Hero Dads Who Love Their Girlfriend/Wife’s Rape Conceived Child

As we celebrate Father’s Day I want to honor a very special group of men. Men who society says don’t exist. With statements like “no one will ever want a woman with a rape conceived baby” being touted in our culture I would like to share stories of real men who became real dads to children conceived by other men who were rapists. Unlike the Sasquatch these men are more frequently seen. These men are confident dads that refuse to carry the stigma placed on the rape conceived. They protect and love these children as their own. This article may seem a bit long but this is only a very tiny portion of the men who love unconditionally.

My own father didn’t think he got “damaged merchandise” when he and my adoptive mom gave me their name.

In fact I was a “Daddy’s girl” in every way. After mom died my dad even came to live with me and my husband. He was still very healthy and was such a joy. His love for me couldn’t be matched and he was so proud of me. I am grateful that he was able to talk to my birth mom before she died. He thanked her with tears in his eyes for giving him “my beautiful daughter and giving me a family.”  He knew me as nothing less than his daughter and blessing. He proved to me that great men do exist.  He was a man of honor who served at Iwo Jima.

There are many other men who are loving and believe children are a blessing no matter how they are conceived. Pro life men are often asked “What if your wife were raped and pregnant?” as if a true pro-lifer would make an exception. They do not. On one of my posts I received this message from Tony:

“After my wife went home to be with the Lord, my son and I had a phone conversation with her niece, who is somewhere in her 30′s and a single mother with one child. I told her that my wife, Carol, prior to her earthly death, still had intrusive recollections of having been a victim of gang rape and attempted murder and of being a victim in court in St. Kitts. The niece said that the way she heard it and believed was that my wife “had given it up” and that she was “always a little off”. My son, Junior, age 29, who was conceived from that gang rape, told his cousin off and told her to never say anything bad about his mother again or else and to never call us again. There was no victim/witness laws or protection or anything for rape victims in St. Kitts (small island country in the Caribbean) at the time and the 3 perpetrators had individual defense attorneys who kept asking Carol, “You asked for it, you enjoyed it, you were paid for it, weren’t you?’ until she would faint on the witness stand and case would be continued – this happened on 3 different court dates and neither the prosecuting attorney nor Judge stopped the false and derogatory and vicious questioning. The case was removed from the court docket and the 3 never spent a night in jail. Junior was born on 11/19/84, but neither his mother nor he stood a chance at any kind of life there. So, I married Carol and adopted Junior and brought them to USA on 11/9/90. Like the first young lady in your blog, a pregnant girl or woman who is pregnant from rape needs outside support if her parents are not supportive and even if parents are supportive, outside help can be a real life saver.”

Once again a woman is not believed by society and even family doesn’t believe her. But this man believed her and married her taking her son as his own. He loves his son – yes his son!

Isabel has a beautiful family. No one could tag her with all the labels. She’s happy, loved and the mother of a rape conceived son. You can’t tell which one is the rape conceived and neither can her husband! Isabel was raped at a party and found out a month later that she was pregnant. Her parents fell in love with this child as any other grandparent would. Isabel says, “When I finally had my beautiful baby I was already engaged to a wonderful man who today is my husband. He loves my son as his own. God blessed us with our little boy.  He is an amazing big brother to the newest addition to our family!”

My hope is that the more real faces people see the more acceptable we will become. My prayer is that society will see the mothers and children of rape conception no differently than any other person in society.

Desere (left) recalls two days after her son turned one. Her now husband met her son for the first time. She remembers, “The day my son met my [future] husband he looked at him and the first words he said was ‘my daddy.’ He [her husband] had a big smile on his face. It was a very emotional moment for me…absolutely beautiful.” Desere says about her story, “I’ve held this in for far too long because I didn’t want people to look at my son and hate him. It’s time now and if our story can save at least one baby then it is well worth it.” Her husband is in the process of adopting this precious child.

Granted this isn’t a topic that comes up when you meet someone. They don’t have to “identify” each individual in the family. More families today consist of “non blood related” people anyways. There are a lot of blended families and men are truly able to love children that they did not conceive, even if it was a rape situation. There are some men who know that love, real love, is commitment.

There was a 15 year old raped and wanting an abortion. She and her mom showed up at First Choice Pregnancy Services Las Vegas thinking it was an abortion clinic. Our board member Pam Caylor was the Director at the time and was able to talk with them. Pam always has a way of drawing out a person’s true beliefs and they really didn’t believe in abortion.

But somehow they had been led to believe abortion was wrong except for rape. And society was backing them. However,since they were Christians Pam asked, “Does God create all life?” They said yes.”Does He make mistakes?” They said no.  “Then is your baby a mistake?”  They had never thought it through this simply. They chose life that day. Four years later that same girl came back in with her boyfriend. She was pregnant and was going to choose life again. This young man had stood by his girlfriend for four years, through her pregnancy after rape and then the delivery of a beautiful baby girl. He loved her and her baby and they were getting married.

Jacqueline and David share a love for her rape(incest) conceived daughter that rivals any blood daughter and dad. This is a powerful testimony to truly God inspired love. Jackie says,

“When I met my husband, I told him about the circumstances of my daughter’s conception almost immediately. If he couldn’t accept my daughter and myself, then I didn’t want to build a relationship with him. He was mortified that anyone would do that to me, and that anyone would think of aborting the darling little girl who charmed him with her sticky sucker face and big blue eyes. It really didn’t matter to him how she was conceived and he didn’t believe the lies of my family about me. He just loved both of us as we were. Six weeks after we met, we were married. My husband had 3 children when we met, and we went on to have another child together the year after we married. As my little girl became old enough to enter school, she figured out that her last name was not the same as the rest of her family, and she didn’t like that. She wanted to ‘be dad’s kid too’. And so we set about getting the biological parent (my rapist) to sign off parental rights. Once that was done, my husband legally adopted her. To mark the occasion, he gave her a gold bracelet with her new name and the date of her adoption, along with ‘Daddy’s Girl’ engraved on it. Growing up they went through the typical father/ daughter clashes, but no more than the other kids. As time passed, we moved from our area, and no one really knew or thought about her being adopted. She was his child in every sense of the word. At age 17, our daughter entered the Fair Queen competition at our local fair. All contestants are given an ad hoc question drawn from a fish bowl, and her question was ‘If there was a fire at your house, and you could only save one material item, what would it be?’ I thought she would say her stereo, or her CD’s. To our surprise, she held up her arm and said ‘This bracelet. My dad gave me this on the most important day of my life, the day he adopted me. This bracelet reminds me of how much I am loved, and how important I am to my family. It is the most precious thing I own.’ Needless to say, her mom burst into tears, and I didn’t miss the soft glisten in my husbands eye either. In one short speech, we knew we had loved this girl well, and had succeeded as parents in the one thing we wanted the most for her… to know she had great worth. And she told all the people in that auditorium that she was adopted, something she held quiet about for her entire life. There was no longer any shame for her in being adopted or in her conception… instead, it was a blessing to her. By the way, she got a standing ovation of several hundred people for her speech that day, and she won the Fair Queen title. Becca and her dad have a great relationship. The other 4 kids will tell you, if you want something from Dad, have Becca ask him for it. While parents aren’t supposed to have favorites, their relationship is much closer than that of the other 4 children. We often laugh to ourselves that the one child that is not biologically his, is the child that he is closest to. And while we have 15 grandchildren, this is the daughter that named a son after her dad. Just yesterday, I talked with an old family member, who brought up my daughter’s conception and the incest. As I was telling my husband about it, he responded ‘They better not have anything to say about Becca. She is MY daughter, and if they have anything bad to say about her, they will be picking themselves up off the floor.’ After 32 years of being her dad, this is how much he loves her and protects her…She was always treated the same as the other kids, and the day of her adoption was a celebration for [husband’s] that side of the family. I remember her grandpa, my husband’s dad, telling her ‘So you are a real Evans now, huh? Well, you always were you know.’ Becca was with my father in law when he passed away 6 months ago. She sat with her grandpa and her aunt, and read him his bible until the very minute he passed away. Her extended family loved her and cherished her. They never saw her as any different then any other child in our family.”

Andy and Julia, featured in the recent documentary Pro-Life Without Exception are parents who had the opportunity to adopt a 13 year old raped girl’s baby. It’s sometimes believed that women are more inclined to love children they didn’t conceive but this husband proves that he can love and be loved as daddy just as easily. Their daughter Jaylyn is definitely a “Daddy’s girl.” She survived an abortion and has mental and physical challenges but none of that matters to this father. Andy said, “Being rape conceived caused me no hesitation in the decision to adopt. It was about helping a young girl in need. We love our daughter for who she is, not for where she came from.”

Andy is the father to five biological children beside Jaylyn. But there is no difference in his love.

Edith Parkman (honored at the  CHOICES4LIFE Honor for Life Awards Gala for being a hero mom) shared in this video how her own father would not hear of an abortion. The child was his grandbaby and no one was going to kill that child. He nurtured his daughter through the whole pregnancy. Edith later married a man that her daughter called Daddy. They too saw no difference in their father daughter relationship. This precious man passed away and Edith is married to still another wonderful Daddy type, loving her daughter conceived in rape for the precious human being she is.

Sometimes hope is hard to find but these men prove there is still hope.