“It doesn’t matter who my father was. It matters who I remember he was.” – Anne Sexton

I know a person no one seems to like: my father.

He is an individual with little regards for others.

He hurts many of those he meets--he’s a destroyer.

He severely damaged my life but finally I’m able to come out of the dark…

However, this page is not about him. Instead, it’s about my new film: a major motion picture. The background story of my survival of severe neglect; physical, psychological, and sexual abuse, as well as the child pornography my father subjected me to along with his complicit wife as his enabler.

 “Just because someone carries it well, doesn’t mean it isn’t heavy.” – Anonymous Survivor 

From the outside, it looks like I have a perfect life. I’m an Oscar contender in “Best Documentary” and a multi-award-winning Film & Theater Director in Hollywood with 35 awards and accolades.

According to the Hungarian National Film Fund's database, I’m also Hungary’s most successful documentarian.

But my journey has been full of tragedies and trauma. I spent decades trying to heal and become a healthy and whole human being.

I invested hundreds of hours in research, interviews, video-recording witnesses, gathering written evidence from authorities, and interacting with the police about the abuse I suffered to make my film’s facts unquestionable and provable.

With my new project, I’ll also be giving a voice to those who have gone through similar experiences, and simultaneously be an advocate for victims and survivors of abuse. I’d like to inspire hope, inner peace, and happiness for those children and adults who have been violated and have to live with the aftermath, just like me, every day.

I’m making my history public to share how I went from being a deeply scarred person, to a successful woman who is proud of herself and what she could overcome.

The truth is, I’m not sure whether I can ever leave my past completely behind, but I’ve come far enough to be able to tell my story to the whole wide world, and free myself by sharing with everyone what happened.

“The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth.” – African Proverb

My story goes all the way back to Hungary, when my parents met in the 60s. My mother was a beautiful national swimming champion and Olympian, and my father was a tall and handsome professor in academia.

Soon, the local “dream couple” got married, but after my father slapped my mother on their wedding night and later threatened to “kick that kid out of you” when she was pregnant with me, the relationship turned volatile and litigious.

“The loss of primary attachment is the part that hurts so much because one feels abandoned and above all unwanted! The worst poverty one could ever experience in life.” – Rita Valentine

After their divorce, I stayed with my mother and when I was 3, my father left Hungary illegally and immigrated to West Germany. Because he neglected to pay child support according to the law, my mother had to involve the Red Cross and other advocacy services.

When I was 6 years old, my mom and I were in an accidental gas explosion, during which I witnessed my 34 year old mother burn to death. I was placed in foster care, and my 70 year old and ill maternal grandmother became my foster mother until her passing seven years later.

“In the eyes of a daughter, her father is The Man, who gives her unconditionally, whom she can count on, who never asks for anything in exchange. He doesn’t take anything from her, doesn’t rob her of her self-esteem, self-worth, dignity, and belief in herself.” – Eszter Kiraly

Having no immediate family left, being in pain, battling with regular suicidal thoughts and several attempts, I wanted to find out whether my father would be willing to take care of me, so I decided to visit him in Hamburg where he lived.

He refused to pay for my airfare, so if I wanted to make the trip happen, I had to buy my own ticket at age 14. 

By this time, he had gotten married again and had a toddler-age daughter. Nevertheless, when I arrived, I found myself in a sexually-obsessed home which made me confused.

My late grandmother, a conservative woman, shielded me from adult topics, so at the time I was not only uniformed, but completely inexperienced and naïve regarding sexual matters. Also, due to the lack of a male role model in my life, I wasn’t able to develop clear boundaries and was not certain what was acceptable and appropriate.

“Abusers are just as good at grooming allies as they are at grooming victims.” – Monica Byrne

First, my father took me to the city’s red-light district, Reeperbahn, and showed me many prostitutes. Over the next few days, he talked about how my mother did not satisfy him sexually when they were married.

He detailed his extramarital affairs at the time, and how he went about cheating on his second wife. He showed me naked photographs he took of my stepmother, and presented them as “art research” for his paintings. His actions caused me to feel uncertain and freeze up internally and physically.

He put me down and called me old-fashioned, and presented the above-mentioned behavior of his as education, opening my horizon, and teaching me how “real” adults behave in Western countries. Today, I now know it was an abuse tactic called sexual grooming during which the predator prepares his victim for his abuse.

“Parents are supposed to love, guide, and protect their children.” – Trudi Griffin

Because my guardianship was not resolved quickly, I had to go back to Hungary before I was able to spend more time with my father again. During my second visit, my father escalated things to an entirely new level.

Soon after my arrival, one night, as I was trying to fall asleep next to my already snoozing young half-sister in the room, my father quietly opened the door, snuck in, leaned over my bed, and French kissed me while his wife was next door in the living room.

The morning after, he peaked into the bathroom when I was taking a shower. Then he walked around naked in the hallway, as if this was normal, and suddenly grabbed my hand and tried to force me to put it on his penis.

A day later, my stepmother groped my breasts in the bathroom and commented “how beautiful” they were.  

“Families will disown a child for growing up gay but will keep the family molester a secret.” – Anonymous Survivor

Subsequently, there was a series of boundary-crossing inappropriate behavior on his part which eventually culminated in my father taking pornographic images of me and sharing them with my uncle and his wife.

When my aunt questioned him about the pictures, my father admitted to her that he was unable to look at me as his daughter. Instead he could only look at me as a woman.

As I found out during my research for this film, it turned out that my sexually abusive father’s photography during those times was extended beyond taking photos of me--he took closeups of his own erect penis and mailed them to his own mother.   

“Always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor never the tormented.” – Eli Wiesel

In addition to making me the subject of incest and child pornography, I also witnessed violence on my father’s part aimed at my half-sister. Even though by this time I was fully aware of my father’s history of aggression and physical abuse, seeing him hurt a small a toddler scared me.

On that given day, her crying agitated him, so he grabbed her and threw the tot against the wall so hard she bounced back and fell on the floor. Screaming even louder, he wanted to throw her again, but I stood between his towering, over six feet tall, frame and the kid, and stopped him.

In the midst of all this, my temporary foster parent in Hungary decided to end her duties. Due to the intense urging of my stepmother, my father legally waved his parental duties, and requested me to be placed in an orphanage instead.

“Feeling like your parent doesn’t love you hurts emotionally and sometimes physically.” – Trudi Griffin

When I was 17, my father visited me at the place I lived. I shared the room with a curvy roommate, and when she entered, he immediately responded to her attractiveness. In front of me, he pulled her body to his, without her consent started to fondle her, pushed her down on the bed, and threw his body on top of hers. He started to undress her right there. She was embarrassed and beet-red, and demanded for him to stop.

“Dear people who have never been sexually assaulted: your opinion on when and how victims report or go public doesn’t matter.” – Anonymous Survivor

After I was out of foster care, due to the financial neglect and lack of a safe home, supervision, supportive environment, and guidance, I ended up homeless.

Already in America, I felt severely alone, unloved, and lost in life. The reoccurring memories and nightmares manifested itself in my body in multiple ways: I got frequently ill and developed an autoimmune disease, common among those who have suffered severe trauma.

“Sometimes you meet someone and you know that you want to spend your whole life without them.” – Unknown

By my mid-twenties, I was strong enough to completely cut off my poisonous father and stepmother—not a challenging task, since they had never truly expressed serious interest in me.

I sought out a psychologist, and not much after started to share my story of abuse with relatives and close family friends.

Eventually, I filed a police report with the German authorities and joined a support organization that helps those who were subjected to sexual abuse as children.

It took me decades to gain some equilibrium, be able to manage my post traumatic responses, and achieve a sense of what a truly normal family is supposed to be like.

You can imagine the slap in the face when my first film received international recognition, and my father was the first one to stand in line to be friendly again. He even had the audacity to ask me to link his website to my movie’s high-traffic URL.

“Just a friendly reminder that abusers don’t abuse everyone they come in contact with, so placing doubt on victims based on your experience with that person is irresponsible and unkind.” – Anonymous Survivor

The abuse that my father and his wife forced upon me left me severely short-changed, depleted, and disadvantaged in life. I’ve been on a journey of trying to catch up and recover ever since.

Today, I hold my father responsible for treating me unequally compared to his other children and excluding me from my siblings’ lives—robbing us all from having a deep bond based on a shared childhood.

I hold my father and stepmother responsible for their assault, neglect, and abandonment. I also hold them responsible for stealing my innocent childhood, as well as the incredible amount of time and resources I had to spend on my healing instead of advancing my life.

The era of anonymity of my abusers is over! As part of my recovery, instead of struggling privately and internally, I’m exposing my story to the world, and hold my violators accountable.

“When a toxic person can no longer control you, they will try to control how others see you.” – Anonymous Survivor

I trust that my film will make a difference for sufferers everywhere around the globe. I trust that laws and length of time for the statute of limitation will be extended, and criminals will be obliged to compensate their victims legally, financially, and medically.

I trust that families will be more willing to face the unfortunate fact that sometimes there are predators among our relatives, and they are to be exposed at the cost of the predator, not at the cost of the abused.

“Some people are holding grudges against you for things they did to you.” – Anonymous Survivor

I trust that people who still victim-shame will re-think their approach and stop protecting the violators.

Last but not least, I trust that society will stop doubting the victims, and will create a safe place for the abused to come forward when they finally make the courageous step of revealing their dark secrets for the purpose of moving on and leaving their pain behind.

“I pray you heal from things no one ever apologized for.” – Anonymous Survivor

Disclaimer: This film could not have been written without the support of those who truly love me. The incidents above are only a fraction of all the things that happened and do not cover the accounts in their entirety.