Reaching past the psychologist I handed the elderly youth minister a picture of an eleven year old girl, standing tall and skinny with a very sad face. The child was me. I told him, “here is a picture of the child you molested. I want you to remember this girl as I speak to you.”

At a ‘discipline hearing’ I was supported by eight pastors from my childhood denomination. I spoke softly to him, recalling what he had done to me at the Bible camp. I then directed a question I had not planned on asking him. “Who hurt you so badly that you had to hurt me?” I knew the Holy Spirit was speaking through me.

Statistics are startling! Pedophiles molest an average of 120 children before getting caught (Sports Illustrated, 1999 “Coaches Abusing the Children they Coach”). One out of three girls and one out of five boys are sexually abused. Sexual abuse is as common as shop lifting. A child is molested every two minutes. A woman is raped every five minutes. An abused woman continues to take abuse until she says stop but most don’t know how to stop the abuse. Long after the abuse, I was held hostage to my past but God heard my cry.

Inside every sex offender is a very wounded child who may have been violated themselves. Power and control are used to reel the child in . . .  like a fish to a fish hook to meet the offender’s own perverted needs. Nearly 80% of all sexual abuse is incest. Offenders are rarely strangers.

As the daughter of a pastor, my daddy led me to faith in Jesus at the age of five. Both my parents instilled in my being the practice of loving the Lord with all my heart, soul and mind but as a very young child I also survived incest by my grandfathers hands who violated my cousins as well. When I finally had courage to tell my parents about the youth pastor’s sin, the generational curse was broken and my mother confided in me that she too had been violated by my grandfather! He was a church elder. The Bible warns in Leviticus 18:6 “Thou shalt not uncover thy nakedness with next of kin to have sexual relations.”

Unable to speak about those horrors for forty years, much like amnesia, post traumatic stress trauma threw me into deep depression and denial. As a child I had frightening nightmares, school was difficult because of memory blocks, and at the age of sixteen I needed hormone shots to begin my cycle. When I got married, I had difficulty conceiving a child so we adopted our first born. Other things that crept into my marriage were hideous secrets including pornography and infidelity after my husbands father committed suicide. I felt all alone and wanted to run away from it all but who I was running from was me and the demons of my past!

What released years of pain was when I choose to forgive the pastor. He answered my question by asking me a question? He quietly said, “I don’t know if you can find it in your heart to forgive me?” My heart broke! I wasn’t expecting this! “Forgive you?” I asked him. “I could never have come to you had I not forgiven you prior to seeing you again!” What I realized at that moment was that forgiveness does not erase our past. He was responsible for what he did to me and all those he violated. God will be his judge. The memories will never be forgotten but in letting the ember of hatred go from my heart I could now be free to grieve all my losses and be empowered to live!

I looked into this pastors eyes and said “I don’t know if you asked for my forgiveness because you got caught or because you sincerely mean it? But you need to make amends to everyone you have harmed but that is impossible! Too much time has gone on. You’ve hurt hundreds of children but you better get right with God before  it’s too late!”

Little did I realize what little time he had on earth. Just seven weeks after facing and forgiving him he fell and broke his back and died, a broken man who was all alone! I opened my Bible to Job 24:19-20 “As heat and drought snatch away the melted snow, so the grave snatches away those who have sinned. The womb forgets them, the worm feasts on them; evil men are no longer remembered but are broken like a tree.”

As I began writing and grieving all my losses, my silence could now be broken and I would begin to give out of my brokenness for others. Comforted, God gave me Psalm 10:14-18 “The victim commits himself to you; you are the helper of the fatherless. Break the arm of the wicked and evil man; call him to account for his wickedness that would not be found out. You hear, O Lord, the desire of the afflicted; you encourage them and you listen to their cry, defending the fatherless and the oppressed in order that man who is of the earth, may terrify no more.”

My marriage has been restored and my husband and I have celebrated forty one years together. God is using us to give back with the mission we are on to free others from the prison they are in.

Many in our churches need comforting, an awakening and much awareness. My husband, my best friend and I are co-Chaplains of our Christian Motorcycle Association “His Riders” Chapter in Massachusetts. We freely speak whenever and wherever God opens doors.

For the past several years God has led me to facilitate Beauty Out of Ashes support group for survivors of childhood sexual abuse. Support is essential so that trauma survivors are not alone. We need to cry with them and believe in them to help unlayer the pain so they can be heard in a safe place. It is in the telling that the secrets no longer hold power over us!

Healing came as I had the courage to face the truth about myself. I could remain in denial, and stay bitter and angry or be freed by Jesus who speaks peace to the brokenhearted and says to the captives, “Come out!” and to those in darkness, “Be free!” (Isaiah 49:9) Like the story of Joseph in the Bible, when his brother’s took him captive and sold him into slavery, we can become better and be healed. The choice is ours. Jesus wants us loosed and free!

This testimony has never been published and is submitted by Author, Barbara Joy Hansen

39 Janock Road, Milford, Massachusetts. The Author’s book is “Listen to the Cry of the Child” published by WinePress Publishing 2003. She can be reached by her website at www.listentothecry.org