Chapter Text
Sam felt their hands all over his back as he walked to the stand. When the bailiff presented the bible he was supposed to put his hand on, Sam hesitated. A half-taunting, half-panicked voice in his head kept saying: It’sgoingtoburnyouit’stgoingtoburnyouit’sgoingtoburnyou.
He was a bad person. He probably wasn’t even a person. He was so bad and freakish. They were right to do what they did. He deserved it. He deserved it. His mind raced with these accusations. And then out of that roiling swamp of words, he heard Jess’ voice, telling him that his soul was pure and good despite what he’d gone through. That there was nothing dirty or bad about him. He heard Benny whispering in his ear that he was a good boy. And finally, he heard Dean telling him that he was good, too. He heard how desparate his brother sounded when said, “I need you to see that.”
Sam looked away from the bailiff and into the crowd. He homed in on Dean, sitting on the edge of his seat, watching him intently, watching him like he was ready to swoop in and grab Sam away if he needed to. He nodded to Sam. Sam nodded back.
He put his hand on the bible and was sworn in. Once Sam was seated, Wexler smiled at him. Sam couldn’t really tell if he smiled back. He didn’t think he did. He was only half-looking at him and he was trying not to look at the defendants table. He watched his shaky hands squirming together on his lap.
“Can you state your name for the court please?”
“Sam Winchester,” Sam whispered.
“Louder please” Wexler said. Sam looked up at him and repeated his name into the microphone.
“And can you tell me how you know the defendants?”
Sam nodded tightly and inadvertently glanced at the defendants before quickly settling on Wexler. “They were regular clients of Lorretta and Charlie.”
Wexler’s lips tensed and Sam’s heart started thudding in his chest. He’d messed up, he’d done something wrong already.
“Can you tell the court who Lorretta and Charlie were?”
“They were my kidnappers.”
“And for how long, Sam?”
“Ten years.”
“And when you say the defendants were their regular clients, what does that mean?”
“They paid them to do sex stuff to me,” Sam said.
Wexler grimaced at Sam.
“Sorry,” Sam whispered. “I’m sorry.”
“Sam, how long did this go on? How old were you when this started and how old were you when it ended?”
“It started when I was eleven and ended when I was 21. Every Wednesday, it would be the ten of them doing sex stuff to me. Some of them would book one on one visits on the weekends. Not every one of them was there every week.”
“So, the defendants did, as you say, “sex stuff” to an eleven year old?”
Sam nodded. “They all did, yeah.”
“Did you want to do the sex stuff with them?”
“No.”
“And they were aware that you did not want to?”
“Yeah, they knew.”
“Well, then, they raped you, correct?”
“Yeah,” Sam said quietly. He started biting his nails.
“Can you identify each of these defendants by name? Point to each and name them?”
Sam nodded.
“Please do that now Sam.”
“I only know what they called them, though,” Sam said.
“That’s okay, Sam. Go ahead and use those names.”
Sam looked at Dean, who was still sitting there, perched, ready to fly off the bench and carry him away if he needed to. Dean nodded and smiled. He looked over at Jess, who smiled confidently at him. He heard her call him the bravest person she knew. He inhaled and turned back to the defendant table.
“I’ll do the backrow first,” Sam said, bringing a trembling index finger up. “Mr. W, they also called him Marcus. Chris, Professor R, Henry.”
Wexler nodded. “Let the court record show that Sam Winchester has correctly identified the following defendants: Mr. Marcus Wealty, Mr. Christopher Pritchard, Mr. Edward Rover, who is a professor at South Dakota State University, and Mr. Henry Lawton,” Wexler turned back to Sam. “Now the front row, Sam.”
Sam bit his lip and held his finger up again. “Mr. D, they called him Andy, Mr. S, Mr. V, Lawrence Mack…I called him Mr. Mack…and,” Sam pointed a shaky finger at the doctor and then his arm just dropped like a dead weight. He tucked his chin and whispered. “That’s Dr. K.”
“Louder, please,” Wexler said. Sam flinched and bent toward the microphone. “The one on the end is Dr. K.”
“Thank you, Sam. Let the court records show that Sam has correctly identified the remaining defendants: “Mr. Andrew Dwyer, Mr. Max Schuler, Mr. Kevin Ving, Mr. Lawrence Mack and finally Dr. Allen Keller, who was in charge of neurosurgery at Cedars Sinai.”
Now that he had looked at them all, Sam couldn’t stop fixating on Lawrence Mack. His curly gray hair receding dramatically like it couldn’t stand to be near his face, his beer belly, the same one that loped onto Sam’s stomach and chafed his skin every time they had missionary sex, had only grown more prominent. He remembered his pitbull, too. Well, it was something he didn’t remember because Mack had given him LSD before he brought the dog in. But they showed him the video many, many times. Each time they fell into hysterics at how terrified Sam had been and all the crazy things they could get him and the dog to do.
Wexler cut off his line of sight and Sam flinched. “Sam? You okay?”
Sam pulled his thumb out of his mouth, realizing for the first time he’d been sucking it. “Yeah. Sorry.”
“That’s okay, I know all of this is very stressful. But I had asked you a question. I wanted you to describe for the court what Wednesdays with the defendents looked like for you. What would happen?”
Sam blinked. “Wednesdays,” Sam said vaguely. It wasn’t a question, he knew exactly what Wexler wanted to know.
“Take your time, Sam,” Wexler said.
“There was a secret room in the apartment, behind the closet. It had scratchy gray carpeting and there was usually just a mattress in it. Different types of shackles and hooks on the walls and on the ceiling.”
“Like this, Sam?” Wexler asked, holding up a photo of the room. Sam flinched and gasped at the sight. He nodded.
“Go on, Sam,” Wexler said, while he showed the photo to the jury.
“Well, they’d all be in the room, and so would I. The way it worked was that they took turns being in charge of me and kind of running the show. So sometimes they’d want me to dress up in certain things…”
Wexler was back in front of him, blocking his view of the defendants. Sam tried to breathe right but he couldn’t.
“What kinds of things would they have you dress up in?” Wexler asked.
“Most of the time it was…just regular little boy clothes. Sometimes like it would just be like a Nirvana T-shirt and jeans, sometimes it would be Sesame Street and Carebears. It just depended on how young they wanted me to be. Sometimes they’d want me to dress up like a schoolgirl. That took a lot more time. Sometimes they would bring clothes from…”
Sam trailed off and shook his head.
“Go on, Sam, when you’re ready.”
Sam felt tears prickle in his eyes. He inhaled. Wexler kept his body in between Sam and the defendants and now he moved closer to Sam, right up against the witness stand. “They’d bring clothes from where?”
“From…from home,” Sam said with his voice cracking on the last word. Tears streamed down his face. “They’d have me wear their…their son’s or daughter’s clothes.” Sam wiped his tears away quickly. “I’m sorry, I never told anybody that.”
“Thank you for telling the court that, Sam. So it sounds like they took turns orchestrating how they wanted the encounter to go. Is that right?”
Sam nodded. “Yeah.”
“Can you give an example of what most encounters with the defendant entailed?”
“They’d all have sex with me, Like all the different ways.”
“I’m sorry, Sam, but can you be more specific?”
“They would make me suck their,” Sam paused and looked up at the judge apologetically before continuing. “They’d make me perform oral sex on them, they’d penetrate me with a sex toy, and then they’d force their, I mean they’d sodomize me.”
“All ten of the defendents would orally rape you, rape you anally with penises and with objects?” Wexler said with an angry growl to his voice that scared Sam a little.
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“Every Wednesday.”
Sam cleared his throat and shook his head. “No Chris and Henry and Professor R stopped when I turned eighteen.”
Wexler slammed his hand on the witness stand and Sam shook violently. But Wexler turned his attention to the jury and then threw his hands to the defendants “All of these men orally and anally raped Sam Winchester every Wednesday for seven years. Most of them raped him every week for ten years. That means that this boy,” he said, pulling the blown-up posterboard of Sam at 11 off the easel and bringing it closer to the jury. He tapped it. “This boy,” Wexler yelled feverishly. He pointed to Sam. “This boy, was raped no fewer than 364 times by EACH of the defendents here today.”
Sam looked over at the jury and they looked stricken. All of them. A couple of them looked at Sam like he was the saddest strayest puppy. Sam had to look away.
“And you know what?” Wexler said. “Most of it’s on video.”
Wexler paused, letting that idea sink in for both the defendants and the jury. Now, there is no way I will subject you to all of the video evidence. It is so brutal and so upsetting that the police department had to watch it in revolving teams. My team, my self included took turns watching, so that not one person had to endear it all. But that’s the thing,” Wexler said, his voice turning soft as he scanned the jury. “One person did have to endure all of it and more. And that person is Sam Winchester.”
Sam looked down as he felt the jury’s eyes on him. Wexler continued. “As you know each one of you has been given vomit bags and a pack of tissues. I am going to ask you to watchjust 1/10th of the hell Sam experienced. We will be able to show you how despite most of the men being faceless, we can still identify each one of the defendants as they abused Sam over the ten year period.”
This was news to Sam. He didn’t think that Dr K was in any of the videos. Lorretta had told him something about him paying extra so he was never on video.
Two large TVs were wheeled into the courtroom. One facing the jury, the other at the far end of the room so that Sam, the judge and the audience could see it clearly.
“If you are in the audience and do not think you can stomach seeing this, please leave now. Someone will notify you when we’re done with this part.”
About five people got up and left. Sam watched as Dean, Jess and Benny stayed planted in their seats with the same look of determination on their faces. Dean had his arm around Jess, Benny had his arm around Dean with his hand touching Jess’s shoulder.
Wexler walked up to Sam, holding the remote. “Now,” he said loudly. “Here’s what we’re going to do. First we will watch a typical torture session the defendents. Every single one of them, inflicted on Sam when he was eleven years old.” Wexler stopped and pointed to Sam’s portrait which was back on the easel. “Eleven years old,” he emphasized.
“Then, Sam and I identify each of the defendants one by one, clearly and irrefutelly, throughout the years of torture. They raped him when he was eleven, and they raped him when he was sixteen and they raped him when he was 21. And we will prove that beyond a shadow of a doubt.”
“Sam?” Wexler turned to Sam and jutted out his chin in a way that told Sam he wanted him to look him in the eyes. Sam tried. “Are you ready?” he asked softly.
Sam swallowed and nodded, but really he felt like he was just hanging on.
“Okay,” Wexler said and then he turned back to the jury. “I’m going to warn you one more time, here. What you’re about to see is horrific. Please steel yourselves and do your best to bear witness to what this young man has suffered.”
And then, Wexler hit play. Both screens cued up at the same time. Eleven year old Sam curled up into a fetal position on the mattress, dressed in a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles T-shirt and a pair of jeans, and crying softly. Slowly, ten naked adult men came into the room. Most of the men were already erect.
As Sam watched, he dug his hand into the meat of his palm and pressed down hard, so hard that four tiny crescents of blood appeared. It told him that he wasn’t in that room anymore. That he was out and everything was better. If the pain and the blood were of the present, well, then, so was he.
He heard the men laughing. He heard the deep gravelly voice of Professor R say, “Oh, he wants it brutal today. Wouldn’t be fighting you so hard if he didn’t.”
He heard Mr. Mack laugh. He heard himself yell and curse and fight. And when he heard Mack whisper, “Shh, shh, we’re going to give you what you need,” he swore he could feel his breath ghost the shell of his ear. Sam, now, grabbed his ear in irritation and scratched roughly at the back of his head.
He made the mistake of looking back at the screen. They were holding him in the air, two men gripping each of his limbs as he bucked and shouted like a wild animal. One of the two other men– Dr. K, Sam now realized, catching the constellation of black moles on his back– ripped open his t-shirt to the great joy of the nine others. Chris, he knew from his hands, unbuttoned his jeans and pulled down both the jeans and his sailboat print little-boy underwear, one of them had apparently requested.
So, Sam was completely naked writhing and bucking and panting, trying to get away, as they brought him over to the mattress.
“Look at you,” Professor R said, as four men, two on each side, held Sam’s legs up in the ear. “One tight hole.”
Someone sat with his head between their knees and put Sam in a sort of headlock. He pulled him up a little by his head and clamped his hand over Sam’s mouth. “You’re going to watch us fill up your sweet little hole with whatever we want.”
Sam could feel his throat getting hoarse. He felt his heart dribbling chaotically in his chest, he felt his legs shake painfully. He felt his face burn, and locks of his sweat-slick hair stick across his lips, his eyes and his cheeks. “Please,” he heard himself whisper.
The men laughed at that.
“Teach him a lesson, prof,” Mr. W said.
As Prof. R lowered to the mattress, the camera lowered too, catching only his belly-button and his hand around his penis as he forced himself into Sam.
Sam screamed in pain. The men laughed, though the guy holding his head up, making him watch, quickly swiped his sweaty hair up and back from his face.
“You guys,” the prof said, “his body is unreal. I’ve never been in anything so tight and warm in my life.”
The men cheered. The guy holding his head slapped him. “Prof. R is giving you a compliment, slut. Say thank you.”
Sam remembered in a sucker-punch how the word has stuck in his throat. How all he could do was cry and look up into the the corner where a spider dangled and imagine that his mind and soul were zapped right out of his body and hurtling for the safety of its web.
Men’s moans and groans filled the courtroom. Sam’s hand was a scraped up, bloody mess. Suddenly the worst sound Sam had ever heard filled his ears. Here and now in the courtroom, an anguished howl spilled out of a man. Sam was staring straight ahead, right at him but it took him a second to register who it was. John, his father, crumpling in on himself and screaming through tears, “My son, my son!” He dropped to his knees, slammed his fists down on his thighs and wailed. “My son, my son!”
Inside Sam felt a rocketship launching, tearing up his sinews and veins and bones. “I’m sorry, daddy,” he said in a voice just above a whisper. “I’m so sorry daddy.”
The judge pounded the gavel as Bobby and Dean both tried to get John off the floor. The man, the absolute lion of Sam’s life, was starfished on the ground sobbing and shrieking his name.
Tears charged from Sam’s eyes, bluring everything and disorienting him. “I’m sorry, daddy.”
Someone was helping him out of the witness stand. Someone was walking him down the aisle passed all the people, who were just blurred up colors to Sam now. When they passed by John, puddled in Dean’s arms still screaming. Sam tried to break away from whoever held him but the person clenched him tighter and pushed him forward. “I’m so sorry, daddy!” Sam wailed as he was pushed through the courtroom exit.