Renowned Family Therapist Cites Oscar-Nominated "Spotlight" As "A Rare Motion Picture Which Has Had Immediate Remedial Effect On Abused Children And Has Already Made The World A Safer Place"

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 9. 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- "Why can't Hollywood do this more often?" asks famed psychotherapist and family therapist Stacy Kaiser whose book "How To Be A Grown-Up" and frequent appearances as an expert on national television have established her authority on childhood abuse which distorts adult lives.  

"The riveting motion picture 'Spotlight,' which so powerfully has disclosed the extent of pedophilic abuse under the cover of priestly authority, has already been literally a God-send to perhaps tens of thousands of abused young people, their families and the children whose future abuse this film will prevent," Kaiser reports. Her comments were issued in support of two key organizations, SNAP (Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests) and Bishop Accountability, which assist victims of such abuse and who have found "Spotlight" an important ally in that effort.

Kaiser, who has treated dozens of young people subjected to such abuse and parents afflicted with guilt for having failed to discern or believe their children's living horror, notes that "I have seen the immediate impact 'Spotlight' has achieved in lifting the terrible burden of perceived stigmatization and guilt which ties thousands of young people's lives into psychic knots.

"I know from the parents who have sought my help and from other experts in the field the vast increase of sexually oppressed young people who are now sharing  with their families the shame, fear and self-doubt which these terrible incursions… revealed by this film to have flourished under the protection of church policy throughout the world… have scarred and limited their lives.

"The greater tragedy, if that is possible, is that for every child who reports abuse to parents or other adult authority, there are hundred and more likely thousands who cannot climb over their own irrational but paralyzing sense of guilt to reveal how they had been afflicted and used and terrified into silence," Kaiser states.

The long-time family trauma practitioner in addressing such stresses "which literally tear families apart" as she puts it, says she has recently seen breakthroughs in the attitudes of "young patients who had struggled with the hidden dark place the abuse created and the dark paths into which it had directed their lives. 'Spotlight' has very definitely shed light into that darkness and even defined the way to rescue."

Kaiser says she understands Hollywood now is dealing with its own need to diversify, "but it must explore the great number of tragic circumstances its films can explore and help resolve as 'Spotlight' has explored and already helped resolve the problem of sexual enslavements by childhood's authority figures. This film reveals all of the personal and social good our motion pictures can and so rarely do promote."

The family therapist asserts that "not only individuals but entire families have already been set on the road to recovery by 'Spotlight's" revelations. Parents tell me they will now explore how such possible turpitude could be destroying precious childhood. No longer, they tell me, will they be so apt to turn the deaf ear."

SOURCE Stacy Kaiser