The story was commented on endlessly last week in newspaper, talk show and blog. I took in all the ways people excused his behavior, amazed that they chose to stand by him with little concern for the girl he raped. Throughout it all the thought sputtered in the back of my mind but never quite took hold — why is this upsetting me so?
Then I read this: “Let us be absolutely clear: Those shielding Polanski are choosing the sex abusers over children. It is an either-or choice.” The reason for upset became clear. Just like my mother did for my father, that group of petition signers, columnists and commentors made the choice to protect the abuser. Having done so, there is no protection left for the one abused. Their concern cannot go both ways.
It was just one instance, I thought, one instance that took place some 30-odd years ago. But for each case visible due to celebrity how many similar yet silent tragedies happen every day? How many times in 30-odd years have 13-year-old girls (or adult women, or girls, or boys, or grown men) had their refusals ignored, then watched in amazement as friends, family and strangers shielded the very person who caused the abuse? Dozens of times? Hundreds? Thousands?
My parents had two miscarriages before I was born. Tenaciously I clung to that bloody field, unwilling to be washed away. But my half-alive dreaming siblings had it right, I think. They gave up when the getting was good. They let go; they went back into that vast queue of souls waiting for placement with another family, a better family. They must have known not to come into that godforsaken stew of abuse and denial. Why I didn’t follow their example is a mystery to me.
In the bluntest possible terms, then: After reading that piece I sobbed. I stood on the deck at midnight in the rain trying to stop, trying to remember that it was long over and that his case had nothing to do with my own troubled history. I failed; I stayed there wet and cold until the worry that my neighbors would call the cops on the crazy woman out in the rain forced me back inside.
If there is any lesson to come from this sorry mess it is this: Every time you make an excuse for a rapist, an abuser, a person who got “carried away,” past victims watch. They listen.
And they are hurt once again.
Wow. Let me first start by saying that this post spoke to me. It took me back to the days when I was a 16 year old girl who suffered through years of incest at the hand of my brother. I finally told someone other than my mother,and that person saved my life by contacting the police. My mother refused to believe it, even though she caught him in the act several times. She wanted to protect her “baby boy” much more than me, her daughter. I was called a slut, a whore, and just about every other derogatory sexual term you can imagine. It took me years to move beyond the abuse in my life, and only because my husband is very patient with me, am I as far as I am now, 12 years later. My mom refused to allow me space from my abuser, and has brought him to my home several times, I finally developed the backbone to enforce my own no contact rule between my abuser, myself and my children. Before this year, my mom would guilt me into allowing contact, where I would spend the whole time furious and physically sick worrying about my kids and my personal safety.
For anyone to side with the abuser reminds me of my personal struggles. To define myself aside from the abuse. To develop the strength to stand up for myself and my peace of mind. To protect my daughters. For anyone to stand up and say… “It was ok, for this to happen”, means that it was ok, for my brother to force me to have sexual experiences with him. And By everything I am, and everything I will be someday, IT WAS NOT OK.
I agree. There is another great post on this at http://www.herbadmother.com you may want to read.
Permalink: Snips and Snails and the Unbearable Heaviness of Roman Polanski
I know you told me to feel to ask you about anything that I read, but this is never a topic I wanted to broach. That being said, you can always feel free to vent to me or reach out to me if others are not more available at the time.
Why not? Wouldn’t you ask me about (say) a serious car accident I’d been in as a teenager? Is this different? :)
It is a valid point, but the subject is not nearly as fun as most of the ones we typically discuss. Besides I am never sure whether asking about a traumatic experience is good or bad.
I know. I know, I know, I know.
Oh AAG, this is so true. I’ve been through the hell of people excusing someone who sexually assaulted me. I rail against this culture we live in that condones rape and abuse. If we don’t stand for the victim then we’re standing for the perpetrator (and all other perpetrators).
This is one of the reasons I love your bog so much. I start my morning off each day coming here, and your posts always make me think, and many invoke a very visceral response, like this one.
Too many to count, I would say, the protectors of the abusers stand by silently, trapped in their own denial. I think if we knew for certain, it just might make us all collectively puke. It’s maddening and wrong on every level. I think your writing about your own experience is brave, and important. I think people who have an active audience like you, and celebrities like Mackenzie Philips, are the fastest way to awareness on the sensitive topics of rape, incest and child sexual abuse.
Keep up the good work. I empathize with you and your pain from the past. I know what it is like to have a hurt so deep that sometimes you don’t even realize it’s there until you pick up the newspaper or turn on the TV.
xo~Sadie
Hee, sometimes it surely does feel like a “bog.”
Their denial is a wonderful safety net. It’s just too bad that victims have to pay the price for their inability to see the truth.
Well you certainly make the point that I have been trying to make for 40 years. Thank you. I feel there is no excusing an abuser, no matter how old and frail, no matter how long ago the abuse was, no matter who is helping to cover it up.
OH!! I can’t believe I said “bog”. Sorry, darlin! :)
xo~Sadie
Hee! It’s not a problem. :)
AAG, thank you once again for finding the right words. And once again, may I add “Me too.”
Jennifer, I celebrate your strength. Although I’m approaching middle age and now live thousands of miles away, whenever I hear my brother’s voice on my mother’s answering machine (yes, he still lives with her) I become that terrified child all over again.
Big hugs to you both.
Thank you for sharing your experience, aag. I wish all the petition signers would read it.
I see no problem with defending the actions of Polanski. As long as those supporters are willing to allow Polanski to sodomize them whilst begging him to stop. As soon as that line forms, let me know – I’d enjoy watching that.
This whole “thing” disgusts me. It disgusts the victim in me, the woman in me, the human in me.
“If there is any lesson to come from this sorry mess it is this: Every time you make an excuse for a rapist, an abuser, a person who got “carried away,” past victims watch. They listen.”
There is another lesson being learned.. by future victims. As excuses are made, they listen and they learn there will be nobody there to protect them, nobody to take their side when it happens to them. And so, like so many others, they will say nothing and they will think they are some how responsible. Because we’ve already taught them it wasn’t “his fault.”
Only too true. :(
Ok…I got a chill when you were discussing you and your relation to you lost siblings. I tend to be an internal hopeful in a tragic world, yet bitter and cynical…that said, to me there is something more mystic than blood, cum and egg. I mean there is a reason why you are here and this the words you share, may be it, or may not…but there is a reason.
As Polanski, well he is brute child fucker, a genius film maker and a bad bad man, but law was served, perhaps wrongfully, but it was served.
I am so glad you addressed this particular case in the news. I work with sex offenders, I hear the lies, the excuses, the manipulation. I stress accountability, ownership, and truthfulness about one’s own actions. Part of the counseling process is forcing admission and accountability. Lie detector tests are given periodically during counseling, to make sure they are being honest with their therapist (and confront them when they are not). They are required to tell significant others, family and employers about their crimes and violations. Sex offenders are master manipulators and liars, until they are forced to own up to their crimes and the impact it has on their victims, they continue to perpetrate their crimes. These are crime so horrendous that society would rather overlook them. When that happens, the victims get overlooked too. No amount of talent, wealth or social standing can make these offenses acceptable. You are right, it is an either-or choice, it can’t be both ways.
Alice
Beautifully expressed. And I’m sorry you had to have such a bad night as a result of this stupid case. I know how it feels.
Meant to pass on this link to you. The lawyer Marcia Clark walks readers through the court transcripts on the day Polanski *chose to plead guilty* to prove that once and for all that Polanski’s “I got cheated on the sentence they’d *promised* me, so that’s why I had to leave” story is a complete lie: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-10-02/the-lost-polanski-transcripts/
It’s an important piece of information, given this falsehood that everyone’s been throwing around. But this article gave me my “hits me hardest” moment, too, when she explains how the mother wanted to attend the photo session with the girl, but Polanski talked her out of being there by telling her “it might inhibit the girl in the photo session.” This “the girl will be inhibited with you present” is exactly the excuse my rapist used to guilt my mother into leaving me alone with him (although of course the conditions around it were different–it wasn’t a photo shoot). I read that and it felt like a kick to the gut. As sad as this case and the reactions around it had already made me, this really brought it home. I was so very, very sad for that poor, poor girl. And her poor, trusting, authority-dazzled, misguided mother. And all the rest of us like them, who got such a raw deal while those assholes got off scot free.
Oh god, I’m sorry dea. I wonder how many of us got that same kick to the gut from some part of this miserable case. Hugs.
Thanks. :) Really, I was okay, it just surprised me, the extent of personal connection, and made the case feel even more “real” than it had before, despite how long ago it was. Also, a lot of people have been trying to blame the mother in this case to detract from what Polanski did, so it was very interesting to see those facts included.
I will also say that for me, despite the misguided Hollywood brouhaha, I have found much positivity to focus on in this situation. I was quite frankly shocked that something got done. That the Swiss and American governments actually kept on it rather than passively letting it go, despite the perpetrator and victim’s current lack of interest in pursuing it. I am so pleased and proud to see after centuries of rape–and the rape of minors–being something people preferred to ignore or look over or just kind of let fall through the cracks of the legal system, that that same system is finally taking this rape seriously. That they’re not going to let this person go, despite public pressure by prominent people. That they’re saying, “Yes, this matters, sexual assault matters, no matter how long ago and no matter who you are and how well respected you are. And the law is the law, and a crime is a crime, and you WILL be held accountable for what you unabashedly pled guilty to.”
This is something that would not have happened even just a few decades ago. I find a great deal of comfort in this.
And I also feel heartened by people like Chris Rock stating the truth clearly, and even more wonderfully, a person like Howard Stern, with his extremely widespread macho-prone male audience who were probably hoping he’d make a funny joke out of the situation, say clearly on his radio show yesterday morning (in response to Whoopi Goldberg’s statements on The View), “This wasn’t ‘rape-rape’? No, she’s right, it wasn’t. It was rape-rape-rape, rape-rape-rape-rape, rape, rape, rape, rape-rape.”
And so despite the stupidity of some people’s opinions, at the core I see this whole thing as a positive. Despite all the usual smoke screens and distractions that people try to throw up to protect the perpetrator and punish and/or ignore the victim, THE SYSTEM IS WORKING. And taking it seriously. And not folding under pressure. It is saying to victims everywhere, no matter who tells you you don’t get support–even if yoiu tell yourself you don’t deserve any–we’re giving it to you anyway.
That’s where I choose to put my focus.
I think you’re right.
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.
The lesson I took from the whole Polanski saga is: it’s not my fault. It’s not my fault that no one supported me, that everyone chose to shield my abuser. It’s what happens to all victims of this kind of abuse. It’s not my fault I wasn’t protected. All those excuses people made for supporting my abuser were just that: excuses.
I am so so sorry that this happened, and that so many people are supporting Polanski. But it made me realise that, if people support the perp in such a clear cut situation, then it’s not surprising they supported the perp in my not-so-clear-cut situation. And it’s not my fault, no matter how often they tell me that their lack of support is because I didn’t fight hard enough/ didn’t leave soon enough/ misinterpreted what happened/ lied about what happened/ made a big deal out of nothing that happened/ etc etc ad nauseum.
I will never worry about whether it’s my fault again.
Good for you. Good for you.