Road through Wonderland

My friend Dawn Schiller wrote The Road through Wonderland: Surviving John Holmes about her experiences as a “throwaway teen” victimized by the porn star John Holmes. The memoir follows Dawn on a road trip with her father, a Vietnam vet, from a tough neighborhood in Florida to Southern California where she met John. She was then 15, and he was twice her age. With the neglect of her father and John’s separating her from family and friends, Dawn came to see John as a protector, but their sexual relationship constituted rape, as she was not young enough to give consent, and he preyed upon her vulnerable situation.

Eventually, John became increasingly involved with drugs and abusive of Dawn. In one instance, John hit Dawn out of paranoid jealousy:

“Bam! John’s hand flies out across the glass and lands hard across my face.
I hit the ground with a thud that sends the air from my lungs. I immediately feel the searing pain of the blow rip through my jaw. It cracks with a loud snap and aches like it is broken. Stunned and in shock, I have no vision except for sparks of light against a black background” (259).

The use of present tense here and throughout the book makes the increasing violence gripping for a reader. While violence in a consensual relationship is never appropriate, it is even more terrifying that this is a big, male adult hitting a child, and the child has no adult to turn to and no frame of reference to use in understanding the violence as wrong.

John went so far as to traffic Dawn, prostituting her to raise money to spend on drugs. I can’t imagine that experience as the norm for a young woman. At the end of the book, following the Wonderland murders in which John was implicated, the couple fled to Florida where, finally, with the help of caring friends who notice the abuse, Dawn turned John in to the police.

Dawn’s book is written as a means to voice her side of the story in response to the film Wonderland, which focuses on John’s connection with the Wonderland murders. I had to watch the film version in small chunks, as I found the violence difficult. Kate Bosworth plays Dawn, representing her as a cute tagalong along for the ride. One planned scene of physical abuse was cut from the film, as the filmmakers were worried about making John look bad. One trafficking scene appears in the film, but it’s depicted so vaguely that it’s difficult to understand what is happening. John himself comes across more as pathetic than terrifying, which distorts his role in Dawn’s life.

As a means of turning the horror of her childhood into productive action, Dawn has founded the non-profit Empowering Successful Teens through Education, Awareness and Mentoring (ESTEAM): http://www.empowerteens.com/. Through this non-profit, Dawn plans to develop mentoring models that can guide adults in supporting teens experiencing neglect and in protecting teens from predators who prey on neglected youth. Nancy

Works Cited
Schiller, Dawn. The Road through Wonderland: Surviving John Holmes. Medallion P, 2010. Print.

Image Source: http://www.medallionpress.com/authors/schiller.html