I have just finished reading “Father’s Touch” by Donald D’Haene. First of all I would like to say I admire Donald’s courage and tenacity in writing this memoir. To get any book down on paper is difficult enough, but this work is extraordinary.
The book really has three main sections to it. The first deals with the abuse and how the family dealt with the traumatic ripples, the second is how they embraced the simple answers Jehovah’s Witnesses offered to complex problems and the third is the trial of the offender. In each there is a very subtle change in the tone of writing. In describing the abuse suffered at the hands of his father, Donald writes simply but unblinkingly and with great dignity. He does not shy away from what happened, but manages to provide just enough detail so the reader can realize the day to day events the children had to endure. Later as the family embraced the Witnesses as their best and brightest hope, Donald’s storytelling becomes more detached as if he were describing events that happened to another person. My heart ached as the elders and a detective used the family for their own ends. They were cold and manipulative and events are told in earnest sincerity and ironic, deadpan humor which only makes the failure of the Witnesses, and later the judicial system, that much more wrenching. Finally the tone of the story changes ever so slightly. Anger and bitterness mixed with detached logic as the trial is described. I couldn’t help but feel tremendous empathy and warmth of feeling toward the family as the entire story played out.
Donald used a brilliant maneuver of quoting from his father’s book in contrasting what his father said happened in that period versus what really happened. It is a contrast between what a pedophile says and what they actually do. Chilling and very creepy.
The story comes across as fair and even handed and Donald is not above relating his own understandable mistakes. The story is powerful and well told.
Thank you for writing a poignant and powerful story.
Now a personal aside. I feel things deeply, which is both a blessing and a curse. When I’m happy I feel as bright as the sun, but when I’m sad I feel it down to my cells. And so it was with this story. I followed it like I was on a roller coaster. The story hit me hard, but not where I was expecting. Not with the abuse, but at the trial. The trial brought up old messages (it’s all a lie; it didn’t really happen; you're bad) and the ending itself left my deeply shaken (in fact my hands are still shaking as I write this). I won’t reveal what happened, but I will say I received a phone call that was almost exactly the same.
The part of the story I related to the most was using the Witnesses as a coping tool and submerging your personality to the organization’s. I understood so well a young man trying so hard to perform, as if that would wash away the past. I too believed with all my heart. I’ve bookmarked several passages that touched me. Here are just a few:
“Bible characters are more real to me than the people who surround me. I question reality as I know it, sometimes even my own existence.”
“Our human subconscious has no sense of time, so reliving an ancient trauma can be as fresh and raw as if it had happened yesterday. However when someone is successful at disconnecting from his history, current behavior that is irrational or conditions that are disturbing, such as insomnia, phobias, nightmares, seem to descend from nowhere. Reality blurs with fiction. One begins to question one’s own sanity.”
“Why am I so numb, so emotionless? Sometimes I feel like a corpse. Do people feel how cold my hands are when they touch them?”
“Even though I am alone, I am not lonely.”
Remember the end of “Castaway” where Tom Hanks stood in the middle of a road heading off in four different directions whilst haunting music played? Each person in this story faced that crossroads and each made a choice. The most painful choice, for me, was Donald’s mother. I wanted so badly for her father to catch the cab as she drove off. I knew what was coming as she drove away with Daniel and I hurt for her. If she had stayed. If she had not left with Daniel. If …
The lives that could have been, and weren’t. All the pain that would follow. What a waste.
If I had to use one word to describe how I felt after reading “Father’s Touch” it would be “Haunted”.
Haunted by what was and what could have been. For all of us.