At first glance, the Massachusetts Senator’s revelation of his childhood sexual abuse on 60 Minutes might be filed under the heading of “Things I Didn’t Need to Know,” but it’s far from that.
From the still unfolding Catholic Church scandals, there is growing evidence of how badly victims are hurt and how long they carry the scars, particularly, as it so often happens, they are too frightened and ashamed to tell anyone, even their parents.
A camp counselor, Sen. Brown reveals, repeatedly abused him psychically as well as physically:
“He said ‘If you tell anybody…I will make sure that nobody believes you’…When people find people like me at that young vulnerable age, who are basically lost, the thing that they have over you is, they make you believe that no one will believe you.”
There is no way to know how many men and women today still conceal and carry the pain not only of what happened to them as children but the shame of feeling that being victimized by a predator was somehow their own fault.
MORE.