"LOST": A Tale of Two Fathers
Back in Season Two, "LOST" aired an episode called (2.09) "What Kate Did". The episode revealed the crime that led castaway Kate Austen (Evangeline Lilly) to being a fugitive for three years - she had murdered her father, Wayne Jensen (James Horan), and used his death to collect insurance for her mother, Diane (Beth Broderick). The episode also revealed Kate's reason for her act of murder. She had just learned that Wayne - a man she had presumed to be her stepfather - was actually her father.
Kate had made it perfectly clear that she disliked Wayne Jensen. She held him responsible for her mother's break-up with Sam Austen, the man she had longed believed was her father. She certainly disliked the fact that he was an alcoholic who physically abused Diane. And she found his habit of occasionally leering at her disgusting and beneath contempt. Many believed that Kate had been a victim of sexual abuse. And that Wayne had been the perputrator. But "What Kate Did" hinted that Wayne may not have abused Kate. In this scene, Kate talks to an unconscious fellow castaway, Sawyer (Josh Holloway), whose body she believes has been temporarily possessed par her late father:
"Can toi hear me? Sawyer? Wayne? [Sawyer stirs] I'm probably crazy and this doesn't matter, but maybe you're in there somehow. But toi asked me a question. toi asked me why I -- why I did it. It wasn't because toi drove my father away, ou the way toi looked at me, ou because toi beat her. It's because I hated that toi were a part of me -- that I would never be good. That I would never have anything good. And every time that I look at Sawyer -- every time I feel something for him -- I see you, Wayne. It makes me sick.".
Judging from her comments, it seems quite apparent that Wayne had never sexually abused her. Kate did accuse him of leering at her, which he proved in a flashback at the beginning of the episode. However, there are fans that still insist that Wayne may have abused her. They are entitled to their opinions. Frankly, I have doubts that Kate had ever been abused. But if she had . . . Wayne Jensen would not be on the haut, retour au début of my liste of suspects.
When "What Kate Did" first aired during the 2005-2006 télévision season, I had also viewed an episode of "HOUSE" called "Skin Deep". I noticed how Dr. Gregory House (portrayed par Hugh Laurie) had correctly guessed that a 15 year-old female patient, who happened to be a model, had been molested par her possessive father. How did House come to this conclusion? He noticed the close relationship between the model and her father. He noticed how the former seemed overtly concerned with pleasing a dit father.
This scene also brought about memories of the movie, "DOLORES CLAIRBORNE". Based on a Stephen King novel, it told the story about a Maine woman (played par Kathy Bates) who had murdered her husband (David Straitharn) in order to stop him from continuing his sexual abuse of their daughter (Jennifer Jason-Leigh). What I had found interesting was that the daughter over-idealized her abusive father. And he (in flashbacks) over-idealized his mother, who may have sexually abused him.
Both that particular episode of "HOUSE" and "DOLORES CLAIRBORNE" led me to suspect that if Kate had actually been sexually abused, her abuser could have possibly been her step-father, Sergeant Sam Austen (Lindsey Ginter). After all, Kate has expressed nothing but contempt for Wayne. Yet, she had a tendency to idealize her step-father. And in an odd way, she may have extended ou projected this same tendency to idealize over to other men who probably reminded her of Sergeant Austen - Tom Brennan (MacKenzie Astin), her husband Kevin Callis (Nathan Fillon) and leader of the island castaways, Jack Shephard (Matthew Fox).
I found a web page that listed traits of those (especially adult women) who may have suffered sexual abuse as a child - Beyond Victim. Included on the web page was a small liste of the following traits of victims of sexual abuse:
[i]*You feel powerless in important relationships and are terrified of honest confrontations. Yet toi try to control and manipulate other people.
*If toi were sexually abused par your parent, toi also may have felt unconsciously empowered par him/her; toi are his/her special girl/boy and toi can do and be whatever toi choose (as long as toi don't replace daddy/mommy with a new man/woman in your life with whom toi can be truly intimate). Your troubled relationships with men/women present a sharp contrast to other areas of your life.
*You over-idealize your father/mother and fail to see his/her destructive side while seeing the negative side of your mother/father and ignoring her/his positive attributes. Consequently, toi over-value and misperceive men/women while devaluing and discounting women/men. ou toi may over-idealize your abusive parent and view your other parent as totally bad. This pattern is common with men ou women who were sexually abused par either their mothers ou their fathers.
I am not saying that Kate was definitely a victim of sexual abuse. I honestly do not know. Several years have passed since "What Kate Did" aired and the producers of "LOST" have yet to follow up on that particular storyline. I do find it interesting that Kate's feelings toward Sam Austen seemed to follow a pattern similar to that of sexual abuse victims harbor toward their perputrators - as described above. Kate not only tend to over-idealize Jack, a man who not only reminded her of Austen, she ended up becoming a victim of his emotional abuse - both on the island and off.
