I don't always make accusations, but I've had many difficult private conversations. Don't leave your child alone with that man, I'll advise a fellow parent. Just trust me on this. Not teachers, not public figures, not celebrities like Jared Fogle or Josh Duggar. I will occasionally get a creepy sense about someone-a vibe or demeanor that is consistent with both my memories and my research. Given my past, I'm never surprised when I find out someone is a pedophile or a sex offender. My role as a parent is to protect, and sometimes the mama bear comes out. Now, I'm even more horrified by the concept of child abuse. What does he know about my past? Only that "mommy had a hard childhood," and that my job is to "keep kids safe." Maybe someday I'll tell him the full story. He came from a foster home, and in a way we may have saved him from abuse of his own. We adopted a son, who is now 10 years old. I came with a lot of baggage, but he saw me as I wanted to see myself. By the age of 30, I was able to open myself up to a social life-and even, eventually, a husband. I threw myself into my work as a research scientist and advocate to try to make the cycle stop. Not teachers, not public figures, not celebrities like Jared Fogle or Josh Duggar. It can feel exciting to them to keep this secret, to perpetuate it. Many sexual abusers were themselves abused it makes them feel powerful to turn around and do it to someone else, to inflict their childhood trauma on another child. Is anyone trustworthy? Is any town safe? Do all humans have the capacity for such depraved behavior? Instead of making me feel worse, studying these patterns helps me cope. It can be paralyzing to consider this kind of collusion. My abuser was well connected-it was the only way to keep hidden the fact that there was a warehouse in our town hosting sex parties for pedophiles.
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