A MUST-READ on male child sexual abuse

 I don't know who Rick Reilly interviewed for this totally insightful piece, but a comment like this is very true:

Many men who were sexually abused as children have ruinous relationships with women. They begin to think they are dirty to the core, shameful and dangerous to women. They're terrified they can't be trusted not to hurt women, so they run from them.

Reilly includes longer excerpts of a specific "survivor" story, about incest, in fact, not stranger or even trusted neighbor, child sexual abuse.

The symptom he mentions is one of the biggest, and totally dispels the lie that abuse turns most survivors into perpetrators themselves.

Besides loss of trust, the single biggest other symptom is loss/non-development of self-esteem and self-confidence. A world in which one feels and seems totally powerless, especially if the abuse is at home, can tend to have that type of ongoing effect.

Meanwhile, Howard Bryant notes that celebrity athletes who served on the board of Second Mile, Jerry Sandusky's charity (or "grooming front" for new boys to abuse) are running like hell from it ... BUT ... without speaking out for the victims.

Reilly is right. There is more hope for survivors than before. That said, understand that healing will never be perfect. And sometimes it won't be close.