Confronting Childhood Sexual Abuse

By Matt McCann
New York Times
October 5, 2012

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/05/withholding-the-pinky-discussing-childhood-abuse/

James, in a cinema, demonstrated a gesture that allowed him to spy on children in the row behind him. “I never ever introduced myself and told them what my name was, and I never ever asked them their names. And because I wore a disguise, they couldn’t identify me.” — James. 2010.

At a book signing in Cape Town, the photographer Pierre Crocquet was writing his name in copies of his book "Pinky Promise" when he thought he recognized someone in the crowd. Was that James just now, one of the subjects — a perpetrator — who participated in the making of this book, a documentary project on child sexual abuse?

Or was it Mr. Crocquet's imagination? Either seemed plausible; James had had a career in military intelligence during the decades of apartheid and used those techniques, and disguises, to abuse children undetected. An air of paranoia hung over him — perhaps it had seeped into Mr. Crocquet's psyche as well, and his mind was playing tricks. After all, Mr. Crocquet had spent a lot of time with James, getting to know him over the course of the project, which had been three years in the making.

"Pinky Promise," the first edition of which was published by Fourthwall Books last year, is an unusual view of child sexual abuse. It presents the stories of eight people, three abusers and five who were abused. The subjects tell their own stories, and occasionally we hear from family members or therapists. Its materials aren't only photographic and documentary — besides the personal testimonies, there are also scraps from journals, drawings, family photos and report cards, creating a kaleidoscopic presentation of the effects of a transformative, and sometimes defining, trauma.

Pierre Crocquet's interest in this subject matter has its roots in his adoption and his interest in seeking out his biological mother, he said. (Mr. Crocquet writes in his introduction, "I have no conscious knowledge of having been abused myself.") Additionally, Mr. Crocquet includes excerpts from his journals in between chapters, offering thoughts on his process as he navigated these stories' complex terrains. By inserting himself into the book, Mr. Crocquet reveals an interest in the ordinary childhoods that didn't take place — the ones in which a "hole in the soul" was not burned through.

It can be difficult illuminating tough subject matter, he said. "The truth on any topic, I think, is very hard — or impossible — to get," Mr. Crocquet said in an interview in New York recently. "So I wanted to communicate a sense of that. To do that, I needed to include victims of abuse, and offenders." As a result, by presenting both sides and getting close to both perpetrator and victim, Mr. Crocquet has created a complex rendering of a profoundly difficult subject. James, for instance, was a devoted husband and father and says he never abused his own children.

"His wife had recently passed away, and he was devastated," Mr. Crocquet said. "So he was very human in that way — he was a provider, he was a husband, he was a friend to his wife, and he helped her in a time of terminal illness." Furthermore, James's story in particular conjures a dark version of that "nature versus nurture" argument. On the one hand, James always stated to Mr. Crocquet that he was "born that way," and that he "can't be cured." Yet after the publication of the book, in subsequent correspondence, Mr. Crocquet said that James told him that "he thinks that the priest who molested him actually did cause him to become a pedophile."

Another perpetrator, Bob, a more flamboyant yet enigmatic character, explicitly blames his offenses on early abuse. Mr. Crocquet's work, however, is by no means intended to exonerate terrible crimes or rationalize sinister impulses.

Rather, the book's inclusion of scraps of personal documents makes reading it an uncomfortably visceral experience. The reader is essentially holding fragmented lives in his or her hands. We're placed very close to Hayley or Chloe or Justin and their pain, and for Mr. Crocquet, this is where the book wields its educational power. Mr. Crocquet is working to make the book widely available to social workers, therapists and law enforcement officials, hoping to forge a way to discuss this societal concern. For the victims, talking — and therefore potentially healing — often seems out of the question.

Seeking to understand themselves and their place in a family or in a community can seem impossible when the abuse comes from a place of trust — a teacher, a priest and, in one case in this book, a biological father. The matrix of psychological scars is further complicated when the child musters the courage to speak up and isn't believed. It needs to be easier for victims to come forward and be taken seriously. (Malcolm Gladwell wrote in the Sept. 24 issue of The New Yorker about how pedophiles often groom victims over a period of sometimes years, becoming trusted figures to the community and the victim's family. When the crime is committed and the allegation made, the child is often thought to be lying.)

Additionally, addressing sexual abuse is a strenuous task because its keystone, as Mr. Crocquet wrote in his introduction, is secrecy. The book opens with a quote from Hayley: "A pinky promise is like when you're talking to your friend, and you say, 'Please tell me this and this and this and I pinky promise I won't tell anyone.' … You just say pinky promise and then your friend wraps their pinky around yours. So my dad wrapped his pinky around mine and I didn't tell anyone."

Mr. Crocquet hopes his book serves to help everyone understand the hows and whys, and to pinpoint a place in the perpetrator's development to effectively address these ills.

"If you read the stories, there were certain opportunities with all three offenders where at a young age, if someone had been skilled, they could have picked up that behavior, which could indicate that they have the potential to harm," Mr. Crocquet said. "If they're born with it, they're going to behave in a particular way, and you're going to need to try and rehabilitate it regardless. If they're not born with it and it's the result of nurture or another reason, at some stage the same thing is going to happen, they are going to exhibit the signs showing that problematic behavior. And that's really the key thing in identifying that."

James, the former intelligence officer, denied being an apparition at Mr. Crocquet's book signing, although when Mr. Crocquet asked, he did acknowledge scouting out the place beforehand.

"I asked him about it three times," Mr. Crocquet said. "It was the only time I probably did interrogate him. And I asked him about it, like, 'Are you sure you weren't there?' And he was certainly sensitive to the question."