02/13/2006

Witty's Legacy as Childhood Abuse Victim Underscores Need for Awareness
this smile went soul-deep as she has shed an old burden — the pain of childhood sexual abuse

MONROE, Va., Feb. 13 /Christian Newswire/ -- When the American athletic contingent entered the Olympic stadium in Torino, Italy, Friday for the opening ceremonies of the Winter Games, speed skater Chris Witty, a five-time Olympian and three-time medallist, carried the flag for her country. That honor would have been enough to put a big smile on Witty’s face, but this smile went soul-deep as she has shed an old burden — the pain of childhood sexual abuse.

Witty has gone public with her story so that she can help bring awareness of and healing for a socially stigmatizing epidemic. She is no longer depressed or suffering from low self-esteem, the common plague of those who have been victimized by sexual abuse in childhood. At the age of 11, she gained the courage through a school awareness program to answer "No" to her perpetrator, a trusted neighbor, when he prepared to violate her yet again.

Witty’s story is all too common as one in three girls and one in five boys are sexually abused before their 18th birthday. More and more people, from athletes and actors to the people next door, are going public with their childhood abuse stories. Most, like Witty, are abused by someone they know and trust. Sadly, it is commonly a parent or step-parent who does the abusing.

Author Linde Grace White knows this shame well as she suffered repeated sexual abuse from her father for years, beginning when she was only 2. White recently penned "Dollbaby: Triumph Over Childhood Sexual Abuse" as her way of both laying to rest the demons of her past and offering hope to those who have yet to recover from the wounds of their own abuse.

A retired special education teacher, White was in her 40s before she sought help for her inexplicable depression. "Through a self-hypnosis exercise, I began remembering my abuse in frightening flashbacks," she recalls. "That sent me back to my extended family — both my parents were dead by that time — to reconstruct my childhood."

Through interviews, White confirmed what she suspected and others had known but never had talked about. "That secrecy is so damaging," she says. White also realized she’d been coping through four different alter egos since childhood. Eventually, she learned to integrate them back into one wounded, but recovered identity.

"Dollbaby" is laced with poignancy and even self- effacing humor, yet White writes with a detached sensitivity to her audience. Whether speaking in auditoriums or via radio, she holds her listeners spellbound as she talks about her own journey and the need for awareness and education.