Trigger Warning: child rape
Just when I thought I was done with this….
One thing that’s come out of shining light into dark corners is that the original “Breendoggle” from 1963 has now been posted online. If it was online before, Google couldn’t find it, only documented references to it.
Bill Donaho wrote the original piece in 1963.
What this gives is contemporary accounts, some second- and third-hand, of recent events as of that time.
You know, the year before Marion Zimmer Bradley married Walter Breen.
So I really want you to think that she married him the year after this report about what happened between Breen and a three-year-old in public view of others.
The second cause was Walter’s sex play with 3-year old P———– —————-. He had her trained up to the point where she would take off her clothes the minute she saw him. He would then “rub her down” and all that. I recall one occasion — a fairly large gathering at the Nelsons — in which he also used a pencil, rubbing the eraser back and forth in the general area of the vagina, not quite masturbating her. (Walter is incredible.) Many people were somewhat displeased by this — most particularly her parents. No one thought he was actually psychologically damaging P——— (she being so young) — obviously —– and —- would have interfered if they thought he had been — but the spectacle was not thought to be aesthetically pleasing. Years later Walter found out about the reaction and said, “But why didn’t somebody say something! I wouldn’t have dreamed of doing it if I’d thought someone objected.”
I seriously wonder what I’d say to proposal of marriage from someone who’d been thusly accused, because “Are you fucking kidding me?” fails the adequacy test.
I do want to say that there are some changes in understanding about psychological harm that have come since then. The survivor stories weren’t being widely told back then.
Also, given what’s in the Breendoggle, if that’s true, I think 150 is probably a low victim count for Breen.
In Which I Take an Important Slight Turn
Related link: The Adverse Child Experiences Study
Dr. Vincent Felitti is talking about people who defied his predictions about how people became obese:
The turning point in Felitti’s quest came by accident. The physician was running through yet another series of questions with yet another obesity program patient: How much did you weigh when you were born? How much did you weigh when you started first grade? How much did you weigh when you entered high school? How old were you when you became sexually active? How old were you when you married?
“I misspoke,” he recalls, probably out of discomfort in asking about when she became sexually active – although physicians are given plenty of training in examining body parts without hesitation, they’re given little support in talking about what patients do with some of those body parts. “Instead of asking, “How old were you when you were first sexually active,” I asked, “How much did you weigh when you were first sexually active?’ The patient, a woman, answered, ‘Forty pounds.’”
He didn’t understand what he was hearing. He misspoke the question again. She gave the same answer, burst into tears and added, “It was when I was four years old, with my father.”
He suddenly realized what he had asked.
“I remembered thinking, ‘This is only the second incest case I’ve had in 23 years of practice’,” Felitti recalls. “I didn’t know what to do with the information. About 10 days later, I ran into the same thing. It was very disturbing. Every other person was providing information about childhood sexual abuse. I thought, ‘This can’t be true. People would know if that were true. Someone would have told me in medical school.’ ”
…and…
Of the 286 people whom Felitti and his colleagues interviewed, most had been sexually abused as children. As startling as this was, it turned out to be less significant than another piece of the puzzle that dropped into place during an interview with a woman who had been raped when she was 23 years old. In the year after the attack, she told Felitti that she’d gained 105 pounds.
“As she was thanking me for asking the question,” says Felitti, “she looks down at the carpet, and mutters, ‘Overweight is overlooked, and that’s the way I need to be.’”
…and…
The other way it helped was that, for many people, just being obese solved a problem. In the case of the woman who’d been raped, she felt as if she were invisible to men. In the case of a man who’d been beaten up when he was a skinny kid, being fat kept him safe, because when he gained a lot of weight, nobody bothered him.
That last? I very much relate to. I stopped being harassed on the street when I gained weight.
Next time you see someone morbidly obese, consider what the hell kind of problem is that big. Then look at the obesity problem in a new way and prepare to be stunned.
Side note: The MZB Literary Works Trust, in its bio of Ms. Bradley, has expunged Walter Breen.
Side note: Corey Feldman video: Pedophilia is Hollywood’s biggest problem. Hat tip: Matt Wallace.
I had never seen this before. I am reeling. I don’t know whether to vomit or cry but I want to do both.
His victim was THREE AND A GIRL!!
he had her TRAINED???????
I know.
I — can’t even.
That these reports occurred before your parents married just makes Marion’s complicity all that much worse.
I had heard the Breendoggle scandal was about a girl, but I thought she was ten, and I never knew anything about it beyond that. That in itself was horrible enough.
My mother always told me that she married Walter partly because he would never do to a girl what her father did to her because he didn’t like girls. I grew up believing he hated girls. She always told me he never got over the shock of having a girl!
Was she out of her f**king MIND???????
I am not feeling very restrained or charitable at the moment!! Who in the name of everything holy MARRIES a man who can molest a three year old girl?? (OR a ten year old girl, or a boy or ANY child!!!)
And why am I of all people asking this question?
denial runs deep. Even mine. I still want this to not be true!!! I feel like I am crawling out of my skin!!!
And what of the child? Is she OK? Does anyone even know???
What woman marries a man who doesn’t like females? Well, okay, maybe a woman who doesn’t much like men. They seemed like bookends from the limited perspective that I have. (Okay, I’m extrapolating in part based on The Ruins of Isis, the only MZB book I ever finished reading, but what made me so uncomfortable about that book was the man-hating plot.)
Then again, I can’t imagine, given the kind of knowledge mentioned in the fanzine, what the hell she was thinking marrying Breen at all.
I’m also very sorry that your mother fed you this line, because I don’t believe that helped you.
I don’t know what happened with the girl in question, but I hope she’s doing well. I also hope the other kids turned out well, but the one I’m most concerned about is the 3-yo girl.
“My mother always told me that she married Walter partly because he would never do to a girl what her father did to her because he didn’t like girls.”
She failed to see her own duplicity: she married Walter because ‘he would never do to a girl what her father did to her’, and yet she did exactly those things to her own girl (and other girls).
“Was she out of her f**king MIND???????”
Either she was out of her f**ing mind, or her mind was otherwise twisted by her own choices.
And that is what it comes down to: she CHOSE to be what she was.
While I am sorry that she experienced abuses at the hands of her father–and those things certainly put her behind the 8-ball–it is deplorable that she chose to perpetuate those abuses herself.
(After all, you had very horrific abuses, and yet you chose a better path.)
I cannot bring myself to read her books.
While there ought to be a reasonable amount of leeway that allows us to honor an author’s works even if the author can be eccentric or twisted, MZB exceeded that threshold by light years.
As a teenager, I was so impressed by MZB’s Darkover novels that I took the Oath of Renunciates, and in the passionate way of many teens, I meant every word of that shit. I held it in my heart and meant it. Other girls and women around me took the Oath as well.
I did, however, from its first publication, despise “The Mists of Avalon.” I never saw it as feminist in the least. Morgaine is manipulated by the priestesses and given no choice. She has ritual sex with her half brother, and in that Pagan society, that incest–because it was ritualized–was considered ok.
Well, as a feminist and a Neo-Pagan, that wasn’t ok with me.
And then, I met MZB at a Darkover con, sometime in the mid 1990’s.
There was something wrong with her personal affect. I never could put my finger on it. I couldn’t explain it. She just….I was told by Liz Waters and someone else it was because she had been so ill, but I just. There was something. It bugged me. I had her sign my copy of “Thendara House,” but I wouldn’t shake her hand.
Now I know why.
Moira–thank you for speaking up. I’m a survivor of childhood incest and abuse and early adult domestic violence. I know how hard it is to speak the secrets. To tell the truth. To be judged for what happened to you–not to be judged for what -you- did, but to be judged for what -happened- to you.
I am so disgusted that the woman who wrote a book so eloquent on the subject of female empowerment could do what she did and to allow what Breen did that I will never read her books again. I can’t. This isn’t just a case of “feet of clay.” Fuck no.
This is a case of–her life was a lie. Her public persona was a falsehood.
And here’s the kicker–other people knew about it. Other adults, and they didn’t stand up for Moira or Kenny or the other kids.
That kills me.
Moira–as a sister-survivor, I salute you. You did what your mother could not–you were abused and you rose above it and stopped the cycle of abuse. If enough of us keep doing it, well, then maybe it will finally stop forever.
Deirdre–thank you for writing about this. I know it’s been hard and I know you’ve taken flack for it. But it still needs to spoken about in the light of day.
Thank you, again.
“And here’s the kicker–other people knew about it. Other adults, and they didn’t stand up for Moira or Kenny or the other kids.”
Exactly. THAT is what pisses me off.
That MZB-and her husband–did what they did is worse than deplorable.
That others in the SF/F world knew of this and did NOTHING puts them in the same league as “leaders” at Penn State (who covered for Jerry Sandusky) and religious leaders who aided and abetted child abusers.
All said, God bless Moira.
I just finished reading the Breendoggle document.
I am aghast. You know, generally the sexual revolution was a positive thing, (it helped us recognize that homosexuality isn’t a perversion, that women deserve sexual autonomy, that birth control is a good thing and that rape, incest and sexual abuse happen, and are bad and victims of same should be supported) but reading this document showed me the dark side of it all.
To have fully grown, adults who are obviously rational, discussing whether or not the publicly displayed sexual activity with a three year old harms the child—it blew my mind. BLEW my mind. Completely.
But, with all of the sexual experimentation that was happening, with the sexual openness–and with the fact that people still didn’t really talk about incest or sexual abuse openly, AND that there was a dearth of research into these matters, I could see this happening.
But it still made my heart stop. To listen to the author arguing with himself over the entire issue, and then seeing that he finally came to the conclusion that Breen was hurting kids, mostly based on his own moral conviction and going against that “free love” philosophy at the time was astounding.
That is the dark side of the hippie culture. And it affected and still affects SF/Fantasy culture, Geek culture, Gaming culture, Neo-Pagan culture and SCA–I know because I have been involved in all of these cultures at one time or another, and I swear that is part of where the whole, “But it’s evil to exclude someone! We’re all freaks, it’s just that so and so is a little more freaky!” excuses and fallacies came from.
In trying to include those who had been rejected by mainstream society, in trying to build a culture based on openness and love, in trying to be tolerant and understanding, these people–many of whom, like the author of that document–were trying to do the right thing—they collectively sacrificed the most vulnerable among them–their kids.
I wish I could go back in time and shake some of them.
But it was chilling to read people saying similar things then about banning a predator from a con that have been said about predators at modern cons. For God’s sake, have we not learned anything in the intervening decades?
Once more, Moira–my heart goes out to you. To have grown up with both parents being so sick was a horrible experience. I am sorry your childhood was so unsafe and I want you to know that even though you don’t know me, as another commenter on another thread said–I’ve got your back.
God bless you! And what you’ve said is totally accurate: the end of the slippery slope is the Pit of Despair.
Barbara, Deirdre: I’m sorry for what you endured, too.
About 20 years ago, I had a classmate during my days at seminary. She was about 15 years my senior, and had grown up in the deep south.
She and I haggled and argued often. We were usually adversaries when the class debated various matters.
Still, we became really good buddies. We both loved our coffee, and we enjoyed sparring over a good brew.
One day, she spilled the beans. Her father–a leader in her church–had started having sex with her during her teen years. When she was 17, she blew the lid on him: she went to the cops, had him arrested. He ended up getting 20 years for child rape.
Her family and church–yes, that means many of her “friends”–abandoned her. At the time we met, she was in her early 40s. She had made some bad life choices over the years, but she was still fighting the good fight. She was just starting to feel comfortable around men. On the bright side, she eventually met a good guy and got married.
What her father did to her was totally awful. What her family did to her for doing the right thing was, in my estimation, worse. What her church did to her was worst of all. They had a chance to affirm her, recognizing that what was done to her was not her fault, and extending appropriate empathy and counseling to help her heal. Instead, they punted and embraced their own self-interests.
Paraphrasing Jesus, there are a lot of people who need to go for a deep-water swim with millstones around their necks.
That goes for the abusers, as well as those who cover for them.
Thank you, thank you, thank you. Reading this makes me feel both more real and more alive. It is hard to describe what it has been like trying both to be a performer AND keep the secrets, and I can see in retrospect why I’ve turned so much to teaching. How can I perform and stifle my own heart?
God bless you for your words. Sister survivor? Yes, absolutely. And may your words inspire others to speak, to tell their stories, and to stand up, as now I am barely beginning to do! <3 Moira Greyland
Of course it has been a struggle for you to perform while keeping those terrible secrets hidden deep in your heart.
Research has shown that for abuse survivors of any sort to really begin to heal, they need to tell their stories. They need to let out the secrets. Those secrets that thrive in darkness are soul-crushing, but when exposed to light–it is amazing how light it makes one feel–as if one has wings!
I’ve been in therapy for five years now. It took me until I was 43 to really get down to the hard work of telling the secrets, tearing them out by their roots deep in my heart if I had to. There is a term that therapists use–it is called, “an enlightened witness.” The enlightened witness is the one who listens to the story of the survivor and truly hears it, without prejudice, without question, without judgement. They listen, hear, understand, and help the survivor begin the cleansing and healing journey.
But I will say, since then–I can paint again. I can write again. I can sing again.
As the secrets leave your heart, you will find it easier and easier to perform again. And you will fly.