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Cry the Darkness: One Woman’s Triumph over the Tragedy of Incest is an autobiographical account by Donna L. Friess published in 1993 by Health Communications, Inc. Florida. 279 Pages. Foreword by Dr. Susan Forward.
Contents
Summary
When Donna Friess’ half-sister came to her in 1989 to enlist her help in stopping their father from further sexually molesting the sister’s four-year-old daughter, Friess stood at a crossroads. She was torn between her loyalty to her father, her fear of scandal, worries about telling her husband about her own abuse, and her need to protect her young niece.
With her sister’s revelation, Friess was forced to admit her own secret shame of childhood rape by her father. At the conclusion of the police investigation, the detective, said to Friess “In all my years as a police detective I have never encountered a story such as this. This has got to be written.” That was the encouragement that Friess needed to dare to consider writing her own story which would cross four generations and many victims.
One aspect of the story is the tremendous conflict this woman faced when she realized she had to do something to stop her father. She had to surmount a lifetime of denial and come to terms with the realization that her father was not the upstanding citizen that he and the family portrayed him to be. Friess described the five months she spent writing her book as a “terrible.” experience. For the first time in her life she had to examine the horror from her childhood which she had “walled off,” as well as examine generations of abuse within her family. In a Los Angeles Times interview, she said, “The pain is like a tunnel. In order to heal, you have to go through it." However, Cry the Darkness is more than the horrendous facts of the abuse as Joyce Sweeney points out in the Sun-Sentinel, August 8, 1993 book review. She states that Cry the Darkness is “A Family’s Dark Secret, Told Warmly.”
“Many books by incest survivors express the rage of the victim, or recount the “long journey” back to mental and sexual health, but do not really tell us what kind of phenomenon we are looking at, why it happens. How it feels.. .Told in a simple, first-person narrative, the book is almost warm and chatty, giving us an intimate knowledge of Friess, an eldest daughter, an overachiever, the typical “glue” that holds the dysfunctional family together. Her father is presented as a real person whom she loved and depended on. We see a childhood rendered all the more tragic because there are so many moments of warmth and good feeling between the father and the daughter that Friess pushes the horrifying side of the relationship out of her mind.“
Donna Friess has written an account that combines the brutal facts of her childhood with professional understanding and perspective.
The Foreword to Cry the Darkness is written by Susan Forward who is a therapist, lecturer and author of New York Times bestseller, Toxic Parents.
Autobiographical elements
This autobiography is supported by the LA Times cover story and the Lear’s Magazine expose, “Incest: A Chilling Report" as well as television talk show interviews such as those on The Oprah Winfrey Show (September 8, 1991 and the Ronald Reagan Jr. show, on Fox Television ( September 23, 1991), and the guilty verdict rendered in Santa Monica Superior Court.
Upon the conclusion of the 15 month-long jury trial and rendering of the guilty verdict, Friess and some of her sisters shared their personal stories with Los Angeles Times reporter Lynn Smith who then published a comprehensive account of the court trial and the family’s abuse which was released as the cover story for the Los Angeles Times Magazine, August 4, 1991 entitled “Daddy’s Girls: Before Raymond Lewis Was Brought To Justice, His Daughters Had to Share Their Darkest Secrets”)
Influence
In the wake of the media attention and the release of Cry the Darkness, Friess was recruited to join abuse prevention organizations such as Laura’s House, a shelter for victims of domestic violence in California, 1994, Mothers Against Child Sexual Abuse, 1993; American Coalition Against Child Abuse, One Voice, Child Abuse Listening and Mediation of Santa Barbara.