Ep. 2: “Every tear was an incest-driven tear”; child sexual abuse comes to light in the 1980s.

The Memory Hole Podcast

Please note: between minutes 3:30-4:56 on some platforms there is a blank space. This was a YouTube clip of an Oprah Winfrey program in 1986, included to demonstrate the pervasiveness of this topic in popular culture. If this is missing in your feed, please accept my apologies. Here is the incident referred to:

In addition to physical abuse, young Winfrey was sexually assaulted by more than one family member when she was just nine years old. She was also molested by a family friend while still a little girl. Oprah shared these traumas with the public very early on in her career. The New York Times reported in 1986 that during an episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show about battered women and incest. She started to cry when a guest talked about her experiences of abuse and sexual assault, asking for a station break and hugging the woman, at which point she revealed her own experiences as a victim and survivor. She later said “For the longest time, I carried this burden around with me and was afraid to tell anybody because I thought it was my fault.”

Prime time movie night Something about Amelia

After school special: Don’t Touch

Rosanne Barr

During an appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show, the comedian admitted that she is ashamed to have levied allegations of sexual abuse against her mother and father in 1991."I think it's the worst thing I've ever done," she said. "It's the biggest mistake that I've ever made."

https://www.intouchweekly.com/posts/roseanne-barr-incest-156910/

Oprah Winfrey

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-9604633/Oprah-recalls-repeatedly-raped-19-year-old-cousin-age-nine.html

Meredith Maran Interview 5/23/23

Dan Rather CBS Evening News, March 1988, Television Archive

Playboy magazine comic, quoted from The Best Kept Secret, Florence Rush 1980

Quotes from: John Money, Wardell Pommeroy, Larry Constantine from The Best Kept Secret, Florence Rush 1980

More about Florence Rush

Love’s Baby Soft Commercial, 1975 “Because innocence is sexier than you think.”

Mark Pendergrast Interview 6/14/23

Laura Pasley https://www.stopbadtherapy.com/retracts/pasley.shtml

Laura Pasley appeared in documentary: Making Memories, from the False Memory Foundation (Patrick Clancy)

Any and all background music from the free YouTube Audio Library

The Memory Hole Podcast theme is: A Great Darkness Approaches, Can You Feel It? by ELPHNT

https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/a-trailblazer-of-trauma-studies-asks-what-victims-really-want