Submitted by: Pat Greenfield, mother of Natalie Greenfield
Subject: Criminal Activity in our Home
One evening last February (05), my daughter Natalie (then 17 years old) called me into her room. I sat on her bed to chat with her as I do quite often and she broke down in tears describing a series of tragic and terrible events from years before, and it hit me totally blind side. These terrible secret aggressions by Jamin Wight took place when he was 24 and 25 years of age, and she was 14 and 15 — in the security of our own home, and what is almost unbelievable, and to add to the devious nature of his acts, is that these events occured while we were also actually in the home!
Once she had poured her heart out to me, describing details of unfathomable offenses against her, a young virgin girl, she asked my forgiveness for; allowing these things to happen without calling on us for help, being manipulated and conned for upwards of a year to continue responding to Jamin’s aggressions, and to forgive her for waiting so long to tell us — we prayed together asking God to forgive all and to give us wisdom to know what to do next. I didn’t sleep that night as I tried to imagine telling Gary, my husband, what she had told me.
The next day I sat in the living room with Gary and told him everything Natalie told me. It was shocking and devastating to him, as it was to me. Originally we had respected and admired Jamin as a fine young man with quite impressive potential, Natalie also felt the same way. He boarded with our family to repair and restore our 115 year old home in exchange for his rent plus an income, so each day he worked on some aspect of this project, carefully logging his work hours. Some of his more obvious traits, when flipped around, made it ideal for him to get away with this crime on a regular basis. He is a leader; very good at persuading others to follow. He is extremely perceptive and very stealth — we would joke about what a good spy he would make, never imagining we were victims of his crafty sense of hiding out and covering his tracks. He *always* has to be right, and argues tirelessly to convince others of this. He would put spins on past events and convince others his way was the way it had truly occured, even though it wasn’t. At first impression, he was well liked.
The day after Natalie told us these things, Gary and I decided to seek legal counsel in Greg Dickison who has been our family attorney for years. When Greg explained the law to us, we knew we had a very serious issue ahead. Gary phoned Jamin a day or two after Natalie’s confession and asked him to come to our home. He wanted to know why because we didn’t really have him over since he moved out and he knew something was up. Greg agreed to be here when Jamin arrived. I was not in the room but I knew they were presenting him with a copy of the Idaho law concerning sexual misconduct with a minor. He read it and Gary then requested him to write out a full and complete confession of any sexual activity that took place with our daughter, and gave him till midnight to return with the written confession. He brought it over just before midnight, we showed it to Natalie and as painful as this was for her to read, she said it was incomplete and it appeared he was banking on her confession not being so revealing of the truth. Gary phoned him and told him he had till noon the next day to write the details of the truth, leaving nothing out or we would call the police. The second letter included the events that the first had omitted. I think Jamin was hoping that his confession would secure we would not go to the law but at no time did we promise anything like that. To protect his then fiancée, Gary drove to the Tri Cities to tell the parents of his bride-to-be just what kind of man they were about to allow their daughter to marry — and they immediately broke off the engagement for good.
Together Gary and I determined to let all rest for a few months for Natalie’s sake as she would have nothing to do with going to the police to report the sexual misconduct because she was so afraid to speak details about what caused her such shame, and in such a small community she feared she would be acquainted with the people she would have to report it to. We had mercy on her and let it lie, warning her that before the summer was over we would have to do something about it for the sake of any women Jamin might be ‘grooming’. We did not mention Jamin’s name to Natalie for a long time, per her request — not because she had any remaining attraction to him at all but because his name alone repulsed her. The passing of time has helped her heal.
Why after six months did we decide now to go to the police? Enough time has passed, summer is almost over but also some of Jamin’s closest friends phoned Gary and I in the last few months because Jamin has been what we call “laying the ground work” by slandering our family, in reference to these crimes, to his buddies so that if/when the offenses became public, he would not look so bad. They saw right through it and in fact, called us so we would report the crime(s) ASAP and get Jamin away from some of their female relatives and friends in case he might do the same manipulative crimes towards them, and to hopefully help stop his apparent devious, sexual predatory path. As an example of his recent manipulating of the truth to his friends, in the last month one of his closest buddies, presently in law school, phoned and asked me if it was true what Jamin had just told him: that Jamin had NO idea of Natalie’s age when he was engaged in sexual activities with her!! As you can see by reading Jamin’s letter of confession, this is an outright lie but it does make him look better than the truth would!
On August 15, Gary and I had a nearly two hour meeting with Peter Leithart, Doug Wilson and Jamin. The purpose of this meeting was to openly discuss what Jamin’s attitude and behavior should be with regard to his admitted crimes. We were not discouraged from going to the police. Jamin was strongly encouraged to “take his lumps like a Christian man” and in so doing, make a bad situation not nearly as bad as it could be. He was told not to slander or gossip about Natalie and our family and also to allow whatever punishment or results came about from the report of his crime to be used to rescue him from his devious sexual ways and hopefully make him a productive member of society one day. He wholeheartedly agreed with this and ‘appeared’ to be broken and contrite, humbled.
I ran into his roommate today who told me he does not appear to be broken, that it may have been a show. Our response to this? Time will tell.
Meanwhile, we truly hope our family is safe from any retaliation potential on his part until he is behind bars, and after he is released. He really is good with weapons, and one of the best grapplers around . . . to be honest, this makes me nervous. Should it?
We look forward to total healing and healthy recovery from all these very sad things. Thanks to our strong family, strong faith in God and a good church and community, we look forward to a good and full life ahead for our brave daughter, who has done the right thing to bring justice.
