A Benefit and Plea for Victims of Child Abuse

When her book, “Mommie Dearest,” was first published eight years ago, Christina Crawford says, she was naively unprepared for the response generated by what one reviewer called “probably the most chilling account of a mother-daughter relationship ever to be put on paper.”

“As I look back on the experience now,” says Crawford, 46, “I had not anticipated that the victim of childhood abuse would be greeted with such hostility, such vehement denial of the truth and such outrage at the fact that I had dared to pull back the veil of secrecy which had previously covered the violent and often torturously cruel behavior of a mother toward her child.”

The blonde-haired Crawford, cool and poised in a bright red suit, was addressing more than 200 people gathered in the gymnasium at Orangewood Children’s Home in Orange Saturday evening for a fund-raiser for VOICES of California, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping former victims of incest.

Reading from a prepared speech and speaking in a clear and direct voice that hinted at her training as an actress, Crawford recalled the difficult period she went through after the publication of her best-selling book about her life as the daughter of the legendary Joan Crawford.

A Flood of Accusations

“Over and over again,” she said, “I was confronted with accusations that I had fabricated the entire story, that I was an ungrateful child considering the privileges that life had bestowed upon me, that my mother was not alive to defend herself and, finally, when all else had failed to stop me from continuing to tell my story, that I had written the book out of spite and purely for the money.”

Only the “voluminous response” from thousands of men and women who had suffered similar childhood experiences kept her going during those difficult months, she said.

Still, she recalled, she reached the point where she felt like abandoning the book tour, fleeing the media battle and returning to the security of her home in Tarzana.

“Then one night,” she said, “I thought of the children right now--children who needed help and the possibility that no one would believe them either.

“I knew that if I gave up and went home--that if, as an adult, I collapsed under the media pressure and the public scrutiny--then the assumption would be that the critics of ‘Mommie Dearest’ were right and once again the child was wrong, the child was guilty, the child was bad, the child was lost.”

Since the publication of “Mommie Dearest” in 1978, Crawford has continued to be an outspoken advocate for the victims of child abuse.

While acknowledging that “much progress has been made these past few years,” Crawford emphasized during her 20-minute talk that “you don’t have to look very far to find current evidence of continued repression and denial of both the damage and the scope of childhood abuse.”

Although the fund-raiser was billed as a “Special Evening with Christina Crawford,” she was only part of the three-hour program which included the presentation of scenes from “If I Should Die Before I Wake,” Michelle Morris’ play about father-daughter incest, and the showing of “Breaking Silence,” an award-winning documentary on victims of incest.

“People must become more educated about this (incest) because that’s how it’s going to stop,” said Mary Cangelosi of Tustin, who co-founded the California chapter of VOICES (Victims of Incest Can Emerge Survivors) with another former incest victim, Zela Lancaster of Westminster.

Support Group Set Up

In addition to providing community education presentations to schools, groups and organizations, the two women explained in an interview, the local VOICES chapter has established a support group that meets weekly at the YWCA in Orange and two weekly therapy groups that meet in Orange and Tustin. Plans also call for offering therapy groups for children and adolescents, and for mothers of incest victims. For more information, call (714) 567-3183.

In providing information, support and encouragement for former incest victims, Cangelosi said, VOICES fills a need in Orange County that was not being met before the chapter was started two years ago. Since then, she said, more than 400 women have attended the group’s meetings.

“I think they get hope, and they see that they can overcome this,” she said. “They get a feeling that they’re not alone, that they’re not different than anyone else.”

During a break in the program, Bill Steiner, director of Orangewood Children’s Home, said that sexually abused children represent 22% of all their admissions.

And, he said, “of all the children we take care of--abused, neglected, abandoned children--the most damaged children are sexual molest victims. In essence, they have been robbed of their childhood, of their innocence.”

“I think,” Steiner added, “that people like Christina Crawford--as with the case with others more recently--are taking a stand on behalf of children. They’re making us face the reality of a dark side of our society. In the long run, public awareness is going to protect children. Christina Crawford and groups like VOICES manifest a lot of courage in talking about these issues.”

In a brief interview before her talk, Crawford said that in the last two years she has spoken all over the country on the subject of child abuse.

She also serves as a commissioner for Children’s Services for the County of Los Angeles, and last year she founded Survivors Network, a nonprofit organization that publishes a free newsletter which provides information from other child abuse victims and lists of books, organizations and resources--”the whole spectrum of information that might be useful to anybody that finds themselves having serious adult problems because of their childhood experiences,” she said.

“My work,” Crawford explained, “focuses on helping other people who are just now coming to terms with their past and many of them are having a real difficult time, so my work tries to focus on solutions: places for people to go, validations of their experience, understanding by government officials how great the need is, tying what seems like dissimilar problems together through understanding that they were all originally the product of abusive childhoods.”

Crawford maintains that “everything from (criminals) to alcoholics to eating problems appear to have their root causes in childhood abuse.”

“Up until very recently, that has not been understood,” she said. “All the different problems--drug abuse, alcoholism, delinquency, domestic violence--have all been treated as separate issues. So in order to solve the problems, I think we have to figure out what the root causes are and how to deal with that in advance because we can’t go on just building endless prisons or putting people through drug and alcohol abuse programs forever and ever.”

Despite the time she puts into her work in the field of child abuse, it is not Crawford’s main activity.

“Believe it or not,” she said with a laugh, “my main occupation is earning a living, and I do that through my writing. I am a writer.”

Crawford, who has been married nine years to producer David Koontz and who has a 22-year-old stepson, said she is producing an independent film based on her 1981 murder mystery novel, “Black Widow.” She also has completed her third book, “Life Spirit,” which she said is about “personal health in relationships” and which chronicles her recovery from a major illness. (In 1981, she underwent a cranial bypass operation after suffering a massive stroke from a clot in the carotid artery in the left side of her brain).

But when not writing, she said, her time is spent on “what I call civic work, or charitable work, and the Survivors Network is definitely a part of that because I am, myself, a survivor. I understand how difficult it is to find the services and to get your life together and so that’s why I’m involved in that.”

Crawford, who autographed copies of “Mommie Dearest” that were on sale at the beginning of the evening, feels her book had an impact in helping to create public awareness of child abuse.

“There were a number of very dedicated, knowledgeble people working in the field, but I think in terms of the public awareness that it certainly was a catalyst,” she said, “and I think that a lot of the work that has been done on a community level has been done subsequent to that.”

Asked if her view of her mother has changed over the years, Crawford acknowledged that she has mixed emotions.

“That’s natural,” she said, “and I think as I have learned more about the ramifications of being an abused child and as I’ve gotten older and I’ve had the experience of being a parent, I think I have some more compassion for her. Which is not to say that I excuse what she did. I don’t, because she did have the opportunity to get help, and there were people--her friends--who suggested she needed help. And she categorically refused. So although I have compassion for her pain, that is not to say I find excusable what she did.”

During her talk, Crawford addressed the other survivors of child abuse who were in the audience.

“We are our own hope for the future,” she said. “We are the voices of change. We are the positive forces that will not allow the past to continue poisoning tomorrow. We are the advocates for today’s children. We are the fortress against which the arrows of disbelief cannot prevail. We are the custodians of truth and reality.

“You know that your powerful voices will not remain silent any longer.”