Dear Tell All: The outpouring of sexual assault allegations against Harvey Weinstein, Bill O’Reilly, Donald Trump and others has brought back a painful incident from high school. In this case, the attack was on my girlfriend, and I knew about it. The weird thing is, I didn’t even register it as sexual assault at the time.
We were both 17 and involved in a hippie-dippy youth group on the West Coast. This was the 1970s, and the “human potential movement” was in vogue. The middle-aged guy who ran it — I’ll call him Dave — styled himself as a charismatic figure who could take you to a higher plane, à la est’s Werner Erhard. In his role as director, he basically hijacked a once-traditional student group affiliated with a religious organization and turned it into an emotionally and sexually charged encounter group. He took us high school kids on weekend “retreats” that devolved into soul-searching psychobabble during the day and anything-goes bacchanalia at night. Amazingly, there were no parent chaperones, only Dave’s indulgent assistants. Ah, the ‘70s.
Unlike me, my girlfriend was sexually daring, and she cut loose during these retreats. It made me feel jealous and intimidated, but I didn’t want to be a “square” and ask her to cut it out. After one weekend, she bragged to me that Dave had stuck his tongue in her mouth and made out with her.
Maybe it was a sign of the times, but I didn’t perceive anything wrong in what Dave did. I didn’t call the police, the religious organization, or my girlfriend’s parents. Instead, I just wrestled with the painful feeling that Dave and my girlfriend were cool and I wasn’t.
Only recently did I remember this incident, after the latest sexual assault headlines. And I finally realized, with horror, that Dave was a predator, victimizing underage girls.
I feel guilty for not doing anything about it at the time. Now it’s 40 years later, and I live in Madison, 2,000 miles away from the scene of the crime. Is there anything to be done?
Coward
Dear Coward: I don’t like calling you by that name. You were only a kid when this incident occurred, and none of the authority figures in your world — parents, administrators, government, media — had warned you to keep an eye out for predators like Dave. You shouldn’t blame yourself.
As for what to do now, you’ve taken a good first step by publicly telling this story. You could take it a step further by contacting your 1970s girlfriend and discussing the possibility of confronting or even outing Dave.
If there’s a silver lining here, it’s that people are speaking out and making today’s teenagers more aware of the creeps among us. Thanks to them — and now, to you — modern-day predators like Dave are much less likely to get away with it.
Do you have a question about life or love in Madison?
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