UNITED STATES
Huffington Post
Ryan White, Contributor
Director and Producer. Creator of ‘The Keepers’ on Netflix
Since the film’s release, I’ve heard from abuse survivors around the world who just want the chance to be heard.
06/05/2017
Note: This post contains details regarding sexual abuse.
I flew to Baltimore in the late summer of 2014. The intent was to meet a mystery woman – up until then, known for decades only as “Jane Doe” – whom my mom had recently discovered was a family friend. They had grown up in the same working class, Catholic neighborhood of Baltimore. As I understood it from my mom, Jane Doe had a seemingly unbelievable story from her past.
Jane Doe was habitually abused by the head priest, Father Maskell, at her Catholic high school in the late 1960’s. She confided in a young nun at the school named Sister Cathy who was trying to do something to stop the abuse. Then, in a scene seemingly ripped out of a horror film, Jane Doe was taken by Father Maskell to see Sister Cathy’s body in a field and told, “See what happens when you say bad things about people?”
For all the silencing she’d suffered throughout her life, if she wanted to finally tell her story in-depth, I wanted to be her partner in unburying these secrets.
Jane Doe, it turns out, is Jean Wehner. I had never met Jean before our first five-hour conversation at her dining room table, and I was admittedly skeptical when I arrived. But I left that conversation nauseated, exhausted, and enthralled ― in the hallway before we even got to the elevator, my producer and I said to each other, “We have to do this.” Jean was a credible person with a completely incredible experience. She was raw and brutally honest and uncensored; I was captivated by her. For all the silencing she’d suffered throughout her life, if she wanted to finally tell her story in-depth, I wanted to be her partner in unburying these secrets.
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