by Anonymous
What comes next is hard. What comes next is difficult to describe. What comes next is my words trying to convey something so indescribable, so confusing. The only description I can offer is imaging the earth shifting off of its axis and never returning.
In October 2009, at 22 years of age and six months after graduating undergrad, my life changed completely.
In October 2009, the world I thought I knew became dark and twisted and confusing.
In October 2009, my mentor since the age of 15 tried to engage in a sexual relationship with me.
And I had no idea it was happening.
When I arrived at the hotel after my flight, DH called to make sure that I got in ok. He immediately sounded paranoid and concerned when I mentioned that I had plans to see other friends later. When I asked friends to meet up the days prior, I explained that I was in town to see other friends and made no mention of DH since he asked me not to. In fact, I told a friend I was coming into town for a funeral. I was under the impression that this business conversation was definitely off the record so as not to make anyone jealous that I was being considered for a role in the organization. What I didn’t know is that DH meant that I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere besides my hotel and the Mall of America. I felt like some kind of weird prisoner… like there was some weird psychological warfare going on… the kind where someone tells you not to go anywhere and you believe that you aren’t allowed to go anywhere. The endorphins from the flight wore off immediately as I resigned myself to my hotel room for the afternoon. I went out to the mall for a bit but made it back for DH to pick me up for dinner.
We went out to a nice Japanese restaurant. There was lots of talk around ordering anything I wanted, how excited he was to see me, and those signature glances he has when he places his chin in his hand, breathing heavily, and just stares at you. I knew enough about business to know that you don’t just lead with pitching a job, so I was intentional about talking about the concepts and plans indirectly at first. Every time I brought up MMA he redirected. Every time I mentioned an alumni’s name and the exciting things they were up to, he redirected. He only wanted to know about me personally. He wanted to know about my boyfriend. He wanted to know if I was happy. He wanted to know if my boyfriend was a good man. If I was being taken care of. I found myself loosening up, smiled and gushed. We had been together for 6 months at that point and it felt meant to be in every way so far. I remembered the conversation my boyfriend and I had before I left for Minnesota. This job, and a potential move, would be a game changer for us. DH seemed happy for me. Perhaps not entirely convinced, but happy for me.
We finished dinner and I felt a little disappointed that we hadn’t talked about my plans, but I didn’t read into it. Perhaps the business would come the following day. After all, I was there for a whole other day and maybe he thought it was bad manners or bad hosting to expect so much the first day/night of a guest’s arrival.
He abruptly left the table to go to the restroom and came back hurrying us to leave. I was a bit caught off guard, but we had plans to visit a bookstore and he was going to take me around the city the next day. He mentioned the recording studio several times and I was thrilled. Perhaps he was just tired? After all, it was a Monday. I got into his car and we left. Dear reader, no one had heard of Uber yet.
While we were driving, he asked if I wanted to go back to his house. He said that he had been working so hard on the new album and that he wanted to share some of it with me. We were already driving and he insisted it was close to the hotel, so I obliged. When we pulled into his garage it had already been quite dark for several hours at this point, so it must have been about 9pm or so. He parked the car, looked at me, and said his signature “This is so cool. Just so cool.”
He gave me a tour of his very reasonable suburban house. He showed me his office and the piano in the front window area. He started to play and I sat on a chair in the room and listened to him play piece after piece from A Changed Heart. He shared that he wrote it after a life-threatening heart incident. That near death moment inspired an entire new collection of work. I found myself saying things that anyone would say in that moment—How wonderful that you are here; How wonderful that this art gets to be made; How wonderful that you are recovered and healthy. Thank God.
You welcome in me
A new heart
A clean heart
A changed heart
I can still sing the entire melody.
He moved on to another piece, You Are Always Present. I remember this piece in particular because the harmonies were really complicated. If there is one thing I’ve never been able to master, it’s sight reading. Anyone who has rehearsed with me will tell you that despite how hard I work at it, I am an audio learner for life, and not a sight reader. DH invited me to sit on the bench next to him.
I think about this moment a lot as a warning to myself for seeing the human behind the celebrity. For a moment, there was no one else in the world. Just the two of us facing the piano and this song. Where was his wife, Helen? No idea. I asked and he didn’t answer. Nine o’clock on a Monday night and your wife isn’t home? Hasn’t come to greet me? Offered a glass of water or a snack? Not in some patronizing, anti-feminist way, but in a surely-you-told-your-wife-I-was-visiting kind of way, right? Surely you told her you were inviting your 22-year-old former student back to your home that you share together? I found it strange. Perhaps she was out of town.
I also think back on this moment ironically grateful to be a terrible sight reader. Perhaps he had some idea in his head that because I was a talented singer we would have some kind of magical moment? Perhaps I busted that bubble for him? Needless to say, we didn’t go back and sing old MMA favorites even though I asked if we could to redirect the attention away from my fear with new music. Singing old favorites was a part of every reunion—singing the songs of our people, so to speak. Singing the songs that unite us. He was only interested in his new work. And was clearly disappointed when I didn’t already, magically know the songs by osmosis.
He drove me back to my hotel and I felt his disappointment with me. I felt ashamed that I wasn’t better. I felt like a fraud that I had all this training, through MMA, in school, and otherwise, and I couldn’t even read music.
He leaned in for a hug and kissed me on the cheek. He lingered a moment too long. I was too busy thinking I was a failure in my high-achiever mind to pay too much attention to it. He placed his hand on my thigh and said that he would see me the following day.
I got out of the car, confused and still very much in my failure feelings. The biggest deal in the Catholic music world asked me to sing for him and I choked. What was the point of all of that training? What was the point of… wait, did he touch my thigh? That’s weird, right? Or maybe not because we were in a small space? He’s my mentor, he didn’t mean anything by it. He was probably just trying to comfort me and couldn’t express it in the way that men can’t express themselves sometimes. Maybe he didn’t want me to be upset with myself. Maybe I will have another try tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow I will get to give my pitch.
Still, I walked back into the hotel and greeted the concierge. As I began to head upstairs I stopped and said…
Um, just a question.
No one else can get a key to my room, right?
No, they can’t, said the concierge.
Even if their name is on the room?
Even if they paid for the room?
Oh, said the concierge.
Yes, then they can.
Oh, I said.
Can you make a note on my reservation not to allow anyone to have access to my room?
Sure, they said.
I headed upstairs and locked my room. Unconvinced, I moved the security/privacy bar over the door jam. I was over thinking that interaction, right?
I got to work on my presentation and eventually fell asleep.
The next day, he picked me up from the hotel and we drove around the city. We drove past familiar sites, like St. Kate’s campus, and visited a bookstore nearby. He filled my arms with book after book—I walked out with an entire stack. Books from prolific theologians and authors like Henri Nouwen, Peter Maurin, Dorothy Day, Eugene Peterson, and my personal favorite, Oscar Romero. Earlier that year, I visited El Salvador and was deeply moved by Romero’s work. DH also placed a book in my hands called Sleeping with Bread: Holding What Gives You Life, by Matthew Linn and Sheila Fabricant Linn. It seemed like a children’s book and I was confused. He was buying me all of these deep and enriching spiritual books that would take me months to get through, but also a children’s book? Odd. I couldn’t tell if he was treating me like an adult or like a child. Perhaps I was something in between?
Perhaps I was being too judgmental, but the entire experience felt weirdly generous. I guess this is what mentors were supposed to do? He knew I was a smart kid, and education was important to me. Perhaps he was trying to continue to invest into my spiritual life as an adult? I smiled, and said thank you as we started to leave. It felt like hundreds of dollars worth of books and I could barely see over the stack. Ever the feminist, completely capable of buying her own books, I remember asking him to wait for a moment as I rushed back in to buy one more that I saw out of the corner of my eye—a bible study on my favorite book, Ephesians. Perhaps I could use it to lead my small group back home. My brain was full and excited. As an adult, I can identify that he was preying on my brain as a way to connect with me. I have often loathed my “smarts” as a result of this interaction and that, dear reader, is tragic enough.
I assumed that our next stop was the recording studio, but instead he took me back to my hotel. It was the middle of the afternoon and the sun was high in the sky. Maybe he needed to do other things to prepare for the session? Maybe he had other guests in town for the recording? He said he would call me later.
A while later he called my cell phone and said he was outside of my hotel. He asked to come up. I still hadn’t gotten a chance to talk to him about my pitch, and I knew that time was running out, so I said yes. I told him the room number, he came up, knocked, and I let him in. He looked around the room, asked if I liked it and if I was enjoying my time. He took a seat in a chair in the corner of the room—the type of chair that you would sit in to read before bed, or tie your shoes on before leaving for the day. Ever the professional, I sat in a rolling desk chair on the other side of the room. I tried to get into the conversation right away and he stopped me.
He breathed deeply and said—
I want to crawl inside of you.
I took a breath and the metaphorical clouds parted. We stared at each other. The next moment felt like a lifetime.
Selah.
My fight or flight training kicked in and, as cheesy as it sounds, I heard the advice that Oprah once gave on one of her talk shows. Never go to the second location. Fuck. I was already in the second location. He stared. I stared. I heard the second piece of advice in a million different words: redirect, refocus, personalize yourself, talk about yourself. I tried to shift the energy back to the conversation, full of nervous talking, completely spinning out of mental control but maintaining physical control of my body.
He tapped the bed.
Selah.
I stood up.
I took a step back and firmly asked him to leave.
What? He said.
I think you need to leave.
Selah.
Job be damned. Future be damned. Lit up completely in smoke in a microsecond. I would find something else, because this wasn’t it, pal. I took another step back because he would have to walk in between me and the bed to get out of the room.
He moved toward the door.
He kept moving toward the door.
And then he turned and held onto my shoulders and forcibly pressed his lips to mine. Wet, disgusting, sloppy, like a teenager who had no concept of consent.
I tried to pull away, but he was holding onto my shoulders and he could have easily overpowered me. I was immediately horrified and thought first of how disappointed my boyfriend would be, not of my own safety. I wondered how I was supposed to explain this to him, not how I was supposed to explain it to myself.
DH said goodbye and left the room.
I sobbed. Selah, younger self.
My flight didn’t leave until the next morning.
I know the power of reframing. I know how trauma in our minds and bodies gets reframed.
As weeks and months passed, the memory of this incident began reframing itself in my head as “what a poor, sad, old man.” You must understand that with the knowledge I had at the time, this was an isolated incident. Clearly he wasn’t in the right frame of mind, saying something so lewd and inappropriate to someone at least thirty years his junior. Someone who could be his daughter. Someone who was his student for years and, up until that moment in the hotel room, to whom he had been a mentor and career advisor.
At 22, I was proud of my reframing. And I was proud of the way I tried to “bounce back,” vowing that this “isolated incident” wasn’t going to veer me off course. I knew what I was good at, I knew what my skill set was, and I knew I had a lot to offer an organization. Sleeping with the director was not on my list of candidate qualifications and prerequisites.
At 33, I now ask myself why I didn’t share what happened to me with anyone. But, dear reader, who was I supposed to share it with? The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis? St. Catherine University? His publishers? There was no guidebook for this. I was 22. Who was going to listen to me? How was I supposed to sum up a decade of what I now know to be grooming techniques? This man was an independent contractor for everyone and beholden to no one. Who let this man open a camp for young people? Who let this man have this level of access to young people? Asking myself why the Archdiocese and St. Kate’s would let him open up a camp for young, impressionable, aspiring musicians is a question that wouldn’t register on my radar until I heard report after report of young people being abused. The NCR article quotes me as saying: “The fact that the [expletive] archdiocese knew [of his history] and still let him set up a camp for young people. … The amount of hurt and pain that could have been prevented is almost unforgivable.” I’ll let you choose your own adventure on what expletive works best for you today, dear reader. Mine started with an F.
On February 15, 2010, four months after the incident in the hotel, he reached out again personally. Of course, I still received his holiday spam group email, but this was personal.
Note these specific lines –
- “I hope something has come up job-wise for you. Of course, I have misplaced your phone number…”
- “I am REALLY hoping to see you!”
- “Plus I have some other things to share and talk to you about.”
At 22, I didn’t know if I should be triggered or reassured. That’s his special brand of manipulation. In one way, it felt like an olive branch, but I was also shocked that he wasn’t acknowledging what had happened. Maybe meeting while he was in town would “reframe” my memory of our encounter and I wouldn’t be so triggered when I heard from him.
At 33, it’s blindingly obvious that his behavior in the hotel room is just par for the course when there are 44 other survivors calling you to account. It’s par for the course to fly your mentee to the Twin Cities for a job interview and have her narrowly escape being raped. Boys will be boys, am I right?
I can’t imagine that the concert happened, but I wasn’t there. A week after this email his father passed away.
In late February 2010, when DH’s father (our honorary MMA grandfather) passed away and we were invited to Minnesota for the funeral, I went. A small group of us were specifically named in an email, the top of which is redacted above for their privacy. Because of the reframing that I had done about the hotel incident and my continued dedication to the organization, I hoped that I would get a second chance to talk to DH about the good work the alumni were doing. After all, donations were asked to be made to MMA in Grandpa Haas’ name in lieu of flowers, so it felt like the right step forward in restarting our fundraising efforts. Our small group agreed: developing a scholarship fund in honor of our Grandpa Haas was the best way forward and would provide DH a sense of meaning in his grief. Two very best friends of mine and fellow alumni helped get the ball rolling with me and attended the funeral.
I think it’s important to pause and remember that when someone with immense power invites you somewhere, “no” isn’t really an option. When someone with immense power is encouraging you to be a part of something, it’s a privilege. You go. There is no option not to. I had best friends whose grandfathers had died, and I didn’t attend their funerals. Why was I attending this one? The one for the father of the mentor who sexually assaulted me in a hotel room? I wouldn’t ask that question to myself until years later.
We attended a few gatherings over the weekend celebrating Grandpa Haas’ life, including meals where we could talk leisurely and a gathering at Grandma Haas’s house. Seeing DH’s world was humbling and deeply human. He was understandably grieving, and seemed to be softened by what was happening. Perhaps humbled by the number of people who came to support him and his siblings. Overall, the weekend was positive. Maybe, just maybe, what happened in October wasn’t the big deal I thought it was. I shared news of the scholarship we were planning to create and he cried. For a moment, all seemed to be right in the world.
Now, as an adult with “Me Too” knowledge, I can name the sexual assault. I couldn’t at the time, and I apologize to my younger self for that. At 22, I was just happy that he wasn’t seemingly “sad” or “pathetic” anymore. Maybe I had another chance at making this career a reality. And maybe DH and I could move on, resuming the role of mentor and mentee.
I moved full speed ahead on another alumni reunion and on advertising for Grandpa Bob’s scholarship. We decided that we would dedicate it to the memory of Derek Campbell as well, a prolific composer and conductor who led the vocal track I participated in in 2002. We started collecting small contributions but nothing significant. Without the tangible backing of support from MMA directly, all I had were my alumni connections. Many of us were deep into our 20’s, drowning in college debt. A $25 gift from one friend seemed substantially generous at the time.
In April of that same year, 2010, my friend and I got an invitation to attend MMA on the adult track for free.
Almost to be expected at this point, our silence was required.
This is just between you guys and myself.
NO ONE else is to know.
OK – our little secret
And my little gift to the two of you.
You know I love you guys… but please
This is to be known by NO one, not Alissa, not Lori, not ANYONE, OK?
We attended our first adult track. It was a relatively normal week, and the track was as we expected—meaningful, encouraging professional development. We continued with our alumni gatherings, which now included staff and team members since we were older. While our friends supported the organization in different roles throughout the week, we enjoyed having the time together, especially back in the staff dorms for a late night hang out.
Pictured below are David and I with some of the young people that attended from my parish. It was so exciting to see the good work of MMA being passed down to another generation of musicians at my home church. We had quite an elite group that had attended since the late 90’s and our home parish was incredibly supportive of our growth and development. It’s important that I pause here, since I mention them, and share that I’m so sorry for the grief that this situation is causing. While I sincerely wish that some of them would have believed the first accounts from survivors and not made terrible comments to me about DH’s presumed innocence, I understand that our society teaches that it’s easier to trust a monolith than it is to trust a woman. It’s easier to believe patriarchal structures of power than it is to believe a woman… regardless of the fact that I’ve lived an honest life full of integrity. For those who supported the immediate dismissal of his music but still carry the heavy weight and grief of sending us to this camp/institute, please know that you did nothing wrong. As I have reminded my mother throughout this process… you did nothing wrong. How could you have known? Had the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis had the courage to move forward with the information they received about DH decades earlier, none of us would be in this situation. I am so very sorry for the pain that you must feel, guiding us to this place with this monster.
In April 2011, DH invited me to be on the Adult Track again and sponsored my scholarship. We were continuing our development work with the Agape Alumni Scholarship and planned on presenting our first sizable gift of $600. While that number is quite small with some perspective now, at the time it felt significant for us and a great start to our efforts. While I continued to feel strange that David paid for my scholarship and kept it a secret, it made me wonder about the other finances of the organization. I didn’t understand where the money was coming from to pay for it. I also didn’t understand why it was a secret. It made me increasingly uncomfortable all week.
Was this money he raised on the road at concerts? Was there a budget or fund for individuals who never asked for financial support? Did he assume I needed financial support? Why would he have assumed? Was he expecting some type of gift in return for this unrequested sponsorship? Did he feel bad about what happened in October 2009 and was trying to make up for it?
Or was it totally and completely innocent and he simply just wanted to?
I attended. We were doing good work for the organization and I told myself that since I was still volunteering and not receiving a stipend for my work, it was fair to accept the scholarship. The social justice element of development and fundraising was so important to me, but I still felt weary. I told myself I would work twice as hard the following year because I wanted to “earn” the scholarship. Damn my high-achiever instincts.
The week continued as normal programming-wise, but this year I added a letter campaign. It was distributed to the alumni attending on the adult track and those on staff. Below is the letter:
On Saturday evening, my other friend and I finally got our chance to reintroduce ourselves to the entire MMA community by speaking at the concert. Ever the journaler and saver-of-meaningful-things, that speech is below.
We were thrilled that members of the staff and team came to talk with and congratulate us after the concert. What an exciting time! We were finally making an impact!
Mass continued the next morning, followed by a meal in the dining hall. Ironically in the second photo, you can see David doing one of his typical hands-on table greetings. They happened so frequently that one was unintentionally caught in this photo.
In January 2012, our small group of five received an email from David and the team. The email was a shocking surprise and seemingly out of nowhere. We treated it as very clear language that our collective wasn’t welcome anymore and that they no longer wanted our support. Even now, there simply isn’t any other way to interpret it. We were being chastised and cut off at the knee.
It was wild to me that they were mandating that we attend a meeting a month or so later when we lived all over the country. They knew we would have to pay for that flight and travel expenses. They weren’t calling us to the Twin Cities to give us jobs. They were calling to shut us down. Who would willingly walk into that kind of meeting?
Whether we could have attended or not, our small group decided we weren’t going. I considered myself a bit older and wiser at this point and was really offended by this email. I had been trying for six years to bring alumni together, at DH’s blessing and request, and now he was ousting us. I decided to put my worth elsewhere and made the tough decision to start breaking away from the organization, along with many members of our small collective.
David invited me back to the Adult Track in 2012. At this point, I was beyond frustrated with what was happening and never replied to his emails. I was volunteering with a new organization, started a new job, and didn’t have time to focus on past ventures. His ridiculously tone-deaf reply is below.
Notice the continuous code of “I worry about you.” Translated, it means “you aren’t paying any attention to me and therefore there must be something wrong with you.” He followed up again, with another secretive scholarship (his “treat!” and “our secret – smile!”) repeating the same subliminal language. I guess emojis weren’t mainstream yet, because this email would have been chock-full of them.
Email after email… I couldn’t do it. Mentally, I just couldn’t do it. I was continuing to feel really uncomfortable with his constant emails. And the invitation to attend the Adult Track? I had thought those invitations were in response to my work leading alumni efforts and fundraising, which you have now pulled your support from, DH. Why did you want me in Minnesota?
I already received so many of his spam/garbage emails. I was hearing from him too often and needed a break. I know I don’t need to justify this, but I literally hate being embarrassed. Least favorite emotion of all time and those who know me well know this about me. What he and the leadership team did back in March, however necessary they felt it was at the time, was embarrassing. We had done nothing but work hard and build their reputation for years. I needed time away.
In May 2012, he invited me to a concert near my hometown and I made up more excuses so that I didn’t have to go. Later that summer, after I decided I wasn’t attending the Adult Track, I told the remaining alumni that I wasn’t going to attend the very-strictly-off-campus-day we planned on either. I reframed it as an opportunity for younger leaders to step up, but really, I needed some distance.
One of my co-directors wrote on my Facebook wall about missing me. Her outreach meant a lot, and still does to this day.
In September 2012, one of our friends and fellow alumni passed away. The weight of it was crushing for so many of us. DH inappropriately emailed a small group of us to tell us the personal details of this young person’s death as a suicide. (Out of respect to the family and those triggered by suicide, I’m not sharing that email here.) DH was still treating me as some strange, pseudo-team member, one of only eight people included on this secretive email. He gained some type of strange power by controlling who had information. He wrote in ALL CAPS often, and demanded that we not speak about this to anyone or post on social media. Of course, DH had no concept of how social media worked, and the news had already circulated through the community. By the time it came from DH in a power-hungry email full of control, we rolled our eyes because we already knew. He loves to control a narrative.
I didn’t understand why I was being included in this email of team members when I wasn’t officially hired by the organization in any capacity. It continued to feel strange that he expected me to uphold this reputational role for MMA but would not give me an ounce of credit for it or a job title or a stipend. It was almost as if he was just trying to hold me close because he wanted to. The lack of personal and professional boundaries was really confusing to my young heart—especially when there is a pervasive culture of “working your way up” and “exposure” in the artistic world. I didn’t make a big deal out of it out of respect for our friend who had just passed, but I made the decision that day, three years after the hotel incident, that David would never change. Much is preached to women in Christian circles about forgiveness, regardless of the wrong committed. I couldn’t fully forgive him, but I worked with a spiritual director for a long time who helped me process a lot of this. It was hard to move on with my life, but I needed to do it. Our small group pooled our resources for a gift and donation. That was the very last time I gave to the organization or anyone related to it, outside of personal contributions to friend’s unrelated GoFundMe accounts and fundraisers. It was time for my deep breath.
In August 2013, DH sent me a job description for a career in the sacred music publishing industry. I was very happy in my current employment, and while I longed to be in the ministry world professionally the role wasn’t the right fit. I appreciated him sending it to me, but his strangely worded urging felt like he just wanted a “friend” in his corner, and I wasn’t comfortable mixing worlds like that. “The two directors are very cool people – you would be OUTSTANDING in this job… I would write a reference for you… So go for it!” By this point in my life, I was very well aware of DH’s tactics to build social capital by insulating himself. He creates a sense of indebtedness and a wall of protection for himself. It’s a truly astounding study.
I continued my break/deep breath from the organization and ignored his never-ending spam/garbage/group emails with zero option to unsubscribe.
Two years later, on September 5, 2014, I was looking for meaning in a few areas in my life. What had happened to me in the hotel room five years before, even now with two solid years off from the organization, still bothered me. But I knew that if I had any chance to move on (and because our patriarchal Christian culture demands submission and teary forgiveness from women), I would need to see him and tell him that what happened was wrong. I would try to forgive him. In hindsight, it baffles me that I needed to tell him it was wrong, but that’s besides the point.
I heard he was giving a concert very close to where I lived, and I decided I would go and sit in the back of the church to pray. If I was prompted by the Holy Spirit, I would go talk to him. If I wasn’t prompted, but felt a sense of peace, I would walk out and move on with my life. He would never have needed to know I was there.
But he saw me. He saw me in the back pews and I knew if I didn’t go say hello after the concert I would get some kind of shaming/guilt trip email about why I didn’t. Two years after leaving an organization I still would have received an email, you ask? Yes, dear reader! You never really “leave.” That’s part of the “cult-ure.”
I waited in a line of fans, as is to be expected at these types of events, and he asked for a photo. I cautiously agreed, but I was willing to wait until the end to really talk because I knew it would take a few minutes to get my thoughts out. He grabbed me, hugging me far too tight for my comfort level. As he did, he turned my chest to be closer to his body. The photo is below, dear reader. Dear reader, I think we are friends at this point, so I hope you’ll appreciate the idea that everyone in my life will tell you that I, shockingly, have an entire right vertical half to my body. It’s wild, I know. I wonder why you can’t see it.
To my surprise, he asked me if I could stick around and talk for a minute, and gestured me into a pew. Maybe the stars had aligned and he was looking for the same forgiveness? Maybe he was the same creepy person who hugged women too close? Then, in a pew facing the altar, he placed his sweaty and smelly post-concert arm around me, pulled me close, and with his hand on my shoulder said…
There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.
I’ve been working with a therapist.
And I discovered something about myself.
I was sodomized as a child.
I was frozen.
It triggered feelings from the hotel room all over again. Never in my life, and never since, have I had someone say such unwarranted, inappropriate, unprompted, and lewd things to me. I still shudder thinking about it. He went on to say that he was working with a professional and talked for a few more minutes, but nothing more. He just left me with that news. That quick heads-up of a news bite and off I go. There was no room for me. No room for what I had to say. He just moved on.
“Hurt people hurt people” was the only justification I could find in my mind, not that this man was a serial predator. “Hurt people hurt people” was easier then processing how serial predators often share overly vulnerable pieces of information with their victims to keep them close. To guard their secrets. To keep them quiet. My old reframing of him being a sad, pathetic, old, confused man seemed to be accurate, now with the added element of apparently the hotel incident was totally and completely warranted behavior because “someone hurt me first.” I drove home with deep pity.
In retrospect, I wish I had saved up some pity for myself.
Three days later he emailed me.
Dear reader, I write this line with all of the astonishment, shock, and dry humor in the world… He wrote and dedicated a psalm to me.
… because that’s a totally normal thing to happen three days after you tell someone unrequested graphic details about you in an effort to keep your manipulative hold on them. This man has no shame. This man uses music as a tool to manipulate and I see that now, clear as day.
I love your heart,
And your striving for integrity,
Your ache for justice,
And your selfless spirit…
So this psalm came to mind, and in thinking of how grateful I am for you –
The song poured out rather quickly.
The phrase “Blest are the Pure of Heart” appears in the Beatitudes. Many will recognize this line from his song “Blest are They.” With one phrase, “Blest are the pure of heart, they shall see God, they shall see God,” DH spiritually manipulated and silenced me.
“Blest are the Pure of Heart” isn’t a psalm setting. He made the piece up. He took the words from Psalm 15 and used them against me. Reminding me that I must do what is right and keep quiet about the hotel incident. Reminding me that God would look down on me if I ever dared to slander DH’s name, or to harm my “friend” in any way. Reminding me that I must stand frozen forever. The lyrics to the full piece are below.
“Blest are the pure of heart, they shall see God, they shall see God.
God, who is welcome to your house?
Who then can rest on your mountain?
Those with integrity, who do what is right, speaking truth with courage.
Blest are the pure of heart, they shall see God, they shall see God.
They never slander with their tongue.
Nor harm their friends. They rebuke the godless.
They honor those who believe, to God they keep their word
And defend it with strength and protect it.
Blest are the pure of heart, they shall see God, they shall see God.
They never give for selfish gain
Nor take a bribe, these are the just ones
They stand forever, unshaken, unshaken.”
At 27, I did exactly what he was subliminally and overtly telling me to do. He was calling me pure and lovely and little and quiet and putting me square in a quaint jewelry box like a twirling ballerina doll. I assumed that role for a long time.
At 33, I see these words differently. Oh what a difference a report with the stories with 44 survivors will do for your headspace. Oh what a difference it makes for there to be a a call to remove the music of one of the highest grossing Catholic composers of all time from pews near and far, because his music was used as manipulation. I should have seen it coming. After all, he used “You Are Mine” to get to me, surely he used this song as well. I see these words as a call to action now, and if you’ll humor me, you can read my version below.
Blest are those who call and fight for righteousness, they shall see God.
God, who can storm the gates of hell?
Who then can rest on your mountain after 19 long years?
Those with integrity, who do what is right, speaking truth with great courage.
Blest are those who call and fight for righteousness, they shall see God.
They tell the truth with great risk.
They uphold their good friends. They rebuke those who abuse.
They honor those who survived, they vow to fight for them.
And defend their stories with strength and protection.
Blest are those who call and fight for righteousness, they shall see God.
They do nothing out of selfish gain.
They cast down every demon, these are the pure ones.
And we, 44 strong, will stand forever, unshaken, unshaken.
End of Part 2
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