My Dark Vanessa: A Novel Kindle Edition

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell:Russell presents the story of Vanessa Wye, a fifteen-year-old who becomes ensnared in the web cast by devious, psychologically wily forty-something English teacher, Jacob Strane, when Vanessa enrolls in an exclusive New England boarding school.The story of Vanessa’s psychological destruction is dark, disturbing, and disheartening but insightfully accurate. Vanessa is sharply precocious but socially insecure as are many bright adolescents. Strane is sufficiently knowledgeable to recognize that Vanessa is a potential accomplice for a sexual liaison. Russell’s portrayal of the careful psychological grooming of the victim by the predator and the culpability of the prey is spot-on. Also illuminating is the portrayal of the romantic need and emotional power of the youthful victim that are energized when the victim, Vanessa, is forced to protect her lover and her own view of the romance when the improper liaison finally comes to light.Many readers will (and have) find fault with Russell’s Vanessa being disappointed in Vanessa’s inability to see and accept how badly she was used and to admit how despicable the behavior of her lover. Some readers also complain that Russell presents no admirable characters---not her parents, not her school administrators, not her other classmates, not her post-high school boyfriend. They miss the reality in such cases of pedophilic accomplishment. The youthful victim is a victim because of the perfect storm of events and key figures in the victim’s milieu.There is, in fact, one shining knight in Vanessa’s eventual resurrection and that is Ruby, Vanessa’s psychiatrist. Ruby is aware that Vanessa’s recovery will take time, time to develop trust, time to strengthen what little positive self-image and ego strength still remain, and the ability to make a timely but necessary confrontation of Vanessa’s wall of defense. The end of the book gives hope that Ruby and Vanessa will find success in opening a new and brighter chapter in Vanessa’s life.Russell’s ability to capture the psycho-sexual hold that the pedophilic predator has on his/her victim makes for the accuracy and the allure of her telling. Two passages at the end of the book aptly illustrate her writing power. Vanessa is twenty-something, her life a mess, cannot successfully manage a mundane job, she hoards, her apartment and her personal appearance disheveled, has many meaningless sexual hook-ups (all often typically the result of a disastrous adolescent sexual experience), and one day spots Strane taking a classroom of students on an art museum tour:I’m twenty-five when it happens. Walking to work, wearing my black suit and black flats, I cross Congress Street and there he is, standing with a dozen kids in front of the art museum, teenagers, students, mostly girls. I watch from a distance, clutching my purse to my side.He lets the museum door close behind him and I go to work, sit at the concierge desk and imagine him moving through the rooms, trailing the bright-haired girls. In my mind, I follow along behind, don’t let him out of my sight. This, I think is probably what I’ll do for the rest of my life: chase after him and what he gave me. It’s my fault. I was supposed to have grown out of it by now. He never promised to love me forever.The next night he calls. It’s late, on my walk home from work, when the only lit-up windows downtown are the bars and pizza-by-the-slice places. The sight of his name on the screen makes my knees give out. I have to lean against a building when I answer.The sound of him grabs me by the throat. “Did I see you?” he asks. “Or was it a ghost?”He starts calling weekly, always late at night. We talk a little about who I am now—the hotel job, the never-ending parade of boys, my mom’s pursed-lip disappointment in me, my dad’s diabetes and bad heart—but mostly we talk about who I used to be. Together we remember the scenes in the little office behind the classroom, at his house, in the station wagon parked on the side of an old logging road, the rolling blueberry barren where I climbed on top of him, the chickadee call and apiary drone drifting in through the open car widow. Our details pool together. He and I re-create it vividly, too vividly.When he moves away from remembering me and begins to talk about the girls in his classes, I follow him. He describes the pale underbellies of their arms when they raise their hands, the tendrils that escape their ponytails, the flush that travels down their necks when he tells them they’re precious and rare. He says it’s unbearable, the way they drip with beauty. He tells me he calls them up to his desk, his hand on their knees. “I pretend they’re you,” he says, and my mouth waters as though a bell’s been rung, signaling a long-buried craving. I roll onto my stomach, shove a pillow between my legs. Keep going, don’t stop.Russell’s writing is almost lyrical, and you have to stop and remind yourself that she is describing the thoughts of a pedophile and the now indelible mind/body entrancement he has worked on the psyche of his victim.Richard R.

read. Hard, all the way through, I felt for Vanessa the entire way. She’s suffering from the worst case of Stockholm Syndrome and PTSD I’ve ever read. I don’t think that ever goes away. I wish the book had ended with her going back to grad school, finally telling the story to the public. But, she’s defined by what happened to her still ensconce in the illusion that she was a willing participant.No 14 or 15 year old girl can possibly be, no matter how much she believes it. She has the body of a woman, the beginnings of desire and knowledge of the new power of her body, but still a child halfway to her brain being fully developed yet even now in her 30’s she’s still wrapped up in this awful event. The school got away with it, without her story the other girls who were also abused are footnotes. It’s never clear even if she was his first, I hardly think so given his age, the vasectomy, he knew what he was and his only concern, ever, was for himself, all the rest window dressing to keep her quiet.This happens far too often, not just with teachers, CPS files are full of worse abuse but the careful tedious grooming men like this use to make children feel desired, wanted, is a powerful as they are just discovering themselves as sexual creatures as well as women with so much to offer the world. All taken away by a predator. Yes, there are awful truths about trafficking, addiction and worse by the endless desire of far too many men for commercial sex with children. The five Tanner stages identify the various ages at which men begin gratifying themselves at the cost of ruining a child’s life in ways that no amount of therapy will ever fix. Their lives forever defined, defiled, by the toxic males who practice their deviance and refine it.The story is complex, her choices understandable, the consequences unthinkable and life long, she will be thinking about this when she’s 80. I don’t know that a healthy relationship, marriage, children is ever possible for a woman who’s been abused this way, even if she doesn’t think it was abuse because coming into her sexuality was so scarred by the abuse she suffered. I want those schools ruined, I want those who knew and did nothing ruined. Their silence, complicity nearly as bad as the abuser’s actions. Things may be better now, but don’t kid yourselves, this is still going on. There are still many men, and a few women, who get into teaching and other jobs working with children with this as their motive. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of great people working with children appropriately but these monsters still walk among us. The Me Too movement didn’t end that. There are stories every week of another teacher, pastor, youth worker and others being charged with heinous crimes against children still now, in 2025.I don’t know the answer to ending this endless cycle, but I wish I did. Mandatory reporting is a step but it’s not stopped it. I don’t know what will. It breaks my heart that I don’t know, that no one seems to. A dark, sad story still being played out the world over. Well written, recommended because the more aware people are the better we can do for our children even if that is only slowing this down until we become civilized enough that this is simply unthinkable. Tears for Vanessa and every child who has or will be part of this story or are already.

This book was well written on such a difficult topic. I know some people judge the character, but what I'm well aware of how easy it is to look at something one way when we haven't experienced it, and how different things could be if we had. Never say never is a good way to live.I have read other books on the topic and haven't been pulled in the way I had with this one. I empathize with the character and see her point of view. The writing is well done and it seems to come from personal experience even though the author has denied that it's autobiographical, though she had possibly a similar experience.