The Dance that Doesn't End

The complicity of the people and institutions that surrounded Jeffrey Epstein is not unique. As shown in this Op Ed from the Minneapolis Star Tribune, written by the team that created Magic and Monsters, the documentary about the child sexual abuse scandal of the Children's Theatre Company (CTC), complicity is more like a protective commodity. The documentary exposes the long-kept secrets of sexual abuse at this beloved theater back in the 70s and 80s, the arrest of John Clark Donahue in 1984, and the civil suits that other victims of sexual abuse and I brought forth under the MN Child Victims Act. The Op Ed, beautifully written by Norah Shapiro, Elizabeth Foy Larsen, and Christine Delp, (shared below with permission from the authors), illustrates how the powers that be continue to protect institutions and perpetrators, leaving the victims to bear the weight of the trauma.

First, I'd like to thank the Star-Trib. I had my own experiences with that news organization when my public fight to expose the truth was happening, which left a bitter taste in my mouth. Their publishing of this is Op Ed is a mint that doesn't take the taste away but freshens my palate a little.

Getting editors to publish an unpopular narrative is next to impossible. I tried to get American Theater Magazine to do a piece about CTC after my trial. I had been included in the 2018 article called Theatre's Silence Breakers, https://www.americantheatre.org/2018/08/21/theatres-silence-breakers/

so I had a connection to the editor. But when I tried to get that magazine to cover the institutional harm I had experienced after the trial, and the most egregious example of exploitation of children in American Theater history, after multiple attempts, I was finally told by the editor they just wouldn't publish such an article because CTC was a contributor to the Magazine. In other words, they were willing to expose individuals who had harmed people within the industry, but not an institution that bought space for advertising.

Secondly, I'd like to thank Norah and her team for their tireless efforts to keep our story out there. The documentary is astonishing and powerful, a must-see.

And finally, I need to say I'm exhausted. It feels like I can't do anything without feeling the weight of this. I've been dealing with the consequences of abuse my whole life, but most pointedly for the past ten years since I came forward. It feels like a dance marathon with no end. And every time I hear about Jeffrey Epstein, which is every damn day, the music ramps up, and it's the same song of harm and complicity and people getting away with sex crimes because money is more important than people. Yeah, I'm tired, but there is no rest, because this is a dance that doesn't end.

Here is the Op Ed by Norah Shapiro, Elizabeth Foy Larsen, and Christine Delp, so you don't have to fight the firewall.

April 2, 2026

 Minneapolis Star Tribune

THIS CHILD SEX ABUSE SCANDAL HAPPENED IN OUR OWN BACKYARD —WHY ARE WE STILL SILENT? Society often places a higher value on an institution's reputation than on supporting survivors of heinous crimes.

By Norah Shapiro, Elizabeth Foy Larsen, and Christine Delp

This past February, New York Times opinion columnist M. Gessen gave a talk at the Walker Art Center that addressed both the ICE deployment in Minnesota and the layers of complicity in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, noting that we have built our society around a  “mechanics of not seeing.”

As Minneapolis-based reporters and filmmakers who have spent almost a decade covering the child sex abuse scandal that took place in the 1970s and 1980s at Minnesota’s beloved Children’s Theatre Company (CTC), we understand the role that “not seeing” played in crimes whose ripple effects are still being felt in our community. As we explore in our documentary film, MAGIC & MONSTERS, ordinary Minnesotans, as well as prominent business people and philanthropists, had long heard rumors that scores of children were being sexually abused by the theater’s artistic director, John Clark Donahue, and members of his staff. But instead of reporting their concerns to law enforcement, most adults looked the other way—leaving some of the very children who were abused to bear the excruciating weight of being whistle blowers.

Despite extensive media coverage of the abuse when Donahue was arrested in 1984, the theater never publicly reckoned with its role in the tragedy, in part because the public didn’t demand it. Back then there were no protests, no boycotts of the theater’s productions.To quote the board’s own minutes from the day after the scandal broke: “[The theater] is too important a part of the aesthetic life quality of this community and its outreach to let it down.” In other words, the show must go on.

Our experience is that this willful blindness is still very much at play, only now the psychological denial of the 1980s has been replaced by a different way of not seeing: a fear that dredging up this horrible past and asking questions about institutional accountability and courage will hurt the theater. It’s a perspective that, intentionally or not, puts the wellbeing of the theater at the center of the frame while relegating the people who were harmed to blurred figures on the periphery, if not invisible.

In 2013, the Minnesota Legislature passed the Child Victims Act, which temporarily lifted the statute of limitations for victims of child sexual abuse so that they could sue their abusers and the institutions that harbored them. In 2016, CTC was sued by 16 former students who were sexually abused. One case went to trial, resulting in a mixed verdict that found the theater negligent but not financially liable. The rest of the cases settled out of court. There have been two leadership changes since the original abuse scandal surfaced, and those new leaders instituted changes to ensure the safety of child actors. But, the theater’s administrators never took any voluntary action toward reckoning with the abuse or reconciling with the students who had been harmed until litigation forced their hand.

At the conclusion of the lawsuits, CTC leadership met with several survivors in an effort to discuss ways to collaborate on non-monetary initiatives that could potentially promote the deeper community-wide healing hoped for by the former students who were harmed. COVID interrupted those efforts. 

Unfortunately, several local institutions closed ranks in solidarity with the theater instead of encouraging them to embrace a more public form of reconciliation and restitution. Last April, MAGIC & MONSTERS had its world premiere at the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival (MSPIFF). We were told in writing after it had been officially invited that the film needed to be reviewed by its board in deference to some of its members’ relationships with people on the CTC board of directors. Festivals routinely screen challenging films and this was a breach of programming customs and practices we had never experienced in our careers. Despite the fact that the film had undergone a rigorous legal review, the festival raised questionable concerns that screening the film could open them up to legal risk. We refused on ethical grounds to allow the board to review the film, but made the conciliatory gesture of adding the festival to our errors and omissions insurance policy.

While we were tempted to pull the film from the festival, we decided it was important that the film premiere in the city where the harm happened. The film sold out both screenings and a third was added as part of the festival’s Best of the Fest lineup. But, our MSPIFF experience was a sobering lesson in what the film’s brave participants had long understood: Society often places a higher value on an institution’s reputation than on supporting survivors of heinous crimes. Power usually protects power. 

Children’s Theatre Company declined multiple requests to participate in our film. Was that because their legal counsel advised them against it? Or was it because they didn’t trust that we’d give them a fair hearing? The truth is we can only speculate. All we know is that by remaining silent, the theater has lost an opportunity to show the world how institutions with histories of harm can own

their pasts in a way that helps survivors and their communities heal.

The National Center for Victims of Crime reports that 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys  are abused by adults every year. The Epstein case has newly spotlighted how this epidemic thrives in silence, and how networks of influence can shield predators for decades. Burying your history or quickly acknowledging it in a press release or even making financial settlements and then moving on won't trigger the kinds of public reflection needed to keep these crimes from happening again and again. Instead of following the Epstein playbook of denial and damage control, institutions and the people who support them can become leaders in prevention by bearing the weight of their history. As the saying goes, sunshine is the best disinfectant.