...My appetite for pornography and perversion increased dramatically after Sherry's departure. One weekend when I had two women partying with me at the ranch, Sherry unexpectedly decided to drop Krystle off for an overnight stay. After Krystle went to sleep, the women and I resumed our drinking before ending up together in bed.

I awoke at about one-thirty, thinking I heard a knock on my bedroom door. At first I ignored the sound.

Tap, tap, tap. There it was again. I lifted my head off the pillow and listened intently. Just then, I heard a sound that haunts me to this day.

"Daddy. Daaad-dy?"

Instinctively, I jerked a bedsheet over my naked body. The women stirred next to me.

"Daddy? It's Krystle," I heard her tiny voice calling.

I shook the women violently, scaring them awake. "Get out," I said tersely. "Get out now!"

"Why? Jorge, what's wrong?"

"Shut up and go!" I whispered harshly. Quickly the women gathered their clothes and started toward the door.

"No, not that way! out the window."

"Jorge, this is ridiculous."

"Go!" I shrieked hoarsely, glaring at them with a face that clearly convinced them to obey.

As the women scurried out the window, still wrapping themselves in their clothing, I pulled the bedcovers up around my neck.

Again the angelic voice called through the door. "Daddy! Daddy, it's Krystle. Please open the door. Daaad-dy! Please!"

I felt as though I'd touched the ends of a live electric wire. I began to perspire profusely; my body was trembling. The more my baby girl kept calling for me, the more I continued to sweat and shake.

I closed my eyes tightly, as if by blocking my vision I could somehow block out the sound. But just as I had experienced when the plane careened toward the earth in Panama, my life passed before my eyes. I blinked hard. I didn't want to see it.

Is this the end of my life?

Krystle's voice gradually diminished from a high-pitched call to a heartrending wail to a sniffling whimper. All the while I clutched the covers around me, as if the bedclothes could cover my shame.

How could I be doing this to my little baby girl? I've never been subjected to anything as horrible as what I'm doing to my darling daughter right now. How could I be so evil? What had consumed me? If my guns had been close by at that moment, I wouldn't have hesitated to shoot myself.

Finally, I heard no more sounds from Krystle outside my door.

Only then did I stop trembling. Slowly, ever so quietly, I slipped out of bed. I was repulsed by myself, but it wasn't the perspiration glistening off my skin that made me feel so repugnant. Filth seemed to emanate from deep within me, seeping out, inexorably working it's way to the surface.

I wanted to check on Krystle, but I was too dirty. I wanted to run to her, to hug her tightly, but I felt so filthy. She was so pure - and I was so corrupt, so vile. If I even touched my daughter, I would taint her forever.

I stumbled toward the shower, turned on the water as hot as I could stand, and tried washing away my foulness. Scrubbing my body roughly, over and over, until my skin was raw, I stayed in the shower until it felt that my flesh itself was going down the drain.

Finally I shut off the water and wrapped myself in a heavy terry-cloth robe.

I opened the bedroom door, and the image I saw was burned forever in my memory. My precious baby girl was lying on the floor crying, her face pressed against the doorjamb as if she was trying to catch any glimpse at all of her daddy.

She looked up at me through tear filled eyes. "Daddy!" she cried.

I knelt beside Krystle and hugged her. Cataclysmic upheavals of emotion ripped through my body. I held Krystle tightly and promised, "Never, never again! Never again will I ever put you through this."

By now, it was three in the morning, but I called Mom anyway. I quickly allayed her fears about my early morning phone call. With Krystle still in my lap, I said, "Mom, I'm finished. I'm through with this kind of life."....Through her tears, she just kept thanking God, over and over, for answering her prayers.

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