Abuse

 

Four people, strangers, are connected via serial pedophiles, or as the book jacket of The Elements by John Boyne suggests: an enabler, an accomplice, a perpetrator and the victim. In this book and in real life, such crimes reverberate for years, even after imprisonment or death. 

The use of first-person narratives ensures surprises; life stories unfold and connections emerge along with flaws, regrets, excuses and pain. As one character notes, “from the moment we arrive on the planet the universe is against us, conspiring to drown us, set us on fire, bury us in the earth, our spirits floating off into the atmosphere.”    

Hard lessons emerge. 

1. A setting loathed by one character can be a refuge for another, often hinging on age and life experience. Two protagonists leave a remote island in Ireland by ferry, leading to a brief encounter between two protagonists, a teenager fleeing an abusive father and a mother who had months before headed to the island after losing a daughter to suicide to escape scandal, one of many women “fleeing the misdeeds of the men they trusted.” The boy who despised the place asks the middle-aged woman if the island gave her what she needed and responds in the affirmative, adding “she must “figure out how to use its gifts.” 

2. Escaping the darkest episodes of one’s past is a constant battle that requires a mixture of fury and forgiveness and, later, determination and distractions. Advice can come from strange sources. The middle-aged woman prepares to confront her own failings and broken relationships in Dublin, but the boy urges that she leave the past behind, going somewhere no one knows her to start again. The woman is “surprised to hear such sensible advice from a boy who can’t be more than seventeen.” 

3. Advice, easy to dispense, rarely provides comfort. The young man offers advice to the fellow traveler, but she only poses questions, perhaps because of her own failings as a mother. She is in awe how he is open to a new future, “breathless for the life he’s entering into, and I hope that he will not know pain or betrayal or disappointment, but of course he will because he’s alive and that’s the price we pay.” 

4. A severely abused child may never feel worthy of love. “I think sometimes there are people who are destined never to have anyone fall in love with them. It doesn’t matter what they look like, how they behave, how much money they have, how much kindness exists in their heart…. There’s some aspect of them, something inherent, something indefinable, that makes people turn away. And I think I’m one of them.” 

5. Suffering can lead to self-destruction or horrific revenge on others who bear no responsibility at all. Abused children become adults who cannot trust others, often second-guessing every move. 

6. The release of truth after years of suffering and questions may be cathartic. The truth serves as a warning for other potential abuse, may stop t he cycle as well as alert loved ones and new friends who did not know about the conflict within. 

But others must listen. Relaying the truth and acceptance by others, the combination is the only way that adults who suffered abuse as children can prepare for what one victim calls a “second life, “one that I will embrace when I feel the  strength and confidence to do so.”