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 Research
Magazine
May 2001
[COVER STORY]
Broker Benefactors
A look at those...who contribute as much or more to civic and
community causes as to helping their clients...these broker-heroes
are as successful on the business side as they are in making
a difference in the lives of others less fortunate.
... HBO last month broadcast "Just, Melvin: Just Evil,"
the award-winning documentary written and produced by Tucker
Anthony financial advisor James Ronald Whitney about generations
of sexual abuse in his own family. Whitney will be honored May
22 with a humanitarian award for the film, which has been championed
by child-abuse advocates and lauded by film critics in several
countries.
...With the disturbing documentary, "Just, Melvin: Just Evil,"
James Ronald Whitney...engages in the rarest kind of disclosure--that
his maternal grandfather, a convicted child molester, sexually
abused all 10 of his children and stepchildren, some from the
age of 2 and 3. A few of the children grew up to become child
abusers themselves. Whitney himself was molested by an uncle
when he was 4. In their own voices, Whitney's mother and aunts
talk about their demons--suicide attempts, drug and alcohol
abuse, prostitution in some cases. And Whitney reveals a few
demons of his own. When he was younger, for instance, he pretended
his mother was dead so that if she did kill herself it wouldn't
hurt so much.
But as he says in the film that Roger Ebert called "one of the
best docs" of 2000: "We can't just sit back and act like victims,
or we become the losers. It's all about finding a way to survive."
Whitney, a star broker in Tucker Anthony's Wall Street office,
began making the movie, his first, in 1997--writing, directing,
editing and producing, all in the hours after the stock market
closed.
"This is a wake-up call to society to say, "Hey, [children]
do remember. [Children] who are abused do remember. In the case
of my family, they never had childhoods, adolescences, or adult
lives that were clean and sober. They choose to live in a world
of fog," he says. "If they lived with perfect clarity, they'd
have to face what happened."
In the film, Whitney even interviews his grandfather, a chilling
confrontation that is as uncomfortable as it is unforgettable.
"He was obviously very courageous to make this film because
it's not only about the subject of incest, but about his own
family," according to Karel Amaranth, executive director of
Victim's Assistance Services of Westchester County N.Y., a non-profit
that will honor Whitney with its Art of Vision award this month.
...A former TV-quiz-show sensation and professional dancer...Whitney's
second documentary, "TheWorkingGirl.com," due out [soon],
is about a friend in the cyberporn industry. His third film
will revisit his own family, this time, his Hell's Angel father.
Whitney says his dual roles as stockbroker and documentary filmmaker
keep him grounded. "our brain has two hemispheres. One side
is artistic and creative, the other empirical. They are inextricably
interwoven to me. It completes the balance."
-- By Ellen Uzelac
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