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He Promised to First Do No Harm. Then He Did
But please don’t call me a victim of sexual abuse. I’m a survivor of it.
I never intended to talk about this in public. For 26 years, I kept it stuffed way back in the recesses of my memory where no-one could get to it. Every so often, I went crawling back there, just to take a peek. I never lingered. The recollection was too blinding, even in the dark.
The memory of being sexually abused still sparks such a wild mix of emotions and reactions — anger, betrayal, confusion, disbelief, hurt, shame — I can never quite pinpoint what I’m actually feeling. The cauldron overflows every time another celebrity is revealed to be a serial abuser of women. It happened with Bill Cosby. It happened with Harvey Weinstein. It happened with Matt Lauer.
I try to look away. I retreat to that old dependable state of denial. When allegations first surfaced that the ultimate ’80s TV dad Bill Cosby had sexually taken advantage of a number of women, I asked myself and others: “But why now? Why are they all coming out with their stories years later, at the same time.”
I thought if I could convince myself they were wrong about what had happened to them and Cosby was innocent, I could convince myself I was wrong about what had happened to me.
