What Haunts Us is a real-life story about how bystanders become co-conspirators.
First-time filmmaker, Paige Goldberg Tolmach, takes you on a discovery to unlocking the secrets that sit at the deep dark depths of one school in her hometown of Charleston, South Carolina after 6 of the 49 boys who graduated from the 1979 senior class of Porter-Gaud school all committed suicide within the last 35 years.
WHAT HAUNTS US is not simply about one teacher, Eddie Fischer, who preyed on, manipulated, and abused young boys at Porter-Gaud School. It’s about an entire school system that facilitated the abuse, not because they did not know, but because they made a conscious decision not to act. Eddie Fischer taught at Porter-Gaud from 1972 until 1982 and within the first 6 months of his tenure at the school, Head Master, Berkeley Grimball, and Principal, Bishop Alexander knew that Eddie Fischer was an abuser. They did nothing. The Porter-Gaud School system may not have created a monster (Fischer was already an evil person just looking for the opportune environment to carry out his sadistic and abusive fantasies) but Porter-Gaud helped this monster grow way bigger than anyone could have imagined.
As a viewer watching this story unfold, you’re left asking yourself, why? If school officials knew Fischer was an abuser, why did they not swoop in to protect these innocent and precious young boys? The answer is very disturbing as you learn that school officials believed the prestigious reputation of Porter-Gaud far exceeded the mental and physical safety of their students. What’s more is that Bishop Alexander, the principal of the school who was responsible for giving Fischer a job, was also a pedophile. Not only is this documentary about how a small group of elite men allowed an entire community to become destroyed, but this documentary also investigates the great lengths abusers will always go to protect other abusers.
As a viewer, you will be horrified at what this documentary uncovers but for the director, Paige Goldberg Tolmach, this story was personal. She was a student at Porter-Gaud, she knew the teachers, and she knew the boys whose lives were ruined by that monster. But Tolmach doesn’t tell this horrifying story just to give viewers something to gasp at. This documentary is more than that. WHAT HAUNTS US is an urgent call to action about the importance of speaking up for people who are too vulnerable and too terrified to speak up for themselves. People who remain bystanders to abuse ultimately become co-conspirators to atrocities like the one at Porter-Gaud. We all need to make a commitment to ensure no more lives will be ruined because someone failed to report abuse. Paige Goldberg Tolmach ends her documentary with an urgent warning, “I think the things that we try to keep in the dark will haunt us in the daylight. We can box them up, but they never really go away. Until we embrace them and set ourselves free.”
WHAT HAUNTS US first premiered at the Boston Film Festival and DOC NYC last year before premiering on STARZ in May 2018 and subsequently achieving an Emmy nomination for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Film-Making. With Oscar season now here, WHAT HAUNTS US will hopefully have the opportunity to bring more light to an important story by encouraging people to speak up about the things that occur in the dark.