April 20, 2012

I was molested as a child. There was no ominous stranger or dark alley. This abuse was perpetrated by someone I knew and by someone who knew me — a family friend. Sadly, these events of my youth would only be the beginning of a lifetime of experiences with abuse and violence.

When I was in high school — an ambitious young woman, very focused on my education — a young man joked with his friends and made a bet that he could “bed the egghead.” He took me out on what I thought was an innocent date with the boy that I liked, and when he got me alone, he forced himself on me. It was my 18th birthday. I don’t even think he thought it was wrong. He and his friends thought it was a rite of passage, nothing big. But it altered the course of my life.

These memories hold much pain and haunted me through many phases of my life. But it is partly through these experiences that I found my calling — to be an advocate for the many nameless, faceless and voiceless women and children who endure this abuse everyday throughout this country.