Sen. Scott Brown Recalls Childhood Abuse
“In a revelation he says he has never told his wife or mother, Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown tells CBS’s “60 Minutes” that he was sexually abused as a child several times by a camp counselor.
Brown, who details the abuse in an upcoming memoir, tells CBS’s Lesley Stahl in an interview set to air Sunday that coming forward about the abuse is “catharsis” for him and that he had been too ashamed to admit what had happened to him.
“That’s what happens when you’re a victim,” Brown tells CBS, according to excerpts released by the network today. “You’re embarrassed. You’re hurt.”
You can watch a preview of Brown’s interview here, courtesy CBS News.
The abuse occurred when Brown was 10 years old. The senator tells CBS that the act was “never fully consummated, so to speak” but that he had been touched and forced to touch the counselor in a sexual manner and that it was “very traumatic.” “He said, ‘If you ever tell anybody… I’ll kill you. I’ll make sure that nobody believes you,’” Brown recounted.
At the time, Brown tells CBS, his childhood was in turmoil, which made him more vulnerable. He had been the subject of mental and physical abuse by one of his stepfathers, and Brown says, he was “lost.”“
Reading some of the comments posted at the CBS site…. no matter what political side of the fence one stands, attacking someone who comes forth with this kind of revelation due to their party affiliation is just screwed up.