Truth-telling. It’s a concept so elusive these days that it has almost become an abstract image, floating beside and around us, perceivable only in our peripheral vision and easily lost. But then once in a while, a truth-teller comes along with the courage to plant it right in front of our eyes, clear and raw and candid. Donna Besel is one such truth-teller.
In her memoir, The Unravelling: Incest and the Destruction of a Family, Besel recounts the years spent in the nineties attempting to bring her father to justice for the sexual crimes he committed against her and her sisters. Besel was from a large family, one of ten children with her biological parents. Her mother died when she was only fourteen, and sometime after her father remarried, they adopted a child, totalling eleven siblings. At a family wedding in 1992, when it was clear the sexual abuse had continued with the youngest adopted daughter, the family admissions finally came out amongst the siblings – leading to a split in allegiances between those seeking justice, and those wanting to forget the past and maintain the status quo.
Much of the praise on the jacket of the book includes words like “brave”, “fearless”, and “honest” in reference to Besel’s writing. Once you read this memoir, and I hope you do, you will feel these words in your bones. The author takes us through her own emotional struggles as a victim and her search for healing, all while raising two young children. But more than that, we walk with her as those personal struggles tangle with the loss of her extended family unit as she’s always known it and then later, with the slow-moving, sexist, and dismissive justice system. At times this memoir reads like a healing journey, and other times it reads more like a true crime account of facts. I suspect it feels that way because it is exactly that complex - facts and pain and healing and struggles moving in and out of the narrative like waves, sometimes crashing, sometimes rolling.
It is undeniable that this memoir also speaks to systemic social issues. Although it is set in the nineties and those with more knowledge of the justice system than I might argue that changes have occurred since then, it’s clear that misogyny and victim shaming is still very front and center, and one of the main reasons so much abuse is still allowed to happen. In one scene, the lawyer for the defence describes the accomplishments of the victims, implying that those with university degrees or successful careers were not harmed by the actions of their father. Even more egregious, the lawyer defines Donna’s success as “marrying a lawyer”. When the court audience reacts, the male lawyers (including the prosecution) and the judge are only confused. “Pollock, Cutler, and the judge look genuinely baffled, unaware of the sexism of Pollock’s implication that marriage to a lawyer was an exalted status.” (361) In addition to the appalling treatment of the victims, the case was stalled in the courts for over three years with over-the-top accommodations for Besel’s father. It is impossible to walk away from this memoir without a solid appreciation for all that is wrong with the justice system and society, especially when it comes to sexual crimes perpetrated largely against women and children.
And maybe even a fire lit in each of us to change it.
I started off by saying that Besel is a truth-teller. As she states at the very beginning, “I cannot speak for husbands, children, sisters, brothers, cousins, wives, ancestors, friends or any of the hundreds involved; I speak only for myself. I tell this story from my vantage point, my version of vision, my fractured reality.”
Besel’s words rise bold on the page. Her pain is clear and stated and vivid, as are her demands for justice, the fair and respectful treatment of women, and the unequivocal protection of children.
And that is truth-telling.