The sitcom format – stock characters and cheap gags, all problems resolved by the end of a 20 minute episode – might sounds at odds with the subject of child abuse, but in My Sexual Abuse: The Sitcom , comedian Mark O’Sullivan merged the two. At 12, O’Sullivan was the victim of sexual abuse at the hands of a family member – Uncle Steve – and it was this trauma that served as inspiration for his one-off sitcom. The film was presented in two parts – the first was a documentary about O’Sullivan’s abuse, the ensuing court case, and the process of turning his trauma into comedy.
Then came the sitcom itself, surreally undercutting its unsettling story of grooming and abuse with one liners and canned laughter. Across both sections, O’Sullivan pushed the capacity of laughter to dispel darkness to its limits – the results were brave and brilliantly disarming. Trauma is all-encompassing, but there’s nothing like a sharp joke to puncture its overbearing bulk.
“No one talks about this because it’s so uncomfortable,” said Cariad Lloyd , who played two villains in the sitcom – Uncle Steve’s defence barrister, and Auntie Bex, who brings Steve into Mark’s orbit in the first place. “But if you make it comfortable, maybe we can talk about it.” And what format could be more familiarly comforting than a sitcom? The project was troubling as well as funny.
In keeping with the “deliberately cartoonish” tone of the sitcom, O’Sullivan played his 12-year-o.
