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 [...]

Q. What’s it like in Canada for a kid who is being abused?A. - Not much different than for a kid who is being abused in Thailand or Cambodia, or any other part of the world where predators corner them in isolation and indulge their twisted perversions.Abuse is abuse. The cry of desperation from a little boy or girl is the same, whether coming from the heart of a child walking the dirt streets of Uganda, dressed in tattered rags; or from the heart of a Canadian child, weeping on a frothy, pink bedspread, with her GapKid clothes strewn where [...]

Simon and Garfunkel sang, “Hello darkness my old friend... within the sounds of silence”Silence.Silence has been, since the dawn of time, a luxury for predators. It has been their friend. Within the protective walls of silence, they allowed their basest desires unbridled freedom. They touched children in private places that were designed to be discovered by brides and bridegrooms. They stirred areas in the brains of children that were never meant to be stimulated until they were grown. They pretended to befriend vulnerable children in locker rooms, summer camps, homes, schools, churches and wherever trusting parents took their little ones.But [...]

“There was no normal, happy greeting – just a sudden torrent of words from my husband. “I did it! I did it all – and more!” Years of bottled secrets suddenly uncorked with the pressure of fermented evil. Incomprehensible sentences erupted from Matt’s mouth in shocking ejections.“As the toxic words hit my brain, pushing to penetrate, I stared blankly at Matt. “You did what?” I didn’t understand what he meant.“‘I did it all – everything Linda said – and more. More than anybody knows.’ For the first time for as long as I could remember, Matt was looking directly into [...]

The internet has been termed today’s “wild west” where anything goes. In the days of Wild Bill and the James brothers, the bad boys rode into town in a cloud of dust with guns blazing. Everyone knew who they were and was aware of their intentions and activity. Today’s bad boys (and girls) can sit at home in the comfort and anonymity of their bedrooms and do far more damage than any gun-toting savage of yesterday. Brandishing keyboards and cameras instead of guns, they swagger through cyberspace like a law unto themselves, savaging the innocence of children through child pornography, [...]

The problem with kids is that – well – they’re kids. Kids don’t have very many years under their belts. They haven’t lived on this planet long enough to spot a manipulator or know how to navigate a tricky situation. Those who live in homes where they can trust the adults around them, tend to think all adults can be trusted and have their best interests at heart. They trust that the person on the other end of their internet chat conversation is who they portray themselves to be.We tell kids: “Mind your manners. Speak respectfully to Mr. Brown. Do [...]