Filmmaker Says She Was Told She 'Should Have Killed' Her Serial Predator Grandfather — But She Confronted Him on Camera Instead By Christine Pelisek

Amanda Mustard spent eight years making a documentary about her grandfather Dr. William Flickinger who sexually abused some of her family members as well as children.

In a video op-ed for the New York Times on Jan. 8, Mustard, whose HBO documentary Great Photo, Lovely Life was released in 2023, said people told her she “should have killed” him.

But, she said, the reality of dealing with sexual abuse is far more complicated.

“Nothing provokes us like child sexual abuse, and I get it,” Mustard said. “That rage is totally valid. But my story has taught me that if we really want to protect kids, then we need to confront a painful truth.”

“In my family, that monster was Grandpa. Dad,” she said. “How amazing would it be if you could just throw Grandpa in a wood chipper? But it’s not that simple when it’s somebody close.”

Mustard began pursuing the documentary after her grandmother Salesta died and she went to Florida with her mother to visit Flickinger — a former Pennsylvania chiropractor whose known trail of abuse included crimes on toddlers and adult women, starting in the 1970s.

“My family’s story might seem extreme, but child sexual abuse is way more common than we think,” the filmmaker said. “15 percent of American adults today are child sexual abuse survivors, and 90 percent of them were abused by someone they know, maybe someone they loved.”

“You’re probably not going to like it, but these aren’t monsters,” she added. “They’re humans that have done monstrous things. And if we can accept that, we can actually start to prevent this and stop more kids from getting abused.”

Mustard recalled asking her grandfather, while interviewing him in the Florida retirement facility where he was living, if there was anybody that he ever felt like he could talk to about it.

“Did you ever open up?” Mustard said.

“I wished I could have,” he responded, Mustard recalled. “I wanted to talk to somebody, but I didn’t know who I could really talk to.”

“What if there had been somebody he could talk to? Imagine how different things could have been for my family,” Mustard told the Times. “In the U.S., we spend $5.4 billion a year on locking child abusers up and only $3 million on child sexual abuse prevention research.”

Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Sign up for PEOPLE’s free True Crime newsletter for breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases.

“I’m not asking you to have sympathy for sexual predators,” she said. “Of course, we need to hold perpetrators criminally accountable, but my grandpa went to prison and nothing changed. He continued to abuse after he was released.”

Flickinger eventually lost his chiropractic license in Pennsylvania and moved to Florida, where he was convicted of lewd and lascivious acts against a child in 1992. He spent two years in prison and had to register as a sex offender.

Mustard said those at risk of abusing need to be given “every opportunity to prevent them from hurting kids.”

There are post-prison reentry programs that have been proven to reduce recidivism and programs that help prevent abuse before it starts, “but they need more funding and more research,” she said.

“So, as uncomfortable as it was, instead of killing Grandpa, I talked to him,” she said. “It was terrifying, but it made me realize that nothing is going to change unless we confront this reality head on.”

In Mustard’s opinion, when we treat abusers like monsters, “we focus solely on humiliation and punishment instead of prevention and treatment, and that is not keeping our kids safe.” It also diminishes “the complex experiences of survivors,” she said. “This stops us from being able to really hear their voices and what they need.”  

Mustard previously told PEOPLE she made the film for the “survivors who have been through the messiness of this and know the complexity of it.”

“I made this for them to feel seen,” she said at the time. “I did not make this for true crime buffs. I did not make this for people who want easy answers or to be told, ‘That’s the bad guy, and these are the good guys.’ That is not the reality of experiencing incest and child sex abuse. That’s why I made this.”

Flickinger died alone in March 2019. He was 86 years old.

If you or someone you know has been a victim of sexual abuse, text “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 to be connected to a certified crisis counselor.