'He is forgiven' - Kalispell woman finds peace after sexual abuse

As a lawsuit against the Boy Scouts organization by women who were molested and raped decades ago by a local Scout leader continues to make headlines and moves closer to trial, the painful memories come to the surface again for Terry Harter of Kalispell.

She was one of William H. Leininger Jr.’s victims in 1974 during the summer of her freshman year in high school. He sexually accosted her at the Kalispell Red Cross office, where he took her — alone — under the pretense of teaching her lifeguarding skills.

Now 53, Harter is not one of the five women suing the Boy Scouts of America for failing to protect them from predatory scoutmasters such as Leininger.

She was asked to be a part of the lawsuit, and, to be sure, her pain and suffering were enormous in the years following the abuse.

But no amount of money from a lawsuit settlement at any point would have healed the emotional fallout, Harter said.

Only one thing has made a difference in her life: She has forgiven Leininger.

“I had to forgive Bill,” she said quietly.

Years of secular counseling only put a Band-Aid on the wounds, Harter said. The anger, the nightmares always kept creeping back.

She knows the women who were abused as young teens as she was. Harter said she believes there are many more victims out there beyond those who sued over their abuse.

Harter herself carried the weight of abuse for years, choosing boyfriends who turned out to be abusive.

“You carry that victim spirit, so you don’t pick good people,” she said.

It wasn’t until she started counseling with a local pastor when she was about 30 that Harter had the breakthrough she so desperately had been seeking.

“It didn’t matter what you ran to,” she said. “The pastor said you’ll stay in bondage unless you forgive him. He told me, ‘There’s the door. You can either go out there or forgive him.’ He took my hand and prayed and it was as if the hand of God reached in there and pulled out all that hurt,” she recalled. “He is forgiven, and I no longer have nightmares or anger toward him.”

Harter said she often thinks of Leininger’s family, some of whom still live and work in the Flathead, and how they have suffered and “keep having it thrown in their faces years later.”

Leininger’s victims ranged from 11 to 14 years old and some endured more than 100 instances of sexual abuse from the then-popular Scoutmaster, according to court records.

He was convicted and in 1976 was sentenced to 10 years in prison, with some time suspended, for the Kalispell rapes. In 1982, he pleaded guilty to raping two other girls in Anaconda and was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Leininger died in state custody in 2002 at age 80.

Harter, painfully shy and quiet in her youth, was excited to become a member of the Explorer Scouts program, a Boy Scout program developed for girls. Her older sister was part of the program, and joining gave Harter a sense of belonging to something special.

The group did a lot of volunteer work for the Red Cross, and there was talk of Leininger taking a group of youths to China on a Scouting trip.

“He was moving up in the community in big ways,” Harter recalled. “It was a huge deal. My dad was excited I was getting involved.”

Harter, then 15, recalls being the oldest of the half-dozen girls who joined when she did.

Leininger had a long history with scouting in the Flathead Valley. He was the leader of two troops in Kalispell as well as two Explorer posts. In addition, he had served as chairman of the Northwest Montana District for the Boy Scouts.

The year he assaulted Harter, the Boy Scouts gave Leininger the Silver Beaver award, the highest adult award in scouting.

Indeed, he was a rising civic star.

It wasn’t long before Leininger took the new girls on an outing to the now defunct Lakeside Air Force Base.

“He brought out wine and other drinks” and encouraged the girls to partake, Harter recalled.

“‘All the other kids were doing it, too,’” he assured them about the drinking.

Leininger then took two of the girls alone and left for a time.

“We were all naive,” she said. “One girl came back and her face was flushed. She didn’t say what had happened. I didn’t understand what was going on.”

Harter said she knew next to nothing about sex. Her parents didn’t drink, so she considered using alcohol “taboo.” Still, no red flag went up over Leininger’s behavior.

“He kept asking me when my [menstrual] periods were and I thought that was kind of weird,” she said.

Leininger told Harter he needed to teach her how to save someone who was drowning, so she accompanied him one day to the Red Cross office.

“It was early in the day. There was a curtain across the room. I had to take off all my clothes,” she said slowly, recounting each detail. “My legs were bandaged together [that was part of the training, he had told her]. I was lying on a mat on the floor. By then he had stripped down. He was standing above me. I was like this scared little rabbit.

“He got on top and tried to insert his fingers. I said it hurt so bad.”

Then there was a knock on the door. A girl had arrived, presumably to talk to Leininger.

“He told the girl to come back later and then he told me to get dressed,” said Harter, who by this time was unable to utter a word. “I don’t even know how I got home that day.”

Harter said she believes Leininger would have raped her had he not been interrupted in his sexual pursuit.

Prior to the incident, Leininger had Harter sign some papers — another confusing request. She thought it might have something to do with the planned trip to China or some other Scout activity.

“I didn’t know what I was signing,” she confided. “He said afterwards I had signed a paper consenting to sex and that in the eyes of God I was married to him.”

“‘It’s a secret you can’t tell anyone,’” he commanded.

Harter felt guilty that she had signed the papers without fully knowing what they were. Because she was the oldest of her Explorer group, she also felt responsible in some way for the sexual abuse the younger girls had endured.

Harter immediately quit the Scout program after the incident, and the emotional aftermath began to spill forth.

“All through high school I stayed away from dances,” she remembers. “I ran from anything where guys were. I started skipping classes.”

As word about the sexual abuse swept through the school, Harter remembers the shame she felt. Other girls at school began asking the Explorer members one by one: “Were you raped?”

“By then the denial had totally set in,” she said. “I felt angry toward my parents. They hadn’t protected me. I became the bully at home and my dad [a teacher then at Kalispell Junior High] couldn’t understand why I was acting that way.

“There were times I took aspirin and alcohol. I just wanted to die. I cut off all socializing. I was alone with the pain.”

Then Harter did an about-face and became rebellious, partying heavily during her senior year at Flathead High. She tried to talk to a school guidance counselor about her inability to concentrate on her studies.

She wanted to tell him about the sexual assault, but couldn’t. Her dad, after all, was friends with all of her teachers, including the counselor, who told her simply: “Buck up and do your homework.”

Her parents were friends with Leininger, and in fact, a second sexual encounter could easily have occurred at her own house. Leininger had stored some of the Scouting equipment in her father’s barns, and one time he dropped by and asked her father if she could accompany him to the barn to scrub out some big kettles.

Harter’s father was puzzled when she emphatically refused the task.

A couple of weeks later, Leininger was arrested.

The nightmares for Harter continued for years.

“I used to dream about him coming out of prison and killing me,” she recalled.

Harter had been baptized and confirmed in the Lutheran Church but steered clear of religion in the years following high school.

It gnawed at her; she should have known what Leininger was doing. She should have prevented it, not only for herself but for the younger girls he’d victimized.

Her salvation came from a group of people affiliated with Riverside Alliance Church (now Riverside Vineyard) who were ministering in her neighborhood. Harter remembers she had a beer in one hand. One of the church members asked her if she knew what salvation was.

“The second he grabbed my hand and started praying, something changed in my heart,” she said.

That encounter led her first to Pastor Mike Phillips at Riverside and later Pastor Paul Arends. By then Harter was a single mother with a 2-year-old son.

“I didn’t want him to go through life like I had,” she said.

Pastor Mike encouraged her to tell her parents. It was painful, and both her mother and father, in turn, said they felt guilty they hadn’t protected their daughter.

Harter told her son, now 25, about the sexual abuse just a year ago.

Through continued counseling, Harter slowly came to realize she could have good people around her.

“I remember cutting out the news article about his arrest and I carried that with me until the day I forgave him,” she said.

Once she was able to forgive Leininger, she was even able to have compassion for him. He was a sick man, she said.

Harter hopes telling her own story will help other victims who may still be suffering. There’s no other reason to dredge up the past.

“A victim only stays a victim as long as they hang onto the hurts of the past, she said. “At my age, money [from a lawsuit settlement] wouldn’t do one darn thing for me.”

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.