UNITED STATES
Catholic Philly
By Natalie Hoefer • Catholic News Service • Posted January 13, 2017
Shrinking the Monster“Shrinking the Monster: Healing the Wounds of Our Abuse,”
by Norbert Krapf.
In Extenso Press (Munhall, Pennsylvania, 2016).
236 pp. $14.95.
In the 1950s, Norbert Krapf was sexually abused — along with scores of other boys — by a priest of the Diocese of Evansville, Indiana, who was loved and respected by the community.
After five decades of silence, Krapf — a retired professor, author and award-winning former Indiana Poet Laureate — confronted the monster of his past both by outing the then-deceased priest to the bishop and, in 2012, publishing a book of poems called “Catholic Boy Blues” to help himself and other victims heal.
This year, Krapf published “Shrinking the Monster: Healing the Wounds of Our Abuse.” In Krapf’s own words, the book is a “prose memoir about the experience of writing those poems, with an emphasis on the process of my recovery from the abuse.” That experience, as outlined in the book, was a journey of pain, struggles, victories and healing.
Why write on such a dark, painful topic that many would, as he admits, rather not read about?
The answer is twofold. First, as Krapf reiterates at several points, the book is to help other victims of child abuse heal, and to further his own healing. But that doesn’t mean the book is only for victims.
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