Thanks for this sad but interesting focus on Taylor and Dean. In another life Elizabeth would have been a therapist and she was drawn to vulnerable men in particular. This dovetails nicely with my recent article focussing on a different photo taken on the set of Giant. 😀
So do you think there was molestation? Even though Elizabeth Taylor misremembered the year of Jim's mother's death? I don't believe in that. What kind of person would communicate with their molester all their life and ask him for money?
There is no way to know for sure, but times were different then. To judge by his relationship with Rogers Brackett, Dean only gradually came to understand that some of his sexual relationships with much older men were exploitative or abusive. This would have been hard to recognize because, until the late 1950s, the law didn't recognize men sexually abusing boys as molestation or rape. It wasn't considered possible for a male to be sexually abused or raped in those days, so many victims did not fully understand what had happened or even believed they were responsible. What I can say is that there is circumstantial evidence that the story of the abuse was known and circulating as early as the 1950s and was not simply Joe Hyams's invention in 1992.
If there is no trauma, we still have to explain a very troubled and angry man who drove his car so recklessly that he died. I have been ddvoting myself to exploring the links between trauma and the drive for fame. And he became so famous…
Will you cite this circumstantial evidence in your book? Although I still won't be able to read it.
All this is too much slander against the minister, who was never caught doing anything inappropriate. Even if he did have something with Dean, I'll bet, it was consensual - and given Dean's excessive sexuality, there is a chance that he could have seduced the minister himself. Any version is possible, Dean was a real asshole and a devil. In any case, it's not for us to judge.
If Dean was eleven at the time and grieving his mother i think we need to be very careful about attributing power to him in any sexual encounter with an adult. But maybe i misunderstood.
His mother died when Dean was 9 (Taylor's 11 is incorrect) when he moved to Fairmount and met the minister. Then when Dean was 10-11-12, I can't be sure, the minister went off to WWII and supposedly came back when Dean was 14 or older. Either the minister "molested" Dean before the war, or more likely after the war when Dean was a teenager.
Taylor was speaking off the cuff 42 years after the fact. The allegation is that DeWeerd molested Dean when Dean was in high school, around the age of 16 or 17.
If Dean was that age, then the most we could call the minister was an ephebophile. For example, Tchaikovsky was an ephebophile. But DeWeerd was definitely not the “predator” that they like to call him.
Thanks for this sad but interesting focus on Taylor and Dean. In another life Elizabeth would have been a therapist and she was drawn to vulnerable men in particular. This dovetails nicely with my recent article focussing on a different photo taken on the set of Giant. 😀
So do you think there was molestation? Even though Elizabeth Taylor misremembered the year of Jim's mother's death? I don't believe in that. What kind of person would communicate with their molester all their life and ask him for money?
There is no way to know for sure, but times were different then. To judge by his relationship with Rogers Brackett, Dean only gradually came to understand that some of his sexual relationships with much older men were exploitative or abusive. This would have been hard to recognize because, until the late 1950s, the law didn't recognize men sexually abusing boys as molestation or rape. It wasn't considered possible for a male to be sexually abused or raped in those days, so many victims did not fully understand what had happened or even believed they were responsible. What I can say is that there is circumstantial evidence that the story of the abuse was known and circulating as early as the 1950s and was not simply Joe Hyams's invention in 1992.
If there is no trauma, we still have to explain a very troubled and angry man who drove his car so recklessly that he died. I have been ddvoting myself to exploring the links between trauma and the drive for fame. And he became so famous…
Will you cite this circumstantial evidence in your book? Although I still won't be able to read it.
All this is too much slander against the minister, who was never caught doing anything inappropriate. Even if he did have something with Dean, I'll bet, it was consensual - and given Dean's excessive sexuality, there is a chance that he could have seduced the minister himself. Any version is possible, Dean was a real asshole and a devil. In any case, it's not for us to judge.
If Dean was eleven at the time and grieving his mother i think we need to be very careful about attributing power to him in any sexual encounter with an adult. But maybe i misunderstood.
His mother died when Dean was 9 (Taylor's 11 is incorrect) when he moved to Fairmount and met the minister. Then when Dean was 10-11-12, I can't be sure, the minister went off to WWII and supposedly came back when Dean was 14 or older. Either the minister "molested" Dean before the war, or more likely after the war when Dean was a teenager.
Taylor was speaking off the cuff 42 years after the fact. The allegation is that DeWeerd molested Dean when Dean was in high school, around the age of 16 or 17.
If Dean was that age, then the most we could call the minister was an ephebophile. For example, Tchaikovsky was an ephebophile. But DeWeerd was definitely not the “predator” that they like to call him.