EULOGY
Once you have kids, you never stop being a parent. From the time they’re born, to the time you die. So long as you are lucky enough to outlive your kids, you want the best for them, even if they screw up or screw you over. You don’t have to support their bad decisions, but you should be ready to welcome them back, should their returning path come with the promise of change, and corresponding actions to follow.
Rather than going on ad nauseum, this eulogy will be as short and sweet as I can make it. Ethan Oliver Ralph groomed Faith Vickers. He manipulated her. He isolated her. He abused her. He impregnated her. He did not love her. He did not cherish her. He did not put her before all other things. In short, I have every reason to hate Ethan Ralph—a fact which few have called into question.
I went to the police. LA, Richmond, Virginia Beach. I reported the crimes. Revenge porn (digital rape, so far as I’m concerned)). Providing excessive amounts of alcohol to someone under the age of 21. I reported everything I knew when I knew it long before, during, and after my “Twitter War” against Ethan Ralph. Ultimately, all of the crimes I reported required the victim to come forward before the police would take any action, and anyone who has any sense at all knows that a victim who is isolated with her abuser is not someone who easily reports their own abuse.
The situation is simple enough to understand. A 34 year old man dating an 18 year old girl is a complete red flag. I don’t care who you are or how smart you believe yourself to be or how old fashioned you think I am. I don’t care about your 1% situational examples where you know a situation when this worked out just fine. If your immediate reaction is “there’s nothing wrong with that,” then you are a moron. Now, add to that massive age/maturity difference a history of alcoholism, drug use, anger problems, narcissism, and a deep desire for fame. Sprinkle in a dash of mental illness and a desire to sire children for all the wrong reasons, and you have a powder keg with a lit fuse where the only variable is the length of that fuse. While she was with Ethan Ralph, Faith was in danger. I knew it. Her mother knew it. Really, anyone with half of a working brain should have known it. What does a parent do…particularly a father…when their family is in danger? They attack.
Ralph is about as hard to figure out as a kindergarten puzzle. It didn’t take long to figure out that the fastest way to legally hurt him was to make public his degeneracy. But here’s the funny thing: Ralph ignores his loyal audience and their inconceivable financial support (however limited) and puts most of his focus onto the people who can’t stand him and make him NO money at all. The simple solution would be to ignore the people who hate him and focus on the people who support him. Essentially, whatever power I ever had over Ethan Ralph, was only power that he gave directly to me. And should anyone feel that term too boastful, or doubt the results of some simple Tweets, then they were not watching his shows when I would really come at him.
But, ultimately, what was the goal? To be mean? To bully Ralph? To be an internet hero (or villain, depending on your perspective)? To seek some sort of fleeting internet fame? Nonsense. I’m a 43 year old man with 5 children ranging from 19 years to 3 years old. I’ve been married to my high school sweetheart for 22 years. I’ve been a business owner in CA for over 11 years which has paid for a perfectly comfortable lifestyle for my family. I have more clients than Ralph has viewers. I have more real friends than he has fake friends. Internet fame has never been, nor shall ever be, something that I seek. It is a foolish, childish endeavor.
The ultimate goal of the first Twitter war was, having foreknowledge that Ethan Ralph was trying to get Faith pregnant (and Faith, in her compromised mental state was willing to let him), was to make the price of their relationship too high for Ralph to pay—to come at him and make him seethe and drink and fuck up his own show (because he’s proven more than once that he is utterly incapable of ignoring me). In the background, I contacted every guest I could find and shed light to what he was up to. The message to Ralph: I wasn’t going away. The downside to me? People who I don’t know and will never meet will say mean things about me and my family and attack my business website—the digital equivalent of high school shenanigans. A less than terrifying prospect, I assure you.
Categorically, that mission was a failure. I’ll take the “L” and move on. By then, we had confirmation that Faith was pregnant (though we found out that she was NOT pregnant when Ralph wrote his poorly composed “Father of the Year” hit piece—literally trying to flex on me with a fake kid). When he later contacted me to admit that he was bullshitting, sometime later when they discovered Faith was actually pregnant, I nuked my Twitter and the AbortTheRetort website, because they would no longer serve a purpose.
So, what was the goal of this new Twitter war? Faith was back home. What is the point? Am I just some f-slur who’s more concerned with flexing on Ralph than contacting the police? Well, we covered that above—I did call the police. They could not help me. But Faith had not yet contacted the police. Here again, we go back to the state of someone who has been groomed and abused and isolated by their abuser. In fact, Ralph was so intent on isolating her from her friends and family that he secretly threw away birthday cards and small gifts from both of her grandmothers, as well as several letters from her brother and other long-time friends. Hell, he didn’t even let her read the goodbye letters that Mrs. V and I sent.
So, here’s Faith, stuck in Richmond, isolated from her family, and being fed lies by Ethan Ralph. She was, until very recently, still convinced that he was not the one who released the revenge porn. But when she got back to CA, notes started getting compared. Evidence started being presented. And when she confronted him with it, he confessed his crime to her. Should be simple, right? She should just call the police, and they’ll jump into their police cars and rush over to Guntsville, kick down the door of the crack shack, throw Ethan Ralph to the ground and slap the cuffs on him. Movies are fun, but that’s not how things work in real life.
No, in reality, here’s a young woman, finally coming out of her mental cloud because of a combination of meds and second trimester hormones. She’s pregnant. She’s just learned the father (whom she fled from due to violence) has been lying to her for months, released revenge porn, and disposed of communications and gifts from her friends and family. Is she angry? You bet she is. But is she scared, too? Absolutely. Ethan Oliver Ralph, though only being ½” taller than Faith’s 5’5”, is still much bigger than her, and known best for going after people and trying to make their lives miserable. To Faith, Ethan Ralph is terrifying. But, to me, he’s a joke. And that’s where the second “Twitter War” came in.
The second war had a sole purpose. Faith was actually with me throughout the whole day on December 2, when I started tweeting in the morning. I told her what I was doing, and I told her how he would respond. And every prediction I made came to fruition. In short, I demonstrated real time to Faith what a little bitch Ethan Ralph really is. Too afraid to lash out at me, he lashed out at her and Mrs. V, and with his own lack of self-control, unwittingly gave Faith the strength that she needed to seek justice for herself, and hopefully have some impact on his active search for future victims.
But again, this isn’t a superhero movie. Ethan Ralph, though unquestionably a villain, is certainly not a super villain. Police have to take the report. Police have to talk to the DA to discuss charges. This takes several days, and sometimes weeks. But the process is started, and for me, that means “mission accomplished.” My ability or necessity to affect any outcome in the matter is spent, and I happily look forward to ducking out of this and returning to my otherwise very enjoyable life. My first grandchild is on the way, and though earlier than I would have preferred, and under circumstances less than ideal, it could have been much, MUCH worse. The child will be loved by its mother, its grandparents, its uncles, two great grandmothers, great aunts, great uncles, and second cousins. It will enjoy a support network of competent, successful friends and family, want for nothing, and not be paraded online as a tool to get more likes or viewers.
In closing, I will address one final question posed often by my detractors. What kind of a lesson have I taught my sons through all of this nonsense?
Don’t let people bully you.
Don’t let the words of fools break your resolve.
Don’t be ashamed for trying to do what you believe is right.
And absolutely, under no circumstances, sit back and do nothing when someone comes out of the shadows of the world and fucks with your family.
If, in this brave new world, imparting those lessons to my sons makes me a “bad father,” then so be it. But, if you think that, you’re probably young, and/or childless, and/or have daddy issues, so I don’t really care anyway.
things I've read this year.