This week in Savage Love: The sins of the grandfather
Note: This article contains descriptions of childhood sexual abuse.
My grandfather was a pillar of the community and beloved by his family. He was also sexually abusive. He died when I was a child. I remember only one incident happening to me—during a cuddle session, he encouraged me to put my mouth on his penis, and then told me to let it be our little secret. I heard rumors as an adult that he molested other kids in the neighborhood. He also had a sexual relationship with my mother. She says nothing happened as a child. But as an adult, he started telling her he loved her in a romantic way. He told her he wanted to take nude Polaroids of her, and she let him. And she loved him—she and her sisters all pretty much idolized him. My one aunt knew (she said nothing happened to her), and I asked her how she reconciled that. She said she compartmentalized it—she thought he was a wonderful father and didn’t really think about the other stuff. I did lots of therapy in the late 1980s and early ’90s. I read books, I journaled, I talked to my mom and tried to understand what she experienced. And I moved on as much as anyone could. So now it’s 2019 and I’m almost 50. My mom just moved into a nursing home, and while cleaning out her drawers, I found the Polaroids my grandfather took of her. I know it was him because he is in some of them, taken into a mirror as she goes down on him. They were taken over a period of years. She had led me to believe he never really did anything sexual with her besides taking photos. But he did. And here’s the thing, Dan: In the photos, she looks happy. I know she was probably acting, because that’s what he wanted from her. But it just makes me question my assumptions. Was it terrible abuse or forbidden love? Both? What am I looking at? What would I prefer—that she enjoyed it or that she didn’t? She kept the photos. Were they fond memories? I know she loved him. She kind of fell apart when he died. Was he a fucking manipulator who had a gift for making his victims feel loved and special as he exploited them for his own selfish needs? I don’t know if I’m going to bring this up with my mom. She’s old and sick, and I dragged her through these types of conversations in my 20s. So I’m writing you. This is so far out of most people’s experience, and I want someone who has heard more sexual secrets than probably anyone else in the world to tell me what he thinks.
Whirlwind Of Emotions
I think you should sit down and watch all four hours of Leaving Neverland, the new HBO documentary by British filmmaker Dan Reed. It focuses on the experiences of Wade Robson and James Safechuck, two now-adult men who were sexually abused by pop star Michael Jackson when they were boys. Allegedly. It’s an important film to watch, WOE, but it’s not an easy one to watch, as it includes graphic descriptions of the sexual abuse both men claim to have suffered as boys.
The second most disturbing part of the film after the graphic descriptions of child rape—or the third most disturbing part after the credulity/culpability of Robson’s and Safechuck’s parents—may be what the men have to say about Jackson. Both describe their abuser in romantic terms. They both say they loved Jackson. And they both remain deeply conflicted about their feelings for Jackson then and their feelings for him now. It was their affection for Jackson—their desire to protect him and to safeguard what Jackson convinced them was a secret and a bond they shared—that led both men to lie to law-enforcement officials when Jackson was accused of sexually abusing different boys.
You should also listen to Reed’s interview on The Gist, Mike Pesca’s terrific daily podcast. Reading your letter the morning after I watched Leaving Neverland reminded me of something Reed said to Pesca: “What the film is about is the reckoning. It’s two families coming to terms with what happened to their sons. And a big part of understanding that, you know—so why the silence? Why did the sons keep silent for so long? Why did they keep the secret? And the key really is to be able to explain why Wade gave false witness and perjured himself on the witness stand. And the reason for that, of course, has to do with how survivors of sexual abuse experience that. And how they keep a secret and how they sometimes form deep attachments with the abuser and how that attachment persists into adult life.”