The all new 50 Books Challenge!
Title: Memoir of a Milk Carton Kid: The Tanya Nicole Kach Story by Tanya Nicole Kach with Lawrence Fisher
Details: Copyright 2011, Tate Publishing
Synopsis (By Way of Back Cover): ""Tom," I said, bracing myself for the threat that was sure to follow.
"I need to talk to you about something. About leaving here, I mean."
He didn't hit me. Didn't threaten. Instead he looked at me with great sadness.
"Who saved your life?"
"You," I replied. "but..."
"Who takes care you?"
"I know that," I told him. "I just can't live like this."
"You can't live? What about me? You would destroy my life if you left. I am the only person to ever show you love, and you would leave me? Don't be stupid..."
Told from the perspective of Tanya Nicole Kach, Memoir of a Milk Carton Kid is the haunting story of a girl, lost in the cracks of the system, forced to spend more than a ten years as the prisoner of her school's security guard. From her troubled childhood, through her captivity at the hands of a manipulative captor, and ultimately on her road to recovery, Tanya's story is one of pain but ultimately triumph.
Her story is told by her advocate and confidant, Lawrence Fisher. For more than five years his impassioned advocacy helped Tanya as she has reintegrated into society. He successfully blends Tanya's story with his own insight into the legal issues surrounding the controversial case that followed Tanya's release. This multipronged approach gives the reader insight into Tanya's emotional state and the state of a criminal justice system that allowed her ordeal to happen."
Why I Wanted to Read It: I heard about this case in passing and was surprised I'd never heard anything about it before. When I heard the victim had written a memoir, I knew I'd want to read it.
How I Liked It:
We're getting to the end of the calendar year in this challenge! And that means we seem to be calling back more and more to previous books read this year. I asked before about who is this book about? Whose story is this really? These questions get even more complex when you consider the fact that this is a memoir and thus non-fiction. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.
Meet Tanya Nicole Kach. Her upbringing was sadly disjointed from the start. As her mother struggled with mental health issues (that would have her briefly institutionalized), her father offered no comfort, and when they divorced, his new wife made it clear she resented his daughter. A tug-of-custody-war ensued (her father at one point had to have a restraining order filed against her mother), and there were no winners. Miserable at home and at school and constantly fighting off sexual assault attempts from older men (including a friend's father and her aunt's husband) and acting out, Kach was the perfect victim for a sexual predator, an outwardly kind school security guard who befriends her.
Horrible boundaries are crossed, and he convinces Kach to run away and live with him. At fourteen, she does, and spends literally years trapped in his bedroom (he lived with his parents and was afraid of them finding out about her). She contracts various mental and physical health issues, and is subjected to such horrors as being forced to only relieve herself in a bucket in the room, and only allowed to shower in the cold cellar once a week. Kach threatens to kill her and/or himself if she even thinks about escaping. She spends vast stretches of time alone in his closet, amusing herself with television through headphones, old books and magazines, and praying.
Eventually as she ages and spends more time there, she gains his trust and is allowed brief excursions outside. Years after her abduction, she is passed off to his parents (and the surrounding community) with a fake name as his girlfriend, and is allowed to have more of a life outside where she manages to make an escape by telling a trusted friend who she actually is, and he contacts the police, who free her.
Life afterward proves no less challenging, as hangers-on try to stake a claim, few people at all seem to be trustworthy, and her parents (especially her father, who becomes both fond of the spotlight and also actually says he wants to hear her captor's side of the story) are absolutely no help at all. Eventually, she struggles to adulthood and its independence and a sense of freedom.
I'll be honest, when I first heard this book was written with someone, I wasn't surprised. After all, Kach isn't necessarily a professional writer merely because something hideous happened to her, nor should she have to be.
But when I heard it was her lawyer making his true crime writing debut (and launching a writing career after that: as of this writing, he's got another true crime book plus a book of poetry), I was not hopeful.
I'd mentioned many years ago in the previous version of this challenge the question of ethics in evaluating a memoir (or memoir-esque) book about someone who experienced something horrible. Certainly, it doesn't feel like my place to tell them I don't care for how they told the story of the horrible thing that happened to them, but a conclusion I've reached before still rings true: this isn't like they're telling it to me personally, it's a book (with ghostwriters and editors and proofreaders and a publisher) that they're selling.
And the fact that this isn't quite nor solely Kach herself talking supports reviewing. The book, save for one chapter (which we'll get to) is told in the first person. She (as told to Fisher) recounts her early life, the factors leading to her captivity, her captivity, release, and reintegration into society. The style is honestly pretty flat all around. This is far from the only memoir I've read of someone either forced into an abusive relationship and/or held in captivity. Had Kach been given the literary help afforded to Michelle Knight or Jaycee Duggard, the account would have been utterly riveting, rather than just interesting by virtue of the facts related.
I can't call it "cartoon cruelty" (a term I've talked about before for the trope of writers who subject a character to absurd, ridiculous, sometimes unintentionally hilarious levels of casual cruelty usually for sympathy-inducing purposes) if it's real life, but Kach's father and stepmother would certainly qualify were this story fictional. I believe Kach that they were truly awful, but a better writer helping her tell her story would've communicated their abuse, neglect, and toxicity (and Kach's ongoing dependence and return to them) in a way that didn't feel so... well, static. Kach doesn't sound like she's relating an ongoing family strife that indirectly caused her to be held in captivity and sexually assaulted; through Fisher's writing, she sounds like a vindictive gossip with a list of grievances (she does have a long list of grievances and they are absolutely fair: it's on her writer to fix the tone). Again, it's only when you take a step back do you realize how the writing failed her story.
Of course, it's sometimes hard to tell how much is Kach herself and how much is Fisher. Certainly, Kach would feel loyalty and devotion to an attorney that's portrayed in her book as pretty much one of the only constants in her life and a port in the storm of her recovery.
But when seemingly everyone seems against Fisher for what's portrayed as largely petty and misinformed reasons and he's portrayed over and over again as being the only one who truly cares about her, it's crossing an ethical line as an author (given that he's so much of the story, should he really be the one helping her tell it?) at best, and downright slimy at worst. It also makes the story about Fisher rather than about the victim, Kach herself.
The flat writing itself (and the over-the-top praise for her lawyer/ghostwriter) aren't the only factors that make the book feel amateurish. Typos abound (in one memorable sentence, an "old biddy" is described as an "old bitty") and in the disjointed photo section (which contains letters and cards from Tanya to her captor as well as his teenage son, pictures of the room in captivity, and the like), all references to Kach's captor are described as "the pedophile". Kach has a right to call her captor/rapist/abuser whatever she likes. But that's not how he's described in the text and it feels like the sort of spoonfeeding that's totally unnecessary. We're reading a book about how he (at the very least: there's speculation of Hose's other potential victims) groomed an abused fourteen-year-old and then assaulted her and subjected her to mental and psychical torture: we know he's horrible.
SIDE RANT! Also, I'm aware people grossly misuse that term and have watered it down, but words do have meanings and this one is important for preventing abuse. A "pedophile" refers to someone with a paraphilia in which they are sexually attracted to pre-pubescent children, whether they choose to act on it and abuse kids or not. A child molester (which Tom Hose, Kach's captor, most certainly is) is not necessarily a pedophile.
Why on earth does this matter, some argue? Well, it matters because the way a predator grooms an eight-year-old is different from the way they groom a fourteen-year-old, and in educating both kids and adults about warning signs, they're pretty different at different ages.
For one, Hose convinced Kach (when she was fourteen) that he was her "boyfriend" whereas had she been, say, seven, he would've probably convinced her he was her new father.
These distinctions matter because the goal should be preventing abuse and educating about abusers and their tactics. For older victims (meaning, post-puberty) like Kach, they face different challenges and their abusers (also like Kach's) have a far better chance of convincing them (as well as other people) that they're in a "relationship" and that they have some "responsibility" in their abuse. WORDS HAVE MEANINGS AND SINCE THE ULTIMATE GOAL SHOULD BE ABUSE PREVENTION, USE THE CORRECT WORDS. End rant!
The book is interrupted midway through from Kach's first-person account for her lawyer to have his turn speaking as himself instead of as Kach. I feared he would be given the entire rest of the book, but fortunately it's just limited to a dense legalese chapter that doubles as a laundry list of people who'd done Kach (and in some cases, Fisher) wrong, including truly questionable passages I'll quote later.
While I'd feared he'd be given the rest of the slim book, thankfully it's back to Kach (or rather, her lawyer/ghostwriter writing for her) and her account.
This book for a number of reasons isn't without value. For one, even through the insufferable filter of her lawyer/ghost-writer, it's a victim's account of a truly horrific, utterly preventable tragedy and how and why she survived.
She also puts her abuse and torment in a greater picture, pointing out that while the media is captivated with the emergence of missing children, they don't really bother with the enormous aftermath, in Kach's case, she was nearly homeless (her abusive to unreliable parents had not changed in her absence) and required disability assistance and medical care. Recovery is a messy, complicated journey and it's not what with which the media spotlight tends to bother.
And with that is the fact Kach is well aware she is far from the only person to emerge from childhood captivity. In her aftermath, she devotes feelings of recognition and sympathy to the famous cases of Shawn Hornbeck and Jaycee Duggard, particularly Hornbeck, who shares Kach's "susceptible background" and the fact many question why he didn't escape on his own if he could. Her sympathies are not limited to American stories. Japanese Fusako Sano (kidnapped at ten and held for nine years) which Kach feels is the most like her case, Austrian Natascha Kampuch, even cases stretching into history, like the first known child sexual abduction in nineteenth century Germany. Of the cases both before and after her own, though, one case in particular stands out to me, the well-publicized case of Elizabeth Smart.
Like Smart, Kach was subject to questionable sexual/religious education about "waiting until marriage" for sexual activity and "promising" to God. This faulty teaching then of course compounds the trauma felt by victims like Smart and Kach.
Unlike Smart, however, who has become something of an activist (or at least lent her voice to activism) against this sort of teaching, Kach appears to take a different approach. While expressing her grief, guilt, and shame that she was "breaking her promise to God" as she didn't feel she could "deny" her captor by allowing him to have sex with her the first night (before, their physical relationship had been only making out), Kach doesn't question why this sort of teaching is questionable (and why there's far more to being a good person than not having sex before marriage in certain Christian teachings).
Kach's faith no doubt helped her survive her ordeal and its aftermath. She talks about praying in captivity, and one of the first places she found community and autonomy when her captor allowed her out was in a church setting. The book ends with her conclusion that God is the one who kept her alive and "finally released me to live." All of this is fine.
But where it starts to become questionable is Kach apparently seeing nothing wrong with the promising to God about her sexual activity and a few other concerning passages.
Allowed to walk the streets somewhat more freely many years into her captivity after she was being passed off to her captor's parents as his live-in girlfriend (after years of living in his closet and relieving herself with a bucket), she is out on her own and stumbles across a thrift store associated with a local Methodist church.
The people in the thrift store were very nice. They greeted me and asked if they could offer me any help. When I had left the house that day, I had no idea that I would find my way into a church thrift store and suddenly felt self-conscious about my appearance.
"I'm sorry," I said, looking down at my short shorts. "I know it's disrespectful to be dressed this way in a thrift store associated with the church, but I didn't know I'd be coming here."
"Don't worry," said a smiling woman, and the others nodded agreement. "I'm Jennifer. You're welcome here." (pg 96)
She gets talking with Jennifer about her Methodist faith and feels so good, she returns many times to the store, where she's recognized by Jennifer who offers her a job and she becomes involved with the Methodist church. But Jennifer has a questionable response on one of Kach's first return trips to the store:
I noticed Jennifer needed help moving a table, and I offered to help.
"Thanks," she said. "You've been here before, haven't you? You wore shorts the first time and we were all worried." (pg 96)
Unless she's wearing shorts in the dead of winter when it's cold, why exactly was Jennifer "worried"? I would be more concerned by someone apologizing for their appearance in a thrift store mostly because it's associated with a church (in my vast experience with thrift stores, their associations to churches has no impact on the attire of the patrons, if the many, many patrons I've seen are any indication).
Once she's getting out more and developing friends (under a false name and false identity) in captivity, she also hangs around with an illegal gambling organization that "runs numbers" with the state lottery. Kach notes
Booking was not the only illegal avenue open to me for making money. I could have done far worse, as McKeesport offered plentiful opportunities in drug dealing, nude dancing, or prostitution, but I never engaged with these activities due to my spirituality. I would have rather lived under a bridge than sell my body or harm anyone with drugs. By contrast, I did not see booking as harmful to anyone.(pg 99)
I understand drug-dealing (although it would depend on the drugs she was selling) being in conflict with Christianity. But while I'd never tell a victim of sexual violence (ESPECIALLY as they are still experiencing that violence) that they should consider sex work, why is nude dancing and full-service sex work against Christianity but gambling ("games of chance" are mentioned in the Bible and most sects look down on it) is acceptable? For that matter, she notes she was "tempted with illegal gambling" as her "financial hardship mounted." She was literally in a life or death situation and struggling to survive, yet feels compelled to justify her choice in what's the least bad/traumatizing with her religion.
Why does this matter? Because victims' voices like Kach are frequently (and mostly rightly) elevated and this is sending a mixed message. Having a relationship with God and being proud of her faith for saving and sustaining her is one thing. Reinforcing the toxic messages that further punish victims of sexual violence is quite another.
I asked who's telling this story and whose story is this really. On the back cover, Kach has no author blurb, while her lawyer/ghostwriter gets a full blurb with a smiling photo (my first edition copy mentions his "plans to write other true-crime books" which he would later do). This book is primarily about Lawrence Fisher and what he means to Kach and what an utterly remarkable person he is and how misunderstood and maligned his amazing work continues to be. Which would be fine, were it not for the fact this is supposed to be the story of a victim of captivity and her survival, not about that victim's really amazing lawyer/ghostwriter (who is doing the literal writing about how amazing he is).
Some clue comes in the form of Kach talking about being recognized in public and considering cutting and dying her hair. She realized she wanted the same thing she wanted before her captivity, which was to just be left alone and allowed to exist. But now as an adult and a survivor, she doesn't want to have to deny her identity. Still, the thought of a book with her image on the cover sounded daunting and she felt "sad and lonely with my problems."
So might that be why this book is about her lawyer/ghostwriter and he gets the publicity? But she counters with the fact she never wanted to be controlled again, not even by her circumstances. Still, this might have some insight into why the book is focused the way it is.
If so, that's truly sad. There were and are truly better ways to afford Kach her privacy than her lawyer getting the spotlight, and it's a damn shame. Kach, despite what she still apparently believed at the time of this book's publication, didn't do anything wrong. She was a troubled fourteen-year-old who trusted a predator adult who should never have been allowed around children, failed again by a system that repeatedly failed her, an adult man who had groomed her and through her own fortitude she survived and escaped and built a life afterwards. That's a story worth telling and it's infuriating it's only secondary (if that) here. When we consider who's telling a story and who the story is really about, a child victim who becomes an adult survivor deserves to have their voice prioritized.
Notable:
I suppose I should've expected this book would be what it ultimately was given the foreward. Mystery writer Bonnie Hearn Hill writes a truly bizarre and questionable foreward where her focus, despite the title "A Story of Survival and Faith" is on (wait for it!) not Kach, but her lawyer/ghostwriter.
I soon learned that Lawrence Fisher, Law to most of us who know him well, is no ordinary attorney. He is a civil rights expert who writes poetry. He is a gifted man who pays as much attention to his heart as to his head. When he came into Tanya's life, she needed not only protection, but validation. He gave her both. Tanya had been held captive for ten horrifying years. Her self-esteem was nonexistent. Law was not only her attorney, but her friend. He was more than just her voice in the land of court. He also helped her to learn how to drive a car. He introduced her to his dogs. He enjoyed the Lenten fish fry at Tanya's church where they also worshiped together. Most of all, he cared about her. (pgs 11 and 12)
Where I really raised an eyebrow though, is this truly frightening passage:
He felt compelled to share Tanya's story. Perhaps, just as important, he and Tanya wanted to warn other women what can happen when you are too young, too angry, and too willing to trust the wrong man.(pg 11)
Except Tanya wasn't a "woman." She was a young woman, maybe, but literally fourteen-years-old. This is blaming an already abused child for her further abuse by being "too young, too angry, and too trusting." While I don't think it's a bad idea for young people to be educated about predators and situations like Kach's, it's by no means ever the fault or the responsibility of the child. It's the responsibility of the parents and other care-givers (like Kach's truly faulty school system and her negligent and abusive parents). This inadvertent blaming of a victim of child sexual abuse has no place in this book, almost as much as the heaps of praise the writer has for Kach's lawyer, but not for Kach herself.
The story you will read here is Tanya's, a teen whose life was stolen because nobody loved her enough to stop the tragic chain of events that took her from a troubled middle school student to a pedophile's captive. (pg 12)
See my above problem with the use of that term.
Also, "nobody loved her" is a curious statement when you're trying to make a case for bettering a broken system. She's a teen whose life was stolen because those who were entrusted to protect her repeatedly failed to stop the tragic chain of events.
[Tanya's] courage and faith helped her find her way out of the nightmare. With Law Fisher, she is ready to share her story.(pg 12)
Too bad her faith and courage is apparently just not as interesting to her lawyer/ghostwriter and this mystery author as how amazing her lawyer/ghostwriter is.
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When starting a new school, Kach meets new students:
As days went by [new school friend] Monica introduced me to other students, and I made some other new friends at Cornell. Still, the McKeesport students at this new school largely presented me with culture shock. There were black students, and I had never known anyone from that culture before. (pg 27)
You can just say you've never known any Black people before.
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And here we have her lawyer's chapter.
It's likely that her behavioral problems were a headache to school administrators. Her disappearance was probably a relief to [middle school principle Andrea] Abrams, [middle school administrative assistant Dan] Pacella, and [middle school guidance counselor Debbie] Burnett. (pg 126)
I'm not saying there weren't grave, potentially deadly mistakes made by school officials for which legal action should be taken and at the very least, far better policies put into place, but the idea of a suspicious disappearance (to the point of her face being put on a milk carton) of a middle-schooler being a "relief" to school administrators is an absurd, over-the-top statement to make. For one, given that her disappearance puts a spotlight on them and their actions, exactly what relief is that? For two, that's an incendiary charge that really cheapens a legitimate argument (that these people did not do their jobs protecting this student).
And though the faculty and staff at Cornell will not admit it, the impropriety between Hose and Tanya was clear by the time of her disappearance in February 1996. For instance, her study hall teacher, Donna Kane, actually dated Hose for a period of time. Whenever Ms. Kane knew that Hose was on his way to her room, she would freshen up her make-up. Tanya, likewise, would freshen her make-up. Noticing this, and likely rather jealous, Ms. Kane punished Tanya for putting on make-up in class. Instead, she should have been reporting her suspicious relationship with Hose to others in authority. (pg 127)
Where to even start with this mess? While Kach's relationship with her eventual captor might have been an open secret to some, it sounds like it was too clandestine to really be able to prove, and I'm sure a busy school district would've had enough pressing problems to dismiss it as gossip, if they heard about it at all. A male security guard in his late '30s having a relationship with a middle-schooler sounds too shocking to be true and exactly the sort of malicious gossip with no basis in truth kids love. A middle-schooler putting on make-up in class would get rebuked because that's not "appropriate classroom behavior" (too distracting and shows you're not doing your schoolwork!). It'd be an extreme stretch to connect that Kach was doing it timed to her eventual captor's appearance. And as for "jealousy"?! I'm practically speechless. A middleschooler is not an adult and they don't react to things the same way. If someone was truly fixing themselves up to impress an ex (which sounds exactly like the sort of thing middle school kids would laugh about and exaggerate), would a teacher really connect her own behavior to some middleschooler girl in her class? The "jealousy" is just more incendiary nonsense that distracts from real neglect and incompetence.
Something with a little more weight that is buried under bullshit, during her captivity, Kach's diary was found. In it, she mentions a "Tom" and describes his behavior, including a "lewd act". This diary, found by Kach's grandmother during her captivity, was given to police and even the FBI studied it. The diary had a scrap of paper with the name of a friend of Kach's captor, a woman who knew about their "relationship" and the fact Kach was with him. The scrap of paper also had her phone number. Kach's stepmother even saw and confirmed that the diary contained mentions of "Tom" before it was turned over to authorities. The diary now is mysteriously missing any mention of "Tom" (and we assume the slip of paper). It's noteworthy that according to this book and to official suspicion, Kach's captor might be a murderer, as there are other missing girls, including Kimberlie Krimm, whose body was found not far from his home, and whose death he admitted to mentioning to Kach. (After he was imprisoned, a jailhouse snitch claims Kach's captor confessed to the murder, and Kach was questioned by police, but had never seen any blood on him or anything suspicious, save for his nonchalant attitude about the murder and the fact he knew horrible and graphic details about the way the body was found that were not made public. No one has been charged in Krimm's murder.)
Other police mishaps abound, including an anonymous tip less than a year into captivity that Kach was being held at her captor's house. The police failed to actually look for Kach inside the house, though, despite Kach's captor's (bluffing) offer to let them search the whole house.
All of this would hit far harder than it does, had Fisher not wasted ridiculous and potentially defamatory outrage at lesser parties within the school.
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Kach has a troubling observation about her captor:
Police officers were kings in his eyes because of the power they wielded. (pg 31)
Final Grade: C-
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