Dancing Through the Pain: My Journey from Abuse to Strength

Dancing Through the Pain cover

**Dancing Through the Pain: My Journey from Abuse to Strength** is 2015 memoir by HSI Special Agent and former ballerina Margaret Marks. It details her experiences as a student at the School of American Ballet and her sexual abuse by her legal guardian, Angela Hadid.

## Background

Margaret seemingly had it all; she was intelligent, kind and humble. She’d just earned the position of soloist at the New York City Ballet after training her whole life to achieve her dream. Margaret also had a secret, she was being sexually abused.

Between 2008 and 2012, from age of 12 to 16, Margaret was the victim of **sexual abuse** from her legal guardian, Angela Hadid. The abuse started shortly after Margaret went to live with her Angela while she was attending the School of American Ballet in New York City. Margaret’s abuse started out with seemingly harmless comments and complaints about Margaret, it turned to inappropriate comments and sexually explicit conversations, this led to touching and in turn led to full sexual assault and abuse. As the abuse continued it grew more and more severe with Angela coming to become sexually aroused by Margaret’s discomfort and pain. Some of the abuse included Angela performing oral and digital sex on Margaret, forcing Margaret to perform oral sex on her, as time passed the abuse got more and more serious, it culminated with Angela forcibly penetrating Margaret with various objects and eventually her hand. Angela kept Margaret from reporting her by threatening to ruin her aspiring career, and worse by threatening to do the same to her own daughter if Margaret didn’t comply. The abuse culminated with a trip to the hospital after Angela injured Margaret during an especially aggressive assault on night. Angela used her position as a lawyer to avoid the nurse reporting the incident as suspected child abuse.

Eventually on Thursday July 26, 2012, Margaret who was then 16 confided in Lindsey about the years of abuse she had suffered. Despite asking Lindsey to promise not to tell anyone else, Lindsey contacted the NYPD and reported what had happened. Detectives from the 20th Precinct along with Special Victims Division detectives came to her workplace to speak with her to avoid tipping off Angela. Despite initially refusing to discuss her abuse, Margaret reluctantly shared her story with the detectives after they promised to protect Angela’s daughter from any retaliatory abuse as Angela had always promised to do. Angela was arrested without incident that afternoon at her home in Central Park West. The following day Margaret’s mother Jennifer flew to New York City to be by Margaret’s side during her grueling and emotional interview about her years of abuse at the hands of Angela. Jennifer not only had to hear the horrific details of Margaret’s abuse but also deal with the fact that her best friend, the person she’d picked to be Margaret’s guardian, was the person responsible for abusing her daughter. Angela was arraigned and pled not guilty, alleging Margaret had an inappropriate fixation on her and had made up the abuse when Angela rebuffed her advances.

### Trial

Angela’s trial took place between Friday September 13, 2013 and Friday September 27, 2013, Angela was prosecuted by Gina Taylor from the New York County District Attorney’s Office. Angela stuck to her original story and tried to portray herself as a victim of Margaret’s misplaced infatuation. Unbeknownst to Angela at the time of the abuse, Margaret kept a detailed journal in her email account which covered her entire history of abuse in excruciatingly lengthy and graphic detail. Despite the defense knowing about the journal and its contents since discovery, they still tried to portray Margaret as an entitled young woman who was infuriated when Angela rebuffed her then made up abuse allegations to retaliate. The prosecution argued that there was no way Margaret could have made up such a detailed account prior to her accusations against Angela, they also brought in a digital forensics expert who testified that the journal entries were made on the days the abuse had occurred and had not been edited or even accessed once they were created.

Angela was found guilty by unanimous decision of sexual conduct against a child in the first degree, a Class B felony, and at her sentencing hearing on Thursday November 28, 2013, she was sentenced to 10 years plus 5 years of post-release supervision. The judge remarked that Angela had a good chance for rehabilitation as it was her first offense. Margaret’s victim impact statement was especially moving, with Angela and even the judge being visibly emotional as Margaret read it.

### Aftermath

The verdict caused significant outrage, with various commentators saying that had Angela been a male offender and being convicted of the same offense, she would have been given a much harsher sentence as the potential maximum sentence is 25 years. Margaret spoke out about the stigma of being the survivor of sexual abuse where the perpetrator was a woman. She explained how several people had disregarded or tried to minimize her abuse by suggesting it was less serious than if it was a male offender. She even recounted people making lewd comments about her abuse, including unnamed male members of her dance company.

Margaret’s mother, Jennifer became a victim’s rights advocate and advocated for significant reforms in sentencing for crimes against children. Angela was released on Wednesday December 15, 2021 after serving 8 years of her 10 year sentence. Angela was considered a model prisoner and was released early for both good behavior and due to the pandemic. Despite her release, Angela still has to register as a sex offender for the rest of her life and complete 5 years of post-release supervision until December 2026. After her abuse came to light, Margaret’s mother tried to convince her to come back home, Margaret refused however at her mother’s insistence, she did go to live with Miranda Snow and three other female colleagues in a shared apartment for the remainder of her dance career. Jennifer believed, and Margaret concurred, that she wasn’t ready to live alone, nor should she be alone during that especially difficult period of her life.

Margaret sought therapy at the suggestion of her mother, Margaret tried a group therapy program but found it wasn’t helpful. She eventually found a therapist in Morningside Heights who had previously counseled female survivors of sexual abuse in which their abuser was female. Margaret immediately clicked with her new therapist and continued seeing her until she moved to Los Angeles in 2019. It was her therapist who suggested Margaret write down her thoughts and feelings, this led to Margaret writing and eventually publishing her memoir, **Dancing Through the Pain: My Journey from Abuse to Strength**, in 2015. Margaret’s memoir became a modest success and was praised by children’s safety advocates and child psychologists.

## Writing

Margaret began writing her memoir as a hidden journal in high school as a way of processing what was happening to her and continued writing it afterwards as a way of moving forward with her life. Margaret’s secret journal eventually helped prove her abuse during the trial of her abuser, Angela Hadid. Margaret rewrote her journal into her life story, from 4 to 18, after graduating high school and during her first two semesters in college. Both her therapist and her mother encouraged her to publish it and she eventually managed to find a publisher who liked her work, it was published in 2015 under the title **Dancing Through the Pain: My Journey from Abuse to Strength**. It subsequently became a modest hit and Margaret even spoke at her school about her journey so far.

## Reception

The memoir despite being a modest success, has universally been praised by professional children’s safety advocates and child/clinical psychologists. Margaret shares her experiences of noticing issues with her abusers behavior early on but not realizing what those signs meant, as well as trying to drop hints to family and friends about what was going on. Clinical psychologist William Bradford has said that the way Margaret explained how she tried to get help while simultaneously being too scared to actually speak out is something very important for parents, educators and others to understand and learn how to spot in others. Bradford stated "Margaret was subconsciously trying to ask for help, she probably wasn’t even aware the extent she was communicating this to others, in her mind she was dropping subtle clues but most of them were so obvious someone should have noticed. The amount of people who missed fairly obvious signs of abuse, much less her all but telling them is disturbing and her abuse should have been picked up years earlier. This account is so important because it addresses specifically how she told people, through behavior and nonverbal communication, it’s something everyone needs to be aware of so they can understand these signs if they’re presented with them."

Child psychologists have also praised how it goes into detail about the beginning of an abusive situation and how it starts, escalates and progresses. Child psychologist Marcus Helms said "Reading survivor’s accounts, you often get details about the abuse and its aftermath. But getting an account from the very beginning, how the situation slowly builds from seemingly innocent loving behavior to abuse, is very uncommon.". Helms explains that information like that isn’t always available to the people who need it most and recommends people read it for an understanding of how abusive relationships begin, as told from the survivors view. Helms also says "Abuse starts subtly, often too subtle to notice but this gives an insight into how subtle and seemingly normal loving behavior can be the foundation for abuse.".

Psychologist and victims support counselor Joanna Greenwood said "It starts out so caring and loving, the survivor and her abuser almost have a mother-daughter relationship and it’s clear they have a special bond. Then when she notices behavior from her abuser that makes her uncomfortable, she ignores it because there’s no frame of reference to understand it’s wrong. When the abuse starts it’s jarring and unexpected. That’s what abuse is really like.". Joanna Greenwood, founder of the victims support and advocacy group The Phoenix Foundation, has used Margaret’s memoir as an important example of how to spot abuse before it escalates.

## Margaret’s victim impact statement

Margaret’s memoir also contained her victim impact statement in its entirety:

"My name’s Margaret and I’m a survivor! My mom’s best friend, my legal guardian and the woman I considered like a second mom to me sexually abused me from the time I came to live with her when I was 12 until shortly after my 16th birthday.

It started out with inappropriate comments, comments I as a naive 12 year old dancer didn’t even realize were inappropriate. "You have such a great body" she’d say, "Do you ever touch yourself?". Eventually it evolved into sexual explicit conversations, conversations in which she’d describe in graphic detail her sexual experiences with both her ex husband and several other sexual partners.

Eventually she started exposing herself to me, finding excuses for me to see her naked. When that no longer excited her, she started watching me in the shower and masturbating as I slept.

Eventually when that was no longer effective at arousing her she started touching me, first while I slept and then whenever she felt like it. After a while she started forcing me to perform oral sex on her, with her then performing oral sex on me. When I told her it made me uncomfortable and I didn’t like it, she said it was because I was a virgin and that she knew what to do.

One night she came into my room and said she was going to help with my problem, she then undressed me and forcibly inserted her fingers into my vagina. I couldn’t believe how painful it was, I begged her to stop and told her it hurt but she continued until she was satisfied that I was no longer a virgin. Afterwards she masturbated herself to orgasm as I laid crying and in shock from her digitally raping me.

Now that I was no longer a virgin, the abuse increased significantly and she began penetrating me vaginally almost daily. Eventually she started penetrating me with objects such as a sex toy of hers, and also pencils, a bottle and a banana. At one point she attempted to insert her entire hand into my vagina but gave up after I started screaming for her to stop. At one point she told me that when Tarik (her ex husband) visited next she’d make sure he "Fucked me like the dirty slut I was" suggesting that he would teach me to "Take it like a woman.".

The worst part came when I began to understand my abuse and she threatened not only to ruin my dance career but to force her 9 year old daughter to ‘take my place’ if I ever run away.

Angela Hadid was like a second mother to me, until she stole my innocence and my childhood from me. I’ll never get to experience that sweet and awkward first time like other young women do. Even when I do get to experience my first consensual sexual encounter, what she did to me will always be with me and will always taint my view of sex and pleasure.

Nothing will ever replace what she took from me, all I can ask, beg, is that you hold her accountable for what she did to me. You and you alone have the ability to hold her accountable.

Angela! I’m going to get the biggest revenge imaginable against you. I’m going to go on, I’m going to achieve my dream, and you won’t stop me. Making you powerless by refusing to let you define me, just as you thought you made me powerless, that’ll be the best revenge anyone could have. You thought I was helpless, powerless, look at where you are now and tell me; which one of us is helpless!"

## Quotes

* "My name is Margaret and I’m a survivor!"
* "I missed out on so much, so many little life experiences people take for granted, ballet was my life for 14 years. I sacrificed everything for my dream and believe me it took everything, but I wouldn’t change my experience for anything."
* "My parents sacrificed a lot for me to follow my dream, so I sacrificed myself to honor their sacrifice. It’s a vicious circle, born out of love."