“If you had a penis, you would know.”

These are the words child abuser Erlis Chaisson uttered to the woman he abused as they sat smoking a cigarette under an oak tree. Unbeknownst to Chaisson, the 25-year-old woman was now a police officer and she secretly recorded his confession of the vile crimes. “I’ve always, always wanted to be a detective,” the woman told The Daily Beast. “I was fresh out of the academy. It was kind of, ‘If he’s going to talk, he’s going to talk’—how do I prove it? “I thought to myself: I’m the difference between him and prison.” Days earlier the police officer had visited McLennan County Sheriff’s Detective Brad Bond and revealed the details of the abuse she suffered. She relayed the details of how over a four-year period, Chaisson rubbed his penis between her legs, performed oral sex on her and guided her hand to his penis. Once a warrant for his arrest was issued, the woman met with Chaisson and asked him about his crimes. His answers were chilling but ultimately secured his fate behind bars. "Are you sorry that you did it?” she asked. “I mean, I understand you’retrying to put all the blame on me,” Chaisson replied. “Lines got crossed. Our emotions got mixed and misread. Didn’t mean for none of it to go as far as it did.” “The dick has no conscience, and there’s no explanation for it,” he continued. “If you had a penis, you would know.” The woman had a fellow police officer nearby and explained that she had established hand signals with him so that he could intervene if necessary. “My heart was racing,” she said. Cruelly, Chaisson refused to accept responsibility, instead shifting the blame to the girl who was 8 at the time. “You need to control your curiosity. I wasn’t supposed to be the friend you played nasty with,” Chaisson said. “I’d be laying on the couch and then you got that look in your eyes,” he continued. “I’d pull the covers up and you’d come run in and jump under there and back up all the way to me.” “In the mornings, cuddle up to you, scratch your back. I shouldn’t have put myself in those positions.” “I mean, anybody would have got confused,” he said. “I was old enough to know better but too young to care,” he concluded cruelly. At the time of the abuse, Chaisson was already a registered sex offender who’d served time in Louisiana on two counts of molestation of a juvenile. After listening to the recorded confession, the court convicted Chaisson of aggravated sexual assault of a child and two counts of indecency by contact. He was sentenced to life in prison. “I felt like a weight lifted over my shoulders after I testified the first time,” the woman told The Daily Beast. “I no longer have to hide the secret or bear the responsibility of it.” “I feel like I helped people that hadn’t reported, and I helped the others get closure. I feel like I helped protect anyone who may have been a victim in the future,” she bravely concluded.

image via Texas Department of Public Safety.