Dr. Bruno Scherz treated me for three years beginning in 1969. He succeeded in restoring my sense of feeling, which had been utterly destroyed during the attack. As a result of the work Dr. Scherz did for me, I very suddenly began to feel the humiliation and the fear that the assault implanted deeply within me [redacted]. I felt overwhelming terror, which led to my hospitalization at the Massachusetts General Hospital for a little over a month. Though I pleaded with Dr. Scherz to continue treating me, he refused, citing both his concern for regression and my need to enter into group therapy. Several years later, in 1980, I asked Dr. Wool to contact Dr. Scherz and ask for any documentation he may have pertaining to the treatment he adminstered me. I thought it might help Dr. Wool with her efforts to treat me. According to Dr. Wool, Dr. Scherz stated that he had no records and that all his records had been burned in a fire. Though I felt it very unlikely that Dr. Scherz would provide me with any documentation, I sent him the following letter. As it turned out, Dr. Scherz would not even acknowledge treating me.
August 20, 1997
Dear Dr. Scherz:
[redacted]
I am pursuing a very modest claim against the Boys & Girls Club of Boston in an attempt to persuade them to provide me with the funding I need to heal a massive psychological injury I suffered at their hands in 1963. I believe that this injury caused me to develop Borderline Personality Disorder. Since you are one of the physicians who treated me for BPD, I am writing you to ask for the documentation I need to prove to the Boys Club that I did indeed suffer this disorder and that it caused me to have many problems with my life during the time you knew me.
As a courtesy, I would like to narrate for you the history of events which now prompts this correspondence.
Following my years of therapy with you, I bounced around looking for another therapist. Finally, in 1978,1 found Dr. Carol Wool at the Mass General Ambulatory Care Center, and she and I worked very hard twice a week for four years, until 1982. Regrettably, our work did nor [sic] succeed. Afterwards, I continued on my own in an effort to uproot the cause of my torment. Eventually, I isolated my most fundamental problem to recurring and uncontrollable feelings of overwhelming humiliation, fear, self-abomination and pain. With that, I also discovered within myself a profound antipathy toward these feelings, and I worked very hard to overcome this antipathy. After I succeeded, I then had to learn to allow myself to be moved by these intensely tumultuous emotions, and, eventually, I did indeed regain my sense of feeling.
There were many more steps I had to learn along the way, and I endured considerable poverty in order to do my work. Beginning in 1990, I worked intermittently for perhaps two months at a time. Then, in January of 1996, I came into a sum of money that afforded me an opportunity to work uninterrupted for six months, and I made a tremendous breakthrough. Five months later, in May of 1996, I very suddenly became transported into the horrifying reality which had caused me to feel these devastating emotions in the first place, and I learned that I had been the victim of a brutally sadistic assault by two men who worked at a day camp I attended at the Charlestown Boys’ Club in 1963, when I was eleven years old. This assault included torture, rape, and a threat of imminent death (being pushed out of a high-rise window).
Unfortunately, though I succeeded in discovering my demons, my funds ran out before I could finally extirpate them, and I continue to live with the haunting torment that brought me to your office on Charlesgate West in 1969. Obviously, having come as far as I have, I fully intend to go the entire distance — so that I may begin a new life and pursue a new hope. All that prevents me from doing so is the funding I need to do my work.
In October of last year, I wrote to the Boys’ Club and told them what had happened to me in July of 1963. They were shocked and incredulous. And they demanded proof of the crime. One of the men who assaulted me was my group leader in the day camp. He accompanied myself and the other boys in my group on our field trips. There were a few occasions on those field trips when this man did some mean things to me. In turn, these incidents made an impression on me, and so I had a vivid memory of his face. I set out to identify him. With a little luck and a lot of leg work, I found a trove of photographic documentation which identifies most of the employees and day campers at the Stay-At-Home camp in 1963, and I obtained the name of my assailant. One week later, I found him living on the South Shore. Last week, my attorney wrote to him and presented my allegations. Since I seek recovery and nothing else, I have asked my attorney to offer him absolute immunity in return for his cooperation, and I am hopeful that he will see the wisdom in my offer. However, since I cannot rely on him, I have also had to find the other boys who attended the camp that summer because at least two of them were victimized alongside me. I have found more than forty of the sixty-five.
In addition to proof of the crime, the Boys’ Club is also asking for proof of the injury. Last month, I met with Dr. Wool to ask for her help in this matter. It has been twelve years since we met, but Dr. Wool remembers much, and she is enthusiastic about helping. Incredibly, Dr. Wool remembers my telling her that, when I was a boy, two men forced myself and some other boys into a room adjoining a gym at the Boys’ Club. She remembers my telling her that these men made us disrobe and that they made us sing songs in front of them while they ridiculed and humiliated us. However, that is all she remembers because that was the extent of my memory up until May of 1996. After the humiliation, the assault got much worse, and the horror made me lose “mental consciousness” of the assault, which, in turn, severely limited my memory of the event. Dr. Wool will also tell the Boys’ Club that, in the last few weeks before therapy ended, I told her that I was having a premonition of being raped as a little boy. At the time, the premonition was not accompanied by any imagery or thought, and so I had no inkling what it meant or if it was founded in any real experience. Concurrent with that premonition, I was becoming increasingly agitated, and Dr. Wool administered anti-psychotic medication in an effort to bring me under control. The effort failed, and I terminated the therapy.
Obviously, I steadfastly believe that this criminal assault caused me to suffer Borderline Personality Disorder, and I am contacting an expert on BPD in an effort to prove my hypothesis to the Boys’ Club. Please understand that I am not asking you to help me to prove anything more than what you learned about me during the years 1969 to 1972. Specifically, it would be very helpful if you would merely draft a report to “Whom It May Concern” stating the name of the psychological disorder I was diagnosed as having, the symptoms of that disorder which I exhibited in my behavior during the time you treated me, and the problems I encountered with life as a direct result of BPD.
Obviously, I will need to speak with you before you write anything. I will telephone your office beginning the week of August 25. If I am unable to reach you, I will leave a number where you can reach me. That number is [redacted]. I can be reached there any day but Tuesday or Wednesday from 1:30 PM to 7:00 PM EST.
I hope I have impressed upon you what it means for me to persuade the Boys’ Club to come forth with the help I seek to heal the wounds I suffered at their hands. Insofar as you treated me for three years during the time when my illness was just beginning to show itself, your statement will bear substantial influence upon the Club’s consideration of my plea. I implore you to make whatever effort is necessary to deliver me the help which only you can provide.
Thank you very much.
Sincerely,
[signed]
James Chester
I telephoned Dr. Scherz’s office and made arrangements with his secretary to call back at a specific time on an agreed date, which I did. Dr. Scherz first denied knowing me and then denied knowing the issues we had tried to work out. He also claimed that all of his records had been shredded. In a conversation with Dr. Wool almost twenty years earlier, according to Dr. Wool herself, he had remembered me well, recalling my intense interest in Nietzschean scholarship. At that time, he claimed that all of my records had been destroyed in a fire. In any case, despite his claim that he did not know me and had no records of having treated me, during our telephone conversation that afternoon, Dr. Scherz agreed to write a simple statement attesting to the fact that he had indeed treated me from 1969 to 1972. At some point afterwards, when I wrote to him again and asked him to forward me the letter, he ignored me.