NOMORE.org WHAT ONE VICTIM WANTS YOU KNOW ABOUT AMERICA’S LAST TABOO.
“Men don’t talk about sexual abuse,” says Dave Moody. He definitely didn’t. He’s an all-American, fifty-something guy. He played football at Morehouse College. He’s a prominent Atlanta contractor. He’s married with two kids.
And he had a secret: A male babysitter abused him when he was 10 years old.
“There’s a stereotype. People think you’re going to be a pedophile. I didn’t want people to look at me strangely. I felt like it was my fault. I felt alone and weird,” he says.
He’s not.
One in six men has an unwanted or abusive sexual experience before turning 18. Now Moody’s on a mission to help them heal.
More than two decades after the assault, he revealed the abuse to his wife when they found out that an acquaintance was an abuser. “It was the first time I said it out loud,” he says. The revelation set him reeling: He started suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms and panic attacks.
“I was as close as you could get to a nervous breakdown. I wasn’t myself. I’d always been blessed with a happy heart, and I just knew this wasn’t right,” he says.
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