Broken Silence

I. Who I Am

I grew up in a big family, three brothers and three sisters. I was the youngest boy and the second youngest child. We were not rich and had to share bedrooms, nothing unusual where we grew up. We had a lot of laughter and joy in the family, always good food on the table. Mom was an excellent cook. Our parents insisted on having our dinners together. “At least once a day, we have to sit together,” was their motto, a tradition that I still carry on. I was a relatively popular kid at school and among my friends. I was, however, insecure and tried always so hard to fit in, to be acknowledged and to be seen. The way I solved it was to take leadership and try to become exceptional in at least one area. In my case, it was first in martial arts, later in my work and dance. I dreamed of being a dancer, like Fred Astaire, or a hero who changed the world.

II. What Happened

It was a hot summer day in July, the summer of 1968. It must have been right after noon when he asked me to follow him upstairs into the bedroom. From the window, I saw glimpses of my brother and my cousin playing in the backyard; my uncle and I had the time to ourselves. He must have known that it was my first time; he didn't rush anything. He hushed me and said, “Let's be real quiet.” Again and again he said that it was all okay, but it didn't feel okay. Maybe because I was seven years old and he was my uncle. Because one man, my uncle, decided to follow his lust and selfish desires, he changed the course of my life. Instead of protecting me, he was the one I needed protection from. It was the first of countless times. The sad thing is that I didn't grow up in a family where I felt safe to come forward with a story like this. My father was a hard, sometimes violent man, and an alcoholic; the home that should have been safe was not.

III. What My Life Became

Instead of going to my parents, I kept it all to myself, a secret for many years. My uncle told me he would do something bad to me if I told anyone, and convinced me that I was the one doing something wrong. On top of the threats was an immediate feeling of shame — that I had done something so wrong I couldn't tell anyone. I wanted to tell someone. I wanted to be saved. But I was more afraid of what would happen if someone found out. Although victims know they are not the only ones, they often feel alone in their pain. This deep violation of trust changed how I saw people. Until that point, I believed I lived in a world that was safe. That was over with one act of abuse, and violated repeatedly in the years after by my uncle and other abusers. The abuse went through my puberty, with more than one abuser. I started to accept these things as a given and a stroke of fate. By the time I was seventeen, I had created my own world, one basically run by “keeping the peace” in all situations, making sure my parents were never upset with me. The scars ran deep, and over the years I discovered I had many.

IV. What Changed

One day, as my mind wandered back to that summer day when the abuse started, I felt anger and hatred. But something was different this time. I didn't want my life to be run by anger and hate; we had enough of that in my family. Something came over me, forgiveness for my uncle. There was nothing logical about it; it was a conscious decision, not driven by reason but by heartfelt emotion. To find forgiveness for him had little to do with him and more to do with forgiving myself. It felt like a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders. Forgiveness is not a one-time event; it is a continuous process and only a first step. Years later, at almost fifty, my world was crushed when my wife left me with our kids. In the midst of pain and confusion, someone close asked me what I would do if anything were possible. She brought me to a breaking point, and things became shockingly clear: I had been living a life of lies, knowing my passion for a long time but never taking action. At the age of fifty-one, I decided to use what I've gone through in life as assets to reach my goals. My experiences are no longer excuses to keep me from achieving them. It's not enough to know what our passion or destiny is; it is meaningless until we take action. It's not about creating a new beginning — it's about creating different endings.

V. Who I Am Now

My life now is good. After twenty-five years working in the corporate world, it was time to pursue a different path, a path of my passion for dance and what is close to my heart: the fight against sexual abuse and the empowerment of others. I became a fighter, a survivor with persistence and tenacity, because of these events. I've been blessed with a strong will to turn all this bad into something else. We don't always have a choice about the circumstances we get into, but we do have a choice about how we react to them. I truly feel that we need to live life on our own terms, not selfishly, but in service of others. There are more than 2,000 sexual abuse victims a day. They are not numbers in a report; they are people with a name, with a family. I believe there is healing in telling your story. By giving abuse a face, we bring it out of the dark and into the light. I'm unbroken — let me unbreak you. Tell your story too, so there is one less story to tell.