‘As a child, I had a book with a macabre 15th century painting: writhing naked bodies, blood, people being torn up. I was fascinated, and ashamed that I liked it. I used to go to the basement to watch an old show with nude actors doing very erotic things, and would go into ecstatic states as a child. I drew pictures of people being strung up, their breasts tied up, being boiled in oil. I thought I was possessed by the devil, that men in white coats would come get me.

‘I went to grad school and worked at the public defender's office, interviewing sex offenders in prison to say whether they could be released. I was finding humanity in them, seeing that they’d been horribly traumatized themselves. The school didn’t like this. I was called into the dean's office and threatened to be flunked.

‘In my thirties I was in  ...