Lessons My Father Taught Me

by Michael Reagan

  Dad was angry. “Where is the guy? I’ll kick his butt!”

  “Honey,” Nancy said, “he probably doesn’t have a butt anymore.” I think Nancy thought that, after so many years, the molester was probably dead.

  To my amazement, Dad and Nancy were as understanding as Colleen had been.

  “Why didn’t you tell me before?” Dad said. “If you had told me back then, I would’ve done something.”

  “I was afraid you wouldn’t like me anymore.”

  “Oh, Michael,” Dad said gently. “You should have known better.”

  Yes, I should have known. My father had always been understanding, forgiving, and protective. If I had told Dad at the time, he would have made sure that the man would never hurt me—or any other boy—again.

  But I had been tricked by the abuser’s lies. He knew how to keep me under his control—and how to put a wall of fear and guilt between my parents and me. He had used fear and guilt to keep me silent all these years.

  For much of my life, Dad had wondered why I was so angry all the time. He had been baffled by my rebellion and rage. He had wondered if he’d failed me somehow. For the first time, the secret was out, and our relationship as father and son finally made sense.

  I had kept that secret inside me until I was forty-two years old. And it wasn’t until I let go of that secret that I was finally able to see all the good things my father and my mother tried to do in my life. And I thank God that I was finally able to unburden myself and see how God had used Dad and Mom to bless my life.

  A Work in Progress

  I still struggle with what it means to live out the kind of forgiveness my father showed to the man who shot him. I still struggle daily to live out The Lord’s Prayer—“forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” Does that mean I have to forgive the man who molested me when I was a child? Yes, it does. But what does forgiveness mean when we’re talking about a monster who destroys the lives of children?

  Forgiveness doesn’t mean excusing what he did. It doesn’t mean pretending it never happened. It doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be arrested, prosecuted, and punished as harshly as the law allows. Forgiveness simply means that I let go of the right to resentment and revenge. It means I leave him to God’s judgment. My decision to forgive benefits me and liberates me, not the child molester.

  The man who molested me died in February 2008. For decades, I had lived in fear that the pictures he took of me would become public. After his death, his sister-in-law wrote to me and told me he was dead. She said, “He was as evil the day he died as he was when he molested you. But rest assured, all the pictures he possessed have been destroyed.” When I read the letter, I was glad to know that the pictures were gone and glad that he could never hurt any more children. But I didn’t feel vindictive. I had moved on.

  According to The Lord’s Prayer, I can forgive—I must forgive—those who do harm to me. But I don’t have the right or the power to forgive what a child molester does to other children. It’s simply not my place to forgive what one person does to another person. It’s not my place to forgive what Hitler did to the Jews, or what ISIS is doing to people across the Middle East. Only God has the right to judge sin or forgive sin in that broad sense. All I can do—all God expects me to do—is to let go of bitterness toward those who hurt me.

  Forgiveness is not something you do once and for all. When people have hurt us deeply, the hurt keeps coming back, and we have to forgive them again and again. We have to let go of resentment again and again. We may think, “I forgave that person. It’s over, it’s all in the past.” But then some reminder of the old hurt will resurface—and we’ll have to forgive all over again.

  People often think that when you come out publicly and tell your story, you’re over it. But I’m not really over it. Whenever I feel that someone is attacking me or trying to corner me in some way, I’m a child again, being blackmailed by that pedophile. When people attacked me on my radio show or spewed hate on my Twitter feed or my Facebook page, I would take it personally. When I was involved in a tough contract negotiation, I unconsciously saw the person across the table as my molester, my attacker. I could really fly into a rage in my attorney’s office.

  I’m still learning forgiveness from my father. People have said the most outrageous things about Ronald Reagan. They’ve lied about him, smeared him, assassinated his character, and attacked his reputation—yet I never saw my father lose his temper (unless you count the “I am paying for this microphone, Mr. Green” incident in 1980). Some of the things Sam Donaldson or The Washington Post said about Dad would keep Nancy up all night long—but he’d sleep like a baby. No matter what anyone said about him, he never took it personally.

  And that’s what I’m still trying to learn from my father. He showed me how to forgive, but I haven’t mastered it. I haven’t figured it all out. I’m a work in progress.

  Meanwhile, child molesters continue to prey on children. The average pedophile will victimize 260 children over a lifetime. And more than 90 percent of convicted child molesters will victimize more children after they are released from prison.5

  If I had the power to write the laws affecting child molesters in America today, I would lift the statute of limitations off the crime of child molestation. I would not protect convicted child molesters from the natural consequences of their actions but would incarcerate them in the general population. And I would like to see the Catholic Church show leadership on this issue, demand harsh punishment of all offenders (including offenders who happen to be clergy), and make strides in protecting the innocence of children, as Jesus taught us to do.6

  We have to do a better job of protecting children from these monsters. We have a lot of work to do.

  Able to Move Forward

  When Joe Hyams informed the publisher about our planned content for the book, the huge advance offer came off the table. That was fine with me. Now that I was no longer hiding that secret, I just wanted to tell my story honestly.

  So Joe and I hammered out a book about my adoption, my life in the Reagan family, and the molestation and the impact it had on my life. I called the book On the Outside Looking In, and it was published in early 1988, during the final year of my father’s presidency. The book quickly became a New York Times bestseller. The moment it was published, the news media combed it for juicy tidbits to use against Dad. I got to go on the Today Show and Larry King Live to talk about the stories in the book. Media attention subsided when reporters discovered it wasn’t another Mommie Dearest.

  It was a liberating experience to tell my story. Secrets imprison us; the truth sets us free. For thirty-five years, I was in a prison of silence and fear. Once I let go of my secret, it lost its power over me.

  Years ago, when I had my radio talk show, I talked on the air about the molestation. I said:

  People sometimes tell me that, after all these years, those childhood hurts shouldn’t affect me anymore. And they really don’t, at least not very often. But when you have been keeping a secret for years, with no way of dealing with it and no one to talk to about it, something builds up inside you. I could compartmentalize it, but I couldn’t make it go away.

  Sometimes I still get angry. I’ll be going along for a while and everything will be just fine—and then the moment I feel somebody pressuring me, those old feelings will come right back. Something that happened decades ago will affect me as if it happened just this morning.

  After I shared those thoughts, I received a call on the air from a man who was probably in his fifties. He said, “Michael, the same thing that happened to you, happened to me. I was molested when I was a boy, but I never told anyone. That memory has been with me all my life. Tonight, I’m sitting in this chair and all I have is my dog.” At that point, he started to cry.

  “I understand,” I said. “Believe me, I do.”

  He composed himself and continued, “I lost my wife, I lost my kids, I lost everyone I ever cared about. You’re right, Mi
chael. When you’ve been molested, it affects all your relationships. I’ve never told anyone about this, and I was never able to let it go. I let this secret destroy my whole life. When you told your story tonight, you gave me the courage to pick up the phone and finally tell someone what happened to me. I knew you would understand.”

  I pray that this man will learn to forgive himself and receive God’s forgiveness, the way I have. I pray that he will continue to let go of his secret so that healing can come into his life.

  I have learned from my father and from Colleen how to love and forgive others and how to forgive myself. Once I was able to unlock that secret, I began to move past the trauma of the molestation and toward a new relationship with my father.

  To my amazement, I even found that God was able to bring something good out of that awful experience. While that doesn’t excuse what the molester did, it does show that God is able to bring his redemptive benefits into my life despite all that I suffered.

  I discovered that I owe my personality—and possibly my success in radio and public speaking—to the hurt the molester inflicted on me. As a boy, I developed a gregarious, class-clown personality to hide the fear and rage inside me. Originally, my outgoing personality was a disguise. Today, it’s simply who I am. By the grace of God, I’ve found a pony buried in the manure pile of childhood abuse.

  Forgiveness—The Theme of His Life

  When my father lay on that hospital gurney, bleeding internally and struggling for breath, there was an excellent chance that he would die in the next few minutes or hours. What was at the forefront of his mind? Forgiveness.

  Dad was well acquainted with The Lord’s Prayer. “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us”—he took that prescription literally. If he was about to enter eternity, he wanted to go with his hands clean, his conscience clear, and his soul washed free of sin. So he began by forgiving the young man who shot him.

  What if he had not forgiven his attacker? And what if Pope John Paul II hadn’t forgiven his? These two men, along with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Czech dissident Václav Havel, Poland’s Lech Wałęsa, and others, helped change the world and bring down the Soviet Empire. Would Dad and the pope have succeeded if they had not been men of forgiveness? I don’t know.

  But I do believe God honored their prayers of forgiveness when their lives were on the line. I believe God crowned them with success because they made themselves available as instruments of forgiveness. Here are some of the lessons I’ve learned from observing my father—lessons in how to forgive and how to be forgiven:

  Don’t wait for an apology before you forgive. Dad prayed for his attacker within the same hour that he was shot. If he had waited for an apology, he would still be waiting. In all the years since that day, the man who shot my father has never expressed remorse for the attack.

  If the person who hurt you apologizes, that’s great. That will make reconciliation much easier. But if that person never apologizes, you can still forgive. In fact, you owe it to yourself to forgive that person and get on with your life.

  Try to understand. As a young man, I used every excuse to avoid recognizing how my father really felt about me. But a few years ago, I was going through some of Dad’s possessions, and I came across a war bond. During World War II, the government issued war bonds to finance the defense effort. These bonds were sold in banks and even in movie theaters. Many Hollywood personalities, including my mother and father, actively promoted the sale of war bonds to support the defense effort.

  I saw that my father had purchased this bond in my name on March 18, 1945, the day I was born. Even before I was officially adopted, he bought this war bond as a “welcome to the family” gift. That piece of paper spoke volumes to me about how my father really felt about me when I was born.

  My birth mother was an aspiring actress named Irene Flaugher, and my birth father was an Army corporal named John Bourgholtzer. When Irene became pregnant, John was stationed in Arizona. He gave four hundred dollars to Irene and told her, “Go to California and have the baby.” So I was born at the Queen of Angels Hospital in Los Angeles. Irene wanted me to have a good home, so she insisted on meeting my adoptive parents, Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman. Mom and Dad adopted me three days after my birth.

  When I searched for my birth mother in 1987, I learned that she had kept a scrapbook of my life with clippings from movie magazines and newspapers, right up until her death on December 24, 1985. She never got to hear me say, “Thank you, Irene, for giving me life,” but I am very grateful and I honor her.

  (By the way, both Flaugher and Bourgholtzer are German names. So I was born German, but three days later, I became Irish.)

  I used to wonder why my birth mother gave me up for adoption. I wondered why she didn’t love me enough to keep me. I used to wonder if Mom and Dad loved me. Today, knowing what I know, I realize I was surrounded by love—but I didn’t know it. My birth mother sacrificed her happiness so that I could grow up in a two-parent family. And Mom and Dad showered me with love, but I wasn’t able to recognize it.

  Only after I let go of my secret did I begin to understand all that my father did out of love for me. It has taken me decades to realize that he was continually trying to show me how much he loved me. I think a lot of people grow up angry with their parents because they are dealing with the same issues I was. If they could gain some adult perspective on their childhood, they might understand—and forgive.

  In many ways, the art of forgiveness is really the art of understanding—of children understanding parents and of parents understanding children. My father was a master in the art of forgiveness. We, his children, dropped out of college, violated his rules, spoke out against him, and embarrassed him in many ways. And he always welcomed us, embraced us, and forgave us.

  When I speak to pro-life groups, I often say, “Do you realize that 80 percent of abortions are performed on young women who profess to believe in God? We have to ask ourselves, ‘Why are our daughters having abortions?’ Maybe the answer is that we have told them, ‘Don’t you dare do anything to embarrass our family. Don’t you dare get pregnant outside of marriage. If you do, you won’t be welcome in this family.’”

  Shouldn’t we be willing to get on the cross for our children’s sins, just as Christ died on the cross for ours? Shouldn’t we be willing to accept some embarrassment, some humiliation, in order to show our children we love them, accept them, and forgive them? How many of our daughters have we chased to an abortion clinic through our pride and lack of forgiveness?

  If we parents would try to understand our children, if we children would try to understand our parents, I think we would find it easier to forgive.

  Understand what forgiveness is—and what it isn’t. Forgiveness is a choice, not a feeling or an emotion. Forgiveness is a decision to give up the right to hurt the person who hurt me. When we forgive, we surrender the right to get even.

  Another way of looking at forgiveness is that we are canceling a debt. That’s why Jesus, when he taught his disciples to pray, said, “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” When we forgive, we wipe the slate clean.

  Forgiveness doesn’t mean condoning evil. When we forgive, we honestly and objectively say that sin is sin, evil is evil, wrong is wrong—but we choose not to hold onto our anger and resentment. The point of forgiveness is not to shield wrongdoers from the consequences of their sin, but to liberate ourselves from bitterness, so that we can get on with our lives.

  When my father forgave the man who shot him, he let go of his own personal resentment toward the gunmen, his own right to get even. Dad canceled any debt the gunman owed him. Of course, the gunman had also wounded three other people and committed a crime. So the gunman owed a debt to those victims and to society. In forgiving that man, Dad didn’t cancel the gunman’s debt to anyone else or to society. The shooter was still accountable for his crime.

  Once you understand what forgiveness is—and what it isn
’t—you may find it easier to forgive.

  Forgiving does not equal forgetting. There’s an old cliché—forgive and forget. Well, it’s not always possible to forget. But we can still forgive even when we can’t forget. The memory of the wrong someone did to you may always be there, but you can let go of the right to get even for it. If you don’t, you’ll remain stuck in bitterness and resentment—and you’ll always be an emotional hostage of the person who hurt you.

  Don’t expect to forgive once and for all. If someone has hurt you deeply, the pain will surface again and again, and you will probably have to make the decision to forgive again and again as well. That’s normal and understandable.

  Holding a grudge is easy. Forgiveness is hard. It takes a great deal of strength and toughness to forgive.

  Being wronged is no excuse for doing wrong. The man who molested me is morally responsible for what he did to me. But I am morally responsible for what I do to others.

  I recently talked to Boz Tchividjian, a former child abuse prosecutor who currently teaches Child Abuse and the Law at Liberty University School of Law. Boz is also the founder of GRACE (Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment), which educates the faith community in responding to sexual abuse—and he is a grandson of the Rev. Billy Graham.

  I’m on the board of GRACE, and Boz and I were talking about the abuse I suffered as a child. I said, “Here’s what most adults don’t understand about child abuse. We look at abuse through the eyes of an adult, not the eyes of a child. And what do we always tell the child who is abused? We say, ‘You were a child. It wasn’t your fault.’ And that’s true as far as it goes. The guy who molested me was an adult, and what he did wasn’t my fault, it was his fault.

  “But tell me this: Whose fault was it the way I treated my mother after that? Whose fault was it the way I treated my father? Whose fault was it that I acted out and was disruptive in school? Whose fault was it that I stole money from Dad’s wallet to pay for prostitutes on Saturday nights so I could prove to myself I wasn’t homosexual? You see, Boz, the first sin—the molestation—belongs to the perpetrator. But everything I did after that, I’m responsible for.”