by Ben Cowan
In 1946, Ben Goldman, two-and-a-half-years-old, was a sweet, adventuresome, and curious child. He delighted in accompanying his mom to the garden where he romped about, dodging the bees on her lilac bush, and enjoying the fragrance of the roses. He was fascinated watching his dad spray DDT from a device resembling a bicycle tire pump with a tuna can on the end. Dr. Steinman, a Detroit pediatrician, noted Ben’s speech was remarkably clear, he was unusually alert and bright; he forecasted a wonderful and prosperous life for Ben.
An only child, Ben had enjoyed the full attention of his mom, Sarah, until late that summer when she returned to the family business full-time. She left Ben in the care of a newly hired live-in maid, eighteen-year-old Yvonne. The brown-eyed brunette, average in most ways, was unemployed at her time of hire and without references. She had a preference for green sweaters and a penchant for little boys.
Within six months, Ben, then age three, stopped eating, had crying spells, and refused to allow anyone to touch or comfort him. Upon the recommendation of Dr. Steinman, Sarah brought Ben to the Child Guidance Center, where a psychiatrist took Ben into a room with toys and invited Ben to finger-paint.
Ben sat on the wood floor with a pile of large sheets of paper in front of him. Using both hands, he smeared paint while responding to her questions. As the painful memories of Yvonne came forth, Ben began crying and stopped painting. The psychiatrist urged him to continue, assuring him it would be just a little longer.
“Just keep drawing and talking, Ben.”
Yvonne had been forcing him to touch her “down there” while she “did things” to him. He hated how his fingers and hands felt. Ben wept and begged Yvonne to wash his hands. He could not stand her touching him. It all sickened Ben. Yvonne threatened Ben, telling him if his mother found out, she would send him away for being a bad boy. Whether he continued in therapy, or if anyone informed Sarah about Yvonne, is unknown. Ben, his burden lightened by giving voice to his secret, was patched-up enough to resume eating and appear normal.
Shortly thereafter, Yvonne’s boyfriend, Mike, showed up and introduced himself to Ben. He told Ben that he was going into the bedroom with Yvonne and asked Ben to leave them alone for a while. Ben took Mike’s statement as a confession that he was a victim of Yvonne, about to be victimized again. (For how else could Ben construe it?)
“I know what you are going to do in there!” Ben volunteered, and told Mike the exact details.
Mike charged into Yvonne’s room, screaming at her. Yvonne ran. Mike chased sobbing Yvonne up the stairs, hitting and yelling at her. He pried her fingers loose from the banister and dragged her into her bedroom and shut the door.
Later, he went to Ben and sat down with him. “If she ever touches you again, you tell me immediately. I am taking her out of here.” Good to his word, a few days later, Mike loaded her and her baggage into his car and before leaving, asked Ben if she had touched him. She had not. Ben never saw them again.
Ben repressed all memories of his abuse. When his son was born, Ben had flashbacks and entered therapy. In searching for answers, Ben called his mother, who described the maid’s basement bedroom, his behavior, and the clinic. She recalled he was terrified of the dark and the basement; he would cry out for her in the night, seeing sheets of cobwebs the size of the wall come loose and cover him and his bed.
As his mother spoke, Ben recalled sheet after sheet falling on him while he lay helplessly in terror and screamed. They changed the wallpaper, painted the walls, moved his bed, and installed a night light. With all that and the maid gone, the cobwebs no longer appeared.
Their conversation brought to memory the maid’s bedspread, a doily-like, lacy affair, typical of the 1940s, a design that manifested in cobwebs falling over him at night. He recalled lying on it, wiping his sticky fingers. His mother denied any knowledge of the maid raping him, and years later, denied any knowledge of his father raping him. She claimed the psychiatrist never disclosed the maid. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she cried. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
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Ben, at five-and-a-half-years old, was awakened by a man standing next to his bed in the wee hours of the morning. Ben looked up and said, “Hi, daddy.”
The man replied, “I am not your daddy. I look like your daddy, but I’m not.”
Ben was confused. The man reached down and groped him. Ben was frightened and shocked.
“Would your daddy do a thing like that?” the man asked.
“No,” Ben said, shaking and crying.
“Your real daddy is in the closet. Do you want your real daddy back?”
Ben nodded. “Then you must do as I say. If you do what I say, then I will go back into the closet and your real daddy will come out.”
The man let the threat sink in. Ben nodded, and the man continued. “If you do not do what I tell you, I will not go into the closet. I will trap your daddy in there and I will be your daddy.”
Ben was crying hard and trembling. The man told Ben what to do. Ben, wanting his daddy back, complied. Hershel stifled his son’s screams of pain by forcing a pillow over his head and continued to rape him for two years.
One day, his mother, Sarah, came into Ben’s room and a rubber-tipped arrow fell from his ceiling on her head. Sarah shrieked. Ben loved it and laughed. Sarah looked up, astonished to see a row of arrows hanging from the ceiling. She laughed. And because it was a happy mood and Ben felt safe, he told his mom about the man-in-the-closet.
Sarah paled. She made Ben repeat the story three times in a row to believe him. Ben did so. Sarah looked at Ben with horror in her eyes and braced herself against the frame of the door, sobbing. Ben stood, transfixed, drawing comfort and strength from her, feeling loved and understood, reassured she believed him. She would make it go away, stop, protect him.
Her arm went out from under her, and she fell against the wall, slipping towards the floor, flailing, grabbing the door frame with one arm, saying things about her arm—it wouldn’t work; things Ben did not understand. Motionless and terrified, Ben watched her struggling to stand and finally regain use of her arm, her face going from relief to anger. Sarah remained silent for a while. When she spoke, she uttered something incomprehensible to Ben and added she would “take care of it.”
Sarah seated herself on the floor next to Ben and in hushed tones instructed him, “You are not to mention anything. You must not speak of bad things. It is bad to speak of bad things.” She explained the meaning of the Three Monkeys and had Ben repeat it.
“See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.”
Shopping in a Five and Dime store, Sarah found a set of the Three Monkeys and brought them home for Ben. They sat on Ben’s bedroom dresser as a reminder of their little secret.
Sarah’s idea of “taking care of it” was to order Hershel to bed when she went to bed. As absurd as it sounded, despite his protestations, “I’m not tired,” and her “Come to bed anyway,” Hershel complied. Sarah bought stock in her magical belief, her fantastic notion, that by his presence in her bed she had Hershel leashed. When Sarah went to sleep, Hershel came into Ben’s room and raped him.
The Three Monkeys saw no evil, heard no evil, and spoke no evil. Ben was then six years old. At night, Ben lay in bed, terrified, watching ghosts float along his wall, from where they would leap at him. A female form drifted back and forth. Ben screamed. The pediatrician prescribed him tranquilizers.
The family business grew, and Ben’s parents were having a home built. They would move within the year before Ben turned eight. One night, when Ben’s father came in to rape him, Ben told him he would have to stop once they moved. He (the man-in-the-closet) lived in the closet and the closet would not be in the new home. Confronted with irrefutable logic from his seven-year-old son, his father agreed: the man-in-the-closet would remain behind.
Trauma did not remain behind. * Ben was an emotional wreck. Unable to express himself, his memories repressed, or put into words the turbulence of his inner world, he displayed it.
Ben bit and kicked the maids, found comfort in lighting matches, and set a small fire in his parent’s bedroom at age seven. He performed poorly in school, was anti-social and could not concentrate. He carried knives, stole, shoplifted, and gambled. He stuttered, twitched, and suffered migraines, sexual obsession, loneliness, rage, anxiety, and depression. If any had existed, he was a perfect candidate for inpatient treatment at a hospital treating sexually abused children.
Ben was suspended from high school no less than six times for delinquent behaviors, barely graduating, then attended college with average grades. His marriage at age twenty-one was fraught with anger and bitterness; Ben could not maintain employment. He found relief from his anxiety and depression in alcohol. Years of therapy failed to uncover the memories.
Years after his father’s death, Ben was attending a conference on sex abuse in San Francisco. The presenter described a particularly devious way an offender had molested a very young child. The method matched Ben’s experience and all Ben’s memories surfaced.
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[ED: By then it was too late. I suffered a complete mental breakdown. Private therapy failed. I finally got the help I needed through the five-year treatment program in prison. After completing my eight-year sentence, I voluntarily continued therapy for three years and reconciled with my family. The cycle of abuse can only stay alive in the shadows of secrecy, protected by the three monkeys.]
Notes