My uncle was the ‘cool’ one. Then he was the one convicted for one count of invasion of privacy and one count of sexual exploitation of a child.
Now our family stands divided. One side forgives the other side not so much.
Growing up, he was cool because of his job, working with documentary film makers and pro athletes. He easily commanded the room at family gatherings and we hung on his every word. He taught us about the stars, the planets, moons and universe; meanwhile making himself the center of ours. I leaned into his exciting career path and felt my own life trajectory expand in my twenties when he gave me a coveted job on one of his high-profile gigs.
Growing up, he was also creepy because he showed us Deep Throat.
In the late 1970’s, while our parents were out, our uncle called us to the TV set and casually popped in the VHS. He said nothing as the 62-minute film – featuring Linda Lovelace performing oral sexual acts on several male actors – played on the television set in the living room where we watched Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, and Mork & Mindy.
My two older sisters, fifteen and sixteen, watched with mortified looks on their faces; as if they were witnessing a school bus full of children go off a cliff. I was twelve years old and struggled to follow the storyline the same way one would struggle to follow a foreign film without subtitles. And our nine-year-old sister sat brushing a balloon against her head, and using the static electricity to raise her hair in shock.
We didn’t mention the porn to our parents. We didn’t even talk about it to each other.
Over the next thirty years, my uncle surrounded himself with younger men, shared his home to a global community via an app called CouchSurfing and lived an extraordinary life. He returned from places like Southeast Asia with incredible stories about wild things in their natural habitats and the occasional headshot of a good-looking foreign teenager. When asked why he had the kid’s picture, he unapologetically bragged that he was now the kid’s manager and was going to get him a job. “The headshot is for a friend of mine in the modeling business.”
It was in 2008 that a family friend — a single mother who trusted my uncle to be a positive male role model for her only son — was no longer a part of our gatherings. There was a rumor my uncle had crossed the line with her son. I was unsure what to make of it. Meanwhile, she vanished and I let her.
Two winters before the decades of sexual abuse allegations against Harvey Weinstein came to light, we had our annual family holiday party. My sisters and I live within a half hour of each other. Three of the four sisters have sons. We are a large, loud, and loving group.
I pressed my way through twenty cherished family members wearing silly sweaters past the kitchen island loaded with rich appetizers and patches of white tea candles with flickering orange flames perilously close to piles of holiday napkins.
Eventually I staked a spot next to my 25-year-old cousin, Mikey, who stood by the window over the sink that someone had mercifully cranked open. We dove into a conversation about his new job saving the planet, and his life with his new wife in Bulgaria when my uncle approached, threw his arm around Mikey’s shoulder, and said to me, “For a white guy, this guy has a huge penis.” Unaffected by my dropped jaw reaction to his unsolicited and inappropriate disruption, he donned his red and white cap and took his traditional spot front and center to pass out gifts as Santa.
I wrote him a letter after the holiday party asking him to consider resisting the use of such vulgar language. I warned him that although his family may seem desensitized to his questionable behavior and insulting language — times were changing. Between Trump’s misogyny and the largest single-day protest in US History advocating women’s rights to be considered human rights, I had hoped my uncle would take the letter as a read-the-room warning.
His reply patronized me and minimized the situation. “You’re so sensitive. It was a compliment,” he wrote and then continued to justify his behavior and deflect accountability, “Mikey and I have a great relationship. I have friends in Bulgaria.”
The shameless self-revelation was his typical hubris. I don’t know why I expected to hear anything different from him.
Maybe I was too sensitive.
Maybe it was a compliment.
Six months later a guest staying at his house called the police after discovering two discreetly placed spy cameras in the shower.
Excerpt from Police Report, 2020: [Tom, twenty-years-old] said he found [my uncle’s] address on the Couchsurfing app. Tom said that he was preparing to take a shower when he noticed the miniature spy camera pointing at the shower and that there were infrared lights activated on it.
My uncle confessed to my eighty-year-old mom — his older sister — and her long-time girlfriend that there was a warrant out for his arrest. He swore them both to secrecy.
Two days later, Mom — suffering from anxiety and insomnia over her brother’s news — called a family meeting. My three sisters and one male cousin agreed not to tell our kids; even though seven of the nine of them were adults.
Two days later, the nine adult kids knew.
The nature of the situation called for honest and open conversations.
Besides, whose privacy were we trying to protect?
Excerpt from Police Report, 2020: [My Uncle] is captured by his own camera setting it up to point at the shower and frequently captured retrieving the camera after the male party has left the bathroom.
Once the media broke his story, I received texts, phone calls and emails from people telling me they were and weren’t surprised at the arrest. One person told me they remembered finding a trash bag under my uncle’s ping pong table filled with European magazines of children having sex with adults and with each other. “It made me physically ill,” they said. Another described hearing my uncle throw rocks at his bedroom window when he was twelve years old to get him to come out and play hooky. An acquaintance who was a guest at my uncle’s house and works as a therapist for sex assault victims said my uncle’s behavior changed significantly in the presence of a sixteen-year-old boy who was staying with him while going through a tough time at home, and thought his behavior was concerning. The deluge of warning signs played in my head like a complicated piece of jazz. There was so much I didn’t understand. He was an admired member of his community and our family, why would he? How could he?
Confessions of feeling confused, conflicted, sickened, and angry with him for lying to me, then, now, and maybe always hit home when my son called from college.
“Mom,” my son whispered into the phone from his apartment, “I spent nights in his bed with him. Do you think I’m blocking things out?”
“No,” I responded emphatically as though the question was preposterous, but it wasn’t.
“You are a sensitive man and you were a sensitive child,” I said slowing down my delivery. “If you had returned from your uncle’s changed in any way, I would have noticed.”
My son remained quietly unconvinced.
“Your uncle may have said inappropriate things to you over the years,” I continued trying to dispel his fears and to convince myself, “but I do not think he did anything inappropriate to you.”
Excerpt from Police Report, 2020: In my conversation [with my uncle] he stated numerous times that the camera was never recording in the bathroom. He also stated that he saw the camera in the bathroom and had made a mental note that he needed to get that out of there. Based on these statements and his attempt to delete the videos from the SD card. He was obviously being deceitful in his statements to avoid any criminal charges.
Months later, his attorneys agreed, my uncle, age 71, would register as a sex offender, serve six months of in-home detention for one count of invasion of privacy for sexual gratification, two years of sex offender intensive supervised probation, and 90 days of jail for one count of sexual exploitation of a child.
I rang him up for an explanation of his sentencing. I was still hopeful I would hear some
remorse for the videos he took and the people he hurt. He said I didn’t understand the law and that he had to plead guilty; that it was part of the bundle. Take it or leave it.
His response was disappointing. He was still only reacting to being caught. I couldn’t be there for him. but I also didn’t think our relationship was over. I just thought it was over for now. I was still hopeful he could be vulnerable, do the work, and advance to living the life of a man with integrity. I was still hopeful he wanted to change.
Since then, four Christmas parties have occurred without my uncle as Santa.
When I could no longer curb my curiosity about whether he was a changed person, I reached out.
Any chance you could meet me at 10:45 am this Friday at the Village Coffee Shop? I texted.
The first two sentences of his reply told me everything I needed to know.
I have an early Sundance screening I think will be over by then. I’ll check the runtime when I’m home. If you don’t hear from me otherwise, I’ll meet you there.
Those were not the words of a humbled man.
I canceled the date.
After sharing this revelation with family some were quick to point out all the good he’s done as a mentor.
Yeh but, we don’t know what his intentions were. I responded confounded by their rationalization. Was he mentoring or grooming?
How is this your fight? They objected, annoyed at my persistence.
The question shouldn’t be how is this my fight, I thought, but why isn’t it yours?
In that moment, I got it.
This wasn’t about anybody changing except me.
I was the one who had to lean into my morals and away from the notion that I was bound by blood.
I forfeit the expectations I had for my uncle and raised some for myself.
Until he takes ownership of not just what he’s been convicted of, but all of it, including the psychological damage to the children and parents that trusted him, perpetuating the child porn industry, and for exposing me, his own niece to a pornographic video then he can’t be in my life.
My uncle used to be cool then he was convicted for one count of invasion of privacy and one count of sexual exploitation of a child.
Now our family stands divided.
Some forgive, but me, not so much.