""…wonderfully intricate…"

John Doyle The Globe and Mail

From the outside looking in, author Donald D'Haene's childhood hardly seemed unconventional. He grew up in a patriarchal family with his mother, father and two siblings. Home life was strict and regimented, his father was clearly the master of the house. But as a devout Jehovah's Witness, this was hardly out of the ordinary.

On the surface, Donald's youth would resonate with anyone raised in the slow paced sanctity of a small town. Years later, Donald would reveal a sad tale of survival, struggle and strife in his book, Father's Touch - his memoirs about enduring years of sexual abuse at the hands of his father, subsequently retold in this documentary - "Family Secrets - When Nobody's Looking"

Documentary Awards

* Gold Medal Houston Film Festival
* Honourable Mention Columbus Film & Video Festival
* Bronze Finalist Award 2003 Telly Awards

"A work of rare power"

Mike Lew Author, Victims No Longer

Sexual abuse survivor Donald D'Haene knows he is one of the lucky ones. Legions of pedophile victims remain silent, afraid, isolated. They don't have to. Surviving sexual child abuse within a Jehovah's Witness family more than two decades ago, Donald D'Haene and his siblings refused to remain silent about the horrors of sexual and emotional abuse. They told Elders of the Jehovah's Witnesses, the police, doctors, therapists and took their abusive perpetrator to court.

How did that journey of sexual recovery unfold? D'Haene has written a memoir of his experience which may benefit victims, rape survivors, professionals and educators. Father's Touch details his father's physical, sexual and emotional abuse of his siblings, his mother, and himself; his experience with faith, educators, sexual orientation, therapy and a trial.

Begin then, one family's decade long journey of sexual exploitation. Four siblings, all victims of the same molester, suffer the manipulations of an abusive religious zealot whose lust for power and control robs them of their childhoods. Father's Touch portrays much more than a somber male sexual abuse victim's memoir.

Emerging from his realm of victimhood, the soul of Donald D'Haene draws us upward into the light. In his teens, Donald realized there would be no triumph without a struggle. His chilling portrayal reveals that child sexual abuse, particularly of boys, was and is yet today clumsily handled.

Not only did this boy's first male authority figure fail him mightily, but so did the various "systems" he trusted; the Jehovah's Witness faith, the Elders, the police and the courts. How was survival possible? In Father's Touch, D'Haene's narrative leaves readers grateful most of us grew up with "Father Knows Best" and equally grateful he's telling his very different and penetrating story of surviving male sexual abuse.

Father's Touch maps the breadth and depth of a father's perversion, his children's rebellion, the public revelation, and the family's struggle for acceptance and self-esteem. The author includes court transcripts regarding the sexual abuse case, plus comments from a father unfit. Here, a pedophile uses the Jehovah's Witness faith to subject his children to years of abuse. The Jehovah's Witnesses, the police, the courts and therapy all play their roles for good or ill as Donald D'Haene recovers as a survivor of child sexual abuse.