Obituary for Andrew Vachss: A Life for the Abused

“Keep your strength” was always the encouragement at the end of the sparse, no-frills messages that Andrew Vachss sent me during our interview project, which we began in the early 1990s. He lived on Lower Broadway, he met me for the first meeting at five-thirty in the morning, and there was a Rottweiler in the doorway of his office who shouldn't scare me, please. Large dogs were constant companions of this author and lawyer, who stood up in court and in writing with unsurpassed consistency for the rights and protection of abused children. Vachss became known in the USA and Europe as a writer of detective novels, whose hero Burke, as a private investigator without commission, leads a merciless campaign for abused children.

These

were published in German translation by Eichborn Verlag, who asked me to do the aforementioned long interview with Vachss - as a companion book for a content and style that was able to shock even die-hard crime readers. The novels were “explicit” insofar as this Burke - registered without a first name as a baby abandoned by a prostitute and convicted twice as a violent criminal - persecuted the perpetrators like a mercenary: “suspicious, hyper-vigilant, alternately frightened and violently angry, and deeply with his 'adopted family.' connected ”, as Vachss described the protagonist (and thus also stylized himself a little).

In our long conversations it quickly became clear what humanitarian commitment drove him, who was already entrusted as an investigator and social worker with cases whose excesses constrict your throat.

He viewed relevant repeat offenders as monsters who had to be stopped once and for all.

He considered social rehabilitation out of the question.

We agreed that there is a group of people who are absolutely evil;

It is no coincidence that our dialogue diverged towards the end of the evaluation of Nazi violent crimes.

He was not an angel of vengeance himself

Vachss was not a rascal, as he was sometimes accused, but advocated preventive measures starting as early as possible to prevent victims of serious abuse from becoming perpetrators themselves, as was and is often the case. And here he drew an absolute limit at which liberals should stop being generous: Anyone who puts the rights of a violent psychopath above the protection and safety of potential victims is not a liberal, but a fool. When Vachss lost a lawsuit, his nightmare was that the affected child had to go back to those who had violated him. Cases that have recently become known in Germany show the role that criminal energy, the failure of authorities and general indifference play in this.

Andrew Vachss has written other crime series ("Cross", "Aftershock"), novels and short stories as well as comics and plays. His professional career began with a humanitarian outreach in Biafra, he ran a maximum security prison for violent juveniles and against this background became a child attorney in New York, who ensured that abused children received proper legal assistance. He was consulted and honored by President Bill Clinton. A black flap over the right eye, which had been impaired as a child, was his outward identification.

For Vachss, the decision as to whether a victim of abuse would later become a sociopath or a person capable of empathy was a matter of free will.

He and his wife Alice, who worked as a district attorney in New York, fought the fight against sexual violence as passionately as professionally, knowing full well that it will never be finally won.

Andrew Vachss died on December 27th at the age of 79.