The Man Named Trevor

​As a twenty year veteran of the Special Victims Unit of a major metropolitan Police Department, I saw my fair share of awful things. None of those were ever as bad as when it involved a child, though. I had a repertoire with kids, which meant I was usually the one who was tasked with those kind of cases. I was good at my job, but hated having to investigate crimes like that. Though most of the cases I worked on were downright horrible, none of them would be considered unusual. Expect for one.

I remember coming into the office one morning and checking my in-box of new leads. This was a collection of different tips and concerns from the public and our informants about possible sex crimes or abuse. It was the usual run of the mill sort of stuff, except for one. A mother had requested to talk to a detective about something her daughter had told her about. I called the woman, who seemed worried over the phone, and asked her to come in so that we could speak. She arrived the next morning, with her daughter, looking as worried as she had sounded the day before.

She told me that her daughter had mentioned that a man had been watching her through her bedroom window during the night a few weeks ago. Of course, this worried her and she spent the next night in her daughter’s room with her. She wanted to catch whoever it was leering in the act, but nobody ever came and they both fell asleep. The next morning, her daughter asked her “Did you see him, Mom?” She began to wonder if her daughter was just dreaming, because she had not seen anyone.

Over the next few days, her daughter mentioned seeing the man a few more times, but the mother was never able to catch anyone outside of the house. She eventually just chalked it up to an over-active imagination and disregarded it. That is, until, her daughter said to her “Mommy, Trevor was in the bathroom with me last night during my bath.” This frightened her, because her first thought was whoever was outside of the window had made it into the house somehow. She asked her daughter who Trevor was, but she couldn’t really get much more information. I was just as concerned as she was that someone had possibly gotten into the house, especially considering he had given the girl his name. So I decided I needed to ask the girl some more questions to see if I couldn’t get a better description of him.

I knew rather quickly I was dealing with someone completely outside of my range of expertise after talking with the little girl. She told me that “Trevor” was dead, but still wanted to be her friend. She said that he would often show up outside, but she invited him in one night so that they could play with her dolls. She said that he wouldn’t leave after that and was always just around, in her room and other places in the house. She told me that she didn’t mind at first, but that Trevor was always by her, even when she was sleeping and taking baths. That made her uncomfortable, and she finally told her mom that he was in the house with her.

​For all intent and purposes, it sounded like Trevor was an intruder. I just wasn’t sure he was the sort of intruder I could do anything about. I thought maybe he was an imaginary friend? Kids can dream up all sorts of things. But if he was a creation of the daughter, why did it all seem so sinister? I’m not really sure what to say about it, to be honest. And I told the same thing to the mother. All I could was recommend they visit a psychologist and see if they could help that way. Trevor, as far as I knew, was still stalking around that house, long after the daughter grew up.

---