MovieChat Forums > Gardens of the Night (2008) Discussion > Any other survivors of sexual abuse find...

Any other survivors of sexual abuse find it... comforting?


Title says it all.

I was repeatedly sexually abused by my father's five friends from ages 3 to 12. I didn't know any different nor did I know at the time that it was wrong. Once it stopped, my coping mechanism became having sex with absolutely anyone, including doing prostitution work. While I wasn't abducted, my story is fairly similar to Leslie's.

So I'm wondering, does anyone else who has gone through something similar find this movie (or any others) sort of comforting?

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I was Molested by a Friend of the Family when I was 9. Never told anyone about it until I was about 23. It was Winter time and we were on the side of my House. He told me he could play the King and I could play the Queen. that the King always gets to kiss the Queen. I felt weird but went along with it. He proceeded to Molest me. After he did it he used a Sling Shot to throw a Rock at my Head and I had to get Stitches.

My first year of College I drank a lot and acted out. I did pretty much everything except sleep with other People. To this day I just can't. One person tried to sleep with me and I had a panic attack. Even now I still have issues forming relationships with people or trusting them.

The movie is haunting and at the end of it I couldn't help but cry. I like to think Leslie and Donnie met up in Florida. I like to think so.

~I love the rhythm it is my methoood!~

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As a survivor of childhood abuse and having lived on the streets I was overly impressed with this film. It captured the emotion and atmosphere without going into graphic and overly disturbing areas. In all honesty it gave a feeling of "I am not alone" and indeed I did find this quite comforting. My husband asked me after we watched it if I was upset and I was cleary able to reply, "no, not at all". Amazing film, thumbs up!

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I wasn't sexually abused, but had a pretty lonely adolescence due in part to my parents' early divorce. Both of them were pretty much absentees.

So I was "abused by life", so to speak, and I find this film quite comforting due to its frank portrayal of teenage isolation. I could deeply empathize with Leslie.

Also, Lilja4ever is an older Swedish film in the same vein, only much rawer.



---
"Don't just DO something, STAND there!"
Pastor Charlie Bing

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....I get what you're trying to say but please don't try and compare what you went through to what we on this thread who were actually abused went through.

Our lives were (more often than not) very lonely and *beep* up as well. I'm lucky in that my parents didn't seperate (Though my dad lives wth and supports me, my mom can't live with me for reasons too long to get into. But they are still married and together, though I don't think they ever have sex, EVER, lol.)

I spent some time on the streets, more correctly, in a 1978 Oldsmobile Cutlass Salon Fastback with an Edelbrock carburetor and dual-exhaust, some other *beep* that turned that boat into a near-muscle car. Baby Blue. It was everything. Then I was lucky enough to get taken in by 5x world kickboxing champion Eddie "The Flash" Newman as well as his friend and sometimes (gym) competitor, legendary hall-of-fame, former middleweight champion (and one of 2 men to beat Sugar Ray Robinson in his prime) Gene Fullmer. Along with my dad who is ex navy-spec-ops, Vietnam era, I was taught to fight and defend myself.

I never told anyone but my best friend (who died in a longboarding accident in 2007, july 18th, the day after that I stopped using heroin and went back to my legal prescription meds which are still "dope"...I guess. But not what I was doing. I went back up to 6"3 260 and I was 165 lbs at the time of his death, then back down to 215 right now. Anyway, I've put myself through hell both as a fighter, an addict, and a "criminal"...I suppose. 90% of the violent encounters I got into were self-defense or defending someone smaller or my gay brother from straight-edgers and whatnot.

I've been stabbed 3x, burned, shot at, shot at people, gotten the *beep* kicked out of me a few dozen times, kicked the *beep* out of others a few dozen times, been in actual sportsman-like official amateur boxing matches, 70 of 'em. Living in my car most of it, not good on the back, not good for healing-up. Or the couch at the gym, I even boned a girl and slept on the ring itself (though that ring was fairly small, generally not used for anything beyond 4-round amateur matches)

Got into firearms-arcana, I can take apart any modern pistol you ahnd me and many older guns, a 1911 without a 1911-wrench (like most people who own them and know what they are doing), give me a bic lighter and 20 seconds or less.

I lost part of my right eye, I make knives and staffs, I go uip in the mountains and do shooting, with a camera, got some great VERY up close-picks up a female moose just 2 days ago.


All of us lead painful and fascinating lives on some scale or another. People who suffer the kind of abuse you see in this film, or worse (I lost a testicle to the abuse that was handed-out to me, sexully and...other things, I was only 10 when they had to cut my nut out of me before it spread to everything else and I became a complete eunuch)
It ruined my life. More than divorce can for most kids. It's not a contest, it's just a fact. It's like trying to say that your parents divorce is nearly as bad as being an indocterinated child-soldier or some *beep* It just doesn't add-up, not nearly.

50% of marriages in the U.S end in divorce. Most kids handle it badly, ALL parents handle it badly, that's why they are there in the first place.

I'm not belittling what you went through. I felt like you belittled (unintentionally) what WE IN THIS THREAD (and the characters in the movie) went through. No ill-will here, bro. None whatsoever. I shared a part of my story because I'd be willing to bet you have some fascinating little gems to share, involving pain, joy, laughter, sadness, uniqueness.

But don't ever try and make your pain worse than what it really is by false equivalencies. It doesn't do you justice or the people you are equivocating-to.

Can ya dig it?

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Great honesty and awesome writing skills on both of your posts here. Thanks for them.
I know you weren't trying to belittle me, just putting things into perspective, and it worked.

If you'll publish that autobiography, I'll buy it.


You asked for some film recommendations in a similar vein; you might like:
Filth,
Revanche,
The 24th day,
Import/Export,
Maria Full of Grace,
The seasoning house,
Bullhead,
Polisse,
London to Brighton,
Human trafficking,
Chained,
Le Gamin au Velo,
Rosetta,
Morvern Callar,
Le Silence de Lorna

Yes, most of these are European films.




---
"Don't just DO something, STAND there!"
Pastor Charlie Bing

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Thanks a bunch for the compliment and the reply :) and recommends

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I was repeatedly raped by a 2nd cousin of a close friend of mine (my friend and his parents were really close to my parents, we all had a cemetary as our backyard, Wasatch Lawns, SLC, Ut). Movies like this, "Mysterious Skin" (I'd like to get some recommends), as well as even weird little movies like "Daydream Nation" etc.

About me (kinda long):

I spent a lot of time there, It was normal for me to walk among the tombstones. (Which is the working-title of my autobiography of my early years, even though I'm only 28). I was raped, brutally, right next to a tombstone and I remember thinking how oddly poetic it was, not that first time, another time where the man let me choose the location along with his "daughter" (no idea if she was or not, she was a year younger than me, I was nine going on 10). I also am a high-functioning Aspie. Afterwards I became obsessed with self-defense and violence.

I was lucky enough to be able to return to my parents, especially my father, a 3-tour combat vet in Vietnam and a man who is not squeemish like my mother, he can handle knowing what I went through and be there for me. The most deadly "bleeding-heart" I know :P. Taught me Jeet Kun Do, Krav Maga, I got into boxing.

I ran away again and got a gun after more bad things happened to me. Didn't ever have to use it, directly, anyway.... Did some bad things to worse people. I can't even count on both hands now the number of times I've had a gun either point at me, shoot at me, shoot in the air around me, general direction (literally had this happen in the parking lot last night, I was completely uninvolved as a witness and was in the shadows behind a bush smoking a cig when this man walked right past me then fired his gun into the air, I had my Ka-Bar Tanto with me and came scarily close to putting it in the back of his neck, had to write up a 3-page police report, help the cops find the casings, a cop literally drove past this *beep* and somehow they couldn't find this very distinct-looking person! Anyway...another day in the life).

This man, Tony, the one who put me on video in child porn that might be sitting in a police evidence locker, FBI, maybe a pedophiles den, maybe Tony's. Maybe he's still out there. If I saw him I'd kill him. I don't think I would, I know I would. He made me think I loved him, he put a needle in one of my testicles, which rotted and had to me removed two months later. The pain is indescribable next to when I lost part of my right eye, had my hand burned. One of the worst pains was when I was stabbed in the side and it hit an entire nerve cluster and the person tried to gut me but I stopped him.

Fight after fight, running into trouble. Sometimes it was my fault, sometimes it was just the places I was having to live. Scrapping like mad dogs. Underground fighting once my eye went because I couldn't legally box anymore, in spite of having hid the injury fairly well (initially, then the eye got worse-looking) and winning seven fights in a row. That was my own prospect to get out of the *beep* at the time.

Now with cannabis legalization on the horizon, with Obamacare (though UT is one of the 19 states where I actually have to make $1,000 minimum to get any healthcare whatsoever, mental or physical, and if I make too much, something like $1800/month, then I don't qualify, it's *beep* I have new prospects, things I'm good at are keeping a cool head under pressure, I have 2/3 completed my training as a paramedic and have combat medicine training. I went to the U of U for a year and studied horticulture, criminology and psycho-pharmacology (and I want to do more, as I am very *beep* far from an expert) ....I also teach stage combat, I'm a fencing student, collect and make knives and staffs.

I'm a liberal but I own some guns (legally). Not a big fan of using them, not a big fan of them at all, they are overused and too readily-used. But I am glad I also had my snub-nose revolver on my ankle last night. (honestly where I was the Ka-Bar would've been easier for self-defense....anyway, nothing to brag about, it was scary as hell in spite of me not shaking or freaking out I went to a very dark place, having to ready myself for that)

PS: And I'd be up for taking recommendations on any movies like this. I'm straight but gay, straight , bi, whatever. After what was done to me all the lines are blurred anyway, I just know I like girls.

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I'm really sorry for what you have to go through. I saw this movie for second time today. It is something that I try to ignore but I got molested by stranger when I was 11/12 and managed to escape kidnapping from the same stranger. I have no idea what would have happened if I was gone that time.

I got sexually abused couple of times before I turned 10. I have no idea how I feel about all these things. I still can't wrap my head around the fact there are real sick people in this world like in movies. This movie is kind of comforting from a survivor point of view, but terrible to see that they just can't lead normal life.

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All of you are so brave to post your stories. I cannot even speak of what happened to me when I was 10 or 11 or so and I am 55yrs old this year. Anyway, I just wanted to acknowledge your pain. I have not seen the movie yet but plan to do so this week. I only came here to read the IMDB on it when I saw it as an offering on a one of the free move sites I have access to.

Thank you.

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