From the New York Times:

>>Sean Escobar had been waiting for the moment for more than a quarter-century.

>>Over the course of an hour in September, Mr. Escobar sat at a dining room table with Sterling Van Wagenen, a founder of the Sundance Film Festival and a respected figure in the Mormon community, and asked him about a moment that had bothered Mr. Escobar since he was 13.

>>Why, he asked, had Mr. Van Wagenen touched his genitals?

>>Mr. Van Wagenen apologized and said that he had been going through difficulties in his career and his marriage, that he struggles with depression. He sounded sincere and penitent. He pledged, again and again, that he had never done anything like that before or since.

>>Mr. Escobar thanked him and showed him out. Then he walked over to a potted plant, retrieved the iPhone he had hidden there, and tapped the red button to stop the recording.

>>It is rare for a sex abuse victim to have the chance to directly confront an abuser, even in a court of law. But Mr. Escobar’s remarkable confrontation did not quiet his nagging questions:

>>Had the abuse, which was reported at the time to a local church official and the sheriff’s office, been appropriately dealt with? Mr. Van Wagenen admitted to a detective that he had touched the boy inappropriately, according to sheriff’s records, but he was not charged.

>>And could Mr. Escobar really have been the only victim?

>>“All my life this has bothered me about Sterling,” Mr. Escobar, 38, said in an interview this month. “It would haunt me.”<<


https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/28/arts/sundance-founder-abuse-arrest.html

and I can't put it in the subject line! How many victims out there of this one man? Mr. Escobar did what he had been told to do--HE TOLD ADULTS. I mean the 1990s? It isn't like it was the 1960s or 1950s.

I give him a lot of credit for doing what he has done. I think what the wife of the perpetrator said to him in return was extremely passive aggressive, spoken like a mormon. She should have kept her mouth shut and been extremely embarrassed that she didn't tell anyone. I wonder how many of her children and grandchildren have been abused by daddy and grandpa.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 04/29/2019 10:47AM by cl2.

cl2 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I wonder how many of
> her children and grandchildren have been abused by
> daddy and grandpa.

I'm a victim of childhood sexual abuse as well as the son of a sexual predator. I don't believe that abusing other people's kids indicates that a perp will abuse their own.

I feel for Escobar. I didn't tell anyone because when I tried to hint at my abuse I was ignored and told I didn't know what I was talking about and how I was misreading things.

I'm glad he has parents he felt in whom he could confide.

I heard this story on KFI this morning. But there was no mention of any connection to the church, just to the Sundance Festival. So mormonosity dodged a bit of a bullet.

They did it out of respect for the "sacred" movies he made.

From today's SLTrib:

https://www.sltrib.com/news/2019/05/02/latter-day-saint/


"Latter-day Saint filmmaker Sterling Van Wagenen pleads guilty to child sex abuse in a second courtroom"

For some really weird reason, I find some vindication in this article. I guess it's knowing that an abuser finally got his dues and that the cult that felt justified in telling him he had repented of it got their dues in the negative publicity that they got.

I never confronted my abuser. And the story is very similar, I was a young teen, it was fondling with no penetration and it only happened (to me) once. It took many years of adulthood to really understand how it had shaped my life in a lot of negative ways.

However, I, for some reason, wasn't worried that my abuser would harm someone else. Because for so many years I thought it was just because he hated me and that it was a personal afront to me, not a problem he had. For quite awhile now, I've realized, that it WAS a problem he had and I've thought there may have been other victims. I really wanted to confront him in the last year of his life. And there was an incident where I really believed he was going to bring it up and apologize, but it was a completely different reason why he wanted to see me and talk to me alone. It was never spoken of between us and he died, and I have never missed him.

But Sam Young's Protet LDS Children campaign made me do a lot of introspection and I've had the help of mental professionals. I thought that a bishop's interview when I was 16 that was totally inappropriate sex talk on his part, was about the fact that he was the bishop to both me and the guy I was dating, and that he was trying to put the fear of God into me. But now, I truly believe that my abuser probably confessed to the bishop and the bishop was trying to find out if I even remembered it or would spill the beans about it. I'd imagine he (the abuser) probably was given some small penance, told he was forgiven and went right on being the bishop's counselor and never once thought he had any obligation to apologize to me directly.

So yeah, I'll get some satisfaction out of Van Wagenen being arrested and knowing that some victims actually do get justice and some mormon men who thought their secrets were safe get exposed. He can do proxy jail time for perps who never had to do their own.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/03/2019 02:44PM by lachesis.

Per the Mormon Stories Podcast Facebook page, the Escobars will be on the podcast tomorrow, around 9:15 AM Utah time.