This Month's Knee-Jerk Reaction: Roman Polanski

Originally, this post was going to be titled "Bullshit Headline of the Day."

The headline in question, "Polanski's past suffering entitles him to sympathetic treatment," initially had me using language I won't repeat here.

I'm a survivor of abuse and violence. I also believe it is important to take responsibility for my triggers, my reactions, and the impact I have on others.

Polanski survived the Holocaust. He lost his wife and unborn child to one of the most horrific mass murders in US history. No one reading this post, and certainly not it's author, can begin to imagine the horror that has taken place in Roman Polanski's head and heart.

But when it comes to raping a 13-year-old-child, I don't give a damn what he suffered. I do care that he chose to act his pain out in a way that would permanently mark, and possibly scar, a child for life.

Then I read the article. Ah, humble pie.

"Do we measure such a horrific history against his later crime of sexual abuse? We cannot measure one against the other any more than we can juxtapose art as licence or abuse as excuse. Being abused can confuse the victim's moral boundaries. Polanski's offence is not nullified by his own immense suffering. Nor is his crime pardonable through his brilliant and sensitive art.

But his suffering, his life and his art send us a message. Violence and abuse create violence and abuse."

The rest of the article, by a Psychologist practicing in Melbourne, Australia, brings forward ideas that I believe as well: retribution does not bring healing. Revenge begets emptiness at best, but usually all it gives us is more revenge. Not all victims become perpetrators, but all too many perpetrators were once victims.

As trauma survivors, how do we balance the demands of personal responsibility against the damage done to us as former and/or current victims? How do we judge the actions of others who have also been victimized?

For example, I learned nothing of empathy until at least my 30's, and my "trauma mind" still regards issues like health care insurance reform as a very real battle of good vs. evil. I know how hard I continue to struggle to fit in to a society I don't always understand, and still frequently regard as a hostile place from which the next bad thing will attack at any moment.

How dare I condemn Roman Polanski, or third-world terrorists, or any other victim who perpetuates the cycle of violence because that is all they know?

At the same time, how do we as a society, and as individuals, walk the wide crack between sympathy for a damaged perpetrator and preventing the "creation" of more victims?

Like I said, "humble pie." Because while my knee-jerk reaction was viscerally satisfying (and gave me a wonderful opportunity to feel morally superior to another trauma survivor; one with money and fame, no less) the fact is that our society already reacts, over and over and over again, with both knees jerking rabidly.

And we all know how much good those reactions aren't doing any of us.

Swimming Through the Memories

Sorry for my delay in posting this week; it's amazing what having a close friend in the hospital with a heart attack does to one's schedule.

That said, Monday evening gave me a chance to face the memories from one of the more traumatic times in my life, because my friend was in the same, inner-city hospital that was my second home for eight weeks after my then-husband was in a 6 O'Clock newsworthy car accident years ago.

Despite the move in recent years to make hospitals -- well, more hospitable -- this place hasn't changed. The same greasy pizza place, the same old architecture of doom, and the same dismal, cramped, loud rooms and hallways sucked me in on Monday for a trip down Remembered Trauma Lane.

I'm happy, ecstatic in fact, to say that it was three hours before my PTSD reactions to the place made it necessary for me to leave.

I'm not so happy to have to say (in the spirit of complete honesty) that yesterday was filled with lots of staring at walls and a seeming inability to get my mind to track anything for any length of time.

But at this moment (the only one that counts) the song below is going through my head courtesy of a friend who posted it in her journal. And I remember all of the times I've been able to keep my head above water, if even just my nose, and remind myself that it's getting a little bit easier every day to keep swimming.

(Fair Warning: There's a few lines of political commentary in this with which you may or may not agree. But that's not what the song is about.)



Image courtesy Nunu Bear via Flickr.