Ghosts From The Past
An ex-con faces up to his past, dragging two sisters back into a painful shared youth of incest and abuse
Hardened ex-con and junkie Viggo comes from a bizarre and mysteriously incestuous family background. Asking himself how he changed from a sensitive boy to a hardened criminal, he begins a painful journey back into his past. Drawing on a rich family archive, Viggo and his sisters struggle to come to terms with the sexual relationships that defined their family. An extraordinarily powerful portrait of a family that lost its way.
"All I basically did was keep busy so I didn't have time to stop and think. Not until I ended up in jail did I start thinking about my life." After a traumatic childhood, tainted by physical and sexual abuse at the hands of his father and brother, Viggo descended into criminality. This lifestyle, however, came to an abrupt end when he found himself incarcerated. "Then I thought 'I've had a great life, you know.' But the more I thought about it, the clearer it became to me that I didn't have a great life at all, really." It was this moment of realisation that set Viggo on a new path towards a better future, a future which began with facing his past.
It was his sister Vonnie, though, that really bore the full brunt of their father's behaviour. When their mother died whilst the children were all young, it was Vonnie that was forced into her position as mother to the children, and wife to her father. "It's a gradual thing. It starts off with very small things. And at a certain point we started having a relationship." This culminated with bearing her child's father in her early twenties. "I was 21. I got pregnant by Dad. Dad arranged for it to be aborted." But it was keeping her second child that really cemented their relationship, whilst damaging the rest of family.
When their father's attention was consumed by the new child, Viggo especially was affected. His childhood desire to impress his father, combined with the fear and horror he felt, left him in an emotional quandary. Although his father's attention had proved disastrous, the lack of it seemed no better for him. "I started to demand his attention. I got jealous. So I began to use lots of heroin. Then I went up to Dad and said: 'Dad, I'm hooked.' ... And Dad said: 'Right, but where's little Vonnie?'"
The further they delve into their past together, the more Viggo and his sisters realise that making peace with their past won't be a quick fix. However far the family have tried to escape this history, they still find the black shadow of their father looming over them.
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