a sound that teeters constantly on the edge of tears.
Once married, every time her husband came home, she got a knot in her stomach at the prospect of his sexual needs. “People think when the abuse is over, it’s over, but it’s not,” she says. “If you grow up with something so incredibly twisted, you don’t even know you need to heal. You’re wanting to find something better, healthy and you don’t know what better, healthy is.”
The next several years were a picture of instability. Her first marriage lasted 18 months. She moved to Utah to save money but hadn’t bargained on the poor wages and tips she’d earn as a waitress. Pregnant with twins after a short relationship, she found herself living on a food budget of $50 a month in an apartment she couldn’t afford to heat. A neighbor in her duplex offered to help. She ended up marrying him. After graduating with a BA in psychology, she continued on for a Master's in social work. By then, she and her second husband had split up, after the birth of her third child.
Part of her graduate work included volunteer hours at Salt Lake City’s Rape Crisis Center, now known as the Rape Recovery Center. At the conclusion of her nighttime crisis line shift, which volunteers did at home, a friendly volunteer, Roger Greer, would debrief her and other volunteers by phone, Zhdilkov says. He was known “as a committed advocate to victims and volunteers alike.” After she separated from her second husband, whom she later divorced, Greer called to offer support. In 1993, a romance developed, although Zhdilkov was very cautious. She knew that pedophiles often honed in on single women with young children. “He had to go through this interview process if he was going to be around my kids,” she recalls.
Everyone loved the former Boy Scout leader, from her 8-year-old twin girls and 3-year-old daughter to her picky cat. A former botanist and plant researcher, Greer started working at Salt Lake City-based National Stock Transfer (NST) in the early 1990s. A few years later, Greer bought the company, which handles the transfer of ownership of company stocks, from its then legally embattled owner, David Yeaman, Zhdilkov recalls. According to a Wall Street Journal article in 1997, Yeaman and four associates were convicted of securities fraud involving companies unrelated to NST in a Philadelphia federal court. Greer’s stewardship of NST hasn’t been without its problems, his current jail time excluded. The SEC fined him and a former associate $5,000 for violations of securities registration provisions in 2000.
Before Zhdilkov, then-40 year old Greer, according to his attorney, Jerome Mooney, had never had an adult relationship. “In reality, he should never have got involved with her in the first place,” Mooney says.
That’s a sentiment Zhdilkov undoubtedly now shares. But not back in 1994. Then, for the first time in her life, she felt safe. That sense of security, combined with the death of her mother from a stroke, brought an avalanche of memories of her father’s abuse. Greer went with Zhdilkov to therapy with a local psychologist, Thomas G. Harrison. For the first year, she couldn’t bring herself to look at Harrison. In the voice of a child, she would whisper to Greer to tell Harrison the depravities her father had inflicted upon her.
At first she was terrified she would lose Greer. But each time she said something about her past, Greer would hold her and tell her how sorry he was for what had happened. “I loved him so much, you can’t imagine,” she says.
GHOST MOM
Zhdilkov graduated with her masters degree on June 10, 1994. She married Greer the next day. Her twins sang a wedding song a cappella, and her youngest child was the ring bearer. “It was the most beautiful day of my life,” she says in tears. They bought a fixer-upper on Princeton Avenue, in the 9th and 9th district of Salt Lake City.
For the first time in Zhdilkov’s life, love and sex came together. As she grew psychologically and emotionally healthier, she left behind the damaged child who had turned to Greer for comfort so often. It was then, she says, her husband pulled away. “The problem was he wasn’t comfortable with me anymore,” she says. “I didn’t get it.”
After her discovery of her father’s photographs and his subsequent death a few months later, Zhdilkov struggled to keep her life together. “I was determined my father wasn’t going to reach out from the grave and ruin everything I had worked so hard for, my life with my husband and my daughters. I just wanted to raise this happy family so bad.”
Try as she might, though, the horror of what Greer had found in her father’s closet slowly consumed her. She couldn’t sleep without getting drunk first. She had nightmares, constantly shook, and after a year, had to give up work as a therapist for sexually abused children and their families at Valley Mental Health. She found herself spacing out into nothingness, believing she was nothing more than “nuclear fallout.” Her mother had gone through similar spells where she would abruptly sit in a chair and mentally disappear. “She was all I had, and I would try harder and say, ‘Please let me in, please let me in,’ and she was just like a zombie,” Zhdilkov says.
All Zhdilkov thought she could do to help everybody was “to move on, instead of having this ghost mom who’s there but not really there.” A year after finding the pictures, she tried to kill herself with tranquilizers and alcohol. Instead of stopping her pain from leaking “all over my house and my kids,” her suicide attempt made things “infinitely worse,” she says in a tiny voice.
After a week in a psychiatric institute and treatment for substance abuse, Zhdilkov began the long path to recovery. Her children are now adults, living their separate lives.
THE ENEMY BESIDE YOU
Greer and Zhdilkov separated in September 2003, when, she says, she learned he’d been lying about finances, including taking out numerous substantial loans and failing to file his taxes for five years. A year and a half later, they got back together. On June 29, 2006, Zhdilkov left work to find her husband home uncharacteristically early. “You won’t believe the day I’ve had,” he told her.
The FBI had interrogated him about a Seattle-based business associate being investigated for securities fraud and had carted off computers from his office. The bombshell was yet to come. “You better sit down now because there’s something I need to tell you that may or may not end our marriage,” she recalls him calmly informing her.
During the FBI interview, he had denied having any child porn on his home or work computers. Later that day, he changed his mind. He voluntarily handed over to the FBI four discs of child pornography he had at the office. He told his stunned wife he had downloaded it from the Internet while they were separated because he was depressed.
Zhdilkov drove to one of her daughters’ homes. Her son-in-law told her, “You can’t stay married to him, can you?”
She returned home to find a note on the table from Greer. The FBI had more questions for him. “I should be back in a couple of hours. I sincerely regret the pictures. Love, Roger.”
Her closest friend, special-education teacher in Davis and Salt Lake county schools, Beth Mazur, was driving when her cell phone rang. A voice like a child crying for help called out her name on the phone. Mazur found Zhdilkov in a rocking chair. She said she had thrown Greer out of the house. If Zhdilkov had had a gun that day—as she says she does now—she would have shot him. “This was the enemy in my house, the enemy of everything,” she says. “He had to go at all costs.”
Mazur took Zhdilkov home. All night long Zhdilkov lay in Mazur’s bed with her, sobbing, in the fetal position. “It was like the whole world had broke,” Mazur says.
Zhdilkov believes her ex-husband, whom she divorced after a messy yearlong battle in 2007, from the beginning of their marriage was collecting images of child sexual exploitation. As a social worker, Mazur says, Zhdilkov knew all the signs to look for when it came to identifying a child-porn addict. The problem was, given Greer’s five years of volunteer work at the rape crisis center, so did he. “And he hid them,” Mazur says.
One dark question Zhdilkov and Mazur sought to answer was whether Greer had molested any of their four daughters. For two years Greer picked up Mazur’s pre-adolescent daughter from school, claiming he wanted to protect her from child molesters. All four girls, Zhdilkov says, denied anything took place. While Zhdilkov is convinced Greer is a pedophile, federal court documents state, “Though Mr. Greer does not have a diagnosis of pedophilia, the large quantity [of child-porn images] he possessed seems to contradict any contentions that he did not have a strong interest in this subject matter.” For 10 years after his anticipated release in 2010, Greer will be on the sex offenders’ registry.
For Mooney, it was Greer’s post-separation depression and Zhdilkov’s obsession with child porn that led to his client’s problems. Zhdilkov’s obession created “a self-fulfilling prophecy,” he says.
Such theories drive Zhdilkov to tears. “For somebody who was attracted to what he is attracted to, I can’t believe it wasn’t a thrill for him to hear the stories I told my therapist about what had happened to me,” she says. “How could he hear what he heard and then look at those little girls on the Internet and not be sick?”
WAITING FOR GOD
On October 18, 2007, Greer was finally sentenced for a single count of child pornography possession. Prior to the sentencing, Zhdilkov went to the prosecutor’s office with a box of chocolates. She had written a note with the famous line from Forrest Gump—“Life is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you are going to get.”
When Zhdilkov spoke to the prosecutor later that day, having not attended the sentencing, she was told Federal Judge Paul Cassell had given Greer 33 months, 18 less than the minimum federal prosecutors had asked for. They had agreed to drop one count of child porn receipt after Greer pled guilty to possession, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years. Zhdilkov fell apart. She called the Rape Recovery Center, desperate for someone to talk to. “I couldn’t even breathe to talk,” she says.
Today, Zhdilkov lives in a small house with a back yard where she plans to plant pumpkins, zucchini squash and tomatoes, boysenberry and lilac bushes. Her only company is a parakeet with a dispiriting lack of birdsong. She doesn’t want to disclose where she works or lives for fear of retaliation from members of Greer’s family.
Greer’s sister, Kay Galster, who is running National Stock Transfer in his absence, refused to comment for this story. Attorney Mooney sees no reason why Greer won’t take control of his company when he’s released. Mooney believes Zhdilkov is “profoundly paranoid.” She mounted a letter-writing campaign to numerous people involved in Greer’s case, attempting to ensure he received the justice she felt he deserved.
How much fight Zhdilkov has left in her now is a matter of her own inner debate. She says, “I’d be happy to go at any time. I’m done. I’ve outlived my expiration date.”
For any of the many thousands of child-porn victims in this country and abroad, ICAC’s McQuiston says, it is next to impossible to put their victimization behind them. “Even if the subject is convicted and sentenced, the images are still out there. There’s no way to ensure 100 percent they are removed. They keep popping up in different people’s collections.”
Zhdilkov says she understands victims who feel “a piece of you has been taken and it’s out there forever. But you’ve still got your soul.”
After Zhdilkov threw Greer out, she found numerous discs around the house that contained, she says, tens of thousands of images of child porn. Attorney Mooney says although he hadn’t reviewed the material Zhdilkov found at home, “we did not believe Greer was the source of it.” ICAC took away five computers and numerous hard drives, lap tops and discs. One image Zhdilkov says she found stuck in her mind. It was labeled, “I love elephants.” A naked girl stands, staring at the camera, surrounded by elephant figurines. The haunted look in the child’s eyes is the same look Zhdilkov sees in a photograph of herself at age 4 standing beside a Christmas tree. The FBI did not identify the little girl.
No clearer indication of the insurmountable problem child pornography poses for law enforcement is that less than 1 percent of children in child porn seized by the FBI are identified through cross-checking available databases. That said, there are still successes. ICAC’s McQuiston says Public Safety Department officer Steve Gamvroulas spent two months tracking down the address of a gas station from a partial name and a high school mascot’s name from images in a video relating to another case. “It’s very tedious work watching those videos over and over again,” McQuiston says. Three minors were identified and rescued, their tormentors put behind bars. “Thanks to Gamvroulas there are three victims who aren’t being raped on a daily basis anymore,” McQuiston says.
An arrest, as Zhdilkov knows, is in a sense only the beginning of the story for the victim, not the end. Caught between the betrayal of the two men she wanted to be loved by most in her life, she cannot say who is better or worse.
“I couldn’t conceive of what forgiveness meant after my father died,” she says. “I wanted an absolute guarantee he was in hell.” One day she found herself on her knees, telling God that Becker was in his hands now. That and her work helped put him behind her. “When I started looking back at the number of clients with abused histories I’d worked with, I’ve surpassed my father in helping more people than he hurt with the knowledge he gave me and that I wouldn’t have learned any other way,” she says. “That’s not a thank you to him. It’s kind of how good triumphs over evil.”
Getting over Greer, however, is another matter. She had so looked forward to growing old with him, talking over their memories.
“There is a big part of me that almost feels like Roger was worse. He saw the pain, he heard the pain, he knew what it was doing,” she says. “I never knew him.”
By Beth 04-23-08
Dramatic article. It is an outrage that things like this go on today in our own neighborhoods. How can we protect our children?
By Anonymous 04-23-08
Greer's defense attorney, Jerome Mooney, did not review the tens of thousands of images found on discs and computers in his client's former home for good reason. After first attempting (unsuccessfully) to defend Greer by trying to get the FBI search warrant which was executed at Greer's business thrown out, he moved on to other manuevers such as trying to get his client off by claiming that his elderly mother was dependent on his care.
Failing the above, Mooney set his sites on convincing former federal judge, Paul Cassell, that Greer should receive leniency because he "voluntarily" turned over the 4 discs at National Stock Transfer. What Mooney (and ultimately, Cassell) downplayed, was that Greer "turned-over" discs AFTER the FBI had already confiscated his computers.
Greer declined to grant the FBI access to home computers. He denied that further evidence would be found at home. However, Greer's ex-wife did not believe that his newly discovered predilection would be limited to "the office." Greer regularly stayed-up on home computers late into the night, "catching up on work." Ironically, he claimed that he was overburdened with work because Kay Galster, his sister, sole employee, and now, owner/operator of National Stock Transfer, was "lazy and incompetent."
Greer carefully guarded home computers. He kept the fact that he had wired the home with 3 lines of high speed internet, a secret from his wife. Instead he claimed that there was only dial-up internet at home because he couldn't justify a need for faster and more expensive service. "We use the internet so rarely." Internet bills it was later discovered, were sent to Greer's private PO box.
Greer's ex wife did not know how to use the internet at the time of their separation. (Those who know her personally, laugh at Greer's claim that she "must have planted the evidence on home computers.) But with the assistance of a friend, she was able to download just one of the hundreds of unlabled discs Greer shamelessly and confidently left lying about in 3 of his home offices. She discovered approximately 100 files on that sole disc, containing approximately 10-12 images of child pornography per file. After contacting the Utah Attorney General and giving permission to remove all computers and computer-related materials from her home, she learned that there were at least, tens of thousands more images of abused little girls.
Ultimately, the Utah Attorney General was ordered to turn over their evidence to the FBI because their investigation was already in progress. The FBI obtained a separate warrant before viewing the 4 discs Greer provided initially. Their case appeared so solid, it was decided to prosecute on that alone. Unfortunatly, that decision opened the door for the defense to claim that there was no further evidence beyond that which Greer "voluntarily surrendered." Mooney argued that Greer had "recently concluded that it was wrong to download the images at his office and was plannig to destroy the discs." Apparently, the FBI interrupted his immenent intention to do so.
Judge Cassell was informed that there was further evidence in the home. Furthermore, the dates on downloaded files confirmed that Greer had collected and saved the images prior to anyone else's awareness. Cassell also knew that Greer protected some of his material with triple passwords and firewalls. But in the end, Cassell granted Greer a downward departure in sentencing from 51 to 33 months. Furthermore, he limited Greer's requirement to register as a sex offender to 10 years, when he could have added to public safety by having him register for life. While Cassell could have also fined Greer up to $250,000 for his crimes, he fined him only $2,500, which he is allowed to pay in convenient installments. It seems that the fact that Greer was represented by an attorney with offices in Salt Lake and Beverly Hills, escaped Cassell's awareness that Greer could probably handle a stiffer fine.
Mooney's comments in the above article are disgusting. The memory of having seen him in action at court, is even more disgusting. Mooney strolled into court like a jovial celebrity attending a party. He deflected the prosecution's admonitions to remember the sufferring of the child victims, with easy smiles and self-serving small talk about his upcoming travels.
In the final analysis, the "injustice system" simply slapped another one on the hand. Is it any wonder that child victimization is so prevelant in our society today?
By Concerned 04-23-08
Why do we continue to victumize the most inoscent? We now know that our society can become better if we pay attention to the upbringing of our children. How can this continue to go on in our society? Where are we going? This is a clear example of failure in our society. Roger brutalized this woman for sex? Then the justice system failed. What message is Roger getting if he is not shown that this is wrong. Our society is in cayoss because there is little justice.
By Gina Zhdilkov, LCSW 04-23-08
Mr. Mooney,
In your world, I'm sure that manipulating the truth in order to secure the lightest sentence possible for a sex offender, is no more significant than just "another day and another dollar" (or car, boat, vacation home, etc.?) But in my world, the truth you mangle for money is not only the life I have endured, but the lives and truths of millions of children who have their innocence and human dignity obliterated by the kind of "men" you represent.
Sure, our governement assures us that if we can pay a "good" attorney and buy a handsome suit for the court proceedings, we have the right to serve as little time as possible for our crimes. Right? Just doing your job?
Well Mr. Mooney, doesn't your civic duty end when you've collected your handsome fee? Or, did the defendant and his family kick-in a little extra for your "insightful" musings?
What qualifies you to "diagnose" me with "extreme paranoia?" Is it paranoid to assume that if your husband has confessed to downloading and saving child pornography at his office, he might be lying when he says "Oh no, I never did it at home.?" Instead of trying to determine what had happened in my home, would you have proposed I obtain a lobotomy instead?
You state that my husband merely accessed child pornography because he was "depressed" about our separation. In my experience as a therapist, I've found that people generally respond to depression by accessing, downloading, copying and saving massive amounts of child pornography. They don't deal with depression through more conventional means like seeking help and/or taking prescribed medications (insert laugh here.) By the way, didn't your client tell the FBI that he was on medication to treat depression? How depressed was he; really? He told me that his greatest stressors stemmed from his lack of help at the office, which led to his lack of sleep, which led to the need for him to stay up until all hours of the night on his computer. By the way, when I offered to help him with his backlogged data entry, he declined. If you would like to know the true meaning of the word "regret", it's that I bought my ex husband's "poor overworked me" story.
Was I "obsessed" with child pornography as you claim? The answer is an emphatic "NO!" With Rogers "support," I had left my childhood abuse behind. By the year 2000, I was no longer having flashbacks. I had achieved that which I try to assist all victims in achieving; distance. The past was finally the past. My father and his actions were finally distant memories. I focused my life on not only helping victims of sexual abuse, but on victims of physical, psychological, ritual, and environmental abuse as well. Adults and children. Children and adults (sometimes paths cross.) Male and female. Rich and poor. Pain is pain is pain. PTSD, depression, anxiety, dissociation. Abuse leaves a trail of survivors you would be humbled to meet. But you wont. You are too busy collecting the filthy lucre of perpetrators. How sad.
There are people who believe in God's ultimate justice and those who don't. I assume that you count yourself among the latter. Just keep in the back of your mind, that on the day you are asked to account for your life and your actions, you will stand before He Who Knows All. You will not have a lawyer because, well, because lawyers like you go elsewhere. But maybe, just maybe, you can base your defense on the "fact" that you were just "depressed."
I
By Phil 04-23-08
This Mooney person makes an absolutely disgusting statement. According to the author of the article, Mooney claims "it was Greer's post-separation depression and Zhdilikov's obsession with child porn that led to his client's problems."
It is quite common for persons who are sexually aroused by nude and provacatively posed children to rationalize, or offer excuses, that enable them to avoid responsibility for their own actions. And here we have a person's own attorney blaming the crime of this man Greer on his ex-wife, who herself had been the subject of childhood abuse. A tragic addition to an already tragic story.
Greer doesn't need an attorney who accuses innocent victims of "causing" Greer's own deviancy - he needs a qualified therapist. It is commonly held by professisonals in psychology and psychiatry that pedophilia is most often the result of experiences, interactions, or arrested emotional development that occurs during that persons own childhood. I hope that Greer gets the help he needs in prison - but at least in prison he is away from my children. There is a frighteningly high incidence of child pornographers who "volunteer" to babysit or take care of children. Also, I hope that in prison he is not able to contribute to further child abuse by continuing to engage in the collection and enjoyment of child pornography.
By Gini 04-23-08
I am appalled! Not only does the lawyer protect a child predator and in the process accuses the victim of lying and being paranoid, the judge protects him as well by not giving him what he deserves and what the law allows. Where is the protection of our children??? If we keep allowing this crime, if we do not do our utmost to put these predators away for as long as possible, if we pretend this is none of our business, we are not much better than the people who make money off the child porn business. So let's show our colors and cry out, as these tormented children do, let's give these children our voice and let's make clear to all the lawyers and all the judges and anyone else who finds excuses for the actions of pedophiles, that we are not going to stand for this. Let's protect our children, and the children of our neighbors. You can do something: add your post, visit the web page of the National Association to protect children and give them your support, let your voice be heard, don't be silent! My highest admiration for Gina who had the courage to speak out where so many others are quiet and let this happen.
By Razberrie Tart 04-24-08
Gina, I applaud your decision to take this to the media, and in a form that would fairly represent the tragedy much better than certain other sources 'cough deseret cough'
I do not understand what goes on in these people's minds, and i am glad I do not. Sick, just sick. Words cannot describe what horror a life like that for those children is. You are one of the lucky few that have the courage, the bravery, the wisdom to speak out against what you have gone through in such a strong heartfelt manner.
Nothing bad enough can happen to Roger and those like him. Nothing can ever take away from him what he's taken away. I desire for you a peaceful heart and a content soul in the days, months and years to come. Find peace in yourself now.
-- A Friend
By LOWLIGHTS 04-24-08
Reading the print version of this week's edition, I noted the irony of the backpage advertisement for "Barely Legal Escorts" (along with the other T&A advertising) - and thought ... could City Weekly perhaps take a higher road in its advertising dollars?
--Rex
By a colleague 04-24-08
Gina is a gift and a blessing to her clients and to her co-workers. She is an example of resiliency and courage. I also wish her peace in her soul and life. She deserves it. I am honored to be associated with her. Thank you.
By Jeff James 04-24-08
Read the article. My reaction? Ewwww!!!! Maintaining your humanity while reading the article is an accomplishment, let alone living through it. God bless anyone hurt by these two monsters.
I don't know what the afterlife holds for such people. But it can't be pretty. So deeply troubling...
By whattheshout 04-25-08
I would lke to know how far Gina will go to launder her baggage of her own life and anyone elses for her own gain and pitty party
I smell a rat and I do not think Mr Greer is that rat., so I can only assume Gina is on a slanderous mission as I have found now four different posting forums where she continues to slander a man she married and loved and his family that have nothing to do with HER claims and disputes
Remember Gina, you have to look in the mirror each day
It seems to me that the attorny is right, you are still very paranoid over things that are relevant to your past, way before Mr Greer came into you life
You have worked in this industry so you certainly know how to get around the system to destroy the only person whom you claimed changed your life the past ten years
Maybe you ought to seek your true heart and agenda a little closer before you continue to try to destroy others lives due to your own unhappiness
I do pray that God almighty helps you to find peace soon. If not you are tight, your life is over cause Satan will continue to devour your happiness and peace
By Hayduke 04-25-08
whatstheshout: A sypathetic predator in our midst.
You with your Satan talk. You make me sick, whatstheshout. May you always be blessed enough to live life with a bag on your head, blinders on your eyes and cotton in your ears. You're lucky to be able to do so. Ignorance must be a very comfortable seat, indeed. But many of us aren't that lucky. Gina certainly wasn't.
What's to be paranoid about concerning this piece of shit Greer guy? He was sentenced and is in prison for kiddie porn. It's not like Gina is going around telling people she suspects a good man of doing something bad. She's not going around trying to ruin his reputation. He's done that for himself, by being a low-life piece of kiddie-loving shit. And of course she's angry. She trusted and loved this jerk. In return, he destroyed what was left of her soul.
You're obviously a family member or friend of pedophile Greer. I'll tell you this: If ever I learned that one of my own was a pedophile, the last thing I'd do is stick up for them.
You're not only defending Greer but his scum bag, soulless attorney, as well! What a dick you are!
By Hayduke 04-25-08
whattheshout: I found a little something on another board, as well. Heresay as presented in this context but interesting none the less.
It is truely pathetic when friends and family choose extreme denial over obvious truth.
On June 29, 2006, the Seattle Field Division of the FBI executed a search warrant at National Stock Transfer, a company then owned and operated by Roger Greer. During the course of confiscating all of Greer's computers, Greer was questioned as to "embarassing material" which might exist on hard drives. After initially lying to investigators, Greer later handed over 4 discs containing images of child pornography he had admittedly downloaded and saved. He later confessed this to his sister and sole employee, Kay Greer, who immediately assisted her brother in the immenantly necessary task of "damage control.", including advising Greer's wife to not "be too hard on Roger. He's been so depressed."
Later that same day, Greer "confessed" to his wife, that he was under investigation for conspiracy to commit securities fraud and that the FBI had confiscated discs containing child pornography which Greer had downloaded and saved "at the office." The "marriage" was immediately over. Divorce papers were proferred 5 days later after thousands of images were subsequently found on home computers as well, (with the assistance of the Utah Attorney General's Task Force on Internet Crimes against Children.)
Greer's ex wife was a victim of incest and child pornography as a child.
Greer pretended to be a victim's advocate when he met her, while secretly collecting pornographic images of little girls ages 8-12. He protected images with secret passwords and firewalls. Her daughter at the time of marriage, were 10 and 6; a truely disturbing and alarming fact. Anyone interested in accessing the truth in this matter, can access records of Greer's admission to downloading and saving child pornography on the federal government website, PACER.
Greer was ultimately convicted on the evidence he turned over to investigators of his own accord. He accessed child pornography at his office and as it turned out, he accessed child pornography at his home as well. Unfortunately, Judge Paul Cassell did not take the scope of Greer's child pornography into account at sentencing. In fact, he gave Greer "credit" for being "honest" in his confession and provision of additional discs he saved and stored at his office. Greer deserved no such "credit".
Roger Greer is a pedophile.
According to the standards of determining pedophilic attraction to children, the collection of child pornography is the strongest indicator. There is no reason to collect tens of thousands of images of child pornography, except for the obvious fact of sexual interest in children.
Our society is not going to combat the problem of child sexual exploitation as long as there are those who excuse the behavior of pedophiles.
Granted, it must be hard for friends and family to accept that a loved one is "one of those monsters". But in reality, those monsters are always related to someone. The challenge resides in doing what is right. Do you bury your head in the sand or do you say, this is unacceptable, regardless of whether this is my brother, my son, my uncle or the babysitter?
Evil exists because "good people" do nothing. I'm sure that Greer's ex wife didn't want to accept that her husband was the very kind of individual who crushed her own innocence and caused life-long pain and trauma. But when confronted with an inconvenient truth, she at least had the courage to face it. Greer and his supporters chose to resort to the ridiculous; a virtual study in the power of denial. How sad.
By whattheshout 04-25-08
I see you have a good choice of vocabulary.
Good luck with your scornful remarks. It helps no one or their souls
By Hayduke 04-25-08
And good luck to you, whattheshout, with your disgusting defense of a convicted pedophile. One that freely admitted to collecting and harboring thousands of pictures of naked, raped, tortured and abused girls, many of whom were little more than babies.
When you finally face your God, may you have the courage to look him/her in the eye when he asks why you willingly chose to do such a thing.
By anonymous 04-25-08
I think you can judge a man by the way he treats his mother! Maybe that should be checked out.
By anonymous 04-25-08
Yes, Greer's mother is ielderly and reportedly suffers from dementia. Someone really should look at how he treated her and should especially, look into whether or not the poor woman still has a dime to her name. Someone paid for his lawyer. I'm guessing it wasn't Greer.
By Another Victim 04-25-08
Hey Whattheshout,
Are you crazy or what? This story is about the pain the victims suffer. Whatever drives your denial is beyond meaningless. Obviously, you've never stood in the shoes of the victim of a sexual crime. Lucky you. Come back and tell us all what you think after you have gone through it.
By Gina Zhdilkov 04-26-08
Thank you so much for all the supportive comments (with one obvious exception so far.) Thanks also to all those in law enforcement who do the heart wrenching work of investigating crimes against children. You are the unsung heros and I know it takes a toll. Thanks also to Stephen Dark for his diligent and responsible work in doing this story. It took a toll on him too, because he had the courage to open his heart as well as his mind and ears. It wasn't easy and for that, I will always admire and appreciate him.
There are 3 groups of readers I hope this story touches.
First, I hope that individuals who know that they have a sexual attraction to children, will seek help. If there is one person out there who now recognizes that children are not just objects to be used for gratification, but real human beings with real feelings, needs, hopes, dreams and rights, then it's worth putting my very personal story before the sensibilities and scrutiny of the public. There is no room for denial when it comes to the impact of childhood sexual abuse, including child pornography. There is no way to be a harmless participant. it's more than "looking at pictures." It's participating in a heinous crime upon the most innocent and vulnerable among us. No more excuses. None.
Second, I hope that individuals who have been victimized by child predators, will know they are not alone, not forgotten, and most importantly, that it's not their fault. Perpetrators are masters at making you feel like it was your fault. Survivors grow up to feel like they could have or should have done something to stop it. They feel ashamed. GIVE THE SHAME BACK. The shame is not yours. Don't hold it. Share your story until you can shout it from the rooftops if necessary. Tears are just fine too. You are a human being and you have a right to your truth and the pain it has caused.
God Bless.
Third, I hope that lawmakers and those involved in the justice system, will recognize that there is a lot of work to be done when it comes to the needs and rights of child pornography victims. The Victims Rights Act supposedly gives victims the opportunity to speak at sentencing; to tell the judge how the perpetrator's crime has impacted them. In child pornography cases such as the one involving my ex husband, no one speaks for the victims. Judges do not see the human face nor the human toll. It all dwindles down to words, numbers, bargains and manuevers on the part of the defense.
I would suggest that when the victims found on these discs and videos remain nameless and therefore, silent, there should be a standard for nevertheless, bringing life to them BEFORE the judge makes his/her ruling. The actual pictures are not shared with the judge for good reason. Every time another person views the crime, it's another violation upon the victim. But forensics specialists could isolate at least some of the faces. The expressions of desperation and horror speak volumes. Let judges see what the perpetrator saw and callously ignored. Furthermore, we need to have victim's rights advocates in court to represent and speak for those who are voiceless. Silence is not golden.
Finally, to the little girls whose images I saw on one of the discs discovered in my home, please know that I will never forget you. I saw your pain. Your faces haunt me little sisters. May you know that there is someone out there who saw your sufferring and cared; who tried to speak for you. You're not alone.
By anonymous 04-27-08
Gina,
I feel so strongly and deeply for you and the pain you have endured in life. To have trusted a man who you thought was a pillar of strength and support only to find out that he was no different from your father is beyond any pain I can describe with mere words.
I admire your strength. I too was a victim of abuse when I was a child. I was abused for several years by a Priest when I was a young boy growin gup in Chicago. I grew up violent, drunk, and on drugs trying to mask my pain while my friends were experiencing the more normal aspects of teen-aged life. I too, eventually, found healing and pursued a MSW degree. I walk in a few days. I want to share with others this great miracle of healing.
I, along with thousands more who read this article, are with you in spirit. You are never alone. I wish you well on your journey in life.
By anonymous 04-27-08
For the last few years I have e-mailed our state legislators advocating for the termination of the protection of the statute of limitations for sexual predators of children. I never have received one response from our elected representatives.
As this story illustrates, child sexual abuse can have long lasting, if not life time affects, on the victim. Yet, the perp can walk away without a penalty simply through the passage of time. Especially disturbing is the fact that many of the victims are victimized by entrusted individuals who use fear tactics to keep their victims quiet. It may take many years for the victims to come forward.
If KKK members can be prosecuted for crimes committed in the 1960's why can't child sex abusers be tried as well? The Priest who sexually abused me for three years will never be punished for his heinous crimes. All I received from the Dominican Order was a "sorry" that was originally mailed in careless error to and opened by my neighbor.
If our legislators are really concerned about the protection of children they should enact a law that eliminates any opportunity for pedophiles to escape criminal prosecution for their life damaging crimes.
By Anonymous 04-27-08
Unfortunately, politics and crime can sometime be the same thing. It's the sleazy and self serving type of Legislatures, Judges, as well as some Attorneys, who as in Ms. Zhidlkov's case and others' with stories yet to be told, who aren't morally opposed to one another’s thinking and actions. They love nothing more than to deny the very truth they know has caused horrific life time harm to others. It doesn't change the TRUTH, all their dirty deeds can never change the TRUTH! For ex. Judge/Attorney: Tyrone Medley, a UT District Court Judge who denied me and my natural sister protection from the Pedophiles who ADOPTED via LDSFS by refusing to sign an Order of Protetion for us! He told us "we don't know what abuse is and called us 'vindictive' and then told us we didn't know what it's like to be a 'true victim' and get followed around every time you go in a store!" Later, we found out that he was the attorney who represented the criminal who extorted $ from Danny Davis's Grandfather. Danny Davis was the little boy who was kidnaped in the late 70's and sexually abused and killed by Arthur Gary Bishop. We also read where (Medley) also denied $ funds to a little girl via a Victims Reparation Fund and yet he signed an improper Order against a women taking care of her Mother and placed her in a Care Center without cause. Legislatures such as rep. Sheryl Allan, ®) of Bountiful, UT, is allowed to create un-Constitutional laws which steal children away from fathers and brain washed, corerced and threatend mothers (even ADULT WOMEN-just like the FLDS) simply because they’re not married and babies are sold to their prospective “Pedophiles” as me and my sister were! Go figure, Scum Rises to the Top, just like sh.. Floats! I'm sorry for the pain such filth has caused us all and may they, these Legislatures, Judges and Attorneys, LDSFS the VOID of EMOTION/EMPATHY-Psychopaths they are, all burn in Hell with the Pedophiles, etc. forever !!!
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