Famous beauty expert Leslie Kenton has revealed in her new memoir “Love Affair” that she was raped by her own father when she was 11 and that the secret incest lasted until she was 13.
According to website reports, four years ago, Kenton first contemplated writing about her childhood and “Love Affair” in which she gave full account of the horrors and the secret incest relation.
Leslie told reporters, “My friend Gail Rebuck, who was my first editor and is now the chairman of Random House, told me, ‘You need to write a memoir.’ I said, ‘Gail, I can’t. No one would believe it, and the tabloids would go wild.’ And Gail said, ‘Who cares? This book will be the bridge between what you have done before and the work you will do afterwards.’”
The beauty guru is considered as the priestess of the real beauty movement for decades. She advocated high-raw, high-vegetable diets and detoxifying, way back in the 70’s. She had created the Origins range and imported the skincare tablet Imedeen to Britain. Leslie has made her brilliant present from a murkier past.
Talking about the book, Kenton said: “It ripped me to shreds”.
In the book she has wrote about the summer of 1952, when she met her father Stanley on his dance tour, sharing his hotel room, sleeping back to back. He was heavy drinker and Kenton who was just 10 was trying to control her dad. He was, in many ways, treating her as a substitute for his wife Violet. One night the final boundary was crossed and he raped his daughter. It was the beginning of an incestuous relationship that lasted until she was 13.
Throwing light on their relation Kenton said, “I believe he tried his best to resist touching me. Then, drowning in a sea of alcohol, he would come to my bed, only to deny the next morning that he’d been there. This was not cynical. Stanley had become so skilled in keeping secrets he could hide his guiltiest one even from himself.”
Kenton who did not blame her father for incestuous relationship said, “He was born into guilt. As a child, he was taught by his mother, ‘There’s something wrong with you, Stanley.’ From talking to relatives, Leslie has learnt of a highly dysfunctional family with a history of manipulation, neglect and bizarre cult-like rituals.”
“I do not know how to express the damage that a family like this does. This is a disease that’s passed on. Some people survive it and others are deeply damaged.”
According to Kenton she thinks that her father experienced a condition known as dissociative identity disorder, involving selective amnesia, which she also developed as she blocked out the incest.
While working on the book, Kenton retreated to her rambling house perched atop an extinct volcano on New Zealand’s South Island.
Kenton dedicated her book “Love Affair” to her father. In the tribute she has written, “For Stanley, with all my love”.
Monday, February 1, 2010
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