By RUTH WALKER, U.S. BOOKS EDITOR
Andrea Leeb was just four and a half years old when her mother, Marlene, saw something so shocking, it turned her world black.
Diagnosed with ‘hysterical blindness’, it took four weeks and an extended stay in a New York hospital before she could eventually see clearly again.
By the time she returned to the family apartment in Queens, Marlene seemed to have no memory of the traumatic event that had so suddenly stolen her sight.
But it was seared in Andrea’s young mind forever.
Now aged 67, married, and living in California, she told the Daily Mail how that night in late September 1962 led to a suicide attempt at age five, years of self-harm, and a lifetime of shame.
‘I remember my father putting me in the bathtub,’ she said, ‘and I remember him taking the washcloth away and telling me to “let Daddy touch you with his hands.”
‘Of course, I was so young, I didn’t know what exactly was going on.’
But she added: ‘His breathing was the thing that scared me the most.’
One of the very few photographs that exist from Andrea’s past (pictured with her mother when Andrea was a baby)
Andrea spoke to the Daily Mail about the trauma that led her to become a writer and an advocate for sexual abuse survivors
At that moment, Marlene walked into the bathroom and let out a piercing scream: ‘David!’
‘My mother’s voice sounded the way it did when she thought I was about to run into traffic,’ Andrea wrote in her new memoir, Such a Pretty Picture.
‘My father stood up and, as he turned to face her, she screamed again. A scream without words; sharp and shrill, more like a howl than a scream. I’d never heard anyone scream like that.’
As Marlene collapsed, ‘like a paper doll’, into her husband’s arms, Andrea could only watch in horror.
‘I thought we’d killed her,’ she said. ‘I thought my father and I had done something.’
She added: ‘He told me it was my fault.’
Marlene later claimed she’d simply been alarmed that the bath water was cold. Gradually, her period of blindness became almost like a family joke; something to laugh about over dinner with David, Andrea, and her younger sister Sarai, then two.
But for Andrea, it was anything but.
Now aged 67 and married, Andrea lives and works in California
The abuse stopped for a while, replaced instead by slaps and beatings at the hands of her furious mother.
It got so bad that, by the time she was five, Andrea attempted to end her life. She stuffed cotton balls and toilet paper deep into her ears, nostrils and mouth, plugging any hole where she thought air could get in, then taped it shut.
She then closed her eyes and waited to die.
Her mother found her that time and hugged her tight, sobbing: ‘My poor baby. What have I done to you?’
Marlene never slapped her again. But a few months later, her father’s sexual assaults began again in earnest, and continued until Andrea was 13.
By that time, she was cutting herself regularly and was plagued by night terrors that woke the entire house.
As a last resort, her parents agreed to send her to a psychiatrist.
It was risky, said Andrea, adding: ‘I think [my father] knew I wouldn’t tell. He was so arrogant.’
However, something had happened recently; a new development that terrified her so much, she was ready to risk the shame that might come from telling someone what was really happening when her father came to her in the night, waking her with a wink.
‘At that point, he’d never penetrated me,’ she said. ‘He touched me with his fingers and had me touch him.’
But one night, coming home from a business trip while her mother was still out of the house, he had tried to kiss her – an open-mouthed kiss full on the lips.
‘He’d never done that,’ said Andrea, ‘and I was so scared that he was going to take things to the next level.’
She said she told the psychiatrist just enough – not the full extent of the abuse – to scare her father. He never touched her again, but the damage was already done.
‘I hated myself so much,’ said Andrea, ‘and I was so ashamed of what happened. It was like a thread that ran through my life. And it certainly impacted my relationship with men and with sex.
‘I didn’t trust anybody. The closest I came to trusting somebody was my sister.’
Her sense of self-worth was so battered, she didn’t report it when boys gang raped her and violated her body over and over.
Uma Thurman and Juliette Lewis starred in a movie about hysterical blindness
‘With time,’ she wrote, ‘I’d come to realize that my father had groomed me not only for himself but for the boys at the party, the boys in the woods, and all of the other boys and men that followed.’
It was only years later – at the age of 33 and studying to become a lawyer – that the past she’d buried in a place she never visited threatened to overwhelm her completely.
Riding a crowded New York subway, she felt a large hand with thick fingers creep inside her top. As the anonymous man squeezed her breast tight, she screamed. But by the time she turned around, all the faces of the men behind her looked blank.
It was just another random subway moment, she reasoned. But it had opened the Pandora’s Box of her past and she felt her physical and mental health crumbling.
It took years of therapy – including a short stay in a residential rehab facility – for her to fully come to terms with the abuse of her past.
And, contrary to many people’s advice – include her therapists – she made the conscious decision to continue a relationship with her parents, despite their categorical denial of her claims.
‘I was told it wasn’t the healthiest thing,’ she said. ‘And my response is, “It’s complicated. So complicated.”
‘I loved my mother. She gave me something – I know it in my heart – and it gave me the resilience to survive.’
Andrea went to live with her mother in her final weeks, when she made her surprising confession
Six years after her father’s death in 1997, her mom chose to stop taking the heart meds that had kept her alive. Andrea went to live with her in her final weeks.
Close to the end, her mother said: ‘I have something to tell you. You have to promise me you won’t cry.’
She paused as Andrea waited. ‘I was a terrible mother,’ she said. ‘I should have left your father.’
With that, Andrea understood what she’d always suspected. That her mother had known about the abuse all along. That, long after she’d been literally blind, she remained willfully blind to the pain of her daughter.
‘I felt so bad,’ said Andrea, ‘because she was so fragile by then.
‘I guess I might have felt guilty, too. All those years, and it was still my desire to have a normal family.’
But she added: ‘It gave me the ability to breathe.’
Andrea at a book signing event in Portland – she is donating part of the proceeds of her book to local rape treatment centers
Now working as an advocate for other survivors of sexual abuse, she is donating all the proceeds of her memoir to RAINN, an anti-sexual violence nonprofit, and to local rape treatment centers.
But in all her work in the field, she has never heard of anyone else who has experienced ‘hysterical blindness.’
‘It’s such a crazy thing,’ she said.
Board certified psychiatrist Sue Varma, who treated trauma patients following 9/11 and has seen examples of hysterical blindness in her own practice, admitted that, while the condition is rare, it is not unheard of.
In fact, it was the subject of a 2002 TV movie of the same name starring Gena Rowlands, Uma Thurman and Juliette Lewis.
‘What used to be referred to as “hysterical blindness” or “conversion disorder” is now called Functional Neurological Symptom Disorder (FNSD),’ explained Dr Varma.
‘In this condition, overwhelming psychological stress can be expressed through neurological symptoms – such as temporary blindness, paralysis, or seizures – even though no identifiable medical cause can be found.
‘These symptoms are very real,’ she added, ‘but the underlying mechanism is psychological rather than structural.
‘It’s also important to emphasize that nothing about this condition diminishes the seriousness of child sexual abuse or its lifelong impact on survivors. Survivors deserve compassion and support, and perpetrators must be held accountable.’
Such a Pretty Picture by Andrea Leeb is published by She Writes Press
