Notes on a Silencing A Memoir

Lacy Crawford — 2020

A riveting, lucid memoir of a young woman's struggle to regain her sense of self after trauma, and the efforts by a powerful New England boarding school to silence her--at any cost When the elite St. Paul's School recently came under state investigation after extensive reports of sexual abuse on campus, Lacy Crawford thought she'd put behind her the assault she'd suffered at St. Paul's decades before, when she was fifteen. Still, when detectives asked for victims to come forward, she sent a note. Her criminal case file reopened, she saw for the first time evidence that corroborated her memories. Here were depictions of the naïve, hard-working girl she'd been, a chorister and debater, the daughter of a priest; of the two senior athletes who assaulted her and were allowed to graduate with awards; and of the faculty, doctors, and priests who had known about Crawford's assault and gone to great lengths to bury it. Now a wife, mother, and writer living on the other side of the country, Crawford learned that police had uncovered astonishing proof of an institutional silencing years before, and that unnamed powers were still trying to block her case. The slander, innuendo, and lack of adult concern that Crawford had experienced as a student hadn't been imagined as the effects of trauma, after all: these were the actions of a school that prized its reputation above anything, even a child. This revelation launched Crawford on an extraordinary inquiry into the ways gender, privilege, and power shaped her experience as a girl at the gates of America's elite. Her investigation looks beyond the sprawling playing fields and soaring chapel towers of crucibles of power like St. Paul's, whose reckoning is still to come. And it runs deep into the channels of shame and guilt, witness and silencing, that dictate who can speak and who is heard in American society. An insightful, mature, beautifully written memoir, Notes on a Silencing is an arresting coming-of-age story that wrestles with an essential question for our time: what telling of a survivor's story will finally force a remedy?

Reviews

Kristen Claiborn@kristenc

Jan 7, 2023

When I read this book I had unintentionally fallen into a hole full of stories about women and girls being treated badly. It's actually a pretty bad hole to fall into. There are many emotions that follow reading tales of women who are victimized and afterwards it always leaves me feeling blue. so sometimes I wish I didn't run across these books. Most of them are fiction, so it's easier for me to walk away after finishing. This one just made me mad. This woman was made to feel like simply being a woman was wrong, and that infuriates me. Then when SHE was violated, SHE was wronged again by the very people who are supposed to keep her safe and well. None of those things happened. I want to hunt all of those assholes down and punch them all in the balls (clearly I will not be doing that, but that's how this woman's story made me feel). I would hope that stories like her would bring more people out of the woodwork to shine the light on how money and privilege have consistently created human monsters, but alas we continue to hear stories about monied brats (many in positions of political power) abusing women repeatedly. And nothing ever happens. This story is important, and it took an incredible amount of bravery to share it with the world the way Crawford did, so I thank her.

Jackelyn@jackelynkjerstie

Dec 12, 2022

Stories and memoirs like this can be horrific and triggering to read. This one is no different, but Lacy Crawford's ability to share her experience with a poetically beautiful, calm voice kept me turning the pages. This book should be required reading for all men, women and parents. It's a clarifying reminder of how corrupt money and power can make and institution. The system works as its paid to.

CONTENT WARNINGS: sexual assault of a minor, sexual assault and rape, abuse, neglect, violence, political and school cover ups, discussion of suicide, suicide, bullying.

Nadine @intlnadine

Feb 18, 2022

Reading this is an exercise in anger & frustration. Through her story she tells “the” story of how the institution considers itself more worthy and important than the individual and how anyone harmed by the beast is chewed up and spat out. How power and privilege think they can lie and cover up and silence. Read this and feel the anger.