Every autumn brings a shedding of illusions — except for those who refuse to face their truth.
This week, I learned that Dr. Júlio Machado Vaz, the psychiatrist who sexually abused me when I was a vulnerable 17-year-old, has released another book, Outonecer. A soft, poetic, nostalgic memoir written in a tone of “lucidez” and “amor.” A book packaged as introspection.
But introspection without accountability is just performance.
It is astonishing — though not surprising — how many abusers reinvent themselves in old age as gentle philosophers, wise grandfathers, and sentimental storytellers. They write about seasons, memories, fear of aging, music, animals, and even artificial intelligence, while carefully omitting the truth:
the lives they harmed,
the trust they violated,
and the young women whose emotional wounds they deepened.
The Spanish Journalist Who Told the Truth
In 2015, a Spanish journalist, Elena Cabrera, published an article titled Abusos en el diván: la transgresión silenciada (“Abuses on the Couch: The Silenced Transgression”). She courageously exposed what many do not want to see: sexual abuse committed by trusted doctors and therapists.
She included my story — my sexual abuse by Dr. Júlio Machado Vaz — and the article was published in a major Spanish outlet.
That article quietly disappeared from the internet.
I have no doubt his lawyers pressured the platform to erase it.
But truth has a way of surfacing again.
Here is the excerpt she wrote about me, translated from Spanish:
“When the press reported the accusations against Dr. Criado, the Portuguese Sylvie Imelda Shene was reflected in what they were saying. In her book ‘A Dance to Freedom’, published in the United States in 2014, she claimed to have been the victim of sexual abuse by the renowned psychiatrist and sexologist Júlio Machado Vaz. In the 70s, Shene went to a young doctor, Machado, to help her overcome childhood trauma. ‘His methods made me worse,’ she says in her blog, where she also says that it took her 20 years to acknowledge that he had been the victim of sexual abuse. Referring to the case of Matilde Solís, Shene asks if ‘Portugal will also someday find the courage to investigate Machado Vaz.’”
Cabrera continued by noting that Júlio Machado Vaz has long been a celebrity in Portugal — a commentator on radio and television, author of books, Vice President of the Portuguese Society of Clinical Sexology — and that one of his own students, psychiatrist João Vasconcelos Vilas Boas, was later tried for raping a pregnant patient.
These patterns don’t occur in a vacuum.
The Persona of Tenderness, the Reality of Abuse
The synopsis of Outonecer reads like the memoir of a gentle, reflective man contemplating his memories, grandchildren, animals, travels, and the seasons of life.
But as Alice Miller wrote with surgical precision:
“We cannot really love if we are forbidden to know our truth…
We can only try to behave as if we were loving, but this hypocritical behavior is the opposite of love.”
— Alice Miller, The Drama of the Gifted Child, p. 23
This “as if” personality — the illusion of love, the illusion of sincerity — is exactly what predatory therapists hide behind.
When I was 17, I was suffering from childhood trauma. Instead of treating the wound, he used my vulnerability for his own gratification. Like most teenagers who are abused by adults, I blamed myself, shoved the memory down, and carried the shame for decades.
He went on to build a celebrity persona — talking about love, relationships, sexuality, introspection — while the truth remained buried beneath polished sentences and theatrical gentleness.
That is not love.
That is not introspection.
That is not healing.
That is emotional camouflage.
The Illusion of Wisdom in Old Age
In Outonecer, he writes:
“Sei que não sou eterno. Mas hoje ainda estou vivo, lúcido e capaz de amar.”
(“I know I am not eternal. But today I am still alive, lucid, and capable of loving.”)
The public laps up these lines because they want to believe in wise men.
They want to believe in healing through poetry.
They want to believe aging brings clarity.
But clarity comes only through facing the shadow, not decorating it with beautiful metaphors.
A man who was truly lucid would acknowledge the harm he inflicted.
A man capable of love would not have abused a vulnerable teenager.
A man capable of introspection would confront his past before writing about the seasons of life.
Instead, we get performance. A last harvest of an emotionally blind public eager to be comforted by illusions.
Autumn Comes for All of Us — and So Does Truth
I am 66 years old now. I have lived long enough to know that truth eventually pushes to the surface, no matter how many lawyers, publishers, or public personas try to bury it.
Dr. Júlio Machado Vaz is in the autumn of his life, writing about love and memory.
I entered the autumn of mine, telling the truth.
One is performance.
One is liberation.
I survived him.
I healed what he exploited.
And I will continue to speak so that younger women do not spend decades trapped in silence as I did.
Because autumn may come quickly — but truth arrives with its own season, and it never misses the harvest.
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