Page 22 - The Hunt - Spring 2021

It was Christmas morning. Victoria Wyeth was doing what she’d done for several years—visiting the women she worked with at Norristown State Hospital before gathering with her family. All were victims of violent sex crimes. As Wyeth was leaving, one of the women looked at her and said, “Going home.”
That’s all. A flat statement. But it crippled Wyeth. “I went into my car and cried my eyes out,” she says. “That was it. It was too hard.”
So Wyeth shifted her focus to men who’d either experienced sexual trauma or were perpetrators of sexual violence. It was a long way from her New York City upbringing, summers in Maine with family members,
a Bates College liberal arts education, and subsequent graduate work at Harvard and Wesleyan universities. Still, Wyeth immersed herself in her work—until breast cancer put a halt to things.
Diagnosed in May 2016, Wyeth stopped working at the hospital in April of the following year. Her treatments sapped her strength, but the news that the cancer might be back was even tougher. Wyeth opted for a “prophylactic double-mastectomy” but later discovered
that her cancer hadn’t returned. Healthy,
she started working again in May 2018 in the psychiatry department at the University of Pennsylvania. She was as a research assistant
for Dr. Aaron Beck, the man who invented cognitive behavioral therapy. “He’s a big fan
of Andy,” she says.
Wyeth has plenty of fans, too—most
notably Salky, whom she met at a dance, and Dave Golden, a musician and composer for TV shows and movies. Golden, a fellow student at the Dalton School in Manhattan, says his longtime friend’s social predilections tend toward dinner parties, where she can interact with everyone in a smaller group. “She’d like to find five or six people she can be genuine and loose and free with,” says Golden. “If you’re lucky enough to be one of those people, you’re going to have a helluva lot of fun.”
Not that Wyeth is out of her depth at larger gatherings. “She has an infectious laugh,” says Salky. “You hear it from across the room, and you want to go talk to her.”
Wyeth is also a Halloween fanatic whose costumes are always first-rate and as authentic as possible. Salky remembers her going to one party
“I WANT PEOPLE TO KNOW HOW MUCH MY GRANDFATHER LOVED LIFE. THERE WASN’T ENOUGH TIME IN THE DAY FOR HIM TO PAINT. I’M TRYING TO TEACH PEOPLE WHO HE IS AS A PERSON.”
20 THE HUNT MAGAZINE spring 2021