CHOSEN

A horrifyingly unforgettable memoir of sexual abuse and its lifelong consequences.

Mills first experienced trauma after the early death of his father, who suffered from both nerve disease and mental illness. In late boyhood, still grieving, he fell into a trap carefully laid by a summer-camp manager. The author’s descriptions of his abuse are uncomfortably graphic, and readers will join him in his reaction to the first of them: “I closed my eyes and prayed. I’m not here. I’m not here.” The perpetrator insinuated himself into Mills’ family life, convincing his mother and stepfather to allow Mills to go on vacation with him to the Bahamas, where yet more molestation occurred. Finding relief along various avenues as he grew into adulthood—from attending yeshiva to taking a pharmacopeia of illegal drugs and committing small-scale crimes—Mills drifted: “My Jewish soul—Shlomo’s soul—had found its way home,” he writes. “But Stephen kept checking the doors for escape routes.” Eventually, with the support of Margaret Mead, Mills undertook graduate studies even as his molester rose in the world of intergroup summer camps. Mills became a counselor, and witnessing the same molester lure young men into lairs at one such camp spurred him to bring the criminal to justice. That effort, which occupies the latter third of this visceral, gripping book, is both an endless game of cat and mouse and the subject of a narrative full of disappointments. The FBI, promising at first, failed to deliver, since Mann Act provisions had expired, even though Mills provided testimonials from numerous of his contemporaries that they, too, had been abused. The late lawyer and thriller author Andrew Vachss also tried to help, to no avail. It was only through civil actions after the perpetrator died, targeting employers that knew of and tolerated the abuse, that some possible form of retribution emerged, a matter unresolved at the end of this powerful, closely observed account.

A vitally important book for fellow survivors—and anyone seeking justice for victims.