Yesterday my husband and I were sitting by a window overlooking a golf course, enjoying amazing Greek salads. A tall man approached our table rather tentatively and said he'd seen me and thought he'd say hi. I remembered him as a relatively quiet man, a member of a church I once attended, but yesterday he was chatty. After catching up on family news, he began to say goodbye but suddenly stopped, turned towards me and looked at me intently."I need you to know how you helped me," he said. "I read one of your posts awhile ago about a help [...]

For generations past, the voices of the abused have been silenced behind closed doors. They were the muffled screams or sobs of victims or, after the fact, hushed whispers between devastated siblings or friends. Often, the voices were locked away as memories, never allowed the relief of release. Child sexual abuse was seldom revealed or acknowledged, whether from shame, fear of not being believed or in efforts to protect the perpetrators.But those voices have lingered in memories and in the damage done to the lives of the victims. They haven’t gone away. They’ve been waiting in the shadows of time, [...]

It’s not fun standing before a group of strangers telling about how I lived with a child molester for 38 years, knowing absolutely nothing about his dark thoughts, re-entrance into pornography or secret life of victimizing two young girls. Every time I speak, I have to unscrew the jar that holds memories that shattered my family. They come tumbling out and I have to grab them and force them to stand, exposed, before the crowd in all their shame. I point to them and say, “Look at what happened to my family – don’t let it happen to yours.” And [...]