‘Fox Chase Boy’ Documentary Defies Child Sex Abuse Code of Silence: ‘Silence Is How They Win’

variety.com:

Will Tizard Contributor When Gerad Argeros took to the stage naked on his first tour of what would become the film “Fox Chase Boy,” it’s fair to say even tough Philly audiences weren’t quite prepared. “This is about my body,” he told them, with a rising sense of anger and urgency. “Embodied experience, where you remember everything that happened – it’s in your body.” Argeros, who at this point has developed the act into a short film with an eye toward a future feature or possible series, didn’t know how to relate his story at first, he confesses.

So the stripping away of both conventions and garments instinctively felt like clearing a slate. He didn’t want audiences to come into his storytelling with prior expectations of what a child sexual abuse survivor is like, says Argeros. “This is about trauma,” he says in the film version screening at the Ji.hlava Intl.

Documentary Film Festival. “I’m not out to destroy the idea that my 97-year-old grandmother has about Catholicism. I just want it to be acknowledged that all the bad shit happened.” Argeros was one of what is now believed to be hundreds of former altar boys and cross bearers in the Philadelphia parishes who were sexually abused by priests.

Official totals don’t exist because many have never come forward publicly but the church has acknowledged the issue and in some cases paid out millions in settlements.