decadent-hag:

“Predatory Men With a Taste for Teenagers” Joyce Maynard on the Chilling Parallels Between Woody Allen and J.D. Salinger

I name two events that caused the greatest emotional damage in my life. I’m not speaking here of personal losses—the deaths of my parents, the death of my husband. I’m speaking of times when I felt unsafe, diminished, and under attack almost to the point of questioning the worth of my own life. One happened when I was a teenager, with Salinger—an experience that ended my college education, isolated me from my family, my friends, and the world, and left me in a state of profound shame that endured for decades. The second, and arguably the more painful one, occurred 25 years later when, halfway into my 40s, I chose at long last to speak of what had happened to me when I was young.