Paul Bryant's Reviews > Damaged
Damaged
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by
Are we now living in the age of Full Disclosure when everything is revealed about what people do to each other, the real truth about what human beings are? When it comes to dresses being paraded with presidential semen stains still upon them, or the latest youtube viral video horrors, you may think so. But - although it seems we have reached a plateau I think there is a way to go. The misery memoir, of which A Boy Called It is the ur-text, is a step along the way. Misery memoirs - my Waterstone's has a whole wall of them. Damaged was one of the first.
But here's what is still to be revealed: the perpetrators' stories. We might be talking about domestic abuse or rape or war crimes, but there's nothing from them ever. Ever. Probably on the very reasonable grounds that they're all nauseating lowlifes who should be given rat poison rather than a pen and paper, and also that they'll lie and try to make out it was all because of their own painful childhoods or that the rape and the war crime was consensual. The depraved are either smart enough to know they really shouldn't tell the truth, or stupid enough not to be able to anyway. So it seems that at present we believe that victims always tell the truth and perpetrators always lie. Can this be true? Probably not, but I think we'll have to live with that for a long time yet. I doubt that we'll ever get the perpetrator's stories. Why would we want to? Because no man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; because I am involved in mankind. (That last bit's by John Donne, not me!)
As regards Damaged, as I read I found the good angel of belief and the bad angel of unbelief grappling with each other in the space just behind my left ear. Alas for Cathy Glass, she writes very dully and competently except when it comes to dialogue, when we get stuff that sounds straight out of The Exorcist :
Jodie [aged 8] spun round to face me. Her features were hard and distorted. "No" she shouted, in a gruff masculine voice. "Get out or I'll rip you to pieces. Get out bitch!"... She advanced towards me with her hands clawed, baring her teeth. "I'm not Jodie" she growled, "I'm Reg. Get out or I'll fucking kill you."'
I know there are abuse cases as bad as this one but this kind of stuff inadvertently gives the abuse the patina of bad fiction. Exactly what the perps count on, of course - No one will believe you . Anyway, this is a straightforward account of one foster woman's total nightmare, the nastiest most ungovernable 8 year old which everyone else had given up on. Once again the social workers get it in the neck - all the signs of familial abuse were there for years and were not spotted, the stupid feeble social workers were intimidated by the family, same old same old. I would have been interested in more detail about the degenerate birth family but Cathy Glass would not have had any access to that info. And I would have liked an uplifting and hopeful end to this revolting tale. So here's my full disclosure: there isn't one. This damaged child was not healed. Life's like that.
But here's what is still to be revealed: the perpetrators' stories. We might be talking about domestic abuse or rape or war crimes, but there's nothing from them ever. Ever. Probably on the very reasonable grounds that they're all nauseating lowlifes who should be given rat poison rather than a pen and paper, and also that they'll lie and try to make out it was all because of their own painful childhoods or that the rape and the war crime was consensual. The depraved are either smart enough to know they really shouldn't tell the truth, or stupid enough not to be able to anyway. So it seems that at present we believe that victims always tell the truth and perpetrators always lie. Can this be true? Probably not, but I think we'll have to live with that for a long time yet. I doubt that we'll ever get the perpetrator's stories. Why would we want to? Because no man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; because I am involved in mankind. (That last bit's by John Donne, not me!)
As regards Damaged, as I read I found the good angel of belief and the bad angel of unbelief grappling with each other in the space just behind my left ear. Alas for Cathy Glass, she writes very dully and competently except when it comes to dialogue, when we get stuff that sounds straight out of The Exorcist :
Jodie [aged 8] spun round to face me. Her features were hard and distorted. "No" she shouted, in a gruff masculine voice. "Get out or I'll rip you to pieces. Get out bitch!"... She advanced towards me with her hands clawed, baring her teeth. "I'm not Jodie" she growled, "I'm Reg. Get out or I'll fucking kill you."'
I know there are abuse cases as bad as this one but this kind of stuff inadvertently gives the abuse the patina of bad fiction. Exactly what the perps count on, of course - No one will believe you . Anyway, this is a straightforward account of one foster woman's total nightmare, the nastiest most ungovernable 8 year old which everyone else had given up on. Once again the social workers get it in the neck - all the signs of familial abuse were there for years and were not spotted, the stupid feeble social workers were intimidated by the family, same old same old. I would have been interested in more detail about the degenerate birth family but Cathy Glass would not have had any access to that info. And I would have liked an uplifting and hopeful end to this revolting tale. So here's my full disclosure: there isn't one. This damaged child was not healed. Life's like that.
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Reading Progress
Started Reading
January 2, 2009
– Shelved
January 2, 2009
– Shelved as:
true-crime
January 2, 2009
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Finished Reading
Comments Showing 1-12 of 12 (12 new)
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I think the movie Monster took some sort of step in that direction; but I can just hear some people saying 'Yeah, right, it's because she's female, (and abused a s a child, and terribly emotionally neglected) therefore more sympathy for her.'
On the other hand she was lesbian, and there's usually less sympathy to go around for homosexual people. All in all, (and I couldn't help feeling sorry for her) I thought it was a reasonably fair portrayal, but I might just be biased...
Second, your review leads me to believe that you have no experience with child welfare or any real-life child abuse situations. I would urge you to take that into account when writing your scathing comments based on a subject with which you have no first-hand experience, aside from reading a book. As I have experience on both sides (former abused child, current child welfare social worker), I can tell you that your words are ignorant, irritating, and upsetting. If you are ignorant of a subject, keep your comments to the writing. No one wants to read your less-than-informed opinions on child abuse and welfare.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
That one is a more scholarly book which is specifically about the way social workers appear to fail to deal adequately with child abuse. It includes a brilliant quote from a child care professional. I would be interested in your comments.
This gets into a fairly complex area of discourse patterns and how they are affected by attachment and trauma. This book contained excellent illustrations of what I'm getting at. (I think that is a very good book except in the odd paragraph when Crittenden goes too far and says upbringing has a role in autism or some physical illnesses the same way it has in the psychological issues that are her specialty. And it seems to have one explanation for types of sexual abuse where it's primarily about boundary problems, but not really re. those who seem to have a chronic sexual attraction to children.) The book is based on an elaboration of attachment theory and the adult attachment interview, areas which I'd already read a lot about in their standard forms in by the time I got to this particular book, and I wouldn't recommend it to someone entirely unfamiliar with these topics. The one best book I read which gave grounding in this area, and which was amazing re. understanding people in general - although it doesn't really relate to perpetrators - was from this (that's a second, revised, edition, I've only read the first). I gather that a pop-psych book by Siegel has been getting some coverage in the UK press lately, but this is a much more scholarly and less cheesy book.
Of course, there are plenty of great writers, who, in a different context viewed only through their family relationships, might be considered "perpetrators" - but it's not often that their work addresses these particular events/actions head-on as it were.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9... - book of less than 200 pages by Camila ... that Batmanwoman whose name even I can't spell without pasting ... who'll you'll have heard of in the media. These are also stories of abused kids but several of them are also teenage offenders so you can see how the problems develop in the wrong conditions. And it has a good brief summary of some of the psychology I was alluding to - though IIRC it doesn't go much into the discourse patterns.
This is an article by a neuroscientist who discovered he fitted the profile of a psychopath: www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/20... He can understand the worldview of "classic" psychopaths and articulates something of it, and he's pissed off some people he knows but he's also basically a decent member of society. (You probably know this already but psychopaths are usually seen as a different sort of thing, more stubbornly hardwired than people who are abusive etc because of bad upbringing / bad examples - although he shows that environment has a role in how they develop too. Oh, and I disagree with his general pessimism about plasticity in adults based on what I've seen first hand in several people, as well as material in other books; I think it's likely an attribute that varies between individuals just as any other does.)
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
but the short answer is not really!
I suppose it also depends on where in the world you are. Plus, horrid domestic crimes are of course hidden by the perpetrators, and victims are threatened by the perpetrators, and are often simply not believed if they do dare to speak out. The signs are often there, true, but perpetrators often successfully cover them up.
So yeah, I think it's a pretty grey area. A very sad grey area..
Anyway, I like that you're wondering about the perpetrator's side. True, they have a story too. But will they ever be entirely truthful about the whole story?