An Open Letter to Bill Cosby

Dear Mr. Cosby,

You don't know me, but I find myself thinking a lot about you, and I have an idea that I want to share.

First, let me introduce myself, in an unorthodox way: I don't hate you.

I don't love you, either.

I'm a 57 year old white woman from the South who never once, not one single time, watched you on television.

Before you jump to any conclusions about my being a racist, you should know: I never watched Dukes of Hazzard, The Simpsons, nothing. In my childhood I do remember The Twilight Zone. Do you remember that floating eye? Did you love it?

I remember how the Beatles' hair moved as they played on Ed Sullivan, and how Perry Mason looked like a handsome vampire, or a human Rottweiler, kind of. A little scary, but commanding.

Later, I loved Peter Gabriel and Annie Lennox on MTV. And Michael Jackson's music videos are genius, don't you think?

That's about it for TV and me. I was busy.

I know TV was a bigger deal for you, but that's a minor difference between us.

I was busy: planting strawberries, shucking lima beans, catching salamanders and bats and then letting them go. I loved reading encyclopedias, and I learned to use a fly rod and shoot a .32. Like my paratrooper Dad, I learned to skydive. I was always outside. Were you?

What else about me. I've always liked to find treasure. I've found a few Herkimer diamonds, black ammonites and black tourmalines, quartz crystal spear tips and chert arrowheads. What have you found?

I've worked a lot. When I was a teenager, I picked okra and tomatoes one summer. I've mucked horse stalls. You learn a lot, balancing piles of horse manure on the tines of pitchforks.

I barned tobacco one summer. The drying plants smelled delicious, like sweet raisins. The leaves were sticky. So was the cancer they gave both my parents.

I picked cotton for a few weeks, but as much as I loved those snow-white clouds growing on the plants, I hated the talons that held them in. My fingertips bled so much on the cotton that the farmer fired me as a picker.

Then I grew up. I have taught thousands of students, fed them all at my home, and always tried to tell them the most important stories I know.

Then one of my students was murdered.

Her name was Morgan.

A sexual predator abducted, raped her, killed her, and dumped her body in a remote fallow pasture. A farmer found her skeletonized remains.

How do you think that day felt for Morgan's parents?

Recently, I've sat in the same room with her killer. A court room. We've locked eyes.

Although he will be, he hasn't been charged yet in my student Morgan's case, because there are other cases coming first, all starring rape, death, and his DNA.

He is like a TV series himself, if you see what I mean, and in every episode, he keeps committing the same crimes. It's like he has only one plot.

Jesse Matthew (that's his name) stars in another abduction. And another. And another rape, and another rape.

When it's convenient, he goes ahead and murders as well.

Which leads me to why I'm writing you.

I don't have much doubt about what you've done. Quaaludes and sex? If I'm the judge, you are guilty. I don't care how many times. I care that you have left a trail of injury.

I don't care that you were funny. I don't care that you are black. I don't care that you look old as Methuselah.

I care that you have left a trail of injury.

As I think about you, as your legal tower crumbles, I see two choices. I'm writing to encourage you to take the one less traveled by, because, for your legacy, for your family, for your reputation, and for your soul, this choice will make all the difference.

You can keep paying to hide.

Or, you can Help Save the Next Girl.

I invite you to fly to Virginia and meet with those of us who have formed the non-profit organization called Help Save the Next Girl. We are helping people.

Let's hold a press event, where you stand with us, and confess every damned act of violation you ever committed. Tell every detail, every denial, and every thought you ever had about doing these drugged rapes, over and over and over again.

Apologize, but much more importantly, tell us why. Why did you want to drug women? Why did you need to rape? Tell us. You are an articulate man.

Help us.

We won't hate you. I doubt we'll love you. But we'll be so grateful. And you'll make something beautiful from the crumbling tower of your life. This is an invitation. Will you accept?

You'll go to jail, afterwards, willingly. But you know you should go, so why would you keep fighting that consequence?

That's my idea.

Why not come help us.

Help young men know what not to be.

Help young women see how hell yawns open.

Please.

Punctuate your trail of injury.

Please.

Sincerely,

Jane Lillian Vance

Vice President,
Help Save the Next Girl,
and Morgan Harrington's teacher in the last Spring of her life