Helplessness and Hope Addressing the Hidden Impact of Family Abuse on Brothers

Keeper Catran Whitney

[00:00:00] Ed Watters: To overcome, you must educate. Educate not only yourself, but educate anyone seeking to learn. We are all Dead America, we can all learn something. To learn, we must challenge what we already understand. The way we do that is through conversation. Sometimes we have conversations with others, however, some of the best conversations happen with ourselves. Reach out and challenge yourself; let’s dive in and learn something new right now.

Today, we are speaking with Keeper Catran Whitney. He is an author, [00:01:00] his book, Helplessness. This is a fascinating and riveting story. And I want to tell people up front, this might trigger many people. So grab your coffee, beverage, and let’s get into this gripping tale. Keeper, could you please introduce yourself and let people know just a little bit about you, please?

[00:01:24] Keeper Catran Whitney: Well, I appreciate, uh, having me here on Dead America. Uh, as you said, you got the name right, the pronunciation right. So kudos to you. Catran Whitney. I am the author of the book, Helplessness, the Emotional Health Challenges Brothers Experience once We Learn Our Sisters Have Been Sexually Abused By Our Parents. It is a brother’s story in, from, in large perspective, but it’s also my family’s story of what me and my three brothers experienced once we learned what happened and how we were locked [00:02:00] out of the conversation. And the journey to go from helplessness

to what is Hopefulness, which is the book I’m writing now, to Happiness, which will be the third book in the series. So you get a, you get a look inside of, of what happens. And so there’s that exploration and you’ll also get answers to what happened and part of the healing journey that it took for me to get through my sisters and find who I am as a brother in the process.

[00:02:30] Ed Watters: You know, that’s the very difficult part and I, up front, want to commend you for the journey that you’ve taken and it’s very inspirational for many of us. I, I myself, I’m traversing this story per se in my own world. Slightly different, but the waters are navigable the same, and it’s devastating. If, if you live within sexual [00:03:00] abuse in any form, the story gets pretty deep quickly. Let’s start off at the very beginning when, you know, before things were uncovered for you. You were right at the doorstep of fame and fortune with your entire family and that must have been a great feeling at the time. And then you get called into this family meeting and it devastates everything. Could you walk us through those early years?

[00:03:40] Keeper Catran Whitney: Sure. I come from a family of ten, four boys, four girls, my mother and my stepfather. Uh, my biological father, uh, my mother left him. Um, we lived in Portland, Oregon in my early years, so an area I imagine that you’re pretty familiar with, Ed. And so, uh, we leave Portland [00:04:00] and my mother, uh, meets this guy and he ends up becoming our stepfather. We were incredibly poor. I lived in twenty-one different places before I moved out, homeless three times. I went to eleven grade schools before I graduated high school, my life was a constant turmoil. In 1971, uh, we could barely pay an eighty dollar a month rent.

And so I was used to going into the streets and getting bottles and turning them in for a pound of ground beef, you know, you get the money for those, or a bag of rice. Also, during 1971, The Jackson 5 were really, really big. I mean, they were everywhere. It was Who’s Loving You, ABC, I want you back. I mean, it was everywhere. And every little kid in the world, not just in America, wanted to be Michael Jackson and The Jackson 5. My mother, absolutely, my mother, Um, who is also a great singer, got together with her brother and sister and they started singing. But as good as they were, they couldn’t make enough money to make ends [00:05:00] meet.

So one day, she hears her kids singing around the house, singing The Jackson 5. And she stopped and she said, Would you guys like to sing? Because as a singing family, we could make more money. We’re like, Yeah, of course. The next thing you know, The Whitney Family is born. Me, my three brothers, my four sisters, my mother, my stepfather, we are singing in after hour clubs all over Los Angeles. My life was, at the two o’clock in the morning, get up, go to school, rehearse, do it all over again. One day we are singing, uh, at rehearsal and the phone rings and my mother says, Shh. And she picks up the phone and she says, Hello? Who? And she looks at us and says, Michael Jackson’s on the phone. Yeah, that Michael Jackson’s calling our house, soon to be king of pop.

He wants to speak to the brother directly underneath me, child number four. I am number two. My brother gets on the phone and says, [00:06:00] Hello? All excited. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And hangs up the phone and then screams and says, Michael Jackson said he’s heard of us. Said he’s heard I sing and dance just like him. Keep going, we’ll get there someday. That’s 1971. Jump cut to 1977, and we are everywhere. We’re doing concerts, we’re in magazines, we’re doing TV shows. We’re with United Artists Records, we have made the coveted Billboard’s Top 100 not once, not twice, but three times. Two singles and an album. Everything Michael Jackson said is coming to fruition,

we are hot. It’s also the same year Motown, who had The Jackson 5 three years earlier because they had lost them to Epic Records, had just completed their exhaustive three year search to find the family group to replace them. And guess who they landed on? Us, we were the group. Where they had one lead singer, we had nine. My mother and all [00:07:00] eight of us kids could lead sing. We all sing background. Me and my brothers, we all played instruments. We were everywhere. Motown had just picked us to replace them. So as far as I was concerned, I was about sixteen or seventeen, the bus was outside, the engine was warm, the seats were warm, all we had to do was step onto the bus and we were gone.

No more abject poverty, no more having to depend on the record company to pay our rent, to feed us, to get us clothes. All that was done. We had, we made it out of South Central L. A. at the time. So on a Saturday morning we have a family meeting because we know on Thursday or Friday coming up, we’re going to sign the largest new artist contract Motown offered any new group. Larger than The Jackson 5, larger than The Supremes, larger than The Four Tops, larger than The Temptations, larger than everyone, ever. TV show was already locked in. I have the pilot script in my office right now. [00:08:00] So my sister screams upstairs, Boys, come downstairs, family meeting! And we all come running downstairs.

We are so hyped. This is it, we are finally out of this hell hole. No more going to the park to go get government cheese, to go get powdered milk, to go get powdered, it’s, it’s, it’s over. Everything, as I said, Michael Jackson said for us to do, and the rewards behind it, it’s today. I go into the living room, and when I enter, my oldest sister’s pacing back and forth in front of the entryway. And she’s mad, she’s angry. Okay, she’s always mad, she’s angry. She and my mom were always at loggerheads. I mean, they’re battling each other all the time. In fact, earlier that day, there was a screaming match between my mother and my three youngest sisters. I’m just thinking, It’s just the girls being the girls.

Okay, cool. Cause that’s, that’s, happened too. But when I walk into the living room, I look at the couch and at the far [00:09:00] end are my three youngest sisters, the three youngest of us eight. The two youngest are twins. They’re huddled in a corner of the couch and they’re not saying anything, which is really strange because all they did was talk. They laugh, they talk, they tease, they play, that’s all they did. It, it, it, it, that was my family, that’s all we did, as close as we were. So I’m looking at them and I’m thinking, That’s odd, they’re not saying a word. Why? At the other end of the couch are my two youngest brothers. They’re also quiet, but they’re confused like I am. Because our sisters aren’t saying anything.

And my oldest sister is pacing back and forth across the archway like, okay? My oldest brother is standing at the far end of the couch behind my three youngest sisters, and I lock eyes on him. [00:10:00] And we just kind of shrugged, what’s the deal? This is going to be the happiest day of our life, everything’s about to change for us. So we just kind of shrugged, Oh, okay. This is really strange. But I take my seat on the couch between my three youngest sisters and my two youngest brothers, and I just wait. And within seconds, my mother and my stepfather enter. We have a recliner in the living room, this brown recliner that clashes against this violently green, ugly carpet.

My stepfather, who’s 6’6/250 pounds and wears a huge Afro wig, puts his head over seven feet tall, walks and sits down in the recliner. But he does something really strange, he bends over and puts his hands in his face. And I think, Is he sick? Huh? [00:11:00] My mother, who’s usually bubbly like her eight kids, has, she’s just stone faced. She walks in and doesn’t say a word. Walks to the far end of the living room, stands next to this large plate glass window that overlooked the outside. And she spins around, and she just looks, scanning the room, looking at her eight children. But she pauses at my oldest sister, and if looks could kill, they would have killed each other.

I’m a brother, I have no idea what’s happening. I don’t have a clue, but my sisters do. Because earlier that day, I would find out later, what they were arguing about is what me and my three brothers are about to learn for the very first time. [00:12:00] I live in California now and we have earthquakes all the time. In fact, we had another one this morning, we had two last week, and we had two or three a week before that. Okay, earthquakes, they uproot trees, they crack bridges, they crack freeways. Get you some concrete, get you some nails, get you some rebar,

top, top, top, top, top spit, gum, hammer, put it back together. You’re on your way. Those are material. Emotional earthquakes are a different matter altogether. You do not come back from those quickly and you rarely ever come back from those completely. Because they become a part of you, they are now who you are. My three brothers and I are about to be hit with three emotional earthquakes, Ed. We are about to be hit with words no brother ever expects to hear, the words no brother could ever prepare for. [00:13:00] My mother drops earthquake number one when she finally speaks. She says, your stepfather has been molesting your sisters for years. Wait, what did you say?

He’s been doing what? This is obviously not the meeting I’m expecting. I am knocked backward emotionally. I don’t know what to do with this, I am becoming paralyzed. And so because it was the last thing I expected to hear and I couldn’t prepare for it, I’m pretty slow on the uptake. But what I hear is apartment, I hear park, and I hear liquor store. But I’m dropping emotionally. [00:14:00] What just happened? No! And then she hits us with earthquake number three. She says, I have known all along. Wait, you’ve known what all along?

I imagine my three brothers are just like me, PTSD is engulfing us. I had no idea what PTSD was at the time. But the shock and disbelief and the betrayal of what we just heard, my mother has known all along. You mean to tell me you have known he has been molesting your daughters for years and you’ve done nothing about it? It turns out what my mother and sisters were arguing about earlier that day was they were [00:15:00] forcing my mother to tell the boys today. This is the day we let the boys know what has been going on with us, what has been going on in this house, what has been impacting the entire family. The deep, dark family secret.

It went a long way to explaining my younger sisters being quiet because they knew what was coming. And of course they did, because they’ve already been experiencing it since 1971, the year Michael Jackson called our house. When they were five and six years old is when my stepdad went after them and my oldest sister was about ten or eleven. So they already knew. The only people who did not know were the brothers. We did not know how to handle what was happening. But as traumatic as that was, [00:16:00] those first two earthquakes did not compare to what the third one was. Because the third one is what puts a brother in a box, it is what prevents him from being a participant in the conversation. My oldest sister who was still angry, spins around and points a finger at her four innocent brothers and says, You can’t talk about it.

It didn’t happen to you. It only happened to us girls, you can’t talk about it ever. And like that, relationships between brothers and sisters that were so tight, were so much fun, were so important to us, lay on the living room floor in shambles. My family was broken, we were lost. I had just lost the nine most important people in my life. I’m a brother, [00:17:00] I don’t know what to do, I am in total free fall. The void is getting darker and darker and there’s no way to arrest the descent, I’m dropping so fast. And I know for sure my three other brothers as well. Guilt is starting to settle in, self blame is starting to settle in, shame, fear, anxiety, all of it is settling on me.

And I don’t know what to do. My book, Helplessness, recounts the story, and it is very, very deep. It gets to be very, very dark. In many ways, this is the light part of the story about what happened to us. But I write Helplessness because I have come to learn over the years, it took me ten years to write it, that there are so many brothers out there who are not allowed to participate in the conversation once we [00:18:00] learn what happened. Because once we learn what happens, every other group, the predator, those people who empower them, and the victims are allowed to be a part of the conversation. But when my oldest sister said, We can’t talk about it, we were just told we don’t matter. Our voices don’t matter. You brothers, you boys, we’re going to put you in a box and you have to deal with your trauma without any questions being answered.

[00:18:33] Keeper Catran Whitney: There was no help coming our way. And so I write Helplessness to bring voice to the brothers. And there are so many of us who learn about our sisters, but aren’t allowed to, as I say, I mean, I pretty much say it like this, we are told we can’t participate in the conversation, but we are expected to answer for our non participation. So what do you do? [00:19:00] How do you give a voice to a group in the family who is not allowed to participate? Who is put on a shelf in a closet and tucked away and the key is locked and you’re locked in a box and you’re tossed. And so, this is what I do. I elevate the voices of brothers so we can participate in a conversation where there are no tools, there are no systems for us. For girls and for women, they can go to any library, you can go to many bookstores, and you will find books, you will find articles, unfortunately, you will find hundreds of thousands of them.

It is unfortunate. And you’ll get a documentary, you’ll get a miniseries, you’ll get a movie about it, you may even get a movie, or book, or miniseries about the Predators who do this. But no one ever asked the brothers, no one ever asked, Are you okay? Do you need to talk? Is there anything you [00:20:00] need? We have absolutely nothing. And if we’re going to close the loop around child sexual abuse, it just can’t be those of us who have been sexually abused, we also have to look at the collateral damage. Oftentimes when I speak, and I know you, I know you have a bunch of questions, but I need to say this up front because oftentimes when I speak,

there invariably is a woman who will say your sister’s right, you can’t talk about it, it didn’t happen to you boys. And I share these two things, I understand what my sister was doing, but we are victims of this. One in the family has been sexually abused, the entire family is sexually abused. Just because we don’t know about it doesn’t mean we’re not impacted. And they’ll say, Well it was just your sisters. And I’ll say, Okay. [00:21:00] I will tell you this, my sisters were, their sexual abuse started in 1971. In 1965, six years before my sisters were sexually abused, my babysitter sexually abused me and my older brother almost daily for six months. So I know both sides of the sexual abuse coin.

I understand the damage side and the collateral damage side. And at that point, that’s when the woman will say, Oh, I didn’t know. I said, Well, no, you didn’t know. But if we’re going to get into a conversation of whose trauma is worse, we’re not gonna get anywhere, ultimately, when it comes to solving this problem. We need to understand that everyone in the family has been traumatized, everyone is being abused, whether they know it or not. So, uh, this is what I do, I bring voice to brothers [00:22:00] who are left out of the conversation.

[00:22:02] Ed Watters: That’s strong. You know, if, if we really think about what was just said, when we throw a rock in a pond, those ripples, they keep going out. I live with a wife that was sexually abused by her father, and it devastated her life. Still to this day, we’re working continually on those ripples. Because it’s important to give voice to the victim. And I want to highlight, there’s a lot of denial in this type of behavior. I know from personal family experience, when my sisters brought claims, It was, No, you’re lying, all of this denial. [00:23:00] Did you face that within your family?

[00:23:06] Keeper Catran Whitney: No, we did not face denial. In fact, when we told aunts and uncles what was going on, there was no denial. What we got was, We can’t do anything about it. Why are you doing this to your mother? Why are you doing this? Because they were hoping that we were going to be wealthy and rich and famous. And so this was going to be their chance to grab on to our shirt, our coattails. We didn’t get that kind of denial. The denial of any sort was the denial of our sisters that me and my brothers don’t matter. You guys are not in pain, you guys are not in trauma, you guys are not worthy of attention, you are not, uh, uh, uh, uh, you, you are not victimized in any way.[00:24:00]

And it took me a long time to, to understand why my oldest sister, the number three of us, did that. She’s protecting herself and ultimately she’s protecting her three, our three youngest sisters. But in the process, pushing me and my brothers to the side and no one addressing, or even giving us any consideration meant that we were left on our own. And I did try to find some sort of book or an article that addressed the needs of brothers, which, of course, there wasn’t at the time. This is 1977. It hasn’t been until recently that men have begun to come out, thanks to celebrities, be them actors or sports figures, and begin to talk about their direct victimhood,

uh, when it comes to being sexually abused as a child. We’re finally starting to have those trickles of [00:25:00] conversations, but we need more of them if we’re really going to address the entire situation. So, we didn’t have that. My brothers and I, we were in severe confusion and crisis and we started to go into this state of depression and anxiety. I am really, really sad to hear that your wife experienced this and that you know what it’s like to work with someone who, who, who is, not just close to you, but a loved one. Your, your, your partner. And try to help them navigate not only their trauma, but there’s also a certain amount of trauma that comes your way, uh, as you’re trying to help them sift through,

you also got to sift through yourself as well. Which was part of what me and my brothers did. We, we, for me, part [00:26:00] of the challenge was my protective instincts start to kick in and you want to do something. And yet we’re told, Put that on pause. Don’t do anything. And I, I understood it later, I mean years later, what that was about because it took me nine years to actually do something. Because my mother and my sister’s, first of all, my sister said, Don’t, don’t do anything. You boys, we don’t want you talking to anyone. We don’t want you doing anything. In fact, my brothers and I, we didn’t even talk to ourselves about it. We were just so locked down emotionally about, about it. And my mother saying, I will handle it.

I will handle this. Well, she didn’t. And so my protective instincts, nine years later, later in 1986, three months before I was to get married, they kicked in big [00:27:00] time because I could not imagine not handling the situation for my sisters. Because one of the things that I believe, Ed, is that what it means to be a brother with sisters is, your job is to protect their honor. And I hadn’t done that. And I know they had stopped it, but that did not mean I wasn’t suffering self esteem blows and my self worth wasn’t taking a hit. You know, and granted, my mother saying that she’s gonna handle this, and all this is in the book, I, I absolutely leave nothing behind. It is really a story of, about me and what I could have done, what I should have done.

It is, my mother saying she’s gonna handle it. Okay, it was a warm blanket. It meant it was something that I could, okay, the girls said don’t do anything, okay, it’s on them now. But as each day went by, [00:28:00] I’m, I’m, and I’m seeing their faces, and it’s like, Okay, you’re hearing the whispers, how come you didn’t see my tears, how come you didn’t hear my weeping, how come, how come? Well, you said don’t do anything, and the reason I didn’t hear is because you were under threat. If you said something, he was going to hurt you so you didn’t tell us. If you said something, he told you he was going to hurt your brothers so you didn’t say anything. It is part of the web. And, you know, what ends up happening is when you had mentioned, you know, different people and denial from other people,

when you’ve got a predator and you’ve gotten the power, like my mother, I, I, my description of it, they’re in the center of this spider web and they’re just feeding on everybody. And as each person who knows who could do something does nothing, [00:29:00] the web gets wider and wider and wider and wider. And all those people who did know anything, whether they know it or not, they are part of the protective detail of the predator because you choose to step aside. And they don’t look at it like that. They just look at it, Well, I don’t want to get in your business, but you’re in the business. As soon as you learned about it, you were in the business and you let your nieces and nephews be devoured by this predator.

[00:29:31] Ed Watters: Yes, I agree 100%. You know, it’s very interesting, my wife, because I, I was like your sister. I listened to an interview that you did, episode fifteen, your talk after forty-five, and your sister said this, I didn’t want to hear it. That [00:30:00] is so important for people to understand, when we shut it off like that, so many assumptions are made, so many opinions are formed, and it’s so dangerous. So stepping up when you are a victim, letting people know it’s not okay, and I’m not okay with how you are handling this, is very important.

For instance, my wife, she was very upset at me because I had that just shut up and let’s not stir the pot attitude both with her family and my family. And it takes a strong individual to step up and say, Can’t we do something? And that’s really what we’re doing here today, is we’re doing something about it. My wife, I’ve helped empower her so she’s writing letters to her [00:31:00] siblings explaining what happened so that their children are now protected because the awareness is there. I think that is very important. Could you talk to us about people being aware of what is happening?

[00:31:19] Keeper Catran Whitney: The awareness is where our power comes from. It is our singular power base, it’s stepping in and owning our trauma. And before you can make everyone else aware, you must be self aware of what happened. I’ll give you an example. I’m in the middle of writing Helplessness, okay? Like I said, it took me ten years. And at around year seven or eight, I’m in the bed and I’m talking to my wife about what happened in the section that I’m writing.[00:32:00]

And I’m telling her, Well, this happened to this. I’m in the section here and it’s really just giving me a problem. And she looks at me and she says, You know, you’re a victim. And I looked at her and I said, No, I’m not. Of course you’re a victim, how can you not be a victim? I said, well, no, I’m just telling you what this section is about and what it’s, Look at you, you’re a mess. You’re sweating, you’re shaking, you could hardly even talk about it. But, but, You’re a victim. That is when it hit me. I’m fifty-seven years old and I, I didn’t even recognize when my babysitter molested me almost daily, as me being a victim. So it wasn’t until I was fifty-seven that I became aware of my trauma, of my victimhood.

I, I can’t even get to the place of being called a [00:33:00] survivor unless I could first recognize that I’m a victim, period. And once you recognize you’re a victim, now you can be put on the path to some sort of healing. Once you do that, the next step is you must talk to someone about it. Ed, that’s the hardest part. But once you talk about it, you are now aware, and you own your space, and you step into that space, and you just plant your feet and you do not move, and you tell someone, you become empowered. It’s liberating the awareness. But the problem when we are not self aware first, I look at it as part of DNA, DNA replicates throughout our bodies all day, every day. And in most ways, they replicate in ways we don’t even understand. We don’t even see it. And most of the time it’s [00:34:00] good, but there are times when it’s really bad. And you’re not even aware of it.

Emotional trauma is the same way, it’s like DNA. It is a part of you, it is not going anywhere. It is part of your marrow, I like to describe, it is all over you, in every cell. And it replicates oftentimes in ways we do not understand, but oftentimes in ways that are dark. They begin to impact our relationships with our loved ones, with our wives, with our children, with our co workers, with our friends. They impact us and impact how we communicate, how we work, how we view the world. It impacts,

and we’re not always aware of that being the reason behind it. I had no idea that that was happening to me. And like I said, it wasn’t until my wife mentioned that. But when my, when my son was born, he’s, we’ve had multiple last names. [00:35:00] My father’s last name was Leary, and when my mother left town, she decided to give us the last name of our stepfather.

And so my wife and I, we took her last name and we became Catran-Perrin. And so one day, my son comes home from school with a report card. And this is the awareness, because you’re absolutely correct with the ripple effect, it becomes generational. It does not slow down, it just gets wider, wider. And people look at a ripple and think it just goes wide, it goes deep. You know, though that pressure of the rock hitting the lake, it goes deep and it spreads. It’s not just on the surface. People don’t look at it as a generational thing, but that’s exactly what happens. So my son brings home a report card and I’m looking at the last name on the report card and I start getting mad, because I see the last name Perrin on it.

Or my [00:36:00] favorite, for years, my favorite steak sauce was Lee and Perrin’s. But every time I bought the steak sauce, I hated to see the name Perrin on there. So I would reach to the shelf and I would turn it around. In fact, it’d be in our pantry. The label would be spun around, so I didn’t have to see the name Perrin and I didn’t understand it. But it’s, it’s eating me away, it’s eating away at me. So when I saw my son’s name on the report card this one particular day, I started to get angry and then I stopped myself. Oh my goodness, I am passing this trauma down to my son. He has no idea. Even if it’s minuscule, he doesn’t deserve it. I had no idea just how this works. And that’s part of what happens when you’re talking about the impact and awareness of [00:37:00] other people. So it’s not just us, it impacts so many other people in our lives.

[00:37:07] Ed Watters: You know, that’s, that’s such knowledge there. I, I really want to highlight one more important thing here, there’s a misconception that poverty brings this behavior on. I don’t necessarily agree with that at all, because it happens everywhere. What is your opinion on that?

[00:37:36] Keeper Catran Whitney: I have an opinion, and I have a story that illustrates that. You’re absolutely correct, people think it has to do with poverty. And oftentimes people think it has to do more, this abuse takes place within the Black community. There is no other community, there’s no other race in the United States where it happens more. But this crosses every race, every religion, politics. It crosses wealth, it crosses education, it crosses waters, [00:38:00] it crosses every aspect of life on the planet. It crosses borders. We have an epidemic of child sexual abuse. The greatest example that I could give anyone is my father in law, who I absolutely love. He passed away about five years ago, he passed away. He’s ninety-five years old, ninety-six years old. He’s white, and he’s Jewish. We could not be more opposite. He grew up on the East Coast,

I grew up on the West Coast, West Coast. He grew up in a middle class family, I obviously did not. He created a life for he and his family I never, ever saw. He did incredibly well. And here I am, his black son in law. He’s got a white Jewish son in law and he’s got a white [00:39:00] Greek Catholic son in law. So we’re kind of all mixed up. It’s wonderful. Shortly before he dies, he calls me to the house. I said, Okay, dad, I’ll be over, I’ll be, I’m on the way. I get to the house and I immediately recognize that my mother in law’s not there, which is really odd because they’re always together. But for some reason, she’s not there that day. Dad is sitting at the dining room table, and he signals to me, come over, I want you to have a seat at the dining room table.

Okay, dad. So I sit down. Everything okay? He says, Yeah. And he looks at me, and he says, I want you to know, I understand. You understand? What, what are you talking about? And then he pats the book in front of him and I look down and there’s my book, Helplessness. I want you to know I understand. You understand what? [00:40:00] He says, I’m going to tell you a story. You cannot tell anyone until I pass away. I have only told one person this story in my life and that’s your mother in law and she can’t tell anybody. After I pass away, you can share this story. So I sit back, where is this going?

He says, when I was a little boy, lived in New York, Brooklyn, we lived in a two story apartment. But there was a downstairs and an upstairs, we were downstairs and our best friends lived upstairs. We were so close as friends, we always left our front door open. Both families did. Our kids, as little kids, you played with that family, they came downstairs, they come into our apartment, we go into their apartment, everyone, we were just one big family. One day, I [00:41:00] went upstairs, I was sent to get something, I don’t remember what it is. But I go into the apartment, the door is open, I just open it, and I walk in, and no one’s there. So I just look around, okay, and then I hear something coming from one of the bedrooms. I walk over, and, and I’m starting to get really nervous now.

I go, Okay. All right. And then I see a tear forming in his eye. I’m like, What’s happening here? I open the door and I see the father molesting my older sister, and I stand in the doorway, and I don’t know what to do. I turn around, and I walk back downstairs, and I don’t say a word. I don’t tell my mother, I don’t tell my father. When my older sister comes downstairs, we don’t say a [00:42:00] word about it. I did nothing. Two months later, it happened again. The same thing and I did nothing. I want you to know I understand. I understand your guilt, your blame, your shame, I understand the depression, the isolation. I didn’t, I didn’t tell anybody.

I point out this story because, as you said, this happens everywhere. Here is my ninety-five year old father in law telling me a story that happened to him almost eighty years ago. And what I learned immediately, he wants someone to hear [00:43:00] him. He wants someone at ninety-five to say it’s okay, he wants someone to understand. He wants to unburden himself of this trauma at ninety-five years old. He is still in pain, he’s agonizing this and his sister had already passed away almost fifteen years prior to him telling me this story. She was so freaking funny, she was hilarious, she was amazing. But here he is, he’s, he calls me, his black son in law to tell the story. He didn’t call his Jewish son in law, he didn’t call his Catholic son in law, he called me because a relationship that was already great, became even deeper. Became,

and [00:44:00] it was more than just father in law and son in law at that point. We were two men who are carrying the same burden. He didn’t talk to his sister about it. And he wanted to talk to his sister about it till the day he died, but he wasn’t allowed to. Which was me, until around 2015, when forty-five years later, I find a way to talk to my sisters. So, this is my best example of saying that it happens everywhere. East Coast, West Coast, Jewish, I grew up Baptist, more on the spiritual side of the world these days. He’s well, well off, I am poor. Like I said, we had very little in common. Other than me marrying his daughter, and now we’re both [00:45:00] brothers carrying this trauma.

[00:45:04] Ed Watters: Yeah, that’s beautiful. You know, just to share a little, both of my sisters don’t talk to me at all. And it’s all because of this type of stuff in our family. And I want to let you know here today, before we wrap up that you inspired me today to really work hard on reaching out to those individuals before I pass away. Because I watched the interview today, how powerful that was. And, you know, I want that for my family. To, to watch your sisters say today when I was watching it earlier, You know, I never knew [00:46:00] that. We just assumed. And I’m telling you, I feel the same way today.

[00:46:10] Keeper Catran Whitney: Yeah, my sisters are the ones who made it okay for me. I, I was going to an event on how to write a book and I knew what the book was I wanted to write. But I also knew if I’m going to write a book, uh, because this was a book that was targeting me. I was going to have to tell my sisters, I want to write a book about what we went through from a brother’s perspective so other men out there will know they are not alone, because that’s what we think. We are not alone. My father in law thought he was alone until he read my book. And so, I hadn’t spoken to my sisters about it. But my second sister, I decided, I’m going to tell her I’m going to write this book because I don’t want them to be caught off guard. So I go over to her house, we’re standing out in front of her garage,

and [00:47:00] you’ve probably already heard it because you, uh, uh, watched that other podcast and heard me probably described this. And I tell her, I want to write a book about our family’s experience because I don’t want our family story to be like every other family story, which is on the dunghill of just child sexual, sexual abuse crap. Our family story, as tragic as it was, can be used to help people. That’s what I want our family story, that’s what I want our legacy to be. It’s not singing, this is it. We were brought together for this, not to sing. But I want to write a story about it and I’m telling her and from a brother’s perspective, I’m in tears.

I am an absolute mess. And she did something I did not expect. I’m waiting for anger, I’m waiting for hell to be unleashed on me. But time has a way of kind of getting a different perspective. [00:48:00] Oftentimes it does. Not always, but often. She looked at me and she said, Of course, you should write a book. All you boys should write a book. It’s not my story, it’s not us girl’s story, it’s your boy’s story. But you should write a book. All men need to know what it is like from a brother’s perspective. And I didn’t know what to do with that. Because I’m waiting for her to say, Hell no, how dare you? But time gave her an evolution about all this and a different perspective on her brothers.

And as you said, another sister who read the book said, I had no idea this is what you boys were dealing with. I thought you guys just didn’t care. And I’m like, No, you said we can’t talk. But forty-five years later, I have great relationships with three of my sisters after taking the most dangerous steps in my life and calling them and saying, I need to talk. Knowing that [00:49:00] the wrath was going to be unleashed on me. And it didn’t, but it was the hardest thing for me to do. So they are my heroes because they, they, I wasn’t looking for permission, I was going to write it anyway, but they gave me the grace of understanding the trauma. They, they understood.

[00:49:24] Ed Watters: Yep. Uh, time. You know, everything can change in time. And if we really dig into ourself, we can find those perspectives that fit. And it’s very important. We have very limited time, you’ve got another appointment. I could speak for hours about this with you because it’s so powerful. It is the most important story on the internet today. And I want to say thank you for sharing it here with us on the Dead America Podcast. Could you [00:50:00] please tell people where they can find the book and how to connect with you, please?

[00:50:06] Keeper Catran Whitney: Well, that’s gracious of you. Thanks for asking. Uh, people can find Helplessness on Amazon. Uh, It’s, I’m being booked all over the place for it, it’s a huge thing now. Uh, people can reach me, uh, you know, um, at my website, keepercatranwhitney.com. There’s plenty of stuff there, free stuff, book reads, chapter reads, downloads, it’s all sorts of stuff there. And if people want to reach me directly, they can reach me at keepercw.author@ gmail.com. Um, this is what I do. I bring a conversation for brothers and bring us into the world, uh, where we’re oftentimes not allowed to participate.

[00:50:50] Ed Watters: Keeper, thank you for doing what you do, sir.

[00:50:54] Keeper Catran Whitney: Thank you. You, you, you stay strong. Uh, I, I [00:51:00] feel you and I feel your wife. And, um, the best that we can do, like with me and my sisters, is just hold on to each other and just do the best we can every day. Because that’s what we all want, men, woman, child, boy, girl, we all want the same thing. We all want to be positive, we all want to be empowered. And we want to live a life of just care and understanding.

[00:51:27] Ed Watters: That’s awesome wisdom. Thank you.

Thank you for joining us today. If you found this podcast enlightening, entertaining, educational in any way, please share, like, subscribe, and join us right back here next week for another great episode of the Dead America Podcast. I’m Ed Watters, your host, enjoy your afternoon wherever you might [00:52:00] be.