One for the Books: Documented cases of abuse

Much of our discourse today is about the Epstein Files and the abuse of minors. I turned to several memoirs to learn the facts from actual victims. Caution: There’s no fiction here. There are triggers of drugs, brutality, and suicidal thoughts. These books are not easy to read. There are no prurient details, but it can be distressing to visualize the threats, beatings, torture, and the mental and emotional trauma. I could only stand to read a few chapters at a time and then turn to something happier to clear my head.

The book in the news because of the Epstein Files is “Nobody’s Girl” by Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who was age 37 at the time of writing and who has since taken her own life. The book is very well written but the details are often cringeworthy. Although she’s now known globally, I’m sure she wished she’d never been famous.

Giuffre says she was sexually abused as a child by her father and a friend of his. She writes, “My dad said if I ever told a soul, he would kill my little brother and bury his body in the woods, where no one would find him.” HER FATHER said this. “From the start, I was groomed to be complicit in my own devastation.”

At age 16, while working at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, she was noticed by Ghislaine Maxwell, who offered her a job with better pay. Maxwell presented her to Jeffrey Epstein, who basically laid claim to her. It was the year 2000. He was 47, “nearly three times older than me,” she tells us. Not only did those two abuse her, they trafficked her to other men, including Prince Andrew. “In my years with them, they lent me out to scores of wealthy, powerful people. I was habitually used and humiliated — and in some instances, choked, beaten, and bloodied. I believed that I might die a sex slave.” The problem wasn’t just Epstein. Maxwell, writes Giuffre, “was an apex predator — as greedy and demanding on the inside as she appeared to be beautiful, poised, and self-assured on the outside.”

Giuffre explains, “But the worst things Epstein and Maxwell did to me weren’t physical, but psychological. From the start, they manipulated me into participating in behaviors that ate away at me, eroding my ability to comprehend reality and preventing me from defending myself.” She spent more than two years in their “orbit.” She writes, “There were no bars on the windows or locks on the doors. But I was a prisoner trapped in an invisible cage.” She tries to explain why she stayed. “We were girls who no one cared about, and Epstein pretended to care. ... A master manipulator who excelled at divining the desires of others, he threw what looked like a lifeline to girls who were drowning, girls who had nothing. ... And then, he did his worst to them.”

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“I’ll Never Call Him Dad Again” was written by Caroline Darian.  In 2020 in France, the author was told by police that her father had been arrested. He’d been drugging his wife, her mother, Gisèle Pelicot, and trafficking her body to be raped by multiple men, for almost ten years, without her mother’s knowledge. She supported her courageous mother through the legal battles that followed.

What happened to her mother is a true nightmare. Darian’s father, Dominique Pelicot, “solicited men through an online hook up forum ... He asked for no money in return. His only condition was that he could film it all.” Indeed, the police found 20,000 pictures and videos taken by him. “The list of charges alone demonstrates the unimaginable nature of the crimes committed” by her father and more than fifty men. 

Darian has since gone on the warpath against those who use drugs against unsuspecting victims. “Chemical submission is far more widespread in the familial and social sphere than anyone thought,” she writes. “Chemical submission causes falls, comas, memory lapses, insomnia, unexplained weight loss, addiction, unwanted pregnancies, traffic accidents, and post-traumatic stress disorders.” She adds, “It is important to note that the victims themselves are often unaware of the abuse; just as in my mother’s case, they have no idea when is being done to them.”

Gisèle Pelicot’s own story, “A Hymn to Life: Shame Has to Change Sides,” has just been published. It repeats the basics of the crimes and reveals how she found out, how she dealt with it, and how she moved on.

It was shortly before the Pelicots’ fiftieth wedding anniversary when the police contacted her. “I had lived with this man for fifty years and he had never let me down,” she thought just before the police told her the worst. Minutes later, “My brain shut down.” For years, she had been suffering memory loss, infections, lethargy and weakness. She had thought she had a brain tumor, or Alzheimer’s, or maybe she was dying. Her husband let her think that.

But Pelicot insists she’s not just a victim. She recalls the happy years she had with Dominique, even though he’d later become a monster.

The trial was held in 2024. Rape trials in France are usually held in private to protect the identity of the victim. But she said no: Open it to the public. She had nothing to be ashamed of. Thus, the tables were turned: the 50+ men were shamed. As a result, she has become a heroine in France and beyond.

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In “This Happened to Me,” Kate Price recalls her childhood in a small town in northern Appalachia. As she grew up, she began having vague flashbacks to a violent past. As an adult, with help from a trauma specialist, she was able to bring out her past in detail. Eventually, she went back “home” and found the evidence that it was all true.

She writes, “Where I grew up, no one talks about family secrets or sexual abuse or rape or being hit or beaten within an inch of your life.” She had been beaten and sexually abused by her own father, who would also drug her and traffic her to other men. “My father controlled me in order to keep his secrets locked away. ... He threatened my life ... I was his property.” 
Price went on to become an advocate for traumatized and trafficked children.

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One of the most famous books on child abuse is from 1995: “A Child Called ‘It’: One Child’s Courage to Survive” by Dave Pelzer, in which he recounts his life from ages 4 to 12. The little boy was literally tortured, starved, and beaten by his obviously deranged and often drunken mother, as his father stood by and did nothing. She completely dehumanized him, even taking away his name. He writes that the school nurse recorded “my various marks and bruises, ... my teeth that are chipped from having been slammed against the kitchen tile counter top.” Quite frankly, I don’t know how he survived some of this gruesome assault. 

It’s a powerful and deeply disturbing memoir. Absolutely heartbreaking.