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Excerpt from transcript of The Popcorn Reel
interview with Jennifer Fox, director of the epic documentary "Flying:
Confessions of a Free Woman", July 4, 2007
SEXUAL ABUSE OF JENNIFER FOX - she talked to Omar P.L. Moore about it.
OM: Was there any time in your life that the three women in your life
(mother, grandmother, aunt) had been responsible for what happened to you
(sexual abuse) when you were 13? You don't explicitly speak on this in
your film.
JF: Well I think I do get at it in the film. The
control that they placed on me was so rigid. And I felt . . . and there
was no movement possible, so for me all the things that they wanted to try to
control me around became interesting. Any kind of freedom, any kind of
sexuality -- even if I didn't know what sexuality was -- was where I wanted to
go. Everything they said "no" to, I wanted to do.
OM: It was a natural curiosity, I guess.
JF: Well -- it was also -- there was no space within the rules
they imposed on me. So I was reacting and wanted out, and in a funny way
it drives me into the arms of an abusive man. But it wasn't just that.
I mean I feel sad saying this, but I didn't feel loved in my family. And I
say that despite the fact that I think they had the best intentions and still
somehow the midst of all the drama that's going on in my family made me feel
like I was the orphan child. And -- so I was deeply searching for love.
And you hear that a lot from women who have been sexually abused, that
they end up with a man abusing them because they getting what they feel is love
from that man. And nothing felt loved by my track coach who sexually
abused me. And I felt, "ok, if that's the price, then I'm willing to pay
it. If you're gonna love me, I'll give you what you want," -- because I
was so desperate for love. So in another family situation I don't think it
would have happened because I wouldn't have been so needy. I wouldn't have
felt so alone. I wouldn't have felt like I had to escape. I felt
there were a lot of rules in my family but I didn't feel that there was a lot of
compassion and love or understanding. And you know, I'm older than most
people who have been reading your columns so -- I was born in '59. I'm 47
now -- 47 1/2. I grew up in a period where children are to be seen and not
heard. And if you didn't obey you were punished, sent to your room, or
your mouth was washed out with soap, or you had the strap. They were very
old-fashioned rules that my parents still had and my grandmother had. And
they weren't about wanting to know you, or know what you felt, or know what
you thought. There wasn't a whole lot of that. The times have
changed and parenting is different now. So part of it also was times and
part of it was all the drama that was going on in my family. A lot of
kids. A difficult marriage. A difficult relationship. A lot of
stress on my parents and my grandmother. So nobody was really tending to
my feelings. I looked outside the house for help and unfortunately ended
up being abused.
OM: Right.
JF: And that's not an uncommon story by the way. Abuse
is something that cannot be talked about simply. There's so many factors,
you know? There's so many factors in every abuse story. And of
course we try to simplify it cause it makes it easy. Actually I think if
one were to really change things one would have to understand the complexity of
it, and talk about it that way. I just think sometimes in the media we
think about these things in an un-complex way. Not you, but in the media
in general. It's hard because, it is so widespread it's
unbelievable. So widespread -- I mean, it makes you crazy.
Even, Omar, in the film, probably I would say 7 out of the 10 women that
appeared in the film were sexually abused and I had no idea of that. And I
don't bring it up because the film isn't a film about sexual abuse. It's
shocking the number of women I run across of all classes who will
suddenly blurt out that their father or a coach or something -- it's shocking to
me. So somehow even in the west and of course in the third world we're not
getting at it at all. And I think that one of the solutions is a more
complex dialogue.
OM: How did "Flying" affect you while you were
making it -- and after you completed it?
JF: Making "Flying" really opened a lot up for me . . . it
really allowed me to face -- to begin to face this abuse that I had totally
denied and got on with my life. And when it happened I just put it behind
me. I mean, I didn't talk about it. I didn't think about it. I
didn't dwell on it. And I didn't call it abuse. And in my head the
people just disappeared -- meaning the man who abused me. And it was
complicated because I was a student of his lover -- it's a long story -- so it
was actually a triangle. There was a woman involved and she set me up to
be with [the track coach that abused Jennifer] -- it's a very complicated story.
And she was also a teacher of mine. And when it happened I just sort of --
I walked away from them -- to make a long, long story short. Nobody helped
me. I just said, "I won't see you anymore." And I shut the door.
And it was as if they died. And here I am in my late forties, and after
making this film for the first time I thought, "wow, these people might still be
alive!" And my mom saw the film too and she was so pissed off at this man
because she knew him at the time -- exactly as like it says in the film and she
wanted to stop me from seeing him and my dad didn't believe her. One day,
I googled him. And not only is he alive and well, he's like this very
celebrated athletic guy, retired --
OM: -- wow.
JF: -- he was a big coach at many universities.
Totally celebrated human being . . . on all these committees today in 2007.
And I was so shocked! Because I had so disassociated -- I thought,
"well, he must be dead!" And my mom called me one day and told me she
found him on the Internet. And it was so weird that up until making this
film I couldn't face it.
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