Denial only makes it worse

The Boston Herald

BEVERLY BECKHAM

They don't want to believe it. Or if they believe it, they want to forget.

"Why do you have to keep bringing this up? Why do you continually talk about it? It does no good. It's over. It's in the past. Why can't you just get on with your life?"

They don't understand why at birthdays and holidays and christenings and baptisms, she continues to arrive late - after he's gone. They don't understand why she refuses his gifts, why she's still in therapy, why she has night sweats. They don't understand why sometimes in the middle of the day, when it all comes back to her, she sits and sobs.

A part of them, a big part, believes is the problem, that she initiated what she said happened, or invented it. After all, he is such a man. He has never been anything but a gentleman to them. He tries so hard to make everyone happy.

And so they have never acknowledged her pain, or consoled her. They've never said, "It must have been awful," or hugged her and asked, "What can I do to help?"

Worse, they have never asked him: "Did you?" Because they really don't want to know.

At least her mother believes her, believed her immediately, took her in her arms and said, "That bastard," and wept and murmured over and over again, "If only I'd known."

If her mother had refused to believe - denied her truth, accused or condemned her - if her mother had been like the rest of the family and told her to hush up and never talk about these things again, the woman might have turned to dust. That's how fragile she felt; that's what her father had done to her.

Her mother stood beside her, continues to stand beside her - as a mother should.

All mothers do not.

Rebecca McCloud, the 19-year-old Utah woman, who worked last summer as a nanny for state Rep. John C. McNeil, (now facing federal and state charges for extortion, bribery, money-laundering and mail fraud) has been abandoned by her mother, and her father. The sordid details of McNeil's filming this girl in the shower of his home, is proof enough this is a sick man. But just as sick are a pair of parents who would sacrifice their daughter's self-esteem and mental health to protect a man who is so obviously depraved.

On the night of July 6, 1991, Rebecca McCloud was taking a shower when she noticed a video camera pointing at her.

"I was hyperventilating. I was scared. I was hysterical," she said. But she was also smart. The next day she filed a complaint against McNeil with the Malden Police.

You'd think that her parents would have come rushing to her aid, praised her courage, applauded her clear-headed action and tried to comfort her. You'd think they would have hopped on a plane to Boston and spit on McNeil.

But, oh no. McNeil was their big-shot friend from Malden, their longtime pal. They insisted that their daughter drop the charges. They whisked her out of town and out of the public eye.

They brought her home and told her to keep her mouth shut, wouldn't let her answer the phone and treated her as if she had done something wrong.

McNeil, who has publicly denied McCloud's charges and similar charges brought by other women, remains on great terms with the McClouds. Though he "admitted to my father that he did it - that he filmed me in the bathroom to get me on videotape in the shower," Rebecca McCloud says, he is still regarded as a good friend.

McCloud, who has moved out of her parents' house in order to talk, says that last March when her mother visited Boston, McNeil picked her up at the airport, took her out to dinner and had his driver shuttle her around the city.

McCloud says her parents are furious with her for speaking out, but that she "wanted to do something about it. I'm still mad about it."

As she should be.

As her parents should be. As everyone should be.

For the most damaging thing is to deny it ever happened, to remain silent. The result of is that the victim feels demeaned, guilty and somehow responsible.

Even worse is that the perpetrator gets to continue what he's doing, and continue and continue, because silence is permission, denial a steady green light.