Harvard Book Store; WGBH Forum Network; Denial: A Memoir of Terror

This evening on behalf of Harvard bookstore I'm honored to welcome Jessica Stern for a discussion of her new book Denial A Memoir of terror as you no doubt know Dr. Jessica Stern is a world renowned expert on terrorism and denial. Her latest book is steps away from previous topics like religious militancy and w d's in order to look inward. Dr. Stern examines a critical and horrifying experience that is shaped not only her career choices but the way in which she understands and experiences the world. Publisher's Weekly calls the book a strong clear eyed elucidating study on the profound reverberate reverberations of trauma in the New York Times called denial a profound human document going on to say the book is hot to touch in ways that are both memorable and disturbing. Dr. Jessica Stern lectures on terrorism at Harvard University and as a member of the Hoover Institution task force on national security and law she served as a staff member of the National Security Council during the Clinton administration. In 2009 she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for her work and trauma and violence. TIME magazine also selected her as one of seven thinkers whose innovative ideas will change the world. Alongside the book

she is here tonight to discuss Dr. Stern is also the author of The New York Times Notable book Terror in the name of God as well as the ultimate terrorists. Again thank you all so much for joining us tonight and for your patience. Please join me in welcoming Jessica Stern. I'm so amazed that you all came out in the heat and I I really want to thank you for coming. Nice to see some old friends and new friends. This book comes out of my going to the police to get the complete file of my rape from 1973 and I when the file was redacted the lieutenant deputy chief of police in Concord Massachusetts actually realized that this was a serial rapist of children and he realized that

he needed to reopen the case because a pedophile serial rapist doesn't stop. He needs to be stopped either physically or chemically. And if he were still at large he could be presenting a continuing danger to girls. And together we investigated the rapes that he committed. Lieutenant McKone got files from Weston in Lexington. There were rapes that tough and 20 in an eight block area at or near Radclyffe 20 attacks. And he also found out that after this man spent 18 years incarcerated for three of those 44 rapes that he was released and he was returned to his hometown which is a town in

central Massachusetts that is remarkably like my image of Appalachia. It was not like Cambridge. He was allowed to spend time with high school students. It turned out and nobody was really monitoring him. And he's now a suspect in the abduction and murder of someone. He hung himself. So he was dead by the time we started this investigation it turned out he was dead. And I found myself both relieved and a little bit disappointed because I really wanted to practice on him what I had learned how to do by interviewing terrasse. I really wanted to interview him but instead I went around and interviewed everyone I could find who was still alive who knew him. His parents were no longer alive but I found a woman who was his girlfriend in high school. I found his best friends and I also discovered that the

town where he grew up was a dumping ground for pedophile priests. And I went and interviewed someone who had been repeatedly abused by some of the priests from that area. I'll read you a little bit and explain as I go along. I won't read too long not so much because it's not fun for you because it's hard on me. I know that I was raped. But here's the odd thing. If my sister had not been raped too if she didn't remember if I didn't have this police report right here in front of me on my desk I might doubt that the rape occurred. The memory feels a bit like a dream it has hazy edges. Are there aspects of what I think I recall that I might have made up in the fall of 2006. I got a call from the Police Lieutenant Paul McKone deputy chief of the police department in Concord Massachusetts called to tell me he wanted to reopen our rape case. I need to know if you have any objection and I will need your help.

He said the rape occurred in 1973. Lieutenant McCrone and I grew up in the same town Concord Massachusetts considered by many to be the birthplace of our nation. It is the site of the shot heard round the world. Ralph Waldo Emerson is phrase for the first shot in the first battle of the American Revolution which took place on the old North Bridge on April 19th 1775. It is still a small town with small town crimes. The concord Journal still reports accidents involving sheep and cows. Although we didn't know each other. Lieutenant McCrone and I overlapped in high school. We never met back then he was a Motorhead as he puts it. Obsessed with cars and I ran with an artier crowd but I knew the name. Everyone in town did because of McKone sporting goods. Everyone bought sports equipment there it was a fixture in our town. It's where I bought my bike the bike I was riding home from ballet class on the day I was raped. I had recently requested the complete file. I wanted to understand what happened to me on the day that my

sister and I were raped. I had an idea that by reading the file by seeing the crime reports in black and white on a page I could restore a kind of order in my mind if I could just connect fact with feeling the fuzziness in my head would be reduced or so I hoped. Lieutenant McCrone told me I read that file from cover to cover and I realized that the rapist might still be out there there were other rapes the same gun the same ammo. What if the rapists were still on the street. Other children could be at risk. I was worried about what might happen if the rapists were still at large. He brought the case to his boss the chief of police. I've been a cop so long we can't help trying to solve crimes. Twenty nine 29 years on the force. And I thought this crime was highly solvable. You'd have to be brain dead not to see that there was the unusual M.O. the fact that you and your sister both saw the perps face before he put on his mask their words a description of the gun of the perps clothing. The fact that he spent so much time in your house early in the evening when all the neighbors were home to say that it piqued my

curiosity is an understatement. The extraordinary thing is that the police at the time did not believe my sister and me that the rapist was a stranger in this small town. It was just too hard to comprehend. Everybody kept their doors open. It was normal in fact people still keep their doors open in Concord. It's at the same time. There had been a remarkably similar rape around the corner a couple of years before and in that file was the list of the 20 rapes attacks in the apelike area here at or near Radclyffe. So he he realized I think he was actually embarrassed by how much the police had kind of screwed up in 1973 of course that was common back then and it would be nice to assume that this could never happen today I don't think it would happen in Concord. I don't think it will happen in

Cambridge but in New York just in the last month. Commissioner Kelly has just put in place a new commission to study how police react to rape because he found that they routinely under report and they try to talk victims into claiming that it wasn't really a rape. So what I did is I got what I wrote down at age 15. I actually had to write it down twice and my sister did too. And I I go through what I said in my writing and then I try to record what happened to me as I'm writing it down. And I really go into an altered state. It feels almost like a chemical change. It almost feels like someone shooting you up with something. And I try to monitor myself really as if I were doing an experiment and I'm going to read a little bit from what I wrote down. I remember what happened next. The click of his gun I thought he was cocking it preparing to kill. I was

calm again entranced into complying with his murderous plans. Here's what shames me to the core. I thought he was going to kill me but I did not fight him. I was hypnotized into passivity. I had no strength to run. And anyway I did not like the idea of being shot from behind. It seemed easier just to wait until the murder was done with. There was no sex in that room no love but there was seduction. The seduction of death would be killed just one of us making the other angry would he kill both of us imagining that we would be angry at him in heaven after our death. Why didn't I get up. Why remain face down on bed as he ordered. Why did I not rise up Medusa like eyes flashing the snakes in my hair ready to strike him dead. Why did I not overpower the puny little man smack the gun out of his paltry warm white fingers. I was strong then probably stronger than he. Certainly very strong now and then he explained to us that the gun was not real. It was a cap gun. I wrote dutifully for the police

always dutiful after complying with the rapist. I complied with the police. Was this the most embarrassing part that I had been entranced by the thought of a gun that my fear felt even as it was at the time had hypnotized me into complying with the person if he was indeed a person and not an apparition wielding a child's toy not an instrument of death. So this shame this is a big aftermath of rape and it's part of what makes it so hard to be credible. I think when rape victims talk to the police it's also what is made it so difficult for victims of clergy sexual abuse to come forward. And I think this is why we see in Pakistan that victims of clergy sexual abuse in the madrassas that I am now finally writing about at least a little bit why that isn't getting the attention it deserves. Rape is a way to transmit shame

and it was very effectively transmitted into my sister and me. Sarah My sister was more afraid than I but also more alive. She retained a human like strength in her arms and hands and mind that I now lacked. She picked up the phone. No dial tone. He had cut the wires he had cut the wires in the basement a big puzzle. How long had he been plotting this crime. That was part of his M.O.. He knew he cased out wherever he was. Active and in fact some of you probably saw Amy Warren Burke's brilliant op ed in The Globe last Sunday where she pointed out that her younger sister had seen someone casing the house. And of course her mother and older sister said Oh don't be silly you're imagining things. There had been 11 attacks prior to Amy vore and rape and had the Harvard

police or the Cambridge Police warned the neighborhood. Perhaps they would have listened to Amy's little sister. He kept saying he wouldn't hurt us. He kept saying to listen to be quiet. I was quiet. I listened. I'm still listening now. I hear a rush in my mind's inner ear of insistence a kind of aural premonition but a kind of premonition that goes backward and forward. The sound word protest of all the rage shamed and silence women from the beginning to the end of time this is a bit melodramatic I should have ended that out. He hurt you. Sorry. He also won that once you start editing you can't stop. I would add that Tolstoy. He hurt you he altered you forever. The course soundlessly and this grating on my inner ear the ear that wishes not to be reminded of feeling I respond to that chorus heard is not the right word for that man if he was a man and not an apparition did to me and I keep saying this apparition because it's hard to believe it.

This whole debate about recovered memory usually has to do with people remembering some horrible thing that happened to them in early childhood. I really had trouble keeping I mean I knew that I'd been raped but I had trouble somehow retaining the belief even as I was reading this. I feel a void. Something got cut out of me in that hour. My capacity for pain and fear were removed. The operation to remove these organs is indeed painful as you might guess but the surgeon cauterised is the cut and feeling is dulled even at the points where the surgeon's knife entered the once tender flesh. There is no more tender flesh. It's quite liberating to have feeling removed the fear and pain of life. Now dobe Nabokov once said Life is pain. Buddhist to believe that to live is to crave and to crave is to feel pain to live in this world involves pain. Had I not been catapulted in that one hour half way to death and therefore closer to enlightenment in death we no

longer feel human cravings no longer feel human pain. I was now halfway there. Later of course I would come to reject this understanding of what happened to me that day. Yes I was partly released from the pain of being alive but my spirit had traveled not toward the infinite divinity of enlightenment but toward the infinite nothingness of indifference. A soft blanket of numbness descended like snow from the heavens obscuring and protecting me from terror instead of fear. I felt numb instead of sadness. I experienced a complete absence of hope a divine spark the craving for life had been extinguished and I felt when I I realized what had happened to me that I had some understanding of what what happened to the Muslim under the. That there is no longer any feeling any craving to remain alive I I was a blankness and it's a blankness that made it possible I think for me to

go and interview terrorists. I I just was able not to feel or not to recognize the feeling of terror as terror I could turn it into blankness turn it into curiosity. Actually once I read the complete file I had to learn about the man who raped me. I needed to do this to tame him but also to tame a wild nameless feeling inside myself. I have always been a spy whenever I sense pain that I don't understand my own or others I feel compelled to research the source. I become a detective. This is embarrassing to admit but I am insatiably curious about the half known truths that motivate people's lives often in ways they do not realize. If I met you today and sensed you have a secret especially a secret you keep from yourself especially a secret that might hurt someone. I would start trying to find the key from the moment I laid eyes

on you. I might not even know that I was doing this. I might not want to do it but I can't stop myself. I've been spying on violent men for much of my life. Not just men who have hurt me but also men who have hurt others. I have traveled all over the world to talk to terrorists. I am compelled to understand men who hurt people as if by understanding what motivates them I can tame them as if by taming them I can make my world safe. But perhaps for the first time I am aware that my curiosity could make me sick. Sarah My sister tells me that she assumed after the rape that the next crime against us would be murder. She was unsure whether the rapist would come back to kill us or a new perpetrator but it seemed logical she felt that we would be killed. Is murder what I fear. I eventually realized I had to write this book in fits and starts. It took me a very very long time to write it because I knew

I'd lose feeling and I I would just tell my editor goodbye I'm taking a terrorism vacation I'm going to Saudi Arabia just to get away from the writing. And I also realized that I began to feel afraid. I began to feel afraid of this dead man. I knew he was dead. But I began to feel somehow fearful that somehow he was going to come back in and get me. This time I have help in my spying. I am spying together with the police. They want to find the rapist to for their own reasons. They want to get him off the street. Today we understand that violent pedophiles cannot be cured. They can be treated with medication but even then they must be kept away from children. So what happens is McKown. This deputy chief of police keeps writing me and I I keep not answering or I answer him

sporadically and I actually try to drive out to see him. And I found that I got lost. I go to Concord regularly. It's it's not just that I grew up there. My father and his wife still live there and my son visits them every week. I have driven past the police station hundreds if not thousands of times. I have a vague recollection that I'd been inside the building but I don't remember anything. Was I ever arrested. I'm certain I was not. But shame shimmers at the edge of my consciousness like a mirage. I can't quite see. I discover that I cannot remember precisely where this station is. I drive past the Louisa May All-Clad house which I visited several times as a child. I know the station is near here but I seem to have gone too far. I drive back toward the center of town. I am terribly sleepy. There's the scout house a large 18th century barn where I attended girl scout meetings where I had to take dancing lessons an image of white gloves floats into my mind. Did we really wear

white gloves. I cannot recall. My brain has turned to mush. What again and what I try to do is capture that mush and take the reader with me on this sort of dizzying journey where I go in an interview he his best friend as I said who are scattered about in in central Massachusetts and they tell me they don't believe that he was guilty. They start out with that claim which is very hard for me but always some time by the end of the interview they would say something like he shouldn't have did what he did or something where it would become clear that they had an inkling or maybe even knew that that he was guilty. Just read you a tiny bit more. I I have a huge file of material about

other rapes and I keep it in a garbage can. I I have a lot of trouble with this material. I have to I actually kept it in a garbage can and I kept the garbage can in a fireplace. And I wasn't really thinking about that it was symbolic. But I I think it is it's simple. I really and I have to hide it away. Even now I have to hide it away. But I I pulled this material. I felt that I needed to see some of the other read some of the material the other rapes I sit down to read a page. I see the words grayish black pistol and he said Don't scream and do as you're told and you won't get hurt. I decided to make a pot of tea. I filled the pot and straightened up my desk by the time the water boils my fire has gone out I have to build a fire because I get cold I insert fresh kindling. I push some logs around. Once again I sit down to read the file with a cup of tea warming my hand or read a few more

sentences I see the words been my knees wide open and zippered. I get up. I'm not upset. I just can't sit still. Finally I decide to bring the trash trash cans somewhere else. I take it to a nearby library where there are people and I have reasons to hope I will be less likely to feel spooked. I find that I must think carefully about where to put the trash can. I do not want to put it in my line of sight nor do I want it behind my back. I find a spot just outside my line of vision on a forward diagonal to my left on a black leather chair. I am not a superstitious person I feel embarrassed even in front of myself that all this seems to be necessary. I have read about triggers the sounds or smells or sights that can suddenly catapult us back to the moment when we faced a violent death. The way the sound of a backfiring car can bring a grown man to the ground. But it is hard to understand how this works. The soldier knows the cars will backfire can't he learn to ignore the sound.

Can't you use his rational mind to overcome his response to that sound. And can't I similarly knowing that these files pertain to a dead man. Treat them as ordinary paper. It's I think very important for us to understand that what happens to vets is when they see. Well in one case a vet I talked to it would be like a bag of garbage on the side of the road that he was sure was either a body bag or an IED and he found that it was very very hard for him to drive. I interviewed a number of vets though. My therapist diagnose post-traumatic stress disorder and I of course disbelieved her I told her this is ridiculous. It was a fashionable diagnosis I read about PTSD only to prove her wrong but then I did go and interview a number of that and there was one interview of that in the book and I found that I had remarkably

similar symptoms even though it's obviously a completely different situation that brought those symptoms on the impossibility of being in a place with bright lights to be in crowds fireworks certain kinds of sounds just drive me nuts. That sound sample is really bothering me because I'm reading. It's ok I will live through it but when when I'm talking about this material my hearing becomes annoyingly acute and I really got more of an understanding of what these guys are going through and seeing that I'm going to stop there and take your questions and I do want to talk about post-traumatic growth because I don't want to leave you all feeling depressed. My sister. Has had had a very different reaction. She in a way was not in denial in quite the same way I was

when I was quite dissociative I could tell you if you ask me about my rape I would tell you about it and there would be no emotion. And I remember I have a very dear friend in this room and I remember her saying to me You're so strong. You talk about your rape as if you're completely over it and it's because I didn't have any feeling talking and I was completely dissociated and my sister was not that way at all. She was after the rape petrified to be alone and she would go all out to make sure that she was not alone and she has had a hard time especially when I first decided to write the book. She started having nightmares again and I had to be very careful about talking to her about it. She has had you know she has had a great life. She is a semi-professional opera singer. She works in marketing and public relations she's fabulously successful

professionally and I think that both of us have had however some emotional difficulties that you wouldn't see unless you were really intimate with us. It wasn't she's not a person that you would think of as a victim at all. She's someone who you would be astonished by her energy and how effective she is. And in her professional life do I answer your question. Yeah. She she wanted me to use her name by the way. Yes I I first offered to change your name then I begged her to change your name but she I think at some point sometimes a person and this happened to me or in Virgo person feels that they're they just are determined to get over that shame. And so she she actually wanted to be here but she's in Chicago so I don't know

whether it's the early death of a mother. My mother died when I was three. I don't know whether it's just that. I mean I think that I have come to believe that I that I have post-traumatic stress disorder. And I you know I think it's important to realize that that can come about from in many ways I mean it's a it's a it's a change in them in the brain and it could be the early death of a mother. It could be rape at gunpoint it could be a beating. I mean it could be an experience in war and some people can get through being a soldier and come back and there they recover very quickly. And and we don't really know why some people have a lasting impact and others don't. In my case and I'm not unique in this it is I think it did make me actually seek out

dangerous situations and I I actually heard from someone I'm I'm hearing from so many people as a result of this book. Someone told me I feel numb unless I go out and expose myself to danger. Actually someone said that to me on the radio today have you heard that but I'm I'm I'm getting so many letters from women who've been raped men who've been raped. One woman sent me a book about her experience babysitting when she was 10 years old for her little sister and the little sister died. I mean people are just telling me stories and about what led them to have to dissociate or to become hypervigilant and that they weren't able to name what they were experiencing. And that's one of the reasons why I felt it was important to actually put down what feels like a mental. I mean what you know I think is a mental illness. I mean I know shrinks tell you you're not fit

to call it mental illness. There are other forms. But you know I wanted to put that there because I have a sense of what bipolar disorder is what schizophrenia is. I have at least a general idea of what it would be like to hallucinate. But I had no idea that anybody else had those feelings of going into a sleepy Spacey state or becoming hyper vigilant. And my father has the same thing and my sister has the same thing and we never talked about it. My father took us mountain climbing in the winter. And you know I think my father is attracted to risk I think you were also raising us to survive a concentration camp but I think he's also there's something that made him want to overcome some something difficult. And I so I it's not unique but we never talked about it until I wrote this book. Nobody

nobody in my family said gosh do we ever have this weird feeling where you're under water and you can't concentrate you can't drive and or this other feeling where you become what feels like really smart. And you see everything. You never talked about it. People didn't know there was. I mean Amy Orenburg was just saying today that the next night there were two rapes right in her neighborhood. The very next night and nobody pulled it together. I mean I think there was actually a deliberate shutting down rumors cause I don't think there is anything cultural that I could identify about the rapist. I think there were psychological issues. He was adopted and learned that he was adopted by his and he learned that his parents were actually his aunt and uncle from a

schoolyard bully. I mean in the worst possible way he learned. I also mention that he grew up in this. There were three pedophile priests in his church three in a row not. That was after the time he would have been exposed to them but I I can't help but wonder if that was. We know that because people went public recently. You know people didn't talk about this back then there were also rumors of sexual abuse at a Catholic school he went to. So I don't know if that's exactly a cultural factor. There certainly was a cultural factor in my becoming numb and move moving on. I mean I I really thought that I had put this behind me and that it wasn't really affecting my life. I wasn't the sort of person who thought of herself as a victim. And I think that really I was trained in a way I was very well trained by a father who understood. He

didn't want to stay in the German Jewish ghetto. And actually his siblings did most of his siblings did actually remain in the German Jewish ghetto. He did not want to be stuck there he did not want to be speaking German with them and not speaking English. He wanted to be what he wanted to have a good life and he wanted to focus on what made him happy and he is someone who will tell you that the only aftermath of the Holocaust he recognizes in himself is that he has the capacity for joy. And you know what I believe him. I think that his capacity for joy is actually greater than most people's. But it also I don't know how to explain that actually because I mean certain things bring him great joy in nature you understand it good. I'm glad you understand. Because actually I think in general when we shut down we shut down

everything. But he does feel a certain kind of joy which is mainly connected with nature. I I I did not realize that I was able I didn't connect my my interest in terrorists with my rape until I started writing this book. And I was surprised when I found that I was able to talk to terrorists I think in a way it is a form of post-traumatic growth. I mean it is a way of using symptoms. To do something useful in the world. And it worked very well for me professionally and now I've paid a lot of money to a shrink and I can't do it anymore. Thanks a lot. I still talk to Harris and I think I'm still good at it. But I only talk to

them when they're incarcerated or I went to Saudi Arabia. I I knew I was very safe talking to terrorists that were being monitored by the Saudi interior minister. Did I have a question about the rapist. Absolutely. I really wanted to know why what happened to him. I assumed from the very beginning even looking back over what I wrote down at the time I realized that at that. Even then I was assuming that something that he was afraid. He seemed really really afraid. And in fact that's another part of his M.O. looking through the files again and again the victim said that he seemed as afraid as they were. And I felt even then that something had happened to him. And and I found out that something did happen to him. I mean he

the people that I met his circle of friends the amount of of incest and sexual abuse and violence all over I mean know obviously if I were to talk to your friends I would get a particular picture of what it's like to be in Cambridge today. I was talking to his friend so I was getting a picture of his town going through him. But I also got a sense talking to the police in his town what that was like so I got a sense of his environment. I also went to visit the school where I think he may have been abused I learned from a police officer who knew him quite well. That police officer suggested that he had been sexually abused by my priest so I was not able to prove it. I actually went and tried tried to get the records. Well did I get to look at the records in the school. And of course there was nothing nobody wrote down pedophile priest here abusing

kids. This would have been gosh I think in the late 50s. Nobody wrote that down. But the kids who had been there talked about it and they talked about rumors. So I think I got enough of a feeling of what might have changed him. And I guess at some level I was I kind of understood also he was he was a very strange man who changed all the time he had a personality that the police said it looked like he had multiple personality disorder. I don't know whether that really exists. I don't know if that's a real diagnosis. But anyway he he changed from one day to the next and was a very a horrible horrible person. I

I don't I want to be careful about drawing Pat conclusions. But I I have known as I mentioned earlier for years about the sexual abuse of boys that Madrassas when you spend time in Pakistan that's where people talk about the minister of religion. You know was annoyed that the U.S. was pressuring Pakistan to do something about the extremist madrassas that are we consider to be factories of hatred and terrorism. But for him the real issue is the parents who were so upset about what they were learning what was happening to their children. And I never really talked about it. I never really thought about it and I certainly never wrote about it. And then I started hearing about the routine rape of little boys by Afghan military and police commanders. I started hearing about this from our troops and they're

writing to me now I am getting e-mails from people who have been looking at hard drives the child rape pornography on hard drives that are picked up and it has made me feel really strongly about talking about this. I can't study. I don't know to what extent the rise of jihadi terrorism is related to this. I think it is related to humiliation. Could this be one form of the humiliation that seems to be a risk factor for this kind of terrorism today. I think it might be. But what I'm really hoping is that if I put this out there that the military will talk about it and also that some grad graduate students will study it. I can't do it myself but if any of you have graduate students who might be able to study it please

send them and I will encourage them. You know I I don't I can't really say the same thing happened to Amy Kornberg I mean I think there's something about turning 50 or I. And also in my case having a child really made me want to feel so it was a very slow process. I mean I didn't want to be numb personally. And I also needed to understand something about him. And the same thing Amy Amy had the same at the same age try to get her files. So I don't know whether that's how common that is that not everyone wants to learn about their rapist. And I have to say that I've been asked Is this a good way to get over that rape trauma. And I would say no it is not. I did this and I became crazy. I had a lot of help. I said No I don't recommend you for treatment.

But I but I don't think that the curiosity that I felt to get the file. I don't think I'm certainly not unique. And I I I am a lot of people have specific triggers like it might be the scent of a tuna fish sandwich. It brings back what happened when they were on the battlefield. It can be an odd trigger that brings something back for me and I don't understand it. The ticking sound is when I'm feeling at all agitated it's excruciating. And there are just certain sounds and certain kinds of light. And I I don't know why. I mean I don't know exactly what is you know evoking in me but something and also has to do with how I hear music. Unfortunately everything sounds sharp. You know I'm in that state it's very physical. Thank you very much.