‘Steven’: A Childhood Nightmare

The entertainment industry’s law of supply and lust still dictates. So, one after another, sensational crime stories continue to get a docu-drubbing on television.

Murder . . . rape . . . child abuse--nothing is omitted. The more heinous or bizarre the offense, the more titillating to TV’s producing community and, presumably, to viewers.

Translated to television, many of these stories have been less docudrama than drivel, exercises in distortion and exploitation that drive a stake through the heart of integrity and intelligence.

An exception is “I Know My First Name Is Steven,” NBC’s two-part drama airing at 9 tonight and Tuesday on Channels 4, 36 and 39.

Seven-year-old Steven Gregory Stayner was abducted from Merced, Calif., in 1972 by Ken Parnell, who held the youngster psychological captive and sexually molested him until 1979, when he escaped with another boy who also had been kidnaped by Parnell. Steven was reunited with his parents, and Parnell was later imprisoned for kidnaping.

Others will have to measure its accuracy, and indeed, occasional small pockets of the J.P. Miller-Cynthia Whitcomb script smack of literary license.

As storytelling, however, “I Know My First Name Is Steven” not only rings true at its core, but is an unforgettable chronicle of society’s dark fringe, leaving few psychological back alleys unexplored in capturing a boy’s and his family’s agonizing journey through hell.

There is a suspenseful edge to Larry Elikann’s direction. You don’t want to watch, but you can’t stop watching.

Be forewarned: Much of tonight’s “Steven” is utterly grim and unrelenting, an odyssey without brightness or happiness that alternates between Steven’s bleak life with Parnell (who renames him Dennis) and the plight of the suffering family left behind.

‘Steven” rises high in part because of its fine cast. The performances by Corin Nemec as the teen-aged Steven, Cindy Pickett and John Ashton as the parents and Arliss Howard as the manipulative and sadistically brutal and perverse Parnell are outstanding.

Parnell controls Steven through fear, mind games and lies, convincing him that his parents have rejected him and given Parnell legal custody, and later, that his father has died and his mother has moved away. Howard is so convincingly evil and repulsive as the pedophile Parnell that when he asks the 7-year-old Steven (Luke Edwards) for a hug, you almost gag. Despite providing some of the outward vestiges of family life, this is a man incapable of feeling, but fully capable of acts vile and violent.

Tuesday’s segment, beginning Steven’s anguished reclamation, is as captivating as it is painful.

The euphoria of liberation and family reunion quickly gives way to the reality of readjustment as the the ugliness of Steven’s life with Parnell is made public. It turns out that Steven is twice victimized, first by Parnell and then by those--including his father--who reject him because he was sexually molested.

There are no soft edges here, and no end to the casualties, including Steven’s family. He left home as a mischievous child, and returns as a rebellious, chain-smoking teen-ager, old beyond his years.

Steven suffocates in the thick residue of his past, as Nemec hauntingly evokes not only the shame and self-hate, but the confusion and ambivalence of a boy who had become psychologically dependent on the very man who abused him and stole him from his parents.

Justice may have been looking the other way this time. An update appears at the end of the movie saying that Ken Parnell is no longer in prison, while his victim, Steven Stayner, is now married and the father of two children.

And, you suspect, still a prisoner of his memories.