\n<\/p>\n
N<\/span>ot so long ago, Frank Spinelli seemed to have sorted out his life. He was happily married, working as a doctor and had a sideline writing medical thrillers. He thought he had dealt with the sexual abuse he had suffered as a child \u2013 not only had he helped bring the man who groomed and abused him to justice, but also he had written a memoir about it. \u201cI\u00a0felt that I had closure,\u201d he says. \u201cI had the good fortune of working with some amazing therapists and\u00a0I believed I had done the work and moved past it and I was a healed person.\u201d<\/p>\n Little did he know that his recovery was fragile. The Covid pandemic took away his routine and structure: \u201cAll the external pillars that were tightly holding me together \u2013 the engagements at the office, the work trips.\u201d Two years earlier, he and his husband had moved from Manhattan to a leafy suburb, from where he is speaking to me over a video call today. He was dealing with uncertainty and felt isolated. \u201cWe know one thing about shame: shame breeds in\u00a0isolation.\u201d<\/p>\n Spinelli had never had a problem with alcohol before. In the lockdowns, though, he found himself drinking more and more. A\u00a0glass of wine while cooking dinner turned into two; a bottle shared with his husband turned into another. Drinking was no longer something that mainly happened at the weekend, but had blurred into the week. Three months into lockdown, Spinelli\u2019s husband realised it wasn\u2019t doing him any good and decided to stop drinking, but Spinelli continued.<\/p>\n \u201cYou make all these qualifying statements to yourself \u2013 you\u2019re home, you\u2019re not bothering anybody, I\u2019m not driving,\u201d he says. He convinced himself that if he drank in secret, it didn\u2019t really count, so he started to take long dog walks, sipping from a water bottle filled with vodka; he hid empty bottles in the garage. When his husband confronted him about it, Spinelli promised to stop, but it lasted less than a week. He found better hiding spots: old bags in the wardrobe, empty cleaning-product bottles, the recycling bin.<\/p>\n <\/span>Spinelli and his dog at home in eastern New York.<\/span> Photograph: Tobias Everke\/The Guardian<\/p>\n At this time, a class-action lawsuit against the Boy Scouts of America was going through the courts. Spinelli was one of 95,000 alleged survivors of sexual abuse within the organisation. The man who had abused him from the age of 11, from 1978 to 1980, was his scoutmaster, William Fox. In September 2022, a $2.5bn (\u00a32.2bn) compensation fund for victims was established. In order to work out how much he would be entitled to, Spinelli was sent a 47-page questionnaire to fill out, in which he was asked to detail the abuse and its impact on him.<\/p>\n He read this piece of brutal bureaucracy, relying on alcohol to get him through. It wasn\u2019t the \u201cdramatic rock bottom I\u2019d expected from movies and recovery narratives\u201d, he writes in his new book, The Shame Compass. \u201cThere was no car accident, no lost job, no intervention from concerned family members. I was alone in my home office, staring at a legal document that reduced my childhood sexual trauma to data points.\u201d It felt like another violation, \u201cdocumenting my own rape for a legal system that would assign it a dollar value\u201d, he writes.<\/p>\n The shame came flooding back\u00a0\u2013 not just about the abuse, but also shame that he hadn\u2019t got over it and\u00a0shame that he was having to drink to cope with it. \u201cYou think you\u2019re healed, you think you\u2019ve moved on, and that is one of the myths,\u201d he says. \u201cThe shame is still\u00a0with you.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>Spinelli on an expedition with the Boy Scouts of America.<\/span> Photograph: Courtesy of Frank Spinelli<\/p>\n Spinelli grew up in Staten Island, New York, the youngest of three children of Italian parents. \u201cIt was a very traditional background,\u201d he says. His mother raised the children and sometimes worked in a supermarket; his father was a labourer. Neither had much education, but they expected big things of their children. \u201cYou really only get two choices: doctor or lawyer,\u201d he says. Spinelli was already interested in science and wanted to become a doctor.<\/p>\n He was a sensitive boy. \u201cJoining the Boy Scouts was my parents\u2019 way of perhaps toughening me up a little bit. Unfortunately, that\u2019s where we were introduced to a man who would change all our lives,\u201d he says. As a scout leader, Fox, who was also a police officer, was commanding and authoritative. Otherwise, \u201che was sort of jovial and there was a lot of camaraderie. And then the sexual abuse began.\u201d<\/p>\n In Spinelli\u2019s previous book, his memoir Pee-Shy, \u201cI wrote that the most insidious thing about child molestation is that it creates a desire in the child to want to please the molester, so I constantly was feeling: what am I doing wrong? How can I make him happy?\u201d The psychological and physical bullying from other boys Fox had groomed was also extremely damaging. \u201cThere was this hierarchy that he established \u2013 if you got to ride in the front seat, you were one of Bill\u2019s favourites that day. If not, you got to ride in the back. That is the type of psychological manipulation he employed as a tactic to keep you under his thumb.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>A class photo of Spinelli, taken around the time of the abuse.<\/span> Photograph: Courtesy of Frank Spinelli<\/p>\n When Spinelli was 13, he told his parents about the abuse. \u201cThey went to the senior leaders and, in a sense, they were shamed into secrecy,\u201d he says. \u201cThey were told: \u2018You do not want this to get out\u00a0\u2013 think of your son, think of your family,\u2019 and I think they saw some truth in that. They agreed that Bill Fox could step down quietly, no charges pressed, and that would take care of matters. Now, unfortunately, we know many\u00a0boys\u00a0suffered after that fact.\u201d<\/p>\n Spinelli\u2019s takeaway was: \u201cThis was how you handled matters\u00a0\u2013 with secrecy.\u201d He had begun to realise around this time that he was gay, another source of shame in his traditional Catholic community. He imagines his parents\u2019 thought process: \u201cA young boy who might be gay, or we\u2019re not really sure, is involved in a sexual relationship with an adult man. While we know child molestation is not a consensual relationship, looking at it from the outside, they probably said: \u2018Do we really want to shine a light on this? Think of the scrutiny.\u2019\u201d His parents also took advice from their priest, says Spinelli. \u201cI think my parents thought they were protecting me. I\u00a0was already being bullied at school; this would only add to it.\u201d<\/p>\n Spinelli struggled in his teenage years and dropped out of college. \u201cThis was not how I envisioned my life,\u201d he says. \u201cBy accident, I came into contact with a therapist who happened to be an art therapist and she saved my life. I painted, she taught me to write, and I used that creative outlet to heal, to move beyond the trauma.\u201d Other than his immediate family, she was the first person he told about the abuse. \u201cI went into very specific details about what had happened and what made it so painful was to hear it out loud.\u201d He was still blaming himself, thinking he was complicit. \u201cBut that\u2019s what grooming is \u2013 making you believe that these actions are coming from you, when they\u2019re being installed in your mind.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>Spinelli says his parents were \u2018shamed into secrecy\u2019 when they alerted the Boy Scouts to the abuse perpetrated by Bill Fox (pictured)<\/em>.<\/span> Photograph: Courtesy of Frank Spinelli<\/p>\n Spinelli went back to college, then to medical school. He became a doctor, specialising in treating people living with HIV. The workload of being a doctor was a good distraction, although he was also being treated for anxiety and depression. \u201cThere was an undercurrent of unhappiness. Certainly, that was reflected in the relationships I had \u2013 perhaps dating people who weren\u2019t always the nicest to me, or didn\u2019t treat me as kindly as they should have.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2008, he published a book on men\u2019s health. While he was promoting it, he got back in contact with two old friends from Staten Island. His childhood felt closer to him again. \u201cThat night, I had a dream about Bill Fox, me waiting by the screen door for his red truck to pull up.\u201d Spinelli looked up Fox online \u2013 and what he found shocked him. \u201cI discovered that the year after he stepped down [from the Boy Scouts], he talked a\u00a0suicidal teenage boy off a ledge and adopted\u00a0him.\u201d<\/p>\n Shortly afterwards, Fox was feted in TV appearances, won a \u201cfather of the year\u201d award and published a book called The Cop and the Kid. He would go on to adopt about 15\u00a0boys\u00a0\u2013 many, according to Spinelli, with special needs.<\/p>\n Spinelli was astonished and appalled and knew he had to do something. \u201cIt was horrifying to me that we allowed this man to step down from the Boy Scouts of America and one year later he adopts a boy, but doesn\u2019t stop there.\u201d When Fox was finally arrested, in 2011, he still had some boys in his care, Spinelli says. \u201cI\u00a0found that story shocking, that this could have happened even after I came forward, and so I felt it was my obligation to finally see this to the end. What motivated me was a sense of blinding justice. All I saw was the end goal of bringing him to justice because that would be the only thing that would make sense.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>\u2018I think my parents thought they were protecting me.\u2019<\/span> Photograph: Tobias Everke\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Spinelli went to the police soon afterwards. Although his abuse was past the statute of limitations, he helped keep the pressure on the investigation, even wearing a wiretap in a phone call with Fox. Three young men, two of whom had been adopted by Fox as children, came forward. In August 2011, Fox pleaded no contest \u2013 by which he did not admit guilt, but accepted the conviction \u2013 and was sentenced to at least 35 years in prison. He died in prison not long\u00a0afterwards.<\/p>\n Spinelli\u2019s memoir about the case was published in 2013. The act of writing everything down, along with securing Fox\u2019s conviction, had felt like closure. And then came the pandemic and that questionnaire. \u201cThat\u2019s when I thought: I really don\u2019t have all of this managed. And that\u2019s common: people who experience trauma will find that at different points in their lives it will re-emerge because something happens \u2013 life happens. It\u2019s not as if you\u2019re going to just be level for the rest of your life.\u201d After completing the questionnaire, he woke up the next morning: \u201cI looked myself in the mirror and I said: \u2018This is not how the story ends.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n He turned his attention to the feelings of shame, which would become his Compass framework: confront, observe, map, process, accept and sustain, plus a final \u201cS\u201d for service, sharing your experience to help others. What if he could dismiss the inner voice that had told him he was \u201cbad\u201d all his life and instead see if shame was trying to tell him something important?<\/p>\n \u201cThat inspired me to think about shame in a way that I hadn\u2019t before. Shame is something we think is negative, but there\u2019s also a way of looking at it where perhaps the shame is showing you that you are just out of alignment with your core values. My core values are kindness, compassion, loyalty.\u201d His shame around drinking was reminding him not that he was a \u201cbroken\u201d person, but that he had become someone who was lying to his husband and hurting him.<\/p>\n In Spinelli\u2019s framework, once he had confronted and observed his shame, he mapped the source of its inner voice \u2013 it was, unsurprisingly, his scout leader. Looking back over his life, he could see all the moments he was triggered by other authoritative men. \u201cI had this wonderful professor, who was brilliant, but he would talk to me in a condescending tone and it would make me freeze,\u201d he says. The voice reminded him of his scoutmaster. \u201cBut I\u2019m not 11 years old. I\u2019m an adult man. That\u2019s how I utilise the framework to help get through those situations. It was important for me to go back to all those different times and to map out my reaction to that situation and what I\u00a0could have done differently.\u201d<\/p>\n Learning to deal with his shame didn\u2019t magically cure his alcohol dependency, but it helped, as did learning about the neuroscience of problem drinking: \u201cIt wasn\u2019t necessarily a moral failing on my part. It was the fact that I had created these dopamine loops and the loop was encouraging me to drink more.\u201d<\/p>\n He is no longer ashamed of shame. \u201cI feel those scars are battle wounds and I\u2019m proud of them; they\u2019ve developed who I am as a person. If we try to understand shame, we might be able to move through it, not run away from it.\u201d Some days are still a struggle, but others are not. Daily practices, including journalling, help. \u201cIt goes back to being as honest as I can with my partner and my family. But understanding that, again, I\u2019m not infallible \u2013 things are going to happen. I\u2019m just more resilient.\u201d<\/p>\n The Shame Compass is published on 25 August (Level Tru, \u00a313.99). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Not so long ago, Frank Spinelli seemed to have sorted out his life. He was happily married, working as a doctor and had a sideline writing medical thrillers. He thought he had dealt with the sexual abuse he had suffered as a child \u2013 not only had he helped bring the man who groomed and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":51828,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[7493,360,3855,681,1612,25193,12752,358,359,445],"class_list":{"0":"post-51827","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-abused","9":"tag-assault","10":"tag-began","11":"tag-child","12":"tag-drinking","13":"tag-healed","14":"tag-lockdown","15":"tag-rape","16":"tag-sexual","17":"tag-thought"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51827\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/51828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}