Making a monster

The story of Walter, a convicted sex offender, continued to grip me as we worked to get it on screen. Kevin Bacon plays the paedophile returning to society after 12 years of incarceration, and his wife, Kyra Sedgwick, plays the good-hearted but defensive Vickie, who is drawn to this enigmatic man.

But what drew me to such a difficult subject? Paedophilia is not an obvious choice for any film-maker, and The Woodsman, in particular, because it humanises a character that most of us would deem a monster.

Yet the more I researched the issue, the more I felt this was a story that needed to be told. Several of the therapists I spoke to quoted a quite shocking estimate: that one in four Americans have been childhood victims of sexual abuse. I realised that I could no longer presume someone was not a victim. Yet little has been done in the mainstream to give voice to this subject.

The challenge for a writer is how to portray the perpetrator of such crimes as the human being that he is, without condoning his behaviour, sentimentalising his struggle, or def lecting sympathy from those who deserve it most.

For inspiration, I turned to Athol Fugard and his novel Tsotsi, Tim Robbins's film Dead Man Walking, and a Time magazine article about Timothy McVeigh. All of these stories had one thing in common: they look at the human behind the monster. They remind us that these people do not exist in a vacuum. They are a living, breathing part of our everyday society, and there are many small tragedies that occur within their own lives that culminate in the ultimate tragedy of the crime they commit.

With sex offenders, characters such as Walter are generally portrayed as purely evil, the villain that expires at the end of the film, allowing the audience to leave without worrying that they might really still be out there. But the reality is that they are not identifiable as something other. They are the man who lives next door, or stands next to you on the bus. They are family members, church-goers, camp counsellors. They cross all racial, economic and age ranges, and there is no clear way to identify them.

Before The Woodsman had its first public screening, I was most nervous about how victims would respond. They were the group to which I felt I owed the most sensitivity and responsibility.

Yet, from that first screening at Sundance last year, and after almost every screening I have attended since, I have been approached by a victim who has wanted to tell me that they felt their story had been told. These have been by far the most valuable reactions to me - and the most surprising. It was not obvious to me that this film would speak to the victims, until one considers the fact that most crimes do happen within the confines of the family or community. As an outsider it is easy to ask, why not just turn them in? If this were your father, brother, uncle - someone you deeply cared about - would it be so simple?

To me, this is where the real tragedy lies. So often the victim loves the person who is hurting them, and while they want the offence to stop, they do not want to hurt the person who is hurting them.

COUPLE this with the fact that these victims are young adolescents or children, and you realise that it is an unspeakable burden to expect them to have the strength to report the abuse. This is further compounded by the deep sense of shame and embarrassment, because the crime is of a sexual nature.

And one must not forget that many of the abusers have been victims themselves. Though this will never be an easy subject to talk about, I hope the film will spark dialogue and encourage people to speak out whether they be victims, offenders or people who fear they may be at risk of offending.

In The Woodsman I pose more questions than answers. While this may be frustrating for some, it was the only way I could honestly address the material. Like other diseases, such as alcoholism and drug addiction, there is no cure for paedophilia.

There is no one reason why one person becomes an offender. There is no guarantee they won't reoffend. This is the struggle we all have to live with in addressing this problem in our societies. But as we live in a time where compassion for others seems to be on the wane, I found myself compelled to explore a subject that ultimately asks us, as a society, to what degree are we willing to forgive?

All I know is that I do not want to live in a world in which I cannot believe in the possibility for change. I am willing to live with the uncomfortable contradiction that I despise Walter for what he has done, but I admire him for what he is trying to become - a better human being.

The Woodsman opens on 25 February.