Tag: child abuse

I once started a novel titled Crazy Pussy, but abandoned it later as an exercise in bad judgment.  It was based on a woman I once knew.  Unspeakable things had been done to her.  She was a strange mix of beauty and darkness, tenderness and rage, passion and loathing.  She captured me without my having fired a shot in my own defense.  Our’s was a raging roller coaster of earthly delights and bone deep horror.

Dylan – Tambourine Man

Fifteen years ago, I represented a fine young reporter who wrote a heartbreaking series of stories about a three-year-old victim of child abuse, and, later, about the fate of her younger sister.  The reason for the representation is largely irrelevant ~ it had much more to do with a vindictive prosecutor (hacked off about earlier stories my client had written) than with anything my client had written with regard to the little girl. Indeed, what my client had done with regard to the child abuse case was just shy of heroic.

During the course of that representation, I wrote an Op-Ed for the local newspaper. The reason for the piece was advocacy, of course, but it was also because the story itself had so touched my soul.  On the Sunday it was scheduled to appear, I flipped to the Op-Ed page and was so disappointed to find that it not there.  It wasn’t there because the thoughtful editor of that section of the paper had put it on the first page, as a friend I had called, in tears, so kindly pointed out.