Reclaiming The Power of Narrative: How Media Stories Can Hurt & Heal
- Karin Naragon
- Sep 14, 2025
- 6 min read
Updated: 6 days ago
By Karin Naragon
January 25, 2024
I met him when I was only 3 years old. I don't know how old he was, but I'd mark my guess around 28. This preschool teacher became our family babysitter when I started kindergarten, and by the time I finished first grade, he was our after-school nanny.
Another family eventually joined the mix, and every day became a playdate. He let us eat extra ice cream and watch exciting, new things we wouldn't have seen otherwise. There was one condition: secrecy.
His nervous twitches got worse when we watched PG-13 rom-coms or sat through the first installment of R. Kelly's "Trapped in the Closet: Chapters 1-12" (2005), a movie-music video turned cultural phenomenon. For adults. I was 8, and I didn't know what sex was, but I knew my parents wouldn't know I saw it happen on a laptop screen. There were lots of things I didn't tell my parents about. I remained relatively unfazed by most of it. Unlike sex, I knew about guns and villains, and the nanny used this frame of reference as a jumping-off point.
The goal of showing us true crime was not to expose, but to scar, and he was less shaky when we watched the latest kidnapping story circulating broadcast news and late-night channels.
Regardless of details or endings, his choice of stories featuring girls my age and scary men who preyed on them instilled one underlying message: I would never let that happen to you. He was the closest adult to me, more of a friend than a caregiver. Of course, I believed him, so I was not worried about being the girl in one of those stories.
There was one story that shook my confidence. No one could protect me from it, other than the man with the remote control. Beslan: Three Days in September (Halderman, 2006), an Emmy Award-winning documentary about the 2004 school siege at a Russian elementary school, still lives somewhere in my nervous system. It wasn't a bad guy versus a little girl, it was foreign men with machine guns, and people of all ages helpless in a gymnasium jail.
It was the first time I saw true horror. I didn't know where they were, or what language they spoke, but the nanny read subtitles in real time as if he was telling the story himself, instead of protecting us. Violent content or not, secrecy was exciting.
Now I know it was also grooming. I was exposed to sex, violence, and the evilest of 'bad guys,' shaping my vies of relationships and danger into something far from where I stood, with a 'protector' looming over me. (Ironically, both the rapper with the sex scene and the nanny who promised protection would end up in prison eventually, and not for anything said openly in their respective narratives.)
I was an expert in compartmentalization and secret-keeping by middle school, where I split my time between new friends and the girls my now-former nanny still watched. With busy, traveling parents, they invited me and a few other girls to join the fun of weekend-long sleepovers, and a new era of movie nights.
Tones from my past lingered in our viewings, but an audience of middle school girls paved the way for moreangst, more thrill, and more sex. One felt like a look into a life we should have by the time we start high school. We watched a film called Thirteen (2003), which felt like an aspirational guide to being cool in the coming years, despite the characters looking more like women than our 10- and 11-year-old selves. But, I was the only sixth grader, and there was no cooler feeling than being "mature for my age." If that's what 13 was, I had only a few years to catch up, and we had the perfect environment to hit the fast track.
We watched videos and movies that some can't stomach at any age, addicted to adrenaline, but the remake of The Last House on The Left (Iliadis, 2009) turned a rush into panic. I knew plenty about sex by then, but nothing about the viscerally horrific display of sexual violence that still exists in my mind and others who say it's the most difficult rape scene they've seen. I hope their images weren't captured by a 10-year-old.
The age of 13 ended up nothing like the girls from the movie advertised, and ultimately, I was glad. At least until the police took him away. I didn't know it then, but I was lucky they did, even if the bureaucratic processes felt like the real trauma. The compartmentalization skills he left behind helped me move into high school, where my secrets stayed so close to my chest that eventually I couldn't even remember everything back there.
Survivors of child sexual abuse are statistically more likely to develop hyper-sexual behavior and recklessness than people without early exposure. They are also more likely to experience trauma responses triggered by sex in any medium, digital or personal. Sometimes repressed memories surface; sometimes anxiety disorders develop (RAINN). In college, I came to terms with each of these things.
One afternoon during my second year, I decided to watch Perks of Being a Wallflower (Chbosky, 2012) in my living room. I was on the bathroom floor by the end of the popular 'rom-com/thriller,' unable to hear the final scenes playing from the other side of the doorframe. Tasteful flashbacks revealed that the main character's aunt had sexually abused him as a child. Something flipped from my chest. It triggered the first debilitating panic attack of my life and a journey into all those secrets kept tucked away.
It was the first movie I saw representing a story like mine, and I still didn't know we were in the majority. Eventually, I would learn that the sexual abuse portrayed in middle school movie nights or true crime programming was far less common than what I held in secrecy. The Colorado Coalition Against Child Sexual Abuse published a blog post on the film after its popularity settled. It captures what I experienced:
Chbosky's depiction of the enduring impact of childhood sexual abuse on his central character is particularly accurate. In an age in which more than half of all sexual assault victims are under 18, and damaging myths about sexual violence abound, true-to-life representations of survivorhood inpopular fiction can serve as vital beacons for youth struggling in the aftermath of sexual trauma. (McCluskey, 2014)
I was no longer alone in the understanding of my life and my story. The pity I had for my own burden faded, just to make way for a larger sadness. I was studying communication, media, and women and gender studies, and I found myself obsessed with learning all I could on the topic I knew so little yet so much about. So many people knew the pain of two realities, one built on love and the other on silent secrecy. Where were all of our stories?
The focus of my work became communication for social change and advocacy, and I was determined to be one of the people talking about the 'wallflower' experience, rather than the 'experience on the left.'
Though my 2020 graduation shifted the path for a few years, I found my way back with the help of secret breaking stories. During a period of detour jobs, I would escape into the world of long-form audio narratives.
I was entranced by the real stories shared on shows like Something Was Wrong (Reese, 2019-present), Family Secrets (Shapiro, 2019-present), and This Is Actually Happening (Missildine, 2013-present), all of which give voice to people with shadowed pasts. It was cathartic to hear other people's vulnerable truths. I saw a part of myself in every story.
Eventually, I realized: I could share my story on one of these shows. Better yet, I could have one of these shows. They were using digital media for advocacy, telling stories that made an impact. I wanted that back.
Now, just over a year later, I am returning to a goal I almost lost in the isolation of secrecy. I am on my way to a master's degree in Specialized Journalism. And I am telling stories that need to see some light.
Sometimes, it is media narratives and images on screens that push a person into that darkness. But, sometimes, it is the narrative within media stories that helps pull them back where they belong. All those voices from screens and speakers were used to damage my world view, and myself. They were also there to challenge me, and to help me understand the world outside of my forced frame of life.
It was new voices, and new narratives that helped understand the power of honesty, and honest storytelling. Each of those stories gave me quite the character arc, but maybe now, my new, shamefully honest voice will reach a little girl who needs a new story herself.
References
Chbosky, S. (Director). (2012, September 10). The Perks of Being a W allflower [Film]. Summit Entertainment.
Halderman, J. (Director). (2006, May 1). Beslan: Three Days In September. Showtime Networks.
Hardwicke, C. (Director). (2003, September 19). Thirteen [Film]. Searchlight Pictures.
Iliadis, D. (Director). (2009, March 13). The Last House on the Left [Film]. Rogue Pictures.
McCluskey, M. (2014, August 1). Survivorhood Portrayed: The Perks of Being a W allflower. CCASA Blog. https://www.ccasa.org/survivorhood-portrayed/
Missildine, W. (Host). (2013–present). This Is Actually Happening [Audio Podcast]. W ondery. https://www.thisisactuallyhappening.com/
Kelly, R. (Director); Swaeld, J. (Director). (2005, November 1). Trapped In The Closet: Chapters 1-12. [Film]. Sony BMG Music Entertainment.
Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN); National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). (n.d.).
Children and teens: Statistics. RAINN. https://www.rainn.org/statistics/children-and-teens
Reese, T. (Host). (2019–present). Something W as Wrong [Audio Podcast]. Wondery.
Shapiro, D. (Host). (2019–present). Family Secrets [Audio Podcast]. iHeart.
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