Magic and Monsters: Child Sexual Abuse and Institutional Betrayal

Teresa Huizar: Hi, I’m Teresa Huizar, your host of One in Ten. In today’s episode, Magic and Monsters: Child Sexual Abuse and Institutional Betrayal, I speak with filmmaker Norah Shapiro and actor and executive producer Anthony Edwards about their recent and award-winning documentary. Now, for those of you who’ve not yet seen Magic and Monsters, I highly recommend it. I love this film. And for those attending the 2026 Leadership Conference, never fear: we’re holding a screening.

Magic and Monsters is the story of survivors of the Children’s Theatre Company abuse scandal. A story of personal betrayal by beloved teachers, yes, but also compounded and amplified by the institutional betrayal of survivors in the present. This important film lingers in the mind long after it’s over. What can we learn from it about holding institutions accountable for great wrongs of the past that continue into the present?

How can we help survivors find community in each other and therefore healing? And how can trauma-informed filmmaking transform the way that survivor stories are told? I know you’ll be as interested in this thoughtful conversation as I was. Please take a listen.

Hi Norah and Anthony, welcome to One in Ten.

Norah Shapiro: Great to be here, thank you.

Anthony Edwards: Thank you for having us.

TH: I have to tell you, I’m so delighted to talk to you about the documentary, Magic and Monsters, because I just loved it. I have to tell you, I was a reluctant attendee of the screening. Honestly, Norah knows this, but I’ll tell you, Anthony, I actually, because I do what I do for a living, I really don’t attend a lot of those types of events I try to stay away from in my private time, filling it with more child sexual abuse books and films and things of that nature. But I just sort of felt like, first of all, I wanted to be a good partner to Zero Abuse Project. And I know you sit on the board, Anthony, and Jeff reached out to me and asked me to attend. And it also intrigued me because it was a case that although, you know, I would have thought of myself as pretty conversant in institutional abuse cases, I didn’t remember this one. I don’t know if I ever knew of it.

But I didn’t remember it. And so it brought me there. And then I was really just gobsmacked. And we’ll get into more about why that was the case, but I just really thought it was a beautifully respectful and beautifully told tale of an emblematic institutional abuse case. So with that though, our listeners probably have not seen it and don’t know about it. So Norah, I’m wondering if you would give just a very brief recap of this case that even I didn’t remember.

NS: So to go backwards, the film is set in Minneapolis, Minnesota at the world-renowned Children’s Theatre Company, which was founded back in the 60s, originally in a little basement and then became a multimillion-dollar world renowned institution. Anthony can tell you his own sort of having been a young-

AE: Us in the theater, we all knew about it. We all knew of this place.

NS: Yeah. And we can get into other connections and all those things later, but just to summarize, it was remarkable. It was run by this extraordinarily gifted, charismatic, and brilliant artistic director named John Clark Donahue, who brought it from this little basement collective into this world-renowned institution that continues to this day. He also happened to, it turns out, be a child abuser.

And a serial one at that. And not only that, he created and cultivated an institution in which there were multiple perpetrators. To cap that off, this went on probably as early as he was working with kids. And then in the 80s in particular, there was a period of time where the theater had a conservatory school. And during this period, is when I think things got the most out of control and the biggest volume of this was going on. Flash forward, Minnesota was one of the first states to have statute of limitations look back reform. They had a look back window, a three-year period in the mid-20 teens and a group of former students/alumni of the school that numbered 17 decided to bring civil lawsuits. But the speculation is the estimation is that it was many, many, many more victims than that. That was the number that actually decided to take advantage of litigating or were ready to or what have you. And while he, John Clark Donahue, was criminally charged back in the 80s and went to jail for a whopping 10 months, he was the only one whoever served any jail, he was not the only perpetrator, which the film in part goes into some of. And there’s a large community of people who were directly affected by this, who despite the litigation continue to feel that justice has not been fully served or whatever acknowledgement or accountability. And so that’s the film follows, both goes back in time to sort of lay it out and bring the viewer in. And then also to follow these subjects who were a subgroup of the plaintiffs who wanted to have me document this so that the story could be told more broadly.

TH: So Anthony, I’m curious for you, was your original interest in this because you had been aware of the Children’s Theatre because it was so renowned, because this was an institution that meant something to you, or what made you sort of throw your support behind this effort?

AE: Yeah, well, in a very personal way, the person who assaulted me was within the theater. I was a young actor. I had fallen in love with the theater. It was a safe place. It was a place where, an awkward 12-year-old, for me, I felt like I found family. Everybody, was the incredible experience that people share. Not unlike people get into sports. I always say, like, I grew up in Santa Barbara, California, and in Santa Barbara, it was like being on, growing up playing basketball in Indiana, guess. It’s like theater in Santa Barbera. It was just what we did. And it was part of our culture. And so I had heard Norah had actually reached out to me before she’d completed the film and she was in it. And I, in having come out since 2017, I hear a lot about, and there’s a lot of films that are going on. The fact is, Norah did it. Norah checked all the boxes. And that’s a tribute to the fact that this is a really good film. The subject matter, of course, but it’s like selling a TV series. When you’re on a, I was on a series for a while. And so a lot of people want to tell you about their TV ideas. And you know what? A pilot idea, I’m sorry to say is it’s a dime a dozen. Like a good idea is a good idea, but to actually go and then write those 10 episodes or write that series or in this case, make that film. That’s a whole other world. It’s a really difficult thing that requires intelligence and artistry, and luck. Anyway, it’s a long way to say that I realized very quickly that this was a super important film, which is what Norah is experiencing, it’s like, you know, your child and people are like, wow, your child really is a nice kid. You’re like, yes. In the world that you know so well, Teresa, I always say, if you want to clear a room, say like, Hey, I want to tell you some child abuse stories. You know, fantastic. I think I’m going to go. You know, we’re already dealing with a world that is uncomfortable. And we’re in a society in which people don’t want to be uncomfortable. And we have a world that says, great, well then take this drug or take this pill or you don’t have to be uncomfortable when the fact is we all know and especially as parents or whatever is that you only learn, we only grow if we get a little uncomfortable. And what Norah’s done here so beautifully is let us get uncomfortable, not just about, it’s really rough what these obviously these kids went through but look at the complicity within an institution. Look at the fact that this doesn’t happen in a vacuum. You know, we’ve learned a lot about obviously what’s happened within the Catholic church, how that environment, this monarchy creates a way and then the bishops and this. And so it all exists because we are part of this. This is the world we live in where, you know, youth serving organizations to be safe. What we have to understand is we really need boundaries and rules set up to do that. And the way Norah allowed these survivors to speak so beautifully and so openly and laying in the history and both as a filmmaker, but also as a legal mind, she understands how to lay out a case and she lays out a really beautiful case.

TH: You know what I was thinking about as you were talking about discomfort, as I think that there’s laypeople discomfort, right? The kind that’s like, I don’t really want to talk about child sexual use. But professionals have a different discomfort because what we cringe about in film generally around the subject is survivors aren’t always treated respectfully. And they’re sometimes exploited. And the way their material is handled isn’t as respectful as it could be. And so, you know, I just sit through these types of things with bated breath, you know, just like, what is going to happen here? Because when we’ve done screenings, even at our own conference, sometimes we’ve wanted to ensure we had therapists on hands and other things, because it’s just like, you just don’t know even if it’s handled well what the reaction and the audience will be much less if it’s not handled well, you know, and we’ll get into how you did it in a minute. But what I appreciate so much is that I never had one of those moments in the film. Like, I never had a moment where I was like, I am really worried about what is happening in the process here to a survivor. I just felt like they were treated so respectfully and the material was treated respectfully and there wasn’t an unnecessarily graphic nature to it. So you knew what was happening, but it wasn’t this overly explicit, just for the point of being shocking kind of material that you sometimes see or read or hear. And I really valued that because at NCA we’ve been thinking about, and in fact had a presentation at our last conference, a panel discussion around the ethics, around working with survivors around their stories. And so it’s really something that’s sort of near and dear and on our radar. So, but I mean, you had to think about that question going in and it had to be central to your thinking. And so how did you process that? How were you considering how survivors were going to be treated and how their story would be told?

NS: First, I just want to tell you how, just on a personal level, how extraordinary it is to hear that that is a takeaway because that was central from literally before we started and in fact continues to be something. It becomes easier now that the film is out, but it’s not over entirely.

I mean, I got a text from somebody just yesterday, one of the subjects in the film, in anticipation of an upcoming event and wanting to touch base and connect. And to me, it’s all part of it. So in my previous incarnation, I was a public defender, which I think that signifies enough. Most people know enough of what’s involved with that to get an idea. And along with that, I thought of myself as somebody who was pretty trauma-informed and pretty tough and pretty sensitive and pretty able to manage all of this but was not an in-depth expert in this subject area for one thing, despite that. And I certainly knew that the rest of the people around me on my team, you know you don’t make a film by yourself. collective effort and there’s your producers, you know, your cinematographer who’s in there filming every moment of that in these intimate situations. There’s the editor who’s spending hours and hours and hours pouring over hours and hours and hours. So we decided very early on, and I’ll give a shout out here to Bruce Shapiro and the Dart Center to go and get, you know, I did some digging, some research and learned about what they did and they do trainings more broadly, but they’ll work with newsrooms, they’ve worked with the Wall Street Journal, but they’ve also worked, they did, for example, worked with a small team that did a podcast about Katrina and went in and embedded. And so it was instrumental and we did a training and it sort of validated and went much deeper. And it was there as a North Star to go back to always about maintaining how we were going to manage this and what to do, what not to do, just sort of baseline.

It helped us, it dealt a lot with communication. And I guess the other big takeaway I got from that and then put into practice as we made the film was this was much more collaborative, I would say, than traditional films certainly that I’ve done in the past as a director where I always try of course to be humane and invariably in the stories I’ve been drawn to, there’s some amount of trauma involved in people’s stories, whether it was Ilhan Omar having been in a refugee camp and all of that, or a young Tibetan refugee, her experience. But those were all much more traditional model, top down. And this one was much more the subjects of the film were involved in the process. I maintained creative decision-making and control, which I had to.

And we had conversations, but we constantly came back. I think this might even have been at the screening when you were there, Teresa and Anthony, we were in conversation, but again and again, I had to earn the trust and be respectful of the process with, and also I had in my hands, multiple people and everyone’s story is different.

Desires and take on the larger story was different. And so I had to be very direct about this is going to be my take on this. It’s not the story. But it was, just to get back to your original question, crucial and central. It is why we didn’t do some of the things that might have made it easier to get some Netflix or other kinds of distribution, although that whole world’s caving in anyway. But it was very, very intentional for this to be non-exploitive and to be safe for the subjects of the film and for the audience. And so I’m extraordinarily gratified to hear with your expertise that you feel that way and that was your takeaway.

AE: Can I jump in too? I say as a survivor, what really hearing you guys talk that is so powerful and so important is that what you just said, I will take a little step back from and go, it’s not necessarily that people have different stories and different experiences. What I believe in the survivor is we all have very different stories of the actual thing, but the actual experience on a deep level.

And we really do connect in that way. And that’s where what I think the film does beautifully is shows, you hear individual stories. But to me, the most moving part of this is seeing those people come back together in the research library. I mean, together there. And that thing of them lining up, because recovery from trauma, as people know, is a lifetime. You spend a lifetime doing that. But the one thing we know, for sure is you don’t do it alone. And that ability for people to get together and communicate and connect, even if it’s the darkest thing that’s ever happened in your life, that foundational connection, the experience then becomes bigger of the recovery and the healing. And that’s what in a documentary to see people at different stages, you also witnessed the healing that was possible here just from them having access to the truth.

Looking for vengeance where they just have, and that’s what these institutions and that’s what everybody’s protecting their individual thing is they want to keep the truth away. And it wasn’t me who said the truth will set us free, but it’s really important. And I think that shows incredible respect to the victims of these obviously horrific things.

TH: I think that you both are pointing out something significant and that I experienced in watching the film myself, which is that there are so many universal themes that are wrapped up in one documentary here that often you would see a story that would include something about the issues of sort of complicity overall or the theme of betrayal or something else, know, disclosure, whatever. But what was so interesting to me about this documentary was it was really the arc of so many of those.

In my mind, it’s emblematic of institutional abuse cases in many, many, many respects. You know, I think it did a beautiful job of showing the way in which a charismatic individual can create, as you named it, a feeling of magic around them and that sort of dazzling persona can really act as a lever to groom an organization, a community, parents, you know, and the story around that in and of itself, I just thought, my gosh, let’s let everyone see this, especially every parent, because we’ve seen that story play out in faith communities and Boy Scouts and lots of other venues, but it’s that same, you know, it’s that same central character, right? Full of razzle dazzle and kids drawn to that and parents drawn to that.

And somehow what falls away are any kind of common-sense ideas around boundaries, like on the part of parents, on the part of boards of directors, on the parts of staff. Like, just, I thought like the story just laid that out. So everyone thought it was great to drop off their kids and disappear. And everybody thought it was great that there was no other really adult oversight, and the board thought it was fine to defend someone who had been credibly accused of abuse. It was just like all of those moments where you’re, you’ve seen elements of that in many stories and here it all is in one sad place. That was kind of my experience of it. And on the one hand, I think it’s educational and lots of people, I hope many, many, many people see it from that sort of perspective, but it was also just heartbreaking the betrayal.

NS: Yeah. That just made me while you’re talking, I had coffee over the holidays with someone who I can’t say who, somebody who, not in the film, and who was not harmed, but had been back in town for various things and we got together. And he just said, without going down into the big long anecdote, I’m racking my brain to figure out what were my parents thinking. Like, what were they thinking?

And that’s why that the one parent who was willing to speak and be in the film and who had been the exception to the, you know, being caught up by the razzle-dazzle, when she tried, she was sort of pushed away and dismissed as a bored housewife. Yeah. I mean, so I also think that it’s interesting because, you know, I think we got into that conversation by saying, well, those were different times.

And yet this continued, it keeps going. It goes and goes and goes. And in any situation then or now where you have in these institutions, these organizations, adults who are dealing with kids, whether it’s theater or arts or elite sports, where they are the gateway for stardom.

And all of the things that they’ve ever dreamed about and put all of their everything into. It’s just right there. Yeah, I mean, I really, really hope that, Anthony and I were speaking, I feel fairly confident based on some good momentum we’re having and we can talk about more that folks, like the professionals you work with and in your network doing the work who already know, will get to see the film and I hope it is a useful tool for them, but I also really, really hope that parents and educators and youth-serving organization leaders will see this film because we had hoped and I believe it can be useful as a blueprint for understanding these dynamics and how to not repeat them.

AE: Especially because we need, want, and have to have charismatic people leading, inspiring, and teaching our children. We need them. We have to have them. Everybody talks about that teacher that changed their life and does the thing. So we can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, but we can also talk about learning about how to set up safer places because we’re not going to change. But what we have to change is how quickly we react and how quickly we respond. That’s this, it’s taking the stigma away because we can know and we can tell people, but they have to see and witness that it’s 90 percent of the perpetration on children is from within trusted loving environments. We have this thing in our culture of othering all the people who are bad or get hurt. And here we are, tragically talking about it. And then, you know, here we are, Norah in her hometown dealing with this horrific thing that happened, you know, it’s just, it’s like, no, no one’s safe from this. And yet we want to think we are. And we’d need to do both. We need to have safe, lovely places. I mean, I always, I go back to things like the fact that in England they were smart enough when this idea of Boy Scouts started, they were like, no, that’s not a good idea. Weekends away, and it just came over into the US.

TH: That’s interesting.

NS: Isn’t that fascinating?

AE: Yeah. the documentary, you know, Scouts Honor, really, it’s a fantastic little fact where you’re like, we all know this because I think, like children, we want to fall in love. We want to have the best day camp for our kids. We want that. So we always give the benefit of the doubt. And unfortunately for perpetrators or people looking for the vulnerable, predators are so good at it.

TH: They’re so good at grooming the whole community, whole organization.

AE: Yeah. I deal with it all the time and talking about it, was because just the other night talking about someone saying, well, because Wade Robson and James Safechuck, the victims of Michael Jackson, who were so incredibly articulate in telling their truth, you know, have to deal with the fact that people are like, well, we need to separate the artist from the product. Are we going to throw away our Picassos? And you’re like, wow, we have so many ways in which these perpetrators can hide behind. It was so easy for Michael Jackson to groom the world, you know? And we have to keep telling these stories.

TH: I think one of the interesting dualities that you all also showed in the film was the fact, and it was reflected in the name, Magic and Monsters, is that there’s also the issue that it’s not just that the individuals are charismatic, it’s that they inspire care, devotion, love, not just through charisma, right? Also through their own, some even perhaps genuine emotion of caring about kids, whatever, but they attract that so that it makes it very hard for survivors who often have very mixed feelings, right? Which you captured beautifully in the film where they feel indebted to the person for the professional opportunities or for caring for them or mentoring them or whatever. But then they also feel just so tremendously betrayed by them because they were.

NS: Yeah, this is making me think, I mean, it’s slightly different, but it’s related. There’s also this other layer and element to the betrayal that I think that we haven’t talked about yet, really. I mean, it’s maybe been mentioned, but there is the betrayal and the harm from the individual. And then there is the betrayal and the harm at the institutional level. I guess I do want to name out loud that for me, something that was equally, if not perhaps, more important. It’s all part and parcel. You can’t understand what continues to this day, frankly, to happen within the ripples of that institution and the community without understanding what happened back then and how it happened. So that’s why we did all of that. But in terms of your earlier point and Anthony’s earlier point about the larger universal or the emblematic or the in every one of these, the commonalities is that there is this tendency where over and over and over, it’s about immediately protecting the brand, rallying the troops, protecting the reputations, not only of the potential perpetrator who’s being in question, but the people running the institution, the people affiliated, the people who have both generously supported the philanthropy, but also benefited from the stardust of being affiliated. And then immediately it becomes about that. So quickly, like on with the show, we don’t want to harm this great institution that is this great cultural jewel in the crown, not only of this local community, but the theater community at large. And wait a minute, nobody stopped to say, wait, we’re about children. And it’s more important to protect the brand and the institution than nobody said, what do those kids need? Nobody said it then.

And nobody, frankly, is even to this day, despite the demands made through, and by the way, they tried, numerous of those people who were plaintiffs tried behind the scene to go in and just say, can we have a conversation? Can you put a plaque in the courtyard? Can you put a note in the programs? Can you not erase everything that we ever did from the history when you talk about the history of this place. And none of those things were successful. And so they had no other route than litigation. And then it became about, you know, we weren’t even the ones running it then, we’re becoming victimized. And I was so astounded at that, frankly.

That was harder for me to understand actually than it was for me to understand what had happened originally. Not to forgive it, not to justify it, not to excuse it. But for me, it’s actually harder to understand and accept. And so that was incredibly important for me to be part of the story. And also to your earlier point that it has to be banked steeped in the details, the specifics of this story and these people.

But we also have to do this job of raising all of these larger themes that I think are part and parcel of the conversation necessary for preventing this from happening in other settings and for other individual children and other organizations and at large. And this refusal to have the conversation, again, like that’s why I’ve been described as a dog with a bone about this, I mean, in part, yeah, I put in all these years, but it’s also much bigger than that. It’s what I’ve learned and discovered along the way. And the more people don’t wanna talk about this or they don’t wanna see this, the more it makes me be like, well, then we’re just gonna work harder.

TH: I was thinking about the institutional abuse aspect of it, and I think, sadly, it’s all too common. That part of the story as well, the kind of outrageous conduct of the organization, the failure to accept any responsibility. And the thing that always honestly drives me crazy in these cases is often the survivors want an apology and acknowledgement that what they say happened actually happened.

I believe you, we’re so tremendously sorry, we know that we can’t undo it, but what can we do to help? So often, survivors have said to me personally that that was all they wanted. And it never ever happens because lawyers become involved and they say, don’t accept liability. If you apologize, if you say anything, you’re suddenly going to be wildly liable. And I think, okay.

I’m not a lawyer, so I’m sure the lawyers listening to me would be really mad at me for saying this.

NS: I was a lawyer!

AE: Don’t you want to stop him and just say, you are liable?

TH: Yes, and do the right thing, just do the right thing.

It’s so heartbreaking. What makes up for that when someone gaslights you and doesn’t validate your experience?

NS: It makes you crazy.

AE: And tragically, like we can say the righteous, but how many survivors, victims, have we lost to suicide? That’s the end result of crazy. That’s the end result of isolation is they take their own lives. And we also know that they, or they medicate or drink themselves to death.

TH: That’s right.

NS: All of it. And all of that did happen, by the way, not obviously with any of the plaintiffs who were alive and well enough to bring these lawsuits. There were plaintiffs that I spoke to who were not healed or well enough to participate in the film. There were people I spoke to who are alumni and were harmed who were not even able to participate in the litigation for whatever reasons then there are people that are no longer with us who have died either by suicide or yeah, I mean that’s also why it’s so crucial that it gets talked about.

AE: Yeah, it’s interesting. was talking to Norah earlier too. I think we were talking about it, but Jim Clemente, who’s a great friend of mine, who’s an FBI investigator, has done so much work in this and is a survivor himself. You know, I so understand the like, we’ve got to put these, we’ve got to separate them from children. We’ve got to put them in jail. We’ve got to do all of that. And it really, you know, flips on the other side for me too of how insanely important it is too, that people who are dealing with for the first time, because I’m dealing with oftentimes, know, men classically, I was the average 52 before I started looking at this abuse, you know, that men, people really need to take care of themselves first, you know, and to get that place because we also see, unfortunately, what happens when people haven’t dealt with the trauma, the foundation of that, and then start acting out and start wanting that and the anger becomes unhearable for other people. And they don’t end up, we don’t end up servicing the justice part because I mean, as you guys know far better than I, you know, people talk about this as if survivors are in court every day getting justice. Like there’s so no justice and there’s so not, it’s criminally, forget it, but even civilly. Has anybody ever heard of a civil case taking less than five, six, seven years? I mean, it is incredible, the slowness at which this justice system works. And boy, do those perpetrators know about it. Like they just had to get to statute of limitations, you know?

TH: Yeah, or just drag the process out till you exhaust someone to death so that they just quit, you know, because they can’t carry on anymore. You raise, I think, a really good point. And I appreciate this actually about the film, that it ends in kind of an unresolved way, which is how this ends for so many survivors, right? Where whatever healing and justice they’re going to get is not going to come from the institution.

It’s not going to come from some interaction with the offender or an apology on their part or anything like that. And maybe not even the criminal justice system at all. It’s going to come from, you know, as you were talking earlier, Anthony, connection with other survivors, getting treatment, you know, knowing that you’re not alone, those things, because the system itself cannot put people back together. And people don’t have access to the system. So, you know, between those two things, I think that was just heartbreaking for me, but real end of it is that you saw people doing their best, connecting with each other, which I thought was wonderful, and having support for each other. But in terms of a system response, not what one would hope, right?

NS: Yeah, not what I had hoped. I had until like literally after, you know, we were locked. I had hoped that a different outcome was possible and that there would have been movement. And you know what I will just say, that’s still potentially possible. That still could be a ripple. I don’t know, but that is possible. And if that were to happen, that would be great.

AE: Norah, I would say that’s your legal hat talking. I will tell you as a survivor and as someone there, the fact that what you’ve accomplished here and what is happening here is we’re witnessing people where the fear, the effects of that trauma in their lives was here, was taking up that much room. What you’re seeing in that film in the beauty of it is it’s taking up less and less room and their connection is happening.

That is what recovery from trauma is about. Because as you know, at the end of the day, we define ourselves and we say who we are. And this thing took up that much space. Right. If it takes up that much space, that’s heaven because we have all of it. That’s the human experience. We’re going to carry this. We’re not going to remove it. We don’t want to remove it because it is who we, it’s happened to us. And yet the shame of having carried it is so powerful.

NS: That’s why we ended the film the way we did. That’s why I chose Rana saying, I’m done. I’m not carrying this anymore.

AE: Right. And that’s what happens when people tell the truth and that’s what they did. And if someone else doesn’t want to tell their truth and they don’t want to own up to the responsibility, well, there you go. That’s the problem with that.

TH: You know what I was so interested by too at the screening is you had a number of subjects from the film that came, which I thought was just wonderful. You wonderfully supportive and also brave if that was their first perhaps foray into speaking about what happened to them beyond the film. And to your point, Anthony, it was just clear people were at different places in their healing journey, as you would expect, right? We’re all different. We’re all in a different place with that. But you could tell that one and all were glad to have had their story told and in the way it was told, which I’m really hopeful for.

NS: That was the first time for one of them, because he was not ready to see the film, the film premiered. We premiered the film here in Minneapolis because it was so important for the subjects of the film. One of the people who was there in the film when you saw the film, it was his first time and it’s because he had not been ready to face even seeing the film, much less speaking about it publicly. And so that was very emotional and beautiful. I sat in the back of the theater and it was the first time he and his partner and I watched tears rolling down her cheeks throughout the whole film. So that was a wild experience. But yeah, I mean, it’s very gratifying to me though that several of them have continued to show up and be part of the film. And what I was gonna also say is that I am not a therapist. I don’t purport to be a therapist, but I will say that it was a therapeutic experience. That is what I observed. It was a therapeutic, it seemed to be. It appears to have been a therapeutic experience for, if not every single one. I think it was for all of them to be in the film because there’s something validating about that process of somebody putting a camera and the multiple cameras and the resources and in depth and taking the time over time, treating as seriously as we did their stories on a very deeply personal level, much less the larger, more sensational elements of the story.

AE: And it connects right back, Norah, to the experience of survivors. When the trauma happens and in that time of the silence there, you are silent because it really does believe you do feel that you will die or be killed if you tell the truth. And dying in the biggest sense, like all different versions of death. So that’s where people tell you the first time that a survivor speaks it out loud that something happened to him, you never forget that. Because giving voice to something is the beginning. And that’s what we talk about, like it’s just normalizing the conversation. So we can, we know we’re after all these big lofty goals and everything. But the fact that the conversation shifts so that space could happen. So there he was having had the experience in his life of having shared that with his partner. But now all that stuff comes back up again when you think of public. And that’s why I always try to say too that like, you know, I’m an actor. That’s what I do for a living. I have this opportunity to do it, but that’s not what people need to do. No one needs to get on podcasts and have to tell the simple act of sharing honestly with another person, which we witnessed in your movie is the most important thing.

Everything else will start working after that.

TH: You know, as you were talking, I was thinking of at NCA and all our centers, you know, we work with children. So not adult survivors typically, but children who are disclosing child sexual abuse. And for kids who are between, I believe it’s 13 and 18, we have a survey that goes out to them after their forensic interview just to ask them how they found the experience at the Children’s Advocacy Center. Because we want to make sure that we get feedback not only from the caregivers, which we do, but also from kids themselves that are old enough to tell us. And what’s so fascinating is how many of them write in the part that’s open-ended, you believed me, or I felt believed. That is the most common response. Like, being believed is so incredibly powerful for another person to go, I hear you.

I believe you, like, there’s something therapeutic about that in and of itself, I think.

NS: 100%. I mean, that’s also toward the end of the movie. There’s a moment where one of the people in the film talks about having been in therapy when he was still a kid and therapists not believing him. And the experience of going back and being there in the theater and seeing it and realizing that this is real, this did happen to me. How valuable and important, albeit painful and devastating, above all and beyond, because the opposite is intolerable.

TH: Okay, I could dissect this film with you for hours on end because I love it so much and also I think it has such important themes, but I know you have limited time. So I want to hear just as you reflect back, since you’ve made the film, since you’ve previewed it in places, screened, you’ve talked to survivors, people have reached out to you, I’m just wondering how you reflect back on not only what the experience has been like, but what are you hoping for from here? What’s next for this?

NS: That’s a great question. What’s next and what is in motion in part through things like your podcast, this opportunity to reach more people and to collaborate with the brilliant work that your organization does and others that also are in the trenches doing this. Organizations like the one Anthony’s involved with, Darkness to Light, and Zero Abuse Project and Child USA and the Joyful Heart Foundation and Hidden Waters. These are organizations that have seen the film and believe in it and want to help get it out and get it widely seen. That’s all in the works, and we are planning screenings with all of those partners, organizational partners. We are in the process of looking to bring the film to conferences.

And we’re talking about within the survivor realm, we’re talking about the legal realm, we’re talking about law enforcement, a lot of different spheres. People are telling us that they think the film will be helpful. And then we are planning, and for people who are listening to this, the film is not quite yet available for streaming, or people always say, how can we see the film? But it will be.

And what I can share now is that we are open and invite other partners and other communities and other organizations to reach out and contact us. And we would love to bring on more partners and collaborators and plan screenings and events for their organizations and communities. So that’s part of the plan. It will be available for video on-demand screening, if you will, that will be coming in April to coincide with Child Abuse Prevention Month. We will have it available on a streaming platform that will be very, very user-friendly and it will be very accessible. And if people are interested in making sure they get that information, they can go to our website, which is magicandmonstersfilm.com, and they can sign up and then we will send that out, that link to stream when it becomes available. And we’ve got other things planned for the month of April. And then down the road, Anthony and I were just talking. I mean, I have big hopes and dreams that the film can ultimately, in the future, not so far away, maybe be available out there for anybody that ever wants to see it anywhere. So we just have to work to get to that point to make that possible. Maybe Anthony can chime in on that.

AE: Yeah, no, I mean, the ultimate goal is to get it as too many as possible and it will live. Yeah, it’s very exciting, but the hard part’s done. Norah did it. She made a beautiful movie, which we’re all responding to. This is all good stuff because it’s just with every viewing and every person, it’s going to be another layer peeling away of the old onion.

TH: I also hope that filmmakers themselves watch it in terms of how to tell a difficult story well and respectfully. I just think there were so many things just from that perspective done right that it could be used to teach others how to tell survivor stories well. So, you know, amongst all those other groups that you’re talking about that you hope it’s screened and watched by, I hope it’s screened and watched by aspiring filmmakers to learn how to do it well from the beginning.

NS: Thank you.

TH: Well, thank you so much for joining the conversation, for making the film in the first place, and for telling just an important story and using it to hopefully prevent these things from happening to others and also to reduce the stigma around this issue so that if there are other survivors out there who have been afraid to speak up, they can watch this film, they can hear you all talk on this podcast or others and realize that there are others out there who are there to support them.

AE: Most importantly to realize they’re not alone.

TH: That’s right. That’s right.

Well, thank you again.

NS: It’s been an honor. Thank you so much.

AE: Thank you, Teresa.

TH: Thanks for joining us on One in Ten. If you like this episode, please share it with a friend or colleague. And for more information about this episode or any of our other ones, please visit our podcast website at oneintenpodcast.org.