Stop Child Abuse Now (SCAN) - 2313

Tonight's special guest is Barbara Joy Hansen from Milford, Massachusetts, a returning NAASCA family member and a survivor of sexual abuse. As a very young child, she was violated by her grandfather. Victimized from age two, she was eight when the abuse stopped. Three years later at a Christian camp, a trusted youth pastor molested her and others. Bobbie Joy relates, “My life was forever changed by the abuse of two people who should have loved and protected me, and not harmed me!” Living with the secret caused PTSD and much pain in Bobbie Joy’s life. In her book, Listen to the Cry of the Child, she shares her journey out of shameful silence. “When you are abused, you are repeatedly told not to tell,” she says. Bits of her memory were blocked; she experienced shame, low self-esteem and delayed physical maturation in her teens. As a child she was intensely shy, quiet, very trusting, withdrawn and extremely vulnerable. As an adult her anger turned inward, and she felt alone and silenced. She struggled with infertility, postpartum depression and marriage betrayal. She suffered in silence for 40 years, until she could keep the secret hidden no longer. Her path to healing came as she acknowledged her pain and anger, asked God for help, and eventually came to embrace forgiveness. No longer a victim, she considers herself a “victorious survivor.” She and her husband work in prisons, homeless shelters, domestic violence conferences, and she facilitates a survivors’ support group called Beauty Out of Ashes. She speaks worldwide to give awareness and hope to other survivors of sexual abuse, sexual assault and violence.