A Crying Shame

Until a spring day in her sophomore year of high school, Tristan Lemons thought her father and stepmother were antique dealers. That morning in 1983, she was awakened at 4 a.m. by a phone call from authorities in London. Through static, she heard the news--her parents had been arrested for smuggling $1.7 million worth of cocaine.

First, the A student learned to lie to her friends about why her parents hadn’t returned from their latest trip abroad.

“Lies are way better--you have more control over lying than the truth,” said Lemons, now 31, a Portland, Ore., health worker.

Then, after the local paper printed the story, she became the object of questions and judgments. “I felt that people were thinking I was bad or disgusting,” she said. It only made her more loyal to the father she loved, and she defended him, telling others they just didn’t understand.

But by fall she had become a nervous wreck. While her parents were enmeshed with their trials in London, the 16-year-old was trying to run a household for herself and her brother, go to school and apply to colleges. Her stepmother was acquitted and came home, but her father served four years in prison.

It took many years before she finally realized, “You don’t have kids and smuggle” and many more years before she forgave her parents.

“When your parents fundamentally let you down,” she said, “you live with that every day of your life.”

When the full glare of scandal shines mercilessly on parents, sometimes the ones hurt the most are those in the shadows--their children.

Recently the public has noticed a few famous offspring trying to cope with scandalous, sometimes lurid, publicity surrounding their parents: Chelsea Clinton, said to be “holding her head high” as her father continues to deal with embarrassing questions about his sexual liaisons and his honesty; the children of Michael Kennedy, coping first with allegations that he had a relationship with their baby-sitter, then with his sudden death in a skiing accident; Sydney and Justin Simpson, whose mother’s life and death were graphically displayed in supermarket tabloids as their father stood trial for her murder.

There are countless more children behind smaller headlines who wake up one day, look at the parents they have idolized, and have to consider that they might also be criminals, scoundrels, cheats or frauds.

Even if news of the adultery or crime remains private, therapists say many of their clients who have been through this feel as if their whole world has crumbled. If it appears the rest of the universe is watching them as well, the humiliation is compounded--particularly for self-conscious adolescents.

Children are devastated by a parent’s fall from grace because they need to idolize them, according to Michael Nichols, a professor of psychology at Virginia’s William and Mary College and author of “No Place to Hide” (Prometheus, 1995). Like climbing vines, young children require strong adults to be larger-than-life supports to help them grow and connect to the world. Ordinarily, children gradually let go of the illusion that their parents are virtuous kings and queens, Nichols said.

“It’s the sudden revelation that’s more likely to be damaging,” he said. “The impulse is to hide, first from oneself, then from others.”

Beverly Hills counselor Bonnie Mark said some kids are so mortified that they quit school and obtain tutoring at home. “I’ve had kids go off to boarding school,” she said. “They get away from the cesspool in L.A., but they’re also escaping their family completely.”

Children yearn to be “normal,” even in an age when no one is sure what that means, she said. It’s clearly not normal when reporters are calling the house, everyone from the country club to the boarding school knows the family home had to be sold, or teachers and classmates are asking if what they heard on TV is really true.

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Some allegations are more humiliating for children than others, experts say. Crimes of passion, even murder, may not be as shameful to affluent children as incontrovertible evidence of embezzlement or financial scandal that affects other people in the community. “There’s not a whole lot of support for something like that,” said Los Angeles therapist Marion Solomon. “The shame is much more intense than anything I’ve seen.”

In February, on the day the governor of Arizona was sentenced for falsifying records, attempted extortion and perjury, his youngest son came to watch.

The 15-year-old listened to prosecutors describe his father, Fife Symington, as a con artist who swindled lenders to shore up a frail real estate empire. He saw his father--a rich and powerful man who had introduced him to life in the best box seats at the most important football games--choke back tears and beg a judge to be lenient. He heard the judge sentence his father, who claimed his worst mistakes were innocent bookkeeping errors, to 2 1/2 years in a federal work camp and five years’ probation.

Afterward, while the governor was telling reporters that it “could’ve been worse,” the boy stood off to the side, hugging his sister, sobbing.

Some adults involved in public troubles have tried to protect or prepare very young children for the bad news. In addition to unplugging the TV, grandmother Juditha Brown, who cared for O. J. Simpson’s children during the trial, used to call stores an hour before she took the children shopping so the manager would remove tabloids with Nicole Brown Simpson’s pictures on them.

But the husband of Orange County socialite Tina Schafnitz, who recently pleaded guilty to selling $1,000 worth of cocaine, has found it hard to shield his children from the publicity. “Our 8-year-old has seen his mom’s picture on the front page of the newspaper for saying yes to drugs instead of no,” Matthew Schafnitz told reporters. “It’s not an example I want for my kids.”

Bill and Hillary Clinton have said their strategy was to inoculate their daughter at a young age, role-playing nasty political accusations and warning her that people would say untrue things about her father.

Older children usually have to take the hits broadside. In some cases, they are urged to participate in a united front for the sake of appearances, posing for photographers or appearing in court, regardless of their feelings.

“It can be a very lonely place,” said Santa Monica psychologist Paul Tobias.

Those who can’t hide at home or in boarding school retreat into denial, a “rescue mode”--or sometimes a simmering rage.

As reported in the New Yorker, Linda Tripp reportedly never forgave her father, a high school teacher, for his infidelities, which she endured during her high school years. Tripp was known to have leaked rumors of several acquaintances’ marital infidelities before this year’s revelations about Monica Lewinsky’s private conversations triggered the public exploration of the president’s sex life.

Other children, such as Richard Nixon’s daughter Julie insist their parents are the victims--of a political vendetta, a lying accuser or misguided journalists. Some adult children of Watergate figures are said still to call whistle-blower John Dean a liar.

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To some observers, this is nothing more than loyalty, the morally correct position.

“Even if Chelsea were privately angry with her father, it would be ethically wrong for her to show it: The White House, like the Vatican or Buckingham Palace, should present a united front,” wrote Camille Paglia in the online Salon Magazine.

If, however, the front represents self-delusion, therapists say there’s a price to pay in the long run. Then, as Solomon put it, “the private self comes at night to haunt them.”

For those who are not able to resolve the shame and loss of trust, the fallout can cripple their adult relationships. Some feel unworthy of a committed relationship, some feel destined or even expected to repeat the same mistakes. Some become self-defeating personalities, the sort who always “snatch defeat from the jaws of victory,” Tobias said.

“We’re really talking about people whose self-esteem is chronically impacted by their parents’ behavior. It takes a pretty mature adult to say, ‘That’s my mom, not me.’ ”

For many people, the model for weathering public scandal is the Kennedy family, known for presenting a united, supportive front in the face of accusations across generations from drugs and alcoholism to wild affairs and statutory rape.

If there is a right way for families to view the accused, Solomon said it is what family friends say the Kennedys have done: Tell them their behavior is unacceptable, but that they are still loved.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., eulogizing his brother Michael, pointedly observed that the “personal issues with which he struggled were not about malice or greed. They were about humanity and passion.”

The best measure of character, he concluded, “is not the behavior that brings us to a crisis, but the manner in which we face it.”

The children may be the ultimate judges. It took Tristan Lemons 15 years of intermittent therapy and a period of estrangement from her father, but she said she eventually forgave him and her stepmother.

Even so, she said, “I will hold them accountable for the rest of my life.

“They made choices that affected me in a profoundly negative way--and I had to clean up that mess for myself.”

* Special correspondent Camille Kimball in Phoenix contributed to this story.