Carolyn Dimmick Final PDF.indd - Washington Secretary of State

Dimmick: Always. OK. Here’s my bit: “How to protect your children from morals
offenders.” We would go to these PTA meetings and Chuck would introduce me as the
deputy in charge and I would have to make a speech.
Hughes: How did you protect your children from morals offenders in 1958, judge?
Dimmick: Just be sure you know where your kids are, and what’s going on, and if anybody
touches them inappropriately you want your kids to know that that’s a no-no and you
should tell somebody.
Hughes: I grew up in the 1950s, and you were a legal professional in the ’50s. Is there
really more of everything today? Are there more pedophiles and other fruitcakes out there
now?
Dimmick: Yes, and more drugs available, all over the place, and more alcohol.
Hughes: Someone once observed that even in the halcyon days of the 1950s that Lucy and
Desi really weren’t getting along that well. They had separate beds and all that, and things
in America weren’t all they were cracked up to be. Do you think there really is a lot more
pedophilia today, teachers hitting on kids, etc.?
Dimmick: They’re discovered more. I don’t know. I would have no way of knowing if there
is more now, but they’re certainly coming to light and being publicized more than ever
before.
Hughes: On your watch, early on, you were on the cutting edge of seeing more
attention paid to those kinds of crimes, weren’t you?
Dimmick: Yes, because I had the moral calendar and so if a child was molested, or a
woman was molested, I would have a case.
Hughes: In that era, were you able to do increasingly more to help those victims get
counseling?
Dimmick: I think so. That was one of our foremost interests – protecting the
victim. Now they have a lot more than we ever did then. We had some services but not a
lot.
Hughes: Did you find yourself interviewing young children, and
women of all ages who had been victimized?
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