Sword and Scale - Episode 99

Episode Date: September 17, 2017

Underreported and underdiscussed, male sexual child abuse is a topic that is often brushed under the rug due to social norms and the child's fears of being labelled a homosexual or future perpetrator. Data from various studies indicates that the problem is much more widespread than initially thought, but because such a small percentage of victims ever come forward, the data is skewed. In this episode we delve into this topic and discuss it freely and openly.If you want to tell us your story, please call us at [phone] and leave your story on our voicemail.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Sword and Scale contains adult themes and violence and is not intended for all audiences Listener discretion is advised It started with me going down on her Eventually we would start to have sex she would cry when she did it, but she knew what she was doing. Welcome to season 4 episode 99 of Sword and Scale, a show that reveals the worst monsters are real. In this episode, we have a very important topic to talk about. A topic many rarely discuss.

Male, sexual, child abuse. We have some stories to share, and we're joined by Real Crime Profiles Jim Clemente. Please stay with us. When I was a boy, maybe around 11 or 12 years of age, I would ride my skateboard or bike really around my neighborhood. It was a different era. We didn't have plate-aids or helicopter parents. We didn't even have cell phones.

There was no internet. Cable TV was essentially one channel, HBO. It felt like a more innocent time than the turmoil we see today on 24 hour news networks. But it wasn't. It just seemed that way. On this one day, I was riding my skateboard going between my grandmother's house and my mother's house where I lived. It's a short route, just around a corner. The houses are but a block away from each other. And I had almost reached that corner when I noticed a white van slowing down and pulling up next to the curb where I was skating by.

It was one of those non distinct white vans with no windows. Not too new, not too old. The same kind of van that gets a hole cut on one side to be modified into a nice cream truck, plastered with stickers of snow cones and cherry screw balls and orange pop-ups, while a musical horn plays an endless loop of carnival sounding music. But this van had no ice cream. It was plain white, no markings, nothing at all that would stand out. Inside, a man rolled down his window and called out to me. I stopped. He held up a polaroid in his left hand. On it, a picture of a child. This child looked young, younger than me.

Maybe seven or eight, maybe younger. He explained that he was looking for this boy. He didn't explain who he was or why, but it seemed that this was perhaps his son who was missing. I inched over from the sidewalk getting closer to the curb to get a better look at the photo. I was now on the grass, just feet away from the van. As I looked at the picture, I didn't notice the driver's door slowly inching open.

I was still focused on the picture. Trying to remember if I had seen this kid somewhere before, I didn't notice that the van's door was now almost a quarter of the way open. But something in my peripheral vision snapped me out of my concentration on that picture. That was the man's face. There was something off about it. His expression didn't make sense. And that's when I looked down and noticed that I could see through the crack in the open door.

The man wasn't wearing any pants. Then he was masturbating. I immediately pulled away and skateboarded home as fast as I could. I told no one. In fact, it took well over a decade for me to finally open up about this incident to anyone. I didn't know how to handle it. I didn't even know what that man wanted, but I knew it didn't feel right. I was lucky on that day. I escaped what could have been a horribly defining moment that would have scarred me for the rest of my life. I may have even escaped death. I was very lucky, and I often wonder who that child was on that photograph. I am often racked with guilt that I didn't do something,

that I didn't come forward. What happened to that boy? Actually, Pierre'd asked me this morning if I planned on talking in the host of Southern scale at some stage today. My answer probably would have been no. Well, thank you for doing that. This is Alan. Alan reached out from literally the other side of the world when we put up a post asking our male listeners if they had ever been victims of sexual child abuse and whether or not they wanted to tell us their stories. That's all the poster.

Yeah, I'll reach out because I've looked at there's very few people that know what kind of person he actually is. Some people just think he's a violent alcoholic and that's fine, they accept him as that. And then there's other things that, well, nobody knows him, especially his family and things like that. Alan wanted to tell us about his father.

When I would have been eight or nine, we had child services come to the house and they were asking every day questions about our stepsister at the time and when she goes to bed overnight, does he stay up later with her and things like that? Yeah. Well, it's difficult to know what you're thinking at that age, but it comes to light surely after that your answers to those questions are having a lot bigger impact on something

of a bigger picture. It's clear that Alan feels a great amount of guilt for not exposing what his father had done. So the particular scenario with our step sister was I suppose the beginning of it or where it started and obviously what came to light after that was yeah he was being accused of sexually assaulting this girl and doing various things. Now he was acquitted of that due to a lack of evidence and looking back on it now. I think the answers that man and my siblings gave at the time, well I don't know how, like

you, the answer to the questions I think some of them just would have been to try to protect him and what we were raised up to tell him what he wanted to hear and you had to guess what he wanted to hear or you'd be beaten for it do you think that some of your answers may have contributed to him being acquitted yet yes and that that's difficult to live with that's difficult to try and and wrap your head around now when

i still think about it and that this was like i'm twenty nine now so this is twenty years later and i can't tell you what school i went to a then but i i could tell you this clear as day that the conversations i had sitting down with these people you remember those traumatic moments exactly this moment in your life and it's sort of i don't know it would have been in my 20s

where perspective really shown on things and I realized that those answers connected with other things that he was doing or had done. You said something in your in your text, you said he was like a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, you different personalities. Yeah, and that's very much how it feels. And his family, his mum and dad and everyone, see, Dr. Jekyll, and then the moment they

go out of the room, you get what's left, the Mr. Hide side of him. And he just have moments where like a switch flicks and he's faced with change, and that was it. He was in a totally different mode. And look, when you, that's the only type of discipline you know as a kid and if it's been hit for things you do and everything like that, that's what we accept. Okay, if we do something wrong, we're going to get hit for it. Knowing where the line was and what he shouldn't be doing, you don't know when you're growing

up. So he put my brother's head through a window one time when he flew off the handle. Our dog was barking too loudly so we went outside and broke its leg. Like, yeah, it's the perspective of the scale that you realize when you reach a certain age. And when you ask for people to reach out, I suppose specifically about sexual assault and things, I listen to a lot of the podcasts,

and I listen to a lot of other podcasts, and you hear some really, really sad stories about things that happen to people. And I suppose for me, that puts a lot in the perspective of there's a lot worse things happening. Yeah, and everything's relative, but that doesn't discredit whatever you went through. Yeah, I know, but in my mind, I don't know. I look at it now and say, okay, that was wrong.

He definitely did things like that, but at the time that connection isn't there, and I don't know if it's just from from listening to other things and well growing up and learning the difference between wrong or right but as I said like he he would get drunk and then for no reason whatsoever Unzippy's pants and And make you look at the his pants like and one instance I recall in the kitchen he to come here and pull me right over and he says look I have a fn warts on my private so she's cheating on me and I'm in the middle of just doing

homework and watching TV how do you at this point so I would have been 13 or 14 at that stage and I barely got a concept of what cheating on him is let alone what general awards are at that stage. And so he separated with my mum and my stepmother who was married to at the time was the girl that he was accused of sexually assaulting. So they got divorced and then he got remarried after that and had two more kids. And it was interesting because I talked to my brother, I'd never talked to my other siblings about it. They kind of went with my mother and at the time I looked up to my dad. So I stayed with my dad and they went with my mom and we kind of separated by, I don't know, 300 kilometers. So we didn't get to talk to each other often and I was largely raised by him from there on out.

So the moment I was able to, I don't know why at the time and I wish largely raised by him from there on out. So the moment I was able to, I don't know why at the time, and I wish I did in, but I went to live with him thinking, that's what I wanted to do. The aside note, I spoke to my brother a couple of years ago, and I said, he's kids now, they don't wanna see him, like he's youngest, which is eight.

She says, I don't like my dad, I don't wanna go there. And I said to my brother, I said, that worries me, I know what kind of many is, and my brother goes, well, I don't like my dad. I don't want to go there. And I said to my brother, I said, that worries me. I know what kind of money is. And my brother goes, well, I know too. I said, well, no, I'm talking like, showing these private parts to kids and things like that. And my brother goes, yeah, I know. I had similar things.

We haven't talked specifics. We kind of just left it at a hat, but it's kind of like, whoa, shit. And I worry for his kids now, to be honest, it's really troubling for me. I, yeah, it's other instances when like he took me when I was, I would have been 16 on a trip to Thailand with my uncle, or we're all staying in the hotel room. And I was asleep in the hotel bed,

and he came in obviously making noise, saw that I was awake, I got up and went to the bathroom, and then this is why he's married with his other kids. He just proceeded to have sex with a woman that he'd brought home while I was sitting up in the bed like in typical hotel bed next to it. And I sort of just got up, went into the bathroom and just sat in the bathroom until should they fill whatever that that was it you just fell asleep didn't think

anything of it this was someone he'd hired it wasn't uh... a date yeah yeah no no i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i Yeah, imagine that it was definitely a sex worker. Yeah, that's amazing. How old were you at this point? So I was 16 at that point. So that kind of evolved from, I need to describe it as random flashing to your child, but that was sort of the next evolution of that. While talking to Alan, I started thinking of my own father when I was young.

To say we have a strained relationship is an understatement. Although I don't think he ever sexually abused me, I do remember a belt when I was very, very young before my parents were divorced. I remember it wasn't a happy home. Later in life, he would act inappropriately. When I was barely old enough to understand what sex was, he would brag about his sexual conquests with random women. He would go into vivid detail. He even told me things about when he was with my mom. Things, no child needs to hear.

Helen's dad reminded me of my own, bringing up long since deeply repressed memories. My father was an angry man, a racist man, a man who didn't understand the inappropriateness of sexual remarks to a young child. In fact, his entire family was like that. My grandparents, my aunt, my father's son, which is probably why as soon as I was old enough, I cut off contact completely with that side of my family. But there was an incident that I never told a soul about. I was at my grandparents' house on my father's side, and there was some sort of joke they

found hilarious. I don't remember specifically what it was, or what it originated from, but I do know that it was at my expense. It had to do with me being a baby. It was not an adult, but I certainly was not a baby either. I was a young adolescent boy. I was well old enough to understand that I was the butt of the joke, and I wasn't happy about it.

That's when my grandmother pulled out her breast in front of everyone, mocking me to suckle at it, like a baby, and laughing uncontrollably. My father and grandfather and aunt thought it was a riot. Valerius. So this was branching off from his regular level of just angry hostile. Tell dad what he wants to hear. He's going to get angry style of abuse to where it got another real, okay, you kids can't show a kid your private parts. Like that's wrong, that's not right. You can't have sex with a prostitute while your son's in the room. Do you find that, like looking back, do you look at it now and think that perhaps his

behavior towards you as his son was in appropriate in terms of a father's son relationship, it was more, it seemed more like a, he was treating you like a buddy or a friend to his. Yeah. And that kind of a thing. Yeah, you hit the nail on the head and well, my definition of what you do with a friend and what you, I suppose, don't have a friend with, is not even at that last moment, to hear my, I really feel like it was. Right, right.

And it's kind of like I felt like I couldn't tell anyone anything of what was happening or what it was doing, because anything you said something that made him, and I was scared of him. Like I was legitimately scared of him. He'd raise his hand and I would be carrying in the corner crying before he even had a chance to bring it down. So I was terrified of him at the time, so I had no idea. One, the scale of what was taking place, but then two, what to actually do about it or who to talk to.

So I kind of just severed all ties with him completely, moved away and changed my phone number. And that was it. What age did you do this at? I moved away when I would have been, so I was still talking to him into my early 20 and I started phasing out. Well, maybe late teens and now it would be a good seven or eight years since I've spoken to him and then before that it might have been one a year or a half a year, and it gradually just

faced out from there. And now I've gotten to where I won't talk to him at all. I hadn't changed my number, and I'd just get voicemails every second day. Why aren't you FN answering my calls? Answer your F and phone. And my little brother, at the moment, was my stepbrother. He still visits me and he shows me some of the messages

that my father sends him and it's in relation to his stepmom and it's all along the lines of you little chump and this is to, I know like, Tena, do his son. You need to tell me who your mum's fucking now. I know she's fucking someone. Give me her a fucking number. And I feel sorry for it. He just has to cop that now.

But in the back of my mind, it's a say. But I hope that's all that he's had to put up with. And that's all that he's had to deal with. He's looking at if it's too late to do something about it or is it one of those things why okay I've just put it all behind me and I've moved on from all these, yeah I think about bad things that he's done and can picture them vivid as they but what do you do? Like I spent so long trying to well to deal with it and various medications for depression and things like that.

And I kind of look all, if I've just come good and I've found the balance and I've found the right medication, then it's kind of like not wanting to open that can and worms up again. Yeah, I understand that completely. It's not your responsibility to do that. You didn't do anything wrong. So I sort of look at that. I'm like, look, I truly believe to this day that he did sexually assault that girl.

And I know the things that he showed me and that he's done in front of me. And I know the instances that it's kind of like it's me that knows all these things. And everyone else just thinks he's a violent drunk, you get angry and makes us say. Yeah, but you have to take care of yourself before you can help anyone else. So you need to be okay if you want to come forward and do something about it and you are doing something about it by coming here and telling your story. But if you want to take that extra step to make sure that he doesn't hurt anyone else, then that's up to you.

You have to be okay with the path you're setting yourself down when you do that. Let me ask you something. Did you ever tell anyone else about this? So my partner knows about it, because obviously that led into the situation of, but we're going to visit your dad with. Are you going to introduce me to your dad? Well, no, we don't talk and I told her everything about it and she had a little similar troubled childhood as well with similar stories. So she knows and my brother doesn't know specifics, but he knows those things in there. The kids shouldn't say or have to deal with.

Right. But what about, like you're, when you look at your life now as a man that's, you know, an adult, and you've probably have your, you know, your whole life together and a partner and a job and all these things, do you think that this childhood that you went through and this father that you had affected your life in some way negatively? Yeah, so I ate a difficult couple of years immediately after I severed all ties and it's difficult to understand why because you know logically that you don't want to be around this person, you don't want to, yeah, what's best for you is to be far away from this person as possible,

but I don't know. It still feels like there's a connection there to your dad, even though he's dad's not a good person. So I was on antidepressants for a couple of years. As I talked to Alan, I found that I was asking in questions that weren't really directed at him and his story. They were really questions for me. I was asking myself how my relationship with my father affected me.

Do you feel like somewhat incomplete or even somewhat as a failure for not having a real family and having this other thing in your life that isn't really, you know? It's been difficult. I have trouble maintaining relationships with people because it's good to put it down to something, but I look I was raised by someone who only cared about himself and then my partner says to me sometimes he's like look sometimes you need to stop and think about other people. So I look do I just think about myself and then my mind completely just makes that connection to him straight away. And like, oh shit, don't tell me that's something that I'm taken from.

And that's where, and it becomes hard because things that he taught me and not like when you grow up and you learn what's right and wrong and things like that. Like, he also was just an abusive racist. And now, obviously, we're in a time where racism's a big thing in the news and everything and you sit there and you think, okay, he would just bite these handle at the Indian neighbor for no reason other than the fact he was Indian. And I know that's wrong and I would personally never do that, but it's difficult for me to try and understand where anyone would do that.

So my mum put it in a good way the other day without knowing the specifics, she's like, look, it just seems everyone that's coming in contact with him requires medication and he's the one that truly made it. Okay, that's the way to look at it. Probably checks it out between both of you and the other members of the family. Yeah, wow. Yeah, wow. Yeah, I mean, so for me, you know, I know you don't know my story, but for me, when I severed

ties with my father, it was about completely going the opposite of everything he'd ever stood for. So if he believed, A, I believed B, if he wanted this, I wanted that. It was almost like I didn't want to be associated in any way with that person because that was something that was toxic and horrible. Yeah, thank you. That's a great way of putting it like that. Yeah, it's kind of unlearning everything that he taught because it's just ludicrous wrong and it's toxic and trying to yeah rewire to the person that I want to be and not the person that he feels like whatever everyone should be. Yeah that's a good way of putting it. It's kind of he's going A, A is automatically the bad way in

the wrong way B is the right way. Right. But at the same time, I'm also completely 100% aware that genetics is the thing. Yeah. And I'll notice things in my personality that scare me from time to time. Does that ever happen to you? Yeah.

Look, little idiosyncrasies that stand out things in my mind that he particularly did just have been silly. it's unconscious I'm doing them and I'm conscious like I'll rub my chin or something in a way that I'd remember he'd always do and I'll realize that I'm doing it and it just troubles me for no logical reason just even things as small as that it's like just a small trigger of no shit but I don't know if it makes me think of him at the time when I do it but yeah I try to like and even I have a daughter now and another one on the sway in October and I'm always conscious when I talk to her when she does something wrong like because I was absolutely terrified of him and what he would do and would be cowering in

the corner. Like if my kids ever cowered or something like that, it would break me. Like I wouldn't be able to deal with it. So every discipline thing I do, it goes over and over in my mind comparing it to how he did it and what he did without the sexually orientated things that there's no logical reason that he would like. I think he's just sick and legitimately sick, but even just the verbal abuse and the physical abuse, even that's what I just goes over and over in my head with everything I do.

Alan, thanks so much for sharing your story. I'm so sorry that you went through what you went through, but I think that a lot of people have and it's important to tell these stories so that we all can learn from them. No, I was happy to talk to you as a big fan of the show. I listened to yours and um, so on scale plots and generation Y and true carage, not turning a bit of a true car. I, not the light missing them all, the latest stories on that. No, I do love the work you do. Are there any differences in what a boy would experience as opposed to a girl in terms of

coping with this act of violence? Oftentimes young boys will feel additional shame from being sexually abused in that they feel that they're now actual. And for a lot of young boys that adds increased shame and will deter them from coming forward and talking about the abuse. So that's an interesting point. This for a young boy that's going through puberty or is pre-pubescent that doesn't understand what's actually happening. That fear of being one and makes them hide what happened to them, right? Definitely. Growing up with my mom as a single parent, I often had quite a bit of leeway, just logistically. Don't get me wrong, she's a great mom, but it's hard for a single parent to keep an

eye on their child 24-7. There's a certain age where kids just want to break free and explore. I'd broken free on this day. Running away from my mom when she was looking the other way, I was in an arcade. Well, it was a tent, really. Set up with a bunch of arcade video games. It was at the Dade County Youth Fair, a rather large event which came to town every year in the spring. There were rides and carnival food and a section filled with animals, prized pigs and chickens that had won a blue ribbon for being the most perfect version of their species.

As a young boy, one of the things that interested me most wasn't the animals. It was the arcade. It was full of the latest video games. This was before game consoles were in every home. And there was one game that really caught my eye. It was a first person shooter. And you were in some creepy old mansion. The things on the screen you were shooting were sometimes ghouls or spiders or sometimes even innocent victims that had been captured and chained up

by these ghouls or spiders or ghosts or whatever. Whenever you would accidentally shoot one of these victims, you got negative points. But the first thing that would happen when you shot a victim was that their clothes would fly off. It was a weird feature to put in a video game. But nevertheless, my young pre-pubescent mind was intrigued. Of course, if you kept shooting, then there would be some over-the-top amounts of blood spatter, bullet-riddled limbs would eventually start falling off in stunning 8-bit graphic glory.

This was my favorite video game, and I was playing it, shooting digital demons and victims in this crowded and noisy arcade tent, when I felt something behind me. At first, I thought someone was inadvertently invading my personal space. That happens a lot in South Florida, with so many people from so many different countries that don't share the same need to have an invisible protective bubble around you at all times. But this person was right up against me. It was really uncomfortable. So much so.

And I stopped playing the video game altogether, and I completely turned around. Behind me was a much older man, probably in his mid-30s. He was wearing short shorts, a kind that were popular in the 80s, and his fully erect penis protruded from the front of his shorts. He had been rubbing up against me from behind. He made eye contact with me, or what felt like an eternity, before walking off towards the back of the tent. I looked around for a second stunned that no one else had just seen this. Everyone was playing their games. Oblivious. Embarrassed and humiliated.

I ran off to find my mom again and to once again look for that invisible protective bubble. Thanks for calling. I don't really know how to start. Before we do, can you just let me know what you're comfortable with in terms of, do you want me to say or name it all? Do you want to use a pseudonym? Do you not want to use any name at all? Any stuff like that? Danny's not my real name, but you can use Danny. Oh, okay. Okay. And you're what is the 6-6-1 area code?

Where are you based out of? And what is the 6.6 one area code? Where are you based out of? California. So I'm just going to open it up for you. And if you could just go ahead and tell me what happened to you. OK. I was 13 years old. And it was 2001.

And my family had just moved. I started attending a new junior high, a middle school, yes, it's called. I was late in the year, it was October. No, it was November, it was right after Halloween. It was late for, you know, all the orientation and stuff. I guess a little background about where I lived. First, I don't know, I want to say about turning a, like a red necky place, and I'm not white to truck stop,

and a lot of people here still, like, you know, we're in Southern California, and guys are waving considers like, surround. It's gross. The people here, it's like dairy out of Stephen King, they're giving, these people, just something wrong with the people here. When you end up at this I think she was the one who said, counselor, at the end of it, the principal walked in and she was destroyed by a woman. Everyone used to call her a woman, because she got a little bit of a sense of that she was a little bit of a woman. And she was a little bit of a woman.

And she was a little bit of a woman. And she was a little bit of a woman. And she was a little bit of a woman. And she was a little bit of a woman. And she was a little bit of a woman. principal walked in and she was destroyed a woman. Everyone used to call her a lupa. She kind of looked like one without makeup. You used to call her what? I'm sorry you broke up there a little bit. They used to call her a nupa lupa, you know, like Willy Walker. She looked like a nupa lupa without all the makeup and the costume. Anyway, she started talking to me and she took me to her office.

It was the day after Halloween. I still had like nail polish on my fingers and it wasn't like a statement or anything. It was literally just the night of the day after Halloween. It hadn't come off yet. She sits me down and she says, I want to ask you something. Are you gay? And I said, no. And she sat down at the front of her desk and I was sitting on that chair and one of it. She started to unbutton her jeans. They were like, there's mom jeans. They're really high ones. They go like way above your waist So the zipper was like seven inches long. I was 13 and the most I've ever done was I've been made out with a girl She made me go down on it. I still remember the smell of her clothes.

I can still feel the roughness of her jeans. I can still feel her zipper rubbing up against my shoulder. I lost it for about an hour. And then she sent me back to class. I'm Dr. Chad Lilling. I'm a clinical psychologist who specializes in forensic cases. In a study from 2003, 76% of recorded sexual assault victims under 15 years old were female, and only 24% were male. But research suggests that the sexual abuse of boys is far more common

than what was once generally believed. There are several studies that show that women report being sexually abused as children about 50 to 60% of the time, whereas males only reported about 30% of the time, indicating that the problem for boys is much more widespread and much more hidden. I asked Dr. Luang White boys seem to be much less likely to come forward. A lot of it has to do with the fear of being labeled a homosexual or a future sexual abuser. One thing I would like to point out is I don't want to give the misperception that individuals who were sexually abused or destined to go offend as adults.

In other words, what we see amongst males who sexually offend, I believe the statistic is approximately 60 to 70 percent of them have been sexually abused. However, when we look at individuals who have been sexually abused as children, and I'm referring to males in this scenario, only 10% of those will go on to sexually offend as adults. That's interesting, too, because yet another reason for a victim to stay quiet, the fear of being labeled a future perpetrator. Exactly.

What are the long lasting effects of sexual abuse? Typically, a lot of shame, a lot of confusion in that I know that this was wrong, however at the same time it felt physiologically good. What we see a lot of times is when an individual does act out in adulthood, their adult crime will mirror that of what happened to them, either the same age or the same type of a fan. In addition, like I said, these individuals will question their decryption, their own sexuality, which will also lead to a lot, a lot of additional shame in that, well, if I am gay, that's bad, which just isn't the case.

It can also lead to difficulties in relationships later, and also a lot of suppression of sexual questions. In other words, trying to become sexually knowledgeable. In other words, the things that we go through in adolescents, when we begin to ask questions about sexual behavior, sexuality, a lot of times these individuals may not ask that at a fear or shame, or the information they believe they've received is just false or inadequate. What about what goes on inside the mind of the perpetrator?

I mean, I simply just don't understand how someone could intentionally harm a child. Well, it goes back to that same thing of this happened to me, and although they know that this was long that happened to them, they also know that it physiologically felt good to them. A lot of times their sexual development, excuse me, their sexual development may become stunted if you will, to an extent at the age that they were abused. And what happens is they become sexualized.

They become too. They'll start to act out sexually more. Now what will happen in adulthood is they'll begin to use sexual behaviors as a coping mechanism. And there again, it's very much a cycle of a trigger, triggering their core beliefs. A lot of times as core beliefs are gonna be, I'm bad, I'm defective, I'm inadequate. Then those core beliefs lead to what we call victim stance,

poor me in other words. From there they'll go to anger, and this anger can either be internal anger in that they're thinking negative things about themselves or others. They'll go to what we call the planning stage where they'll start thinking of ways that they can act out and guess what, I remember this sex mate me feel good at one time. I'm going gonna try this. And given that, a lot of times, they feel sexually attracted to or at the same age

they were sexually offended upon. That may be the individual that they act out upon. For example, they were offended on by an uncle at age nine. They may find themselves sexually aroused to nine year old boys. Once they've acted out, they then go through the guilt and shame of what they went through. Oh my god, I can't believe I did this. This was a horrible thing. So from there, they go into what's known as false promises and excuses. This will never happen again, or it didn't hurt him or he was asleep,

or what happened to me, I didn't feel bad at all. And then they go back into what's known as the pretend normal. This is the stage where they pretend everything's okay. They're a good guy, they're a good person. And then the cycle just stops, so. But a few few days later I had to do some sort of computer project for a history class, but the school wouldn't let anybody access the computers without, I guess, like an ID passing. And they wouldn't give me one because I wasn't there at the beginning of the year. So they

sent me back to this woman's office and they told me to talk to her about it. And I'm not going there a few times throughout the year. It started with mostly me going down on her. Eventually we would start to have sex mostly. A lot of she would cry when she did it. But she knew what she was doing. This was in the principal's office. In her office, it was in the CAD office, CAD of like a computer-rated design. They had like a computer room. And in the back there was a small room with windows and had a blind, like blinds you could

pull down. Eventually I started not going to school. I told one person, he was a friend, and he told me that she was doing it to another kid too, just kidding Trevor, I guess. Because he wasn't the only one. How old was this woman? She had to be late 30s or 40s.

She went on for a few more months. I started just not going to school and eventually my parents caught on because we had moved. The school still had my old phone number in their records. So instead of calling our new house to tell them that I was truing, they were calling our old house. So for months my parents didn't know I was going to school.

And they thought I just didn't want to go. I didn't know how was going to school. And they thought I just didn't want to go. I didn't know how to go to school. I didn't know what was expected of me. Eventually I got caught and I started going back to school. I could slow down towards the end of the year. I was getting in a lot of trouble and I think she was trying to avoid attention. Once I left that school, it never happened again.

But I didn't really know how to tell anyone how old were you when you left? I was about the time I was out of that school. I guess I was a not like a month away from turning 14 So this was almost a year of the abuse going on. It was from November Well, I guess like a so June There's never something you could tell someone. You know, I told my friends and my friends, you knew what's happened to other people. He didn't seem to think there was anything wrong with it. I distinctly remember him like getting in this room like you're complaining about a woman

taking you to our office and having sex with you. Right. How old are you now? I'm almost 30. And did you ever tell anyone else about it other than your friends back then? It's all the girl for a year and a half. It's not really something I would want.

People don't know. I knew she's not at school anymore, otherwise I would. So you've kind of tracked down where she is now. I saw her a few years ago. I was, I don't know if it was a cousin's graduation or she was a superintendent after that. She became a district superintendent, I think.

So is she still around children? Yeah, that probably would. Like such a coward sometimes. You I know like such a coward sometimes? You, you're not a coward. Ah, it's strange. It's just a small time in my life. It still has such a hold over me. I don't know if this is what you wanted to hear, man.

I'm sorry. No, it's, it's, thank you for telling your story. I just, I'm wondering how, how this has affected you over the course of your life. It's been quite a while ago, and it seems to still very much affect you. Do you think it's affected your life and your relationships and anything else? I have a really, really hard time getting posted and pulling in. I've had relationships, but they usually end because I'm absent, I'm distant. I keep things to myself, I keep things bottled up.

I'm strange when it comes to sex, I feel like dirty afterwards every time. I just feel disgusting. Have you talked to anyone about this psychologist therapist of some sort? No, I don't know how I can stand it sitting in the room and see someone week after week if they knew that it happened to me. I don't think I could deal with that kind of shame. And you know, like you tell someone that, don't forget about it they don't stop seeing it you know you're not just a person anymore you're this is a kid that got molested or raped or whatever they call it and I don't want someone that we could be like that but you didn't do anything wrong you know that right yeah I know I can do anything wrong. This place is sick man.

Those towns, whole fucking town is disgusting. It's such a small fucking town. People had to have known. It couldn't have been just us. Do you know any of the other victims? You said there was at least one other kid that you knew about. Did you ever talk to him or did you ever find out what he was up to or you know just kind of track him down to? I know the guy actually I don't talk to him. We're not friends. We don't like each other. In fact,

during middle school, he was really aggressive with me. He used to fight me and work like him and his friends just to gang up on me. They would throw water bottles for, pass take me and they would chase me home from the bus to help. I don't know if he knew that I knew, and I don't know if he knew that it was happening to me too. Maybe he didn't, he was just angry and he didn't know where else to take it out on. I see him around every now and then. I don't really know what to say to him. I hate to fuck it, but at the same time, I know that we share a connection to some really fucked up circumstances. I don't know.

I hope he's OK. Nobody deserves that. Other than him, I don't really know anybody else. I do hope that, you know, at some point, you do reconsider and try to talk to someone about this. It sounds like you could benefit from it. There is a reason I thought about going to that school and telling them what happened, telling someone. If I could just, you know, offer you some advice if you were going to talk to someone other

than a therapist, you should definitely make that the police. And the reason I'm saying that is because I believe the statute of limitations has probably run out on your case, but there are ways to get around that in terms of trying to get this person to reveal what they did. And maybe there are other cases that are more recent that they can find just cause to a rest this person. But I'm really sorry about what you went through. Nobody deserves that. I just hope you're going to be okay. I'm like in duck man, water just rolls on off me. I'll figure it out. I'm not going to let it define me.

I do think it's time that I talked to the police, and I do think that it's time whether she's doing it or not, that someone looks into it. And someone starts asking questions, because what she's doing, she's in a position of power. She's supposed to be someone you can trust. She's refusing that power. Yeah. I think I do need to talk to the police. So I don't want her to do it to anybody else.

Thank you for sharing your story. I really appreciate it. I hope you're going to be all right. I'm going to be OK. Mike, thank you. These traumatic events that happen in our lives can affect us in different ways. Sometimes they can destroy us. But sometimes people figure out a way not only to survive, but to turn a horrible event into something positive, by embarking on a path to bring the perpetrator to justice. It takes an incredible amount of strength, but before that strength comes the anger. Does faith play a role in shaming young victims and keeping them quiet?

Very much so. In that, oftentimes, figures of religious authority, in other words, priests will use the context of religion or God to keep the victim quiet. In other words, you don't tell this, this would hurt you, this is bad, maybe you tell on me, such as that. So we spoke briefly in the Wondery Office. We did. And I had never met you before in person. That's correct. This is Jim Clemente. Okay.

I'm assuming you're talking about sort of the story that ended up getting me into the FBI. Jim is a fascinating guy. He's one of those kind of guys that you meet at a party and he starts telling you his story and halfway through, you think he's bullshitting you because the story sounds so unbelievable. But it's all 100% true. Besides being a retired supervisory special agent or profiler for the FBI, he's also a TV producer. He's worked on several shows you may have heard of, Criminal Minds, Man Hunt Unibomer, and the case of John Bene Ramsey. And since he's not busy enough, he also has a podcast on the Wondry Network called Real Crime Profile.

That's actually where we met at the Wondry office. And he proceeded to tell me a story which was so incredible that I immediately invited him to come here and tell it to you. Yeah, so when I was 15, I was at a camp, a CYO camp, and the director of that camp was like, you know, a tough guy. He was also my backscarball coach, and he sort of ran the camp with an iron fist. And at the end of camp, he told me that I was the hardest worker at the camp and because of that, he wanted me to stay and close down the camp with him. And I thought, wow, you know, that's like he actually thinks that I'm a good person. And I looked up to him and I thought he was a man's man.

So I was very taken aback on the one hand and very happy on the other hand. So I stayed back in the camp and helped them close the place down. It was me and him on something like 900 acres in the middle of nowhere, about 60 miles away from my home. And on one of the nights, he said, well, let's go into town. And he actually was basically teaching me how to drive.

I didn't have my permit yet, but let me drive the truck. Well, he went to a bar and he let me sit up at the bar with him and he bought me a Coke, but he drank and then he got two six packs to go. And then he actually let me drive the truck home which I was like wow this is amazing you know because as I said I didn't even have my learners per me yet and then when we got back he started giving me beer and talking to me about sex and

and then asking me questions about things that I had done and I was really naive and really hadn't done much at all. And he gave me porno magazines and he talked to me about masturbation, he talked to me about sex, and he said, you know, don't be embarrassed about any of that stuff and all that. So in the end, he said, here, take these magazines and go in your room and I did. And then he came in and he started going through the magazines with me. And then he started touching me and he said, you know, I was shaking. My old body was shaking and just, I didn't know what to do and I froze.

And I was embarrassed because I was shaking and he told me you're just being a kid and then he kept doing more stuff. And I wanted to just disappear and I felt like you know I wasn't even in my body at the time and I wanted to just kind of Curl up into the corner and go away, but he came back and he did it again again and Again, I was alone out there. There was no cell phones. There was no regular phones There was nothing and and he was my right home. So

When he did take me home a few days later, you know, I wanted him to, I wanted him to go in and tell my dad and have him beat him to death with a baseball bat, but I figured my dad would probably get in trouble for doing that. And also he would tell my mom and that would be horrible because I didn't want her to know, because we didn't talk about that kind of stuff.

And I had no idea that boys could be victimized. So long story short, I just basically held it to myself. When we started school again, I went to our guidance counselor, who was a priest, and I told him, and he told me, say, 10-hour fathers and 10-hael marries, and never speak of this again, I absolve you of your sins. So that just added to my guilt of anything. Years later, as an FBI agent, I'd be the one to investigate that very priest, and the Catholic Archdiocese from New York is just now 40 years later, paying money to the victims who that priest

had victimized in my high school. So he sent me to that camp, and then he made me feel guilty about what happened to me there. But what happened after that was, I still did really well in school. I competed in sports. I felt very isolated from people, and especially my mother, because she knew something was wrong,

and I couldn't tell her what it was. So I ended up going to law school and then becoming a prosecutor. And when I was in the prosecutor's office, my brother called me and he told me, you know, now that you're a prosecutor, we should do something about that director from the camp when we were kids. And I was like, what do you mean? And he said, well, one day, you know, how we weren't allowed to go into his office. Well, when everybody was gone, I snuck into his office and I found three shopping bags filled with polar-rated pictures of him molesting boys.

Oh, wow. And I said, I thought I was the only one. So the next day, I went to the FBI and YPD task force on child sexual victimization and I told them what happened and they started an investigation. And they didn't investigation for a while. They found out that he worked as a teacher and a coach at 13 Dithron Catholic Schools over the course of 23 years. That each time there was an allegation, they confronted him, he resigned on the spot,

and they let him just walk away. And he just went to another school down the street and started it all over again. And it's just a horrific thing. I don't know if anybody's seen the keepers, but it's the same kind of, for some reason, instead of actually dealing with it, they would rather just let it go away, let it be in somebody else's jurisdiction, somebody else's school, somebody else's neighborhood, but they never do anything about it. And that's what happened with this guy. How old were you when this first happened? I was 15. And how many years did you keep this secret? Ten years.

Wow. I was 25 when I went to the FBI Task Force about it. I asked Dr. Chad Lohing if he thinks that boys internalize their sexual abuse more often than girls. It's really hard to say because so many of them just will never come out, will come out with it. I think we see a higher likelihood of acting out later in males than we do females. I read somewhere that it's reported that 64% of women, but only 26% of men had told someone about the abuse that occurred when they were children. I would say that's that's probably accurate.

So when when I went to the task force and they found out all this stuff, they interviewed kids from all these teams and his classes and they couldn't find a single boy who would come forward and say they were victimized. And so at our frustration, they came back to me and said, we'd like to wire you up and have you go talk to him. And I was like, are you kidding me? There's no way I'm gonna sit down and have a civil conversation with this guy.

I've had dreams of meeting him in an alley with a machine gun. That kind of stuff, but I can't sit down across from him and have a conversation. So, they said, all right, and after about 18 months, the investigation kind of just withered away because they couldn't find anybody. And so, I just sort of accepted the fact that he was never going to be brought to justice. But at that time, my boss came in to me and said, Jim, I just found out you haven't filed your paperwork for the New York State Bar. You were supposed to do that.

You had 18 months to do it and the time is running out. And I hadn't done it. I didn't tell her this, but deliberately I hadn't done it because you have to list every place you ever lived or worked in your life. And I didn't want to put the camp down and I want to put him down. I didn't want him to know where I lived or what I was doing or anything about me. And so I was still sort of in that victim mode. But that night I said, I resolved it.

Look, you're an adult now. You probably know we're near this place, and you don't have to worry about it anymore, and just be a man and just do it. So I called in sick the next day. I spent the whole day filling out this 25 page, paper, application, and you have to attach your law school transcripts to it. So since I live just six blocks away from the law school, I walk down a Fordham law school, walked into the law school,

register's office, to get them to attach my transcripts to this paperwork and who do you think is sitting in the desk in the registrar's office as the night assistant to our registrar, but Michael J. O'Hara, the guy who molested me. And I mean, it was just unbelievable. I mean, I literally, my jaw hit the floor. I was frozen in place. I didn't know what to do.

Half of me want to leap across the desk and strangle him and the other half of me wanted to run away. But he said, oh, Jim, yeah. I noticed you graduated from here a couple of years ago. He's sitting right next to the alumni files with my life history in them. All the things that I just didn't want to have to possibly let him know about me, he already knew.

And so luckily the dean walked in and I asked her to personally handle my file. And I remember being in her office with her for a couple minutes and wanting to write down on a piece of paper. He's a child molester, fire him, but I just couldn't do it. And when I walked out, he said to me, oh, by the way, I was really sorry to hear about your mother's death. And that just did it for me because the reason why I had a strained relationship with my mother was the fact that he molested me and I didn't want to tell her.

And I felt it would break our heart and I didn't want that to happen. So that was never resolved before she died. And that was a terrible thing. And he's just evoking that in me and he got me really pissed off. And so I went outside and I called the FBI and I said, remember you said you wanna wire me up?

Well, I know where he is right now. Come out here and wire me. And they came out and they wired me up and I went back in and talked to him. I set up to meet him that night at a bar. And we sat down and we talked and they told me, Jim, this is what we and talked to him. I set up to meet him that night at a bar. We sat down and we talked. And they told me, Jim, this is what we want you to do. We want you to tell him that when you were a kid, you were confused. You didn't understand what he was trying to do,

that he was just trying to teach you. And you judged him harshly and you shouldn't have. And now you realize that you should never have treated him that way. And so that's what they wanted me to do. And I was like, whoa, that's crazy, but they said, look, guys like this, they know that society abhorrs them and that they have no sense of community.

And so they're always looking for somebody who will not judge them. And please, just try this. So we sat down on a bar and we got beers and immediately said, what was it that you wanted to talk to me about? And I was like trying to use my my nervousness in the situation that I was wearing a wire and that there were two FBI agents and two detectives sitting in the bar with us. I was trying to use my nervousness as part of my story to him and

just saying, look, I've never talked to anybody about this in all these years and you're the only one I could talk to about it, but let me at least drink some of this beer first. And he immediately says, well, you always were a whimp. You can never stand on your own two feet immediately trying to reset that that imbalance of power that he had when I was a kid And so I played with it, you know, and he said I was oh, I'm the teacher you correct me if I'm wrong and he starts talking It's about sex right? Yeah, and it's about what happened between us Yeah, and it went on like that and I said I used the lines that the FBI told me and I said look I didn't understand it then and I'm sorry, I treated you so badly, I reacted so badly, and he said, that's okay, I was hard on you,

and I shouldn't have been, and you know, he went through this whole thing, and then he started telling me about 1969 when he worked at an orphanage, and how he would take the night shift, so he could molest the kids at night, because nobody else was around. And then his next job and his next job and every single one of them, he molested the kids. And he told me about 47 kids by name, and date, and time, and place. And it was just disgusting, but I knew it was good evidence. The only thing is that all of the cases he talked about were way beyond the statute of limitations. He was very careful about not talking about anything current. And so we went on to have to meet six different times before he finally

gave me enough information about a kid that was in a current team. The agents went out and interviewed all the members of that team. Nobody came forward. The agent didn't give up. He went back to the principal and said was there anybody who Who got injured and couldn't be on the team anymore whatever and she said well There was one kid who didn't make the team and he was the scorekeeper and he went and interviewed that kid and the kid Disclosed that he was molested and then he said and by the way I remember one day when I was leaving there was this other kid from the team and he was walking in. And as soon as he saw me, his eyes went wide and then he looked down

and from that tape forward, he never talked to me again at school. And I'm pretty sure the same thing happened to him. So he went back to the other guy and sure enough, he disclosed. So we put together a case and he was prosecuted and I got an opportunity to talk to the judge before the sentencing and the judge had no idea of the background and how devious this guy was but he had actually told the probation officer that the prosecution had promised him probation And so the probation officer simply said recommendation probation and that was a lie But I got the judge to change it to five years in prison. It was a five-year split sentence So he only served about 18 months and while he was there

He sent out postcards to his family and friends basically saying that he was on sabbatical in Europe so he had a friend send out postcards from different places in Europe so that his family would think that he was just on vacation the whole time but I was able to confront him in the courtroom walk out of the judges chambers with the judge before sentencing he was like you know why did you do this? I was going to quit teaching anyway. He was trying to shake my hand. I was like, are you kidding me? This is just a slap on the wrist. I am going to be watching you throughout the rest of your miserable life. If you ever go near a kid again,

ever, you don't want to see what happens. And I just turned around, walked out, slammed the court door in his face. And it was a total sea change in my life. Instead of feeling afraid, and you know, without any power and self-conscious and guilty and shameful about all this, I felt like this guy is sick and he took advantage of me and now he's paying for it. So that was great. And then the FBI agent took me out to lunch at the end of the case. And while we're having lunch, he slid a piece of paper across to me, it was actually 25 pages. And I said, what's this? And he said, it's an application to the FBI.

We want you. And I said to him, I actually said this, they would still take me even though I was a victim. And he goes, of course, we would. You're the victim of crime. And by the way, you're a prosecutor, you're attorney, and you did a great job undercover, and you transcribed all the tapes, and you did all this great work. You helped make this case, absolutely. And so I got into the FBI Academy. A year later, I was in.

It's about a year long application process. And while I was in the Academy, that agent was transferred up to Boston and they actually put me as my first assignment on the same sexual exploitation of children task force with the NYPD and FBI in New York City. I went from trying to hide it from everybody I knew to working with people who knew what my backstory was So I never had to worry about it again. And now I can use my experience to help other kids who go through the same thing

and help prevent people from having to suffer like that. I mean, this guy affected not only your relationship with your mother, but altered the whole trajectory of your life if you think about it. Yeah, in a lot of ways he did. What's good about that is that when I was a kid, I always read detective novels. I love Sherlock Holmes, the hearty boy mysteries. I love, I wanted to figure things out whether it had to do with microscopically or in the

universe, and I think that's one of the reasons why I was drawn to be a prosecutor. I think I always wanted to be a detective, but I always knew my parents wanted me to go to college and I didn't think much about, I didn't think that people went to college and then became cops and then became detectives. But what the agent told me was not only was he an attorney, but that FBI agents were just federal detectives. And I was like, wow, that's great. I would love to do that because I always wanted to be a detective.

So in a way, he helped me realize my own dream. What is the statute of limitations for this kind of crime? Well back in those days, for certain of those crimes, it was three years, certain crimes, it was five years, and certain seven years, but seven was the max for the most egregious crimes. And it's really bad because we know from research that the average it takes a child to disclose is 20 years and 25% don't disclose until 30 years later.

So to have a statute of limitations of five or seven years is pretty useless. Now, since then, there's been a lot of change in statutes across the country and federally, so now federally, you can disclose up until the age of 25. And there's also some laws that take into account when people repress a memory about it and then recover it later that they can then

toll the statute of limitations. That might be only in civil cases, but there's a whole bunch of attempts to, for example, in Brooklyn, New York. There's been a number of attempts to try to get the statute of limitations extended, and both the Catholic Church and the Jewish synagogues fight that incredibly hard politically because neither of them wants to open up the statute of limitations so that they then get barrage with all the complaints that people were prevented from bringing during all those years because of

the statute of limitations. Are you still angry? I mean for this guy to have destroyed so many lives, you know, a lot of these 40 some people you said that he molested. Who knows what became of them and maybe not a lot of them were successful in fighting these demons as you were? Mm-hmm. Alright, does this still piss you off? Yeah, well it pisses me off on a number of levels. He pisses me off, of course. What he did was horrific and the 47 those were the ones he told me the

first night. It turns out he molested over 200 boys over the course of his career. And there are a number of them like that. In fact, the most prolific offenders are those male offenders who offend against adolescent boys. And while other offenders may offend against two or three people, those offenders may offend against two or three people, those offenders may offend against two or three hundred people. And that means that we got a really prolific offender off the street, so that's a good thing. But what pisses me off the most is, one, the church's response to this, and two, the

schools response to this. If you watch the keepers, there's a pivotal moment in which the new principal comes in after sister Kathy gets sent back to, she gets basically sent away from the school and she's going to teach at a public school nearby because she confronted Father Mascul. And the new principal finds out about Father Mascul and she's getting complaints from different parents about what he did. And she says, I went up to him and I gave him 15 minutes to pack his stuff and leave the school. Like, as if that was appropriate.

And what he did was he went to another school, and he molested more people, and more people, and more people. And he had been in another school before that, and there was an allegation, and it was an allegation by a boy, so they sent him to an all-girl school, and he molested dozens of girls there.

So that is what pisses me off more, because an offender is an offender and he's trying to commit a crime. That's his motivation. But the school and the church is supposed to protect children. It's supposed to be their safe haven, and instead of being that safe haven, what they did was they protected the offender and they protected their reputation.

They did not protect the children that were in their charge. So that still pisses me off. What would you say to someone who's gone through something similar and may still be keeping in a secret? Well, I'll tell people that everybody deals with it differently. And I've met literally thousands of men over the course of my career. I'm now part of an organization called Male Survivor,

which is an international organization. And I actually first spoke at Male Survivor, I think in 19, no sorry, 2001. And when I gave my first talk there, there was a guy sitting in the front row who got very upset during the course of my talk. And I thought, I put a mental note. I have to see him at the break and see what I said

to piss him off. And when I went down to talk to him, it was like he wanted to run away. And his wife was there holding him and saying, tell him, tell him. And he said, I was molested by Michael J. O'Hara too. And he was in a small school, there were 13 boys in his class, and O'Hara had molested 11 of them. And it was insidious what he did, because what he did was the first day, he handed out a survey to all the kids in the class, what their favorite meal was, ice cream, candy, magazine, whatever,

so he could get to know them. And then he, one by one, went up to them and said, hey, I see you like soccer. Well, I'm actually soccer coach, and I have the soccer gear. And, you know, I see you have your favorite magazine was Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition. Well, I got a lot better magazines than that. And he went through one by one, grooming them, sexually victimizing them and keeping them quiet. So I would say that to anybody out there

who's been through this male or female, that you're not alone, there are literally millions of us, millions of survivors of this. And you can go on and you can live a great life. You can be successful. You can live your dreams. The best thing you can do for yourself is to deal with it. You don't necessarily have to speak out in public, but you should talk to someone. There are plenty of therapists and organizations out there to help you. There's male survivor.

There's StopItNow. StopItNow.org. There's SafeForAthletes.org. There's a number of organizations that have information out there, education, model policies for organizations because unfortunately every single youth serving organization is a target rich environment for these offenders. It's going to draw not only the good people that want to help kids, but it's going to draw the bad people who want to take advantage of kids.

And so you should do everything in your power to try to talk to someone about it, because you don't deserve to be suffering in silence. You deserve to have a real life, you deserve to have fun and build relationships and do great things with your life. I'm living proof it can happen. Jim, thank you so much for telling us your story. No problem. While telling these stories, I shared a few things that happened to me throughout my life that I'd never shared publicly before, while those experiences pale in comparison to what some kids have gone through. I shared my stories because I want those listening to understand that things like this can happen

to anyone. The world is full of evil, and you don't have to be embarrassed or ashamed if something bad happens to you. It's not your fault. And you can let it control you, or you can own it, and derive strength from the fact that you survived. This story isn't over. In a few weeks, I'll be on Jim Clemente's program, Real Crime Profile, and we'll be talking about you.

Do you have a story you'd like to share? Did this episode help you in any way? We want to know. Call us at plus 1-954-889-6854. And until then, stay safe. safe. you you