‘Fox Chase Boy’ Documentary Defies Child Sex Abuse Code of Silence: ‘Silence Is How They Win’

When Gerad Argeros took to the stage naked on his first tour of what would become the film “Fox Chase Boy,” it’s fair to say even tough Philly audiences weren’t quite prepared.

“This is about my body,” he told them, with a rising sense of anger and urgency. “Embodied experience, where you remember everything that happened – it’s in your body.”

Argeros, who at this point has developed the act into a short film with an eye toward a future feature or possible series, didn’t know how to relate his story at first, he confesses. So the stripping away of both conventions and garments instinctively felt like clearing a slate.

He didn’t want audiences to come into his storytelling with prior expectations of what a child sexual abuse survivor is like, says Argeros.

“This is about trauma,” he says in the film version screening at the Ji.hlava Intl. Documentary Film Festival. “I’m not out to destroy the idea that my 97-year-old grandmother has about Catholicism. I just want it to be acknowledged that all the bad shit happened.”

Argeros was one of what is now believed to be hundreds of former altar boys and cross bearers in the Philadelphia parishes who were sexually abused by priests. Official totals don’t exist because many have never come forward publicly but the church has acknowledged the issue and in some cases paid out millions in settlements.

Argeros began speaking out about his experience around the time the 2015 film “Spotlight” brought the story to national prominence, at first working on how to talk about what happened at events like The Moth and open mic nights in various New York venues, he says.

His journey in developing the performance was chronicled by cinematographer and producing partner Kaya Dillon. Argeros had no background in film, he says – “We didn’t know what the fuck we were doing” – but could see from the tears and hugs of the crowds that his tale was having a devastating impact.

That made him realize he needed to get it out to a wider audience onscreen. Dillon, a veteran cinematographer for series such as “Homicide Hunter” and a score of projects including several hit comedies, met Argeros on their neighborhood schoolground where both their boys were on sports teams.

They decided almost immediately to figure out how to put together the “Fox Chase Boy” doc, named for the working-class neighborhood where Argeros had grown up, like so many others there, in a conservative religious family.

“Silence is how they win,” he says. But how to talk about things so appalling they would normally chase audiences away in droves? He decided to crack the problem with two tools: comedy and brutal honesty.

“What’s Gerry Argeros’ show about?” he asked on stage about himself in the film. “Yeah, I don’t know, man, he talks about being molested as a kid. It’s funny, though. It’s funny – not that part, that’s not the funny part. There’s like other stuff.”

Reaction shots of audiences breaking down capture the effect. Ji.hlava fest audiences responded the same way, waiting to talk to the filmmakers after the screening, one sharing a personal story of similar abuse.

Argeros’ story begins ominously in “Fox Chase Boy,” which introduces his hardscrabble neighborhood as a place where “people work – they don’t fuck around.”

It’s also a tight community with the almost lost-cause Eagles NFL team revered as much as the church. And it’s a place where many young boys become the pride of their families by serving as altar boys.

Then one day, an impressive black Volvo arrives in the parish, to the general awe of the kids around. It’s car horn could play the “Dukes of Hazard” theme, which would draw kids immediately. Argeros sat in the lap of the owner, priest James Brzyski, as he was allowed to operate the horn.

“We didn’t know what a Volvo was,” says Argeros in his film, with signature comic timing.

A least three of Argeros’ schoolmates who were also abused, sometimes raped, by a priest who years later killed himself, did not make it to old age, says Argeros.

But he feels like he’s brought them all along to his world premiere screening in Ji.hlava, he says. And the word is spreading, with an upcoming screening in DOC NYC’s main competition and others in Washington D.C. coming up, along with interest from platforms.

One goal of “Fox Chase Boy” most important to him is to ensure those who went through this are never forgotten – that they don’t “become invisible.” Argeros shares the names and photos his classmates in the film: Jamie Cunningham, John Delaney and Jimmy Spoerl.

“I am holding their families in my heart today,” he says. “Thank you to everyone who showed up when I needed you to help me tell this story. This is your story too. Fox Chase Boys forever.”