This review is more of an exorcism than anything else as this book has haunted and enraged me for weeks, leaving me absolutely unable to move on without writing out all my myriad frustrations. The book jacket promised a journey of healing, forgiveness and restorative justice. Now, while that may have been Shannon Moroney's intent in committing her story to paper, what it ends up instead is an appallingly narcissistic screed that seeks to position her as her husband's biggest victim and provide copious excuses for him while minimizing his crimes. She spent the majority of the book seeking to humanize him so we the readers understand that he's a good man with a good heart. Or whatever. I don't need to be convinced of his humanity, I'm fully aware monsters like Jason Staples are living, breathing human men who laugh and dance and feel. I also know that they rape and murder because they want to. However there is another, contrastive story being told underneath Shannon's words, in the blank spaces and noted absences: that of how society, as individuals and as a whole, is eager to overlook sexual violence against, and even the murder of, women.

The description on the book jacket is deeply misleading. The second chapter - shockingly titled 'A Gentle Giant' - related how on their first date in 2003, 6'3" Jason Staples told Shannon that in 1988 he murdered his female roommate. He got angry that she turned down sex with him and he beat her head against the floor until she was dead, then he attempted to cover it up. He served a scant 10 years in jail before being released to work in the community, where he met Shannon. He was legally obligated to tell any woman he dated this information as part of his parole, as well as have them speak to his parole officer, and he also needed to inform anyone whose private residence he stayed overnight at. (Once he was granted full parole about a year later, he and Shannon celebrated no longer having to inform people he had committed a sexually-motivated murder before they stayed in their homes.)

To be fair to Shannon, it's pretty obvious that Jason targeted teachers (his relationship before Shannon was also with a teacher) perhaps because they would be more likely to see his brutal murder, committed at age 18, as a 'youthful indiscretion' similar to the ones made by the boys and young men teachers work with daily. It was a very solid strategy as Shannon absolutely did relate his crime to her job as a high school guidance counselor and mentioned it often in the book; it's part of why she believed his lies.

Shannon apparently never wondered what would happen if she herself turned down sex with Jason or whether she was endangering anyone by bringing this man into their lives. She never once questioned, either before or after, whether he was using her for respectability purposes. A large man convicted of murder married to a young teacher in the suburbs is far more likely to be believed reformed than the same large man living alone in an apartment. She was appalled that anyone might consider her husband to be akin to Paul Bernardo and her to Karla Homolka, yet Shannon conveniently left out that Karla's presence made at least one of their victims believe she was safe. Shannon simply believed him when he told her things. Her demented devotion allowed Jason acceptance in her world, which was genuinely sickening to read. Over and over men and women, from her parents to her friends to her colleagues, just accepted that a man who had brutally beaten a woman to death using his bare hands simply must be reformed because he didn't murder any women while incarcerated in a men's prison, he pinky-promised to be good, and because Shannon loved him. The value placed on the lives of women is so low that there seemed to be no second thoughts about prioritizing a man's wounded ego over a woman's life; a fact seen in the scant amount of time Jason spent in prison, the restaurant he volunteered at while on work release that allowed him to work with vulnerable populations that included minors, and how easily and readily countless men and women simply took Jason's word that he didn't want to hurt anyone ever again. He lied.

[Note: the following paragraphs contain graphic mention of his crimes to further illustrate how devious and depraved Shannon's apology manifesto truly is. It includes details not in the book. Please skip if this might be triggering.] A few scant months after being granted full parole and leaving Kingston for Peterborough, Jason was the only employee working at a store when a woman entered with the intent to buy a treat for her mother. He forced her at knifepoint into the walk-in refrigerator, where he told her he would kill her if she didn't cooperate and bound her with duct tape. He proceeded to orally then anally rape her with such force that she needed multiple stitches after rescue. According to court documents the woman believed Staples was going to beat her to death, and prayed that she would die quickly. She was left alone briefly when another woman entered the store. Jason threatened her, cutting deeply across her palm with his knife, then choked her unconscious before he tortured and raped her. Then he rented a van, wrapped his victims in black garbage bags, ripping holes for their mouths, and brought them to the home he shared with Shannon where he terrorized them for many more hours, using excessive amounts of violence.

Shannon left several of these details out, like how he threatened to kill the first victim and the excessive violence that left them bloody and bruised, likely because it didn't fit the narrative she attempted to paint with her book, that of a moment's deviation from being a good, kind-hearted man brought on by something else that conveniently allowed her to separate him from his actions. She made absolutely no mention at any point in the book of how the sexual violence of Jason's murder matched his actions in Peterborough, over 15 years later. The first victim acquiesced so Jason acted out a fantasy he later told Shannon was related to the violent anal sex he used to watch his mother receive from her boyfriend, but the second one fought back and after wounding her, he dropped the knife so that he could kill her with his bare hands, similar to how he murdered his first victim when she rejected him. That she survived his attempt on her life was only luck. That the attack in November 2005 bore such striking similarity to the murder he committed in 1988 was surely not.

Shannon brazenly stated "I would never protect Jason" which I suspect was something we were supposed to admire about her, much like the many times she stated she didn't condone his actions, but after 133 pages of increasingly bewildering defenses of his actions, reading that line was nothing short of obscene. While editorializing on his crimes Shannon said "[the] women's eyes were taped, and so were their hands and feet, but they still tried to talk to Jason, to re-humanize him and bring him down from his psychotic ledge." This passage was where I realized that Shannon was not in denial and not ignorant, she was and is simply manipulative and narcissistic. How many times in our lives are we told to acquiesce to a violent man who is endangering your life, to let him rape you so he won't kill you, to talk about yourself to try to make him see that you're a human, you're a person and please don't kill me? In my lifetime, many. Yet here Shannon flips it to favour her murderer-husband by deviating from the standard language used in cases of male violence against women; her word choice serves to subtly massage the reader towards sympathy for Jason. They were trying to "re-humanize" him, not humanize themselves. They were trying to save his life, not their own. Jason's behaviour was not him living out a long-held violent sexual fantasy but in a state where he was "psychotic" and in need of being "re-humanized" by two women he had brutalized. It's an extremely calculated language choice that rather undermines her vow that she would never protect him.

In addition to the prolonged attacks on the women, Shannon was also told another piece of information: Jason had placed a pinhole camera in the bathroom almost immediately after they moved to their house in Peterborough several months before and had been taping everyone who came into the bathroom for some cheap voyeuristic thrills. Jason had left the tapes in the van he had rented, but the police hadn't found the camera. While reviewing video to identify victims Shannon called his face blank and said she didn't recognize him, a technique she used to allow herself to differentiate between the "monster" version of him and the "gentle giant" part of him. In court, perhaps knowing that his attempts to lie and charm wouldn't work on seasoned members of the court like they did on Shannon and her family, Jason did not even attempt his usual gimmicks. It never seemed to occur to her that Jason had put these tapes in the van he had rented because he either wanted them to be found by the police and thus make his voyeurism victims aware of the humiliation as part of a final thrill before jail or because at some point he intended to dispose of them along with the women's bodies. She and her mother, another voyeurism victim, made sure they delivered the news to the other victims rather than the police. It seems truly bizarre that the wife of a sex criminal was allowed to inform other victims of her husband that they've been violated. For all her subsequent whining about how weak victim support (for her) is, she never considered how wildly inappropriate her actions there were.

From the start Shannon was fixated on knowing who her husband's victims were. For their well-being, she promised, totally not for her own gratification. The search warrants left at their house revealed the names of the victims and her friend quickly revealed she knew the woman a little, but not personally. "She put her arms around me and said, 'I promise to protect you - if we go anywhere together and we see her, I will tell you so you will know who she is, and you won't have to wonder if every woman you see is her. Maybe one day we can talk with her; it might be good for both of you.'" This set the tone for how Shannon saw herself for the remainder of the book and how she expected to be treated by not just by her close friends but every single person she met. She was Jason's biggest victim and she needed to be protected from the big, scary rape victims.

Shannon got deeply affronted and believed it deeply unfair whenever anyone attempted to protect the victims of her husband, because much like her husband, Shannon truly believes that what she wants is more important than the rights of the actual victims. When a colleague was shocked that Shannon was supporting and visiting Jason regularly, she didn't even attempt to understand why the woman acted as though she were suddenly "contagious". Rather than attempt introspection, Shannon simply writes: "I realized that I was going to have to be a lot more careful about what I said and who I spoke to from then on."

She leveled up her narcissism when "another long-term friend" wrote her a two paged typed letter that expressed how troubled he was by the group email she sent. Interestingly, Shannon included some of Jason's letters in their entirety, perhaps in an attempt to let Jason's manipulations work on the reader, but did not transcribe the letter from the man concerned about her misogyny. No, that needed to be filtered through Shannon so his perspective doesn't permeate in quite the same way. Another clever technique to influence the reader.

"He demanded to know what message would be sent to Jason's victims if he were to show compassion for their assailant. What message would he be sending his sons? What message would he be sending to all the women in his life who have experienced sexual assault and abuse?...He said that my correspondence made it sound as if Jason were the real victim and the women minor casualties of a tortured mind." Instead of thinking about his words and contemplating how she might be hurting other victims Shannon cut this man out of her life. The devotion she demanded from others would absolutely not be extended to them by her. They had to try to understand this rapist or else, but she didn't have to try to understand the perspective of anyone else.

"My family and I were devastated by all violence against women. I was also incensed that he and his partner had decided the victims would never recover - didn't that only victimize them further, condemning them to victimhood forever? How could they ever hope to recover if society deemed them ruined for life." I genuinely could not believe that only moments after being asked to consider the victims, she raged against the idea that her husband's actions might permanently affect them.

I'm going to include a passage from the only non-Shannon information online I could find. It's from 2013, three years after Shannon published this book and dared to write those words down.

"Each woman told the court their traumatic experience, however, has continued.
The older woman required stitches in her anus immediately after the assault. Her hair was hacked off and she was covered in bruises.
Scar tissue from the stitched wounds continues to cause bleeding and may require surgery, the judgment states. She suffers from panic attacks, nightmares, sleep interruption, insomnia, hopelessness and depression. The court states she is unable to feel safe anywhere and has numerous locks on the doors of her home.
“I would describe (the woman’s) testimony as displaying a grief beyond anything I have ever encountered in my legal career, which has expanded over 30 years,” the judge states.
The younger woman told court the assault broke her heart and faith in humanity. She is unable to focus during conversations, court documents state, and suffers from anxiety, flashbacks and is distrustful of male strangers.
“Overall she has lost her optimistic, happy view of life. Her energy levels have diminished and she is no longer the independent, strong, capable individual she once was,” the documents state."

In the five years between that letter and Shannon writing the book she didn't learn a single thing about empathy or compassion. She used this book to dismiss Jason's victims, over and over while praising her own strength and fortitude. Only her victimhood and Jason's matter.

This insensitivity continued when she returned to her job at a local high school (after chapter upon chapter of complaining that the wives of rapists just aren't getting enough support). She quickly became desperate to know the identity of the first victim's teenage step-son, who attended the school where Shannon worked. When informed she would not be given the name of the boy out of concern for his privacy Shannon had the gall to say "I will respect his privacy too, but it is extremely stressful for me to wonder if every young man is him." The school board, showing appropriate safeguarding, prioritized the child under their care and told Shannon she would be being transferred to a different school. She was affronted that the high school prioritized the well-being of a child and never returned to work for them. She later requested that someone associated with the school sit down with her in a restorative justice session to talk about how the school victimized her. Her ridiculous request was denied, commendably.

During a court date, Shannon saw a colleague she knew from the board of a charity. It turned out his partner was the older woman assaulted, the father of the child whose identity she felt entitled to, and that he asked the board not to tell her because they needed some time and privacy. She sobs that she "didn't know". "I was saying two things at the same time: that I didn't know Jason was dangerous, and I didn't know it was his partner who was the first victim." Jason was, is, and always will be a violent murderer, marking him as dangerous forever, no matter how much he cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die promised to her. After court, it was time for Shannon to think about herself again. "The truth of what Greg had told me was also starting to sink in: fellow board members had kept the identity of the victim and her connection to Greg a secret for six months - Greg had asked them to." Shannon was outraged the victim's needs were prioritized over hers and later, "I confronted two of the people, but they were defensive... I found myself crossing off a few names from my Golden Circle list. More loss."

The entire time that Shannon was insisting that she deserved the identities of the victims and their families she was also insisting there be a publication ban on her name so people wouldn't know that she was the wife of Jason Staples, the murderer and rapist. With absolutely zero irony. Then she wrote a book and did dozens of interviews about it, purposely tying her name to his forever as a way to bring attention to herself and profit off his crimes while his victims received nothing but trauma.

These final things are quibbles but drove me nuts within the book. Shannon's period was a few days late and she hoped she was pregnant. It started the next day. Inexplicably she referred to this period as not only a miscarriage but her "almost baby" several times. She wasn't ever pregnant. Another was that she became fixated on a few caffeine pills Jason took on the day of the attacks being responsible for his "psychosis" and using this as part of his defense. Included is a full-page photo of her and Jason pressed together grinning in prison, a few months before he was sentenced.

I've read several memoirs in the past few years, some of which were heartrending and touching memoirs of childhood sexual abuse, loss, grief, and violence; victims telling their own stories with more compassion for their abusers than their abusers ever showed for them and with a critical, self-aware eye to the harm they might have caused others while in pain. Perhaps it is because of these memoirs of strength and compassion that this memoir read not as an empowering tale of restorative justice but a horrifyingly selfish tirade, nauseatingly desperate to prove that Shannon Moroney is a good person, dammit! beyond all reason. Yet I cannot imagine Jason's victims reading this and feeling even a modicum better because Shannon is so incredibly tone-deaf and downright cruel in her certainty of her own righteousness. She never once critically examined either Jason or herself with any genuineness throughout the entire book. ( )

"When Shannon Moroney married in October of 2005, she had no idea that her
happy life as a newlywed was about to come crashing down around her. One month
after her wedding, a police officer arrived at her door to tell her that her
husband, Jason, had been arrested and charged in the brutal assault and
kidnapping of two women. In the aftermath of these crimes, Shannon dealt with a
heavy burden of grief, the stress and publicity of a major criminal
investigation and the painful stigma of guilt by association, all while
attempting to understand what had made Jason turn to such violence." --jacket

Through the Glass by Shannon Moroney is a revealing memoir about Moroney’s therapeutic process and how she copes with the after-effects of her discovery that the man she loved and married had unexpectedly recommitted horrific and violent crimes in the form of kidnapping and the raping of two women.

The narrative is written in first person by the author who divulges in detail the careful history in which she thoughtfully considered her relationship with Jason Staples after learning he was previously in prison for ten years and on parole with a life sentence for second-degree murder when he was eighteen-years-old.

She depicts her husband the only way she can, through a compassionate lens of her personal perspective and asserts his positive qualities: “…kind and gentle—still boyish in his looks.” (p. 23); “His easy-going nature and artistic talents…” (p.25); “…his articulate and well-educated manner of speaking,” (p.19) throughout the book as opposed to a one-dimensional view of a criminal.

While Moroney’s internal dialogue is filled with a detailed stream of consciousness and rhetorical questions that reveal her to sometimes succumb to over-analysis and personal sensitivity especially when responding to others scrutiny, judgement, and stigma at the knowledge of her husband’s crimes, it seems the influence comes largely from her experience as a guidance counsellor.

In an effort to throughly depict her experience and those closest to Jason Staples (his family, his friends), she reveals the hardship that loved ones of the law offender must face as a result of emotional isolation, societal stigma, and lack of correctional and institutional help by law.

To read the rest of my review, please visit my blog, The Bibliotaphe Closet:

http://zaraalexis.wordpress.com/2012/10/25/book-review-through-the-glass-by-shan...

Thanks,
Zara ( )

Read for Review
Overall Rating 3.50

First Thought when Finished: NonFiction is such a hard thing to review because it is so personal. Through the Glass is one of those stories that needs to be read but won't be easy.

What I Thought of the "Story": Through the Glass is the story of a woman who finds out that her husband has committed a horrific crime. This is not his first offence but no one in the system saw it coming. It is about her journey as a victim, wife, activist, and daughter through the ordeal. I think much of the story shines a light on things that need to be taken into consideration when we hear stories of horrible things happening. The victims are not always just the obvious ones. How the system handles the other parties involved is often as bad as them being the perps themselves. Through the Glass did a terrific job of shining a light on that.

What I Thought of Shannon: Shannon herself did not come across too sympathetic in Through the Glass almost from the beginning. Her incessant need to know who the victims were. Crossing people off her "golden circle" list because they didn't tell her was "off-putting" to say the least. Her thoughts over the baby that she might have lost were a little over-played. I did feel that she had some very bad things happen to her and there should be more of a system in place for the spouses/family of the perp. They are not responsible in most cases for the actions of the one person and should not be held accountable.

Last thought: Through the Glass was a very interesting look at the victims of association and their struggle to move forward.

Shannon Moroney is a woman coming to terms with her husband's horrific crimes - the kidnapping and rape of two women who were brought to their home to be violated while she was out of town on business. The crime is shocking and its aftermath is pretty horrible. Ms. Moroney bravely shares her journey - one that leads her into the field of victim advocacy for family members of criminals. I'll be honest and say that I often disliked her in this book - she seems self-centered and justifying, focused on the effect of what happened to her over the broader implications of the crime and its two victims. It's easy for me to judge, however, sitting in my nice chair in front of my nice computer next to my wonderful husband who's never hurt anyone. Who can say how you'd react? This is one woman's story and one woman's voice and it's definitely worth reading. ( )