A Very Upsetting And Unsettling Experience

With the news constant about Jeffrey Epstein's files and his many depravities, I decided to brace myself to read the following book:

A very brave book written by the late Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein's most prominent and outspoken victims, it is a chronicle of the victimization of a vulnerable teen who grows up to be a resilient and dogged fighter for justice. 

You probably know her as the one who blew the whistle on the former Prince Andrew who, it can be concluded with certainty, sexually abused her three times. In his abject cowardice, he has always denied the claims, despite this picture with Giuffre when she was about 17.

While Andrew consistently denied ever meeting her in a disastrous interview for the BBC, there is no doubt that both the picture (which he claimed was a fake) and Giuffre's assertions were true. Indeed, Andrew ultimately paid her a reported £12 million, strange for a man who claimed to be so grievously wronged.

However, the book goes far beyond the sensational headlines, weaving a narrative revealing Guiffre as a victim of sexual abuse at an early age by both her father and his friend. Virginia was a very damaged girl almost right from the beginning, making her relatively easy prey for the diabolical duo of Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, who was the former's chief procurer and now reposes in an almost-recreational prison. Indeed, Trump has not denied considering her for a pardon. 

Virginia faced many difficulties in her life after Epstein, but she became much more than a victim. She married an Australian and had three children, to whom she was a loving mother. But her determined pursuit of justice, not just for herself but Epstein's many victims, cost her dearly. She had a number of health battles, perhaps the worst being a broken neck from a fall that left her in regular pain. Yet those physical struggles did not stop her.

Heroism is something we often equate with daring feats: people rushing into a burning buildings, pulling people out of crashed cars, putting themselves on the line for a belief, striking in the face of armed goons, standing up to those who would tear us down. Well, in my view, Virginia Guiffre's adult life was one of heroism; she never lost sight of the goal that justice is for all victims, not just the individual. 

That battle, however, which she never flinched from, meant she had to constantly relive the trauma and the degradation of her abuse, often in front of a hostile world and the powerful of that world. But it is not my purpose here to recount those battles, only to acknowledge the courage of a very fallible yet determined woman. And it is for that reason I think this book should be widely read. We can all benefit not just from seeing that heroism, but also examining our own souls and the times we might have thought of women as lesser human beings. 

It is for that reason I think it would be particularly useful for young men and women to read it, even older teens who, in this world of readily accessible pornography, may often see girls as objects solely for their lust and pleasure. Young women could be particularly moved by bearing witness to Virginia's bravery and realize that self-respect is not just a quaint notion but a very realizable objective.

We have all seen the results of the #MeToo movement and the consciousness it has raised. Nobody's Girl is a more than worthy addition to its efforts to change the course of society's relationship with its female members.

Spotlight

Given that they are generally aimed at a younger demographic, I rarely watch movies these days. However, on the return leg of our trip, one of the films offered by Air Canada was the award-winning Spotlight, important for a few reasons. The winner of two Oscars, the movie

tells the riveting true story of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Boston Globe investigation that would rock the city and cause a crisis in one of the world's oldest and most trusted institutions. When the newspaper's tenacious "Spotlight" team of reporters delves into allegations of abuse in the Catholic Church, their year-long investigation uncovers a decades-long cover-up at the highest levels of Boston's religious, legal, and government establishment, touching off a wave of revelations around the world.

I will engage in no spoilers for the film, but I have to say it resonated with me in two very important areas. The first involves my own history of being subjected to both verbal and physical abuse during my Catholic school days, abuse that began early in Grade One with the strap, progressing to being made to 'stand in the corner,' a common method of public shaming and ostracism in those days, to slaps across the face, all by the third grade. As I recall, my infractions usually involved, as they used to say, 'talking to my neighbour.'

Things got worse in high school, where the same methodology (minus the strap) was employed, but in a much more intensive way. Teachers, both lay and cleric, seemed almost demoniacally driven to wear down any sense of our self-worth, suggesting our worthlessness on a regular basis. The physical abuse escalated to being slammed over our heads with heavy books, more forceful slapping across the face, and outright mockery.

I vividly recall my Grade Eleven physics teacher being especially cruel one particular day. I did not know the answer to a question when called upon, so he asked someone else who, with his textbook open but concealed, read off the answer, at which point the teacher said, "Whoa, slow down, Potter, slow down. Warwick is kind of slow." His bon mot was met with a response of general hilarity throughout the classroom, and absolute humiliation on my part. But I was hardly the only victim. There was a lad in the same class who had a stutter, and I will always remember that same teacher trying to hide his amusement whenever he gave an answer.

I could tell you so many stories, but the above serves to illustrate, I hope, that even though I was never a victim of sexual abuse, what I did experience left a deep scar for many, many years, and an abiding hatred for those who had subjected us to such measures. It was a hatred I only managed to let go of well into my forties.

I often think that those experiences were the genesis of my own extremely strong aversion to abuse of power in its many shapes and forms. They helped make me what I am today, both the good and the bad.

However, beyond my own personal reasons for valuing the movie, there is a much greater lesson to be had from it. It underscores very effectively both the power and the importance of the press, the same press that we find in our time under constant financial barrage. Had it not been for the doggedness of the Boston Globe and its reporters, the scope of both the abuse and the concealment at the highest diocesan levels would never have come to light, and the priest would have continued to be relocated to other parishes, free to carry on their predations. The movie is both an indictment of the tawdriness, cowardice and complicity of the Catholic Church and its many prominent Boston lay supporters, and an extollment, in a very quiet way, of how the profession of journalism can often rise to noble heights.

So yes, I still subscribe to a print newspaper, despite the ever-rising costs, because I know that good work costs money and a great deal of time. Think of all the investigative stories you have read over the years, and the results that ensued. My own paper of choice, The Toronto Star, has a remarkable track record of getting things done, often to the point of affecting both and provincial governments to the point of inspiring remedial legislation in a number of areas.

The battle will never end, as long as we live in such an imperfect world.