Rafael Yglesias - Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil

I called Phil the next day to learn more about the hypothesis of his new study. He said he wanted to test if children who had no experience of sexual abuse would fabricate such stories as easily as a biting mouse. He said we were regarded as the most thorough and impartial interrogators (we videotaped all sessions, used dolls rather than words to pinpoint exactly how the kids were touched) and he wanted to imitate our technique. I asked him to describe the new research. Eight children were to undergo a routine examination by a pediatrician that would be secretly taped. The doctor would do a few innocuous and pointless things — listen to their bellies with a paper cup to his ear, tickle them lightly under one arm with a feather — not skin to skin, clothes always on — and count the toes with a tongue depressor. At no point would their genitalia be exposed or touched. We might consider these actions to be a silly bedside manner and perhaps sexually symbolic, but no reasonable person could consider them to be molestation and they are far less physical and stimulating than ordinary parental embraces or sibling roughhousing. A week later, copying our procedure and technique, using dolls and questions that are stripped of direct sexual references, the children would be asked about the examination as if an accusation had been brought against the pediatrician. Samuel wanted to see our tapes of real victims of abuse to train his graduate students for that phase of his study.

Diane objected vehemently in general and she was certainly opposed to my sending tapes of the Peterson case, the one most suitable for Phil. Henry Peterson had accused his wife’s father of sexually molesting his granddaughters, ages six and four, while they were in his care. At the time of the alleged abuse, Henry and his wife were in the midst of a bitter divorce; he had had to relocate out of state and she often traveled on business, so the Peterson girls were basically being raised by the maternal grandparents. Henry Peterson’s lawyer, leery of many recent failed child abuse charges, had asked us to question the girls. Diane handled them exclusively. She uncovered a systematic, progressive molestation by the grandfather. He fingered their vaginal lips during baths, rubbed up against them in their beds at night, and eventually, as the girls put it, “Grandpa peed on my tummy.” The girls said when they complained to Grandma, she spanked them with wooden spoons so hard that they bled. Since no penetration was alleged and the beatings were claimed to have taken place months before (the girls moved out when their mother changed jobs and no longer had to travel) there was no physical evidence to confirm or contradict the testimony Diane had elicited. The psychological condition of the Peterson girls was alarming, however. They had severe night terrors, had completely regressed in their toilet training, were fearful of their grandparents and would shriek if any man, including their father, tried to touch them. For us, that is emotional corrobo-ration. I had no doubt that the stories were essentially true, if not absolutely accurate in every detail.

I wanted to include Diane’s interrogation of the Peterson girls precisely because, unlike patients such as Albert, there was no corroborating physical evidence and their ages were in Samuels target. Most of our patients were older than his cutoff of six. (The age limit isn’t arbitrary, it’s developmental. The study sought to examine the ease with which a child might blur fantasy into reality. After six years of age, a child bears a greater resemblance to an adult liar. Phil Samuel was testing the reliability of young children to testify at all, not their willingness to lie. He believed that the inventive boy in the mouse study didn’t understand the distinction [for adults] between the “game” of being asked questions by a clinician and official testimony. In many cases, a child his age would not be required to appear in open court. A deposition under circumstances similar to the clinical interview is sufficient, and a private retraction, such as the admission to his father that the story was pretend, is regarded as denial typical of abuse victims.)

Diane objected that the case against the grandparents was not a criminal procedure — Henry Peterson had merely asked the court to forbid them visitation rights and, with the agreement of the District Attorney’s office, wished to spare the entire family any attempt at punishment. Her complaint didn’t seem relevant to me. Samuel had agreed that he would merely view them to imitate our questions and use of dolls. I didn’t see any harm.

We argued this to a draw in the morning, went off to our separate appointments for the day, agreeing we would settle it at home in the evening. My schedule that day was an unusually happy one for me. Albert had been accepted into Dorrit House, a boarding school in North Carolina founded by the posthumous donation of a wealthy tobacco baron for boys from disadvantaged backgrounds. In view of Albert’s excellent behavior and academic progress in the nine months since Torres had allowed his sentence to be served at our clinic, as well as the six months before the sentence (a total of fifteen months of therapy and exemplary conduct), Judge Torres agreed to extend the strictures of his parole so that Albert could to go boarding school.

Albert packed the night before and said goodbye to the staff and his roommates at a small party. I drove him to the halfway house in Brooklyn where his mother was a resident. This was to be their first meeting since both their arrests two years ago. After their goodbye, I was to take Albert into Manhattan to meet a van that would transport him and six others to Dorrit House.

The women’s shelter in Brooklyn was a converted rooming house. We were led to a garden in the back. Albert stepped onto a brick patio with two wood picnic tables and green metal folding chairs. Albert and I had to duck to clear the sliding door. His mother, Clara, was at the far end, on a grassy elevation, waiting under a tall maple with her arms crossed. It was late August, a hot, humid day. The leafy tree looked damp, exhausted and sooty. Clara watched her son approach as if he were a stranger. She was in a red blouse sufficiently unbuttoned to show her impressive cleavage and the beginnings of a black bra. Her flat belly and long legs were emphasized by tight white shorts; I noticed later they had impressed lines on her upper thighs.

I was shocked by her youthfulness. She was fifteen when Albert was born; that meant she still wasn’t thirty years old. I knew that as fact. Seeing with my own eyes her smooth creamy brown skin, her girlish figure, and the dignity of her high cheekbones and long nose, did not match an expectation of meeting a mother, much less the most monstrously abusive mother in my experience, and as bad as any in the literature for that matter.

I was also taken aback that they had allowed Clara to dress this way to meet Albert. Involuntarily, I looked to our escort for an answer. She was a young and beautiful African-American woman, but she was wearing a dowdy blue dress that dropped to her sandaled feet. I had no idea what authority she had, and I realized my questioning look to her was absurd. Obviously, someone felt it was up to Clara how to present herself to Albert and up to him how to react. All in all, I had to agree. If she persisted in sexualizing her relationship with him, then he should know it.

Albert went no farther than the brick sitting area. “Hi,” he said shyly and lowered his head when his mother didn’t answer, uncross her arms, or move in any way. She seemed to stare through us; not angrily, in a trance.

“I’ll be right inside,” our escort said. “You want to join me?” she asked me in a low tone.

I shook my head. Albert had asked me to stay with him the whole time. He was afraid of Clara; and was afraid of himself. He had vivid fantasies of cutting her open, her stomach in particular; sometimes he longed to strangle her while she begged to be forgiven. Often, while in the midst of a pleasant and innocuous activity, he could feel the grip of her hand as she kept his head between her legs, pushing his lips to her sex; sometimes, the recollection was so vivid Albert jerked his shoulders to free himself from her insistent fingers. The memories were clearer and more immediate with each passing day. Recently, his ability to masturbate had returned and, although that was relief in one way, sexual feeling also brought with it images of torment and vengeance. I had worked with him to keep it specific to Clara, not to fight the memories or fantasies about her, not to generalize them in an effort to forgive her. “She did it,” I said more than once. “Not anybody, not any woman. This woman. Remember it was her face, her body, not anyone else’s.” Of course, when I gave him that advice, I had no way of understanding just how vital and beautiful was the person who tortured him.