What I’ve learned since surviving being groomed and abused by a public figure

If you’ve engaged with me online or read my writing in the last two weeks at all, you’ve very likely read my story about being abused in 2021 by a former friend, John Maher (Senior News Editor at Publisher’s Weekly), originally published on Twitter and then in my own Medium piece.

I wish I’d never had to make some of the worst things that have ever been done to me public. Having the ten closest people in my life knowing vague details of the abuse I survived, and my therapists, being the only ones who knew these experiences was mortifying enough. Despite the fact that I’m a personal essayist, journalist, poet and overall public figure which means so many people have had access to so many parts of my life for a long time, this is different. Those things—the stories I’ve chosen to tell in my personal essays or in personal reported feature articles—I decided to disclose of my own volition because I felt safe to do so. Telling my story about how John abused me feels more akin to forced disclosure—because I only did it to protect myself and to protect others who needed to know about what someone with so much influence in publishing and media has been doing to people—because he’s done it to so many people who he isolated and who all didn’t know how many others he’d done it to. Because that is how abuse functions and is enabled, allowed to go on forever—in the dark.

And sunlight is the best disinfectant.

In the last two weeks since sharing my story on October 29, 2022, I have received communications from dozens of people corroborating my stories—from his former friend Sarah Rose Etter, an author, who told me that John came to her to confess his abuse of me in late 2021 after I had moved out, and that he was scared if I ever spoke his life and career would be ruined, to other friends of mine who were groomed and abused by him, which I never knew because he isolated us from each other. I cannot state more plainly how I am heartbroken to find out the extent of his abuse and/or mistreatment of people far surpasses me as one individual, goes far beyond my own experiences.

Since receiving so much information from so many, with people contacting me about stories of his harm going back to 2004—with the most egregious examples being from during his time in publishing and media since about 2015—I realized that I, too, was groomed by him.

This is not something I declare lightly. As a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and child abuse in general, I take these words and matters very seriously. I’ve reported on them many times for outlets such as Teen Vogue (see my piece on surviving domestic violence and abuse, and my piece on love bombing), and SELF Magazine (see my piece on survivors of abuse healing through relationships), among others, because being careful about the clinical terms and language with much gravity is important to me. I don’t want to give people false ideas. I want to be as clear as possible.

I also didn’t want to simply take the word of others who observed my experiences over the years, and told me I’d been groomed and manipulated. I needed to know for myself. (Being a trained investigative journalist is useful in some personal capacities, it turns out.) And so I went through every digital communication that John and I had from the time I met him in 2017, to when I ended our friendship by moving out of our shared apartment in 2021. I thought back to important conversations we’d had, that I had written about in my daily journals. Through these conversations, I was able to identify many lies, much manipulation, and clear predatory patterns. I realized what a vulnerable, impressionable place I was in at that point in my career at 22 years old. John was older, and had more access than me, and promised a lot of things—all of which were contingent on how close I was to him and if I behaved in the ways he wanted.

Publisher’s Weekly, the largest trade magazine in publishing, and a company with immense power in the industry to shape it, does not seem to see how John’s abuse of me and others has anything to do with his job, and so it is now that I know I must share parts of my story and others’ who have felt comfortable and safe enough to speak out, to outline exactly what this has to do with John Maher’s job and position of influence in the industry.

I’m going to take a break from talking about John’s abuse again soon because I deserve space from it, to not be consumed by it, but I want to say that you cannot separate his abuse from the context of who he abused (me, a survivor of childhood abuse from parents) and the tactics that he used to do it, all of which I had told him in intimate detail during the beginnings of our friendship.

I’m grateful for all of the community organizing I’ve been part of, all the bell hooks and Audre Lord and other great thinkers I’ve read who have taught me about systems of power and control tactics, and how important context is to abuse perpetrated against marginalized people.

The facts here are plain and simple, uncomplicated in the end: John Maher, an editor at Publisher’s Weekly, a person with immense power in the publishing and media industry, targeted me at 22 because of my vulnerabilities, learned everything about my childhood abuse, and when he no longer felt like he could control me the way he had before, used it against me. This all started while he was reporting on #MeToo in the publishing industry from 2017 onwards. Again, context is crucial.

I haven’t shared 90% of the details of everything I experienced from John in 2021 let alone prior to that, since he began grooming me in 2017, nor will I ever publicly unless I end up on a court stand. But the patterns of his abuse are worse than I could have ever imagined when I was isolated from others he’s harmed. And now that I have more context, I have more clarity.

Some others who were groomed and/or manipulated, harmed, or abused by him have spoken publicly but many don’t feel comfortable enough or are not public figures so they feel it doesn’t matter or they have spent years trying to recover already — all valid reasons to stay quiet. However, my dear friend Sammy Nickalls, for example, spent the last two weeks talking at length and in depth with me, before deciding to speak publicly, and briefly and vaguely enough for her comfort levels, about what John did to her. I told her she never had to publicly. She did speak publicly anyway, which is brave considering how intimidating John has been.

Others like Bryan, a former friend of John’s from Long Island from his teenage years, have spoken out to confirm patterns in anger and manipulative, or toxic behavior, they witnessed from John as far back as 20 years to confirm for me he’s always been like this. This context is key. Friends like Vic, who was close to John 15 years ago and went to high school with him, have spoken out about having to cut ties with John after realizing they were being verbally and emotionally abused and manipulated for years. And several of John’s ex partners who are on the internet and do feel comfortable speaking out (though they didn’t before I came out publicly with my story of John’s abuse) have posted vaguely about their own experiences with John’s abuse, like his former partner Becky who left her job in publishing at least in part because of John in 2019.

Most of all I think I’m grateful for Emma, one of John’s exes from college who upon reading my story immediately reached out to me to tell me about the ways he was emotionally manipulative and abusive bordering on verbal abuse towards her way back ~15 years ago, and other exes of his who confirmed the same behavior dating back to high school. They, too, had thought they were the only ones who experienced that with him.

I am, again, extremely heartbroken to now suddenly have not just my own experiences with John’s abuse but a collection of stories from people who have had to heal from John over the last twenty years because he’s never actually worked to heal whatever inside him causes his abuse.

I can put together extremely clear patterns from every story I’ve heard from someone about John going back twenty years:

• Targeting and trauma-bonding survivors of childhood abuse
• Isolating and manipulating and/or abusing women and trans people
• Using copious amounts of alcohol to control situations and manipulate people into what is essentially manufactured consent (AKA taking away people’s ability to consent)
• Telling victims sweet nothings often followed by verbal degradation when they don’t act as he wants them to
• Offering career opportunities to people that ultimately hinged on drinking with him or sleeping with him
• Love bombing, which is the act of inducing a cycle of harm and gifts to “make up for it” on repeat, traumatizing the victim of it

I write all this because apparently Publisher’s Weekly is not convinced that John Maher’s abuse has much to do with his job and I’d like to paint a very clear picture of how that could not be more false. John has power in publishing. He uses that power to take advantage of others. There could be nothing more plain here.

If you read this and know how grave this situation is given the context of publishing and media, and understand how much influence John being in spaces in this industry has on young, vulnerable people, I am asking that you reach out to Publisher’s Weekly and let them know John Maher should not be employed there and given access to these spaces. John has, for the last several years, and currently does manage the website and is the Senior News Editor. For all I know he could still be running the website and the social media accounts.

Now, I am asking that you stand with survivors and help me create a world in which abusive people are not given access to platforms and positions that allow them to more easily prey on people.

Though I’m not interested in exerting any more energy on this in ways that allow it to take up all the space in my life, I am dedicated to doing as much as is in my control to protect people from John Maher and anyone else who behaves like him serially.

You do not owe me and I do not owe you. But we all owe each other so much more care at large. And every moment is an opportunity to speak up for what we believe in. I believe in making these industries safer for the most vulnerable people. I believe in using my own voice to speak up for others who feel they cannot.