" . . . her life as a mixed-race foster care child, raised by a black mother, running drugs for the Bloods in South Central L.A.—her “homies,” as she called them. Actually, her name is Peggy Seltzer; she was raised in an all-white, intact family in the affluent Sherman Oaks suburb, and attended private schools.
"Today, we’ll tackle the question of why so many women insist on casting themselves as “survivors” even when—perhaps especially when—they have lives of glittering privilege.
"Last fall, The New York Times published an article that ought to win a Pulitzer Prize (if that accolade still meant something) on Amy Griffin’s memoir of sexual abuse, The Tell. The gist of the story is: The wife of billionaire hedge fund manager claims she was raped from age 12 to 16 by a middle school teacher in Amarillo, Texas, citing details that are strikingly similar to the sexual abuse of one of her classmates.
"Rather importantly, I think, Griffin only remembered her years of being violently raped during an illegal psychedelic-drug therapy session. Griffin says the problem she was seeking to resolve by taking MDMA was her incessant drive for “perfectionism”—apparently unaware that this is a joke answer to the interview question, “What’s your biggest weakness?”
"Reporters Katherine Rosman and Elisabeth Egan never say the book is the work of a fabulist, but the facts they’ve assembled are, as a Smith College grad would say, troubling. On first reading the article, I recall thinking I wouldn’t want to be Griffin if the teacher or classmate ever decided to sue. Last week, the classmate did just that.
"The first red flag about Griffin’s book is that it was gushed over by a string of female celebrities—Oprah Winfrey, Sheryl Sandberg, Reese Witherspoon, Jenna Bush Hager, Gwyneth Paltrow and Drew Barrymore, among others. Griffin was also honored as one of Time magazine’s “most influential” people of the year.
"There hasn’t been this star-studded a rollout since Somaly Mam’s widely celebrated—and completely fabricated—The Road of Lost Innocence, about her own sexual abuse as a child in Cambodia. She was embraced by nearly the identical coven—Oprah, Sandberg, Hillary Clinton, Meg Ryan, etc. She, too, made Time’s “most influential” list." . . .
"Among the oddities about Griffin’s story is the fact that she was the richest girl in school, but for some reason, the predator teacher chose her to violently rape. And I mean violently. Griffin says the first thing she remembered was the teacher smashing her head against the wall, then hearing his belt buckle hit the floor.
"Or consider the Times account of this part of Griffin’s story: “In the book, she writes that the final assault happened when she was 16. She was en route to a tennis match and ran into the teacher. Moments later, she found herself following him ‘numbly’ into the team room at the tennis center.”
"Maybe, but I’m not familiar with the solar system where a 16-year-old girl from a prominent family robotically follows her rapist into an empty room in order to get raped again." . . .
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