Stop Child Abuse Now (SCAN) - 2506

Tonight's special guest is Mark Troyer from Johnstown, Pennsylvania, who spent his early years in an 'Ozzie & Harriet', 'Leave it to Beaver' type of family. At around 5 years old his brother, 8 years older, began to sexually abuse him. This abuse continued until Mark was 13 years old and his older brother 21. Mark's sexual abuse would remain a secret for the next 25 years. “If you were an outsider looking in you would have seen an “Ozzie & Harriet”, “Leave it to Beaver” type of family.” Family members, friends and neighbors, saw an average American middle-class loving family. There was a degree of truth to this, my parents were good people. I always felt inferior to my peers and was extremely unstable emotionally. I fell in love for the first time my sophomore year of high school. After a little more than a year when she broke it off, I fell into a deep depression. The abuse I had suffered as a child left me unequipped to handle situations like this appropriately. Over the years to come, I exhibited many dysfunctional behaviors." He goes on, "At 59 years old, looking back I have lived in 47 different places not counting the streets. I know what it is like to walk for miles to the point of blood seeping through my shoes. I know what it is like to sleep on park benches, abandoned buildings and to drink water out of garden hoses in people’s yards. My abuse also led me to be co-dependent and a sex addict. I tried reaching out to several counselors throughout the years but would always back out after so long." Mark shares how his faith and forgiveness has led him to living in the same place for going on 19 years. “I no longer go from job to job and being homeless in between. I have a warm house with a warm bed and I no longer drink from garden hoses”.