Stop Child Abuse Now (SCAN) - 200

Tonight's SPECIAL GUEST is Mark Douglass, abuse survivor, author, speaker and life coach. A retired attorney, Mark was the first male survivor of childhood sexual abuse in our nation to successfully sue for his injuries. In 1988, a civil jury awarded Mark a verdict of over $1,000,000 against the close family friend who molested him. His book, "Flashbacks of Abuse; How a machine gun toting sociopath freed me from the chains of my childhood," is autobiographical. Although Mr Douglass saw numerous therapists in his earlier adulthood, he marks his awakening as following an incident in 2004, when, while traveling in Europe with his twelve-year-old child, they were almost killed as they accidentally stumbled into the middle of a gangland kidnapping. The shock brought on PTSD that eventually helped him review and re-frame his perspective on his life. The narrow brush with death, coupled with the author's growing awareness of his own mortality, proved to be a valuable gift as he worked his way through the pain and confusion of his past with the help of his therapist, a retired police officer. Mark seeks to dispel numerous myths about child abuse, and to teach several truths, among them, that the manner in which a survivor's family responds to abuse plays a critical role in how the incident will affect his recovery. See: FlashbacksOfAbuse.com