Stopping Sexual Abuse #244

Melissa Bednarowski:

It's everywhere. It's just a matter of getting it exposed. So how do I deal with it? You have to categorize it. There's good people and bad people in everything in life.

Catherine Mossman:

What I like, if you will, about my story is that it really shows that whole sort of timeline. The first time I was sexually abused was I was six years old. It was the vice principal, first grade in school. I had happily married parents. So there are myths about, you know, it's single family, it's Lewiston, it's Biddeford, whatever.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to Love Maine radio show number 244, stopping sexual abuse, airing for the first time on Sunday, May 22, 2016. There is no easy way to discuss the problem of sexual abuse and trafficking. Yet these problems do exist within the state of Maine. Today we speak with Melissa Bednarowski of Stand up for Me and Kathryn Mossman of Stop Trafficking Me, both of whom have personal experience with these devastating situations and have chosen to go beyond their pain and become advocates so that others will not have to suffer as they have. This is a sensitive topic, so younger people may not want to listen. If you are a parent, please be aware. Thank you for joining us.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Today in the studio, I have with me Melissa Bednarowski, who lives in Biddeford with her laboratory retriever, Sandy. She was born and raised in Manchester, New Hampshire and moved to Maine in 2000 after spending many summers there with her family. Melissa believes strongly in serving her community. She is the co founder and president of Stand up for Me, a non profit with a mission to end childhood sexual abuse.

Melissa Bednarowski:

Good morning, Lisa.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Good morning. Thanks for coming in.

Melissa Bednarowski:

Thanks for having me.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So this is, that's a tough topic that you've chosen.

Melissa Bednarowski:

It is a tough topic and it chose me.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, tell me about that. I mean, I think this is something that a lot of us are interested in, especially given the recent movie that came out, Spotlight, which I'm sure you've seen, which really deals with sort of the systems and their impact on covering up things like childhood sexual abuse. But tell me about your story.

Melissa Bednarowski:

Sure. My personal story is that I had, I'm 40 years old and I made it 37 years without having been sexually assaulted in my life and found it, you know, grateful that as a child I never had to endure that pain. It was something that I experienced and dealt with on my own and wasn't comfortable going to the legal system at 37 years old. Can't imagine what it felt like as a child for these men. The backstory is about a year ago there were several men in Biddeford that came forward saying that, alleging that they were sexually assaulted as children at the hands of police officers. So that intimidation level is strong, especially for a developing boy. And their process in coming forward has been difficult as adults because of the time span and because of the levels of corruption, if you will, or the ancestral political being of Southern Maine, Maine in itself. So, so some people got together and decided that we needed to form a non profit group to help support these men and help support children all over the state in getting their voices heard in finding ways to end sexual abuse. It's at a point now, after seeing Spotlight, after living through the Catholic Church crisis. I've never seen my mom's world rocked so bad. It's a life that we've all known about. It's a life that we've lived, but no one talks about it. It's not a sexy topic, it's not a popular topic. And some of us at some point need to stand up. Hence the stand up for me and stand up for Maine and make sure that more children's lives aren't affected to make sure that perpetrators realize that they will be caught. We don't believe as a foundation that we can necessarily rehabilitate the perpetrators. But what we can do is educate the children and educate the adults that are surrounding the children to look for the red hot alarms, look for the people that could be perpetrators and look for the symptoms in your child that they could be being assaulted or being hurt and then provide them avenues to report the crime and end it. So that's where we're at. I was asked to come on and help start the foundation, which I did and was asked to be president. It's been very rewarding and very cathartic for me to heal. I'm grateful for the opportunity and I hope that, you know, 10 years from now we're not in existence because it has ended. But it's going to be a long journey. There's a lot of obstacles. There's a lot of people fighting our cause because they don't want the truth revealed. That's one of the hardest things for me as a human being to deal with, that someone actually wants to stop the good.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You've been really active in York county for quite a while. You're a member of the Child Advocacy Center Steering Committee for York County. You're also a member of the steering committee for the Boys and Girls Club of Biddeford and you're the founding member and board director for the Edmund A. Bednarowski Jr. Charitable Foundation. I'm guessing there's a relationship there.

Melissa Bednarowski:

Yes.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You also served as a city councilor in Biddeford and on the Biddeford Planning Board. So you've been really in the community and very active for a long time. You've been interacting with, I'm assuming, people in law enforcement, people in government, people in all aspects really of southern Maine. What has this been like for you to try to, I don't know, give voice to something that impacts so many people, but also really, it kind of goes up against these big institutions.

Melissa Bednarowski:

Yeah, it isn't easy and I know I'm not the first one to do it. Hopefully more people will understand and will see the importance and will join forces. There's a lot of different agencies across the state working towards the same goal. And part of the Child Advocacy center is bringing a lot of those resources together and I hope that the collaboration will continue. My work in York county is similar to how I was raised in Manchester, New Hampshire. The Edmund A. Jr. Charitable foundation is based out of Manchester, New Hampshire. So that's not part of York county, the work there. But I was raised in a home with very active grandparents and parents that our belief was you serve your community. And I've never in my life come across anything like this. It's been shattering to me as a professional, as a woman, as I don't have children of my own, but I'm a godmother to four, aunt to six, and it's shattering as a human being to see these walls that have been built and it just keeps going back to that word ancestral. It's this deep rooted, just deep rooted. I can't even come up with all the words for it, but layers of corruption, layers of let's forget about it and move on, let's shut them down. And my hard work in Biddeford for the last 15 years, well, in York county for the last 15 years, has been jaded over the last six months or so. And people associating me with sex abuse no longer want me to work on other missions. And that makes me a stronger person. I think their efforts are to bring me down, but in essence it's making me stand stronger. Knowing that someone wants to bring that down to me is showing me that there's something to fight and there's no reason to back down from that. If somebody doesn't want me associated with them, that's fine. That's their choice and that's what, what their mission is. This is something I strongly believe in, something I strongly believe that my energy is worth spending on and I'll just continue to move forward.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

When I think about this, for me, I was raised Catholic and I found out that a priest that had been in my church in Yarmouth, as I think he was sort of a fill in priest, but he was a priest, he was a teacher at Chevreuse, that he had been abusing young men who were my age at Cheverus. And to know that every Sunday he stood up in front of the church and gave a sermon and then had such darkness in his heart, It really caused me to. It really was sort of a turning point for me in my ability to continue to go to mass and feel okay about it. And I guess what I wonder is if other people feel similarly about some of these other institutions. You're saying in Biddeford that police were involved? I think we know that in other places, doctors and teachers and attorneys. I mean, this really goes across every

Melissa Bednarowski:

level of society, specifically professions with authority.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Right. So how so? That is just so for me. I mean, it really changed my relationship with the Catholic Church and it must cause other people to feel the same way with these other institutions. I mean, this is this complete Breaking of trust.

Melissa Bednarowski:

It sure does.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So how, as someone who works with this every day, how do you deal with this? How do you sort of separate the acts of a few from the good that many others have done?

Melissa Bednarowski:

We have to remember that it is a few. What they did is spoken loudly when it is finally revealed. I was also raised Catholic in Manchester, New Hampshire, where several of those priests were revealed as well. And the Boston Globe did a fantastic job bringing that story to light. But what we need to realize is, like you said, it's not just the Catholic Church. You know, it's teachers, it's coaches. Like the Sandusky issues in Penn State. It's everywhere. It's just a matter of getting it exposed. So how do I deal with it? You have to categorize it. There's good people and bad people in everything in life. There's good people and bad people at the grocery store. There's good people and bad people in my neighborhood. There's good people and bad people at my job. And to say that all policemen are bad or all priests are bad to me is being untruthful and not okay. So I look at the person for who that person is. I will trust you until you give me a reason to not trust you. And unfortunately, that put me in a situation to be assaulted. The time I was. That was a city official who assaulted me. And through the investigation over the last year, I realized that he, too, was a victim of one of the police officers as a child. So it's a perpetual motion. And to identify now, I've grown, I've learned, I've educated myself to see the warning signs. You know, I miss them then. And I think to continually educate yourself, to continually be comfortable with who you are, and you start to see those identifying characteristics, to judge somebody by their position because someone else in that position did harm. I can't go there. I know there's plenty of people in the world that do. But that's like saying any TV personality who cooks is going to be like Martha Stewart and, you know, going to end up in jail. It's just too broad for me. So I try to categorize and look at somebody as a person and not as a profession or what they do. Long winded answer.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I think it's. It's very thoughtful. I think that one of our inclinations as humans often is to retreat from things that hurt us. And what you're saying is that on a daily basis you keep showing up and in fact, standing up. Stand up for me, which is the Opposite. You didn't go to a corner to lick your wounds. You came out and you said, this is what happened to me. And we need to talk about this. And this has happened to a lot of people, and we need to talk about that for them as well. And this is such a sensitive subject for me because I deal with when I worked as a medical director at the Cumberland County Jail for a few years, and the number of people that I. That came through as inmates, that had been molested as children or abused in other ways was so high, you know, and it was such a cycle. You know, they had done. They had this done to them, and some of them had gone on and done it to other people. And I see this in my practice even now. You know, I'm in a suburban practice, and I see patients that were molested decades and decades before. And it still impacts them, of course,

Melissa Bednarowski:

especially as a child. It's formed in their being. You'll never get rid of that. Stamped in their body forever. And whether they turn to drug abuse or alcohol abuse or violence or they retreat. And how many suicides have we seen from that? It's something that will never go away.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And then if there are people that do stand up, I have seen people be. Especially when it comes to, let's just say, the Catholic Church. I've seen people who have tried to say, this happened to me, this was wrong, and then they become ostracized. And there's something that just seems very. It doesn't seem right. I mean, it seems really deeply wrong.

Melissa Bednarowski:

And I agree.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So, I mean, I guess it's an obvious thing that I'm saying, but I just have such a hard time wrapping my head around all of this, Right?

Melissa Bednarowski:

And then when the people of authority tell that victim that they're wrong, the other people in that community or in that parish have the respect for that authority figure. So who are they going to side with? And they're going to say, well, that priest is right, that child's lying. And as a community, we need to make a paradigm shift. You know, not every child's going to be telling the truth, and not every adult is going to be telling the truth. And the harder they push to convince you that that victim is lying, in my mind, that's telling me they're hiding something even stronger than we think. Why are they pushing so hard to get me or somebody else to stop talking? What are they hiding? So the more resistance. There's gotta be something behind that wall

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

in working with Stand up for me. You've Been able to, it sounds like, have an outlet for dealing with your own situation. The assault that you underwent, which I'm sure is not a strong enough word, but that's kind of. I mean, that gives you a place to put your energy. That's a positive thing. I'm sure that there's a lot of sort of intellectual things that you've done that have helped you heal.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

But then there's some very deeply personal

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

ways that you've been harmed that I'm sure you've had to work on completely separate from the stand up for me process. I mean, how have you dealt with your own situation emotionally?

Melissa Bednarowski:

Really, it's a continual process. I'm not sure that I will ever fully heal from it. Like I said, with a child, it marks you for life. And intimacy is one of now the most difficult things. Because I was in a situation where I was taken advantage of. There are times that I just don't feel comfortable in an intimate setting. I have not been in a relationship since that assault three years ago and no interest to be right now. And that's still part of my healing and trust factor. I was not in a relationship with that person that assaulted me. But from a relationship becomes intimacy. Correct. And when those issues get shattered for you, it takes some time to rebuild and it's a self reflection. I started with the guilt of my own personal guilt of what did I do wrong? How did I end up in that situation? And then as I started attempting to tell the people close to me because I didn't report it immediately for many multiple reasons. But when I started to tell the people close to me in their response to me, I think it's taken me longer to heal from their response than it has the actual assault since the people around you and how they handle it. You know, my own sister looked at me and said, no sister of mine would get assaulted and not go to the police. And I said, you know what? I would have thought the same thing. 24 hours ago. I would have said the same thing. I'm a very strong person. If something's wrong, I'm going to talk about it. But I was in a situation that day. The only thing I can correlate it to was the day my father died. He was 58 years old. He had an aortic aneurysm. They operated on him for seven hours trying to save his life. And when they came to tell us that he was gone, I fell to the floor and I froze. And I had not felt that again until that day. I Froze. And it was an out of body experience. There was nothing I could do to get out of that frozen feeling. Just as there wasn't that day I sat on the cold hospital floor waiting for my dad to come back. Waiting for someone to tell me that was a lie. That day, very, very important person in my life was taken from me. And the day I was assaulted, a huge part of my self was taken from me. Trust was violated, respect was violated. My knowledge of friendship was violated. And it takes time to heal from that. It's been 15 years since, almost 15 years since my dad passed. And I continually, every day grieve. I continually, every day try to heal. And when you lose something like that, that's that important to you. It takes time. And I think that's really important to respect the time that's needed for yourself, to understand that you need that time and give it to yourself and just be with the pain and just be with what you need to feel better and feel secure. And one of the gentlemen that came forward this past year that started the whole Stand up for Me movement, Matt Lozan, originally from Biddeford and moved to Boston and then came forward after many years of fighting the same things that I fought in a different level obviously. But he and I became very close friends and we helped each other through a lot of this and it's been nice to gain the friendships and to learn to trust people again. And we were able to give that to each other. So from bad comes good. You know, we were healing, we're moving forward and we're hopefully going to help a lot of other people in the state, the state we love.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You mentioned that one of the things you're trying to do with Stand up for Me is give people the tools to recognize perpetrators, essentially. So talk to me a little bit about that.

Melissa Bednarowski:

Well, we're not looking to reinvent the wheel by any means. And there's two organizations in the state that are currently offering these programs. One is Mikasa and the other is SARS ism. And we're working with them to identify locations where the classes can be offered and then help with funding where needed. So we're not looking to become educators or looking to become, you know, counselors. We're looking to connect the resources. So there's, you know, there's signs, there's red hot buttons that, you know, if your child comes home and says certain phrases or, you know, looks a different way or stops acting, you know, their normal way, what do we do about it? And those classes are being offered around the state. Currently we're just looking to help expand that. And then the Child Advocacy center, there's a few across the state and I'm on the steering committee to bring one to York county where there isn't one. Now we also work to bring the first ever support group for male victims of sexual assault to York County. There hadn't been one there ever just for men. There are for females. There was in Cumberland County. But obviously with everything that's happened in the last year in York county, there's been a greater need for that. So SARS ISM is now offering that in Biddeford and then the Child Advocacy Center. I'm not sure if you're familiar with how they work, but it's a multidisciplinary approach to reporting a crime for a child. Once the child has come forward and the authorities are involved, the center allows the child to explain their situation in one room with one trained person. Outside that room is every other legal person that needs to hear the information. So the child only has to speak once they're not being re victimized over and over again with the DA or with the other lawyer or whoever else might need to be involved for the court case. Also at many of the centers there's a doctor, a physician ready to do an exam. So all in one area, as comfortable as possible for the child in order to eliminate the revictimization. And we feel in all these organizations that are working towards it, feel that this will help reporting. If it's an easier reporting process, more families will come forward, More families will be able to stop doing the trials at the kitchen table, if you will, and, and come forward. And the more that come forward, the less perpetrators on the street and then hopefully bring awareness that it's happening and less people will perpetrate. So a lot of different facets and as we grow as an organization, it's continually flowing and needs may arise that we don't initially think would be necessary. We've worked on everything from education to freedom of Information acts to try to get to the root of some of the issues. And we just continually flow with where the need is and move our energy as need be

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

for people who are listening, who may have been assaulted themselves or maybe suspect that a loved one has been assaulted. Do you have any suggestions?

Melissa Bednarowski:

Talk, help, support and know that there's resources there for you. You can reach us@contact standup4me.org if you don't want to talk live, you can email us and we'll connect you with a resource that we think is best for your situation. A lot of times people have a hard time calling the state hotline or calling their SARSISM hotline because of different associations. And that's what we want to offer you is, you know, give us the call or give us the email and we will help identify the best resource for you to move forward.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, Melissa, I appreciate your coming in and talking with me today. I feel very, I don't know, it's such a heavy, such a weighty topic and it's so it can feel really overwhelming. But I but I really appreciate your honesty and your courage and your willingness to work through the pain that you've personally dealt with, but also help others work through their pain. We've been speaking with Melissa Bednarowski, who is the co founder and president of Stand Up For Me. I really thank you very much for coming.

Melissa Bednarowski:

Thank you for giving me the opportunity and allowing it to be heard.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

details@artcollectormaine.com Kathryn Mossman started Stop Trafficking Me, a 501c3 nonprofit organization whose ultimate goal is to eliminate the sexual exploitation and trafficking of children in Maine. Catherine believes that most people in Maine simply do not know what is happening. Shortly after moving Back to Maine 12 years ago, Catherine felt a calling to show others how she survived and began volunteering at Long Creek Youth Development center, where she quickly realized that the sexual abuse and sex trafficking that claimed Ra her life 35 years ago, or at least her childhood, was unbelievably still going on in Maine. You have a very interesting story and one that not a lot of people are interested in sharing, so thank you for being here today Catherine, it's an

Catherine Mossman:

honor, privilege to be here. Thank you.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It's a tough thing, what you're talking

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

about as a survivor.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It's tough to have gone through it. It's tough to talk about it afterwards. And yet this has been really important to you and important enough so that you've started this organization, Stop Trafficking me.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So tell me about that.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What was the sort of the shining light one day that said, katherine, you need to do this. You need to start this advocacy work.

Catherine Mossman:

Menopause.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Oh, well, that's a good answer.

Catherine Mossman:

Okay. You know that you're 47 and you're approaching the big fish and you're thinking about. At least for me, I was thinking and had plenty of time to think as I lay awake at night with night sweats. Right. Thinking about Legacy and thinking about how I can give back and what's really important to me. The older we get, the more people around us are suffering from cancer or death or whatever. And really makes you think about, okay, what's this last chapter of my life going to look like? And I was going to women, to women in Yarmouth, and I was talking to my doctor and telling her about my past and my life. And we were talking about the effectiveness of being able to be helpful for trauma victims, rape victims, sexual assault victims. And she was saying that really, the earlier we can talk to kids, the better. And I had volunteered sporadically and, you know, at halfway houses or wherever I thought I could speak to adults, you know, and she was suggesting maybe doing something with the kids in Maine. And I thought, oh, gosh, I really never felt like I had a childhood. So speaking particularly to teenagers was like aliens, you know, I was so glad when my kids got through the whole teenage time. But what she said made sense to me. And so I was doing all the background checks and stuff to be able to work at Long Creek. And I didn't know how that was going to turn out. You know, like, for instance, would they lock the door behind me and would I freak out or would the kids try to kill me or something? I didn't know what to expect. And a part of the background check was talking to the people who work there. They wanted to hear my story story and find out if I was a good fit for them. Next thing you know, they're having me come back to do my story all over again for the correctional officers. And what they were saying was that the correctional officers and the staff needed hope, too, because they work with all these kids and they hardly ever see a success story that Just sort of stuck in my mind. And then. So there might be, say, 20 girls. So there's only one juvenile detention center in the center, State of Maine, and this one has a girls unit on it. Beth Peavey is the one who runs the girls unit. And let's say there might be 20 girls there, age range from, oh, gosh, from 12 to 19. So my group has typically been a group of around eight girls. And they're picked through various reasons. Maybe they question if there's sex trafficking in their life, or maybe the girls haven't said that they've been trafficked, or maybe they have, but they're chosen specifically for my group. And I just went in and shared from my heart, and it was an amazing experience. The kids really opened up to me. And it was, you know, when you're on your right purpose, the stars sort of align and everything flows. And that's what it was like there. The girls really received me and I received them, and we were able to talk to each other from a really authentic place. And in that conversation, I started hearing about what was going on in the state of Maine. And it just sort of floored me that 35 years later that this almost exact sort of thing that had happened to me was happening here in Maine. And I thought, boy, you know, aren't we doing something about this? And I wanted to find out what was going on in Maine. What sort of organizations do we have here? And so I educated myself on the fact that we have one kind of mothership called MiCasa, and that's like the information hub. And then we have several other organizations like SARSM and SART, various ones that started in Maine in the 1970s as a rape crisis center. That started sort of evolved over time. And those are strategically placed throughout Maine based on district and population. But let's say there's three or eight employees for pretty large area. So they're kind of like a salmon swimming upstream. They're doing the best they can, but there's still, you know, there's 1.3 million people in the state of Maine, and I was getting inundated. Everywhere I would go, people would say, is this really happening in Maine? And I'm thinking, well, why don't you know that this is happening in Maine? And Channel 6 offered to do an interview. And when that went on, then the U.S. attorney's office was working with our local law school and working with the Women's Justice League, who had Ruchira Gupta coming into town. I don't know if you remember Ruchira she was here two years ago. She worked with the Clintons to get the anti sex trafficking bill passed. And she had an award winning documentary on sex trafficking in India. And so she was here. The Women's Justice League brought her here as a speaker this year they had someone from food insecurity. So every year they try to bring some someone globally to the state of Maine. So the U.S. attorney's office and Umaine Law and this women's Justice League asked if I would be on a panel to speak to about 90 law enforcement folks at the Wish Camper campus. So I was on that panel with FBI and Homeland Security and Christine Thiebaud talking to the people in Maine who are behind the law enforcement. And I was so honored and privileged to be there. And it was such an eye opening experience to see and hear these 90 people all saying, man, this is happening in Maine and we're trying to figure it out and we don't know what to do. And I'm saying, well, I know what to do. We need to bring Maine people in on this because if the Maine people knew what was going on, they would rally. So how can we spread the word? And that really, that was it between helping out at Long Creek and then the Ruchira Gupta event, man, that was just like, okay, we need to do something and I need to be the voice of these girls and let the people in Maine know what's going on. So that started it.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Do you mind sharing your story?

Catherine Mossman:

No, I don't mind. So one of the things that's really important to me to share with the Maine people is that there wouldn't be human beings for predators to manipulate into sex trafficking if we didn't have child sexual assault. I see child sexual abuse and as the genesis for so many things as a society. We see kids dropping out of school, bullying, drug and alcohol abuse, promiscuity, incarceration, cutting. And we look at those as like individual problems. And when we open up each one of those issues and we look inside, we see that over 85% of them have all been sexually abused as children. 94% of all the women in prison have been sexually abused. In my mind, it is the genesis. What I like, if you will, about my story is that it really shows that whole sort of timeline. The first time I was sexually abused was I was six years old. It was the vice principal, first grade in school. I had happily married parents. So there are myths about, you know, it's single family, it's Lewiston, it's Biddeford Whatever. I had happily married parents. I was the eldest of three kids. My brother had really severe asthma. My parents were focused on him. I was the first child, so they weren't used to the whole parenting thing. So I was bedwetting and having night terrors and all this stuff that we can look back and say, well, gee, that was obvious, but it wasn't obvious to them. That made me a little bit different. And so now I'm kind of the weirdo in school, which made me perfect to be bullied at school. And then the school's telling my parents, well, why don't you just let her figure this out? Because, you know, back then, I'm 52, we didn't know about the whole bullying thing, so they thought it would build character. I was the littlest kid in school, literally the shortest kid in school, and they just left me alone. The girls were awful. The boys were nice to me. If I, you know, if I let them go too far. I became promiscuous. I started skipping school. The male babysitter was molesting me. My uncle was molesting me. My aunt was molesting me. I would do a sleepover, and somebody's big brother, somebody's, you know, Harvard did a study on this, trying to figure out if you take two women and they're running around Central park and they're the same body type, and one of them has been abused, and one of them hasn't, the odds of the one who's been previously abused being assaulted again is so much higher than the person who had never been assaulted. Is it a pheromone? Is it a neon sign over your head? Who knows? But there's just something that happens, and my story is very congruent with that fact. So I started running away from home. And I was a runaway from 12 to 17. At first, I would run away to my friend's house. But it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know if you're staying with a family who's not contacting your parents or the authorities, the odds are they're probably not really healthy themselves, themselves. So I learned that that wasn't a safe place for me. So I would sleep in abandoned forts in the woods. I would stay in abandoned apartment buildings or remodeled condominiums, wherever. I really didn't do a lot of drugs and alcohol. It just not because I didn't want to. It just my body, by the grace of God, couldn't do drugs and alcohol. So that wasn't my issue. Like it is for so many people. And at 15 I met a couple of girls. And you know, by 15 I had already been, you know, brutally raped numerous times. I had been choked to unconsciousness. I'm stealing food, I'm doing survival sex. So survival sex is, you know, can I sleep here and will you feed me? So when a couple of girls said, hey, you might as well get paid for it, you could have your own apartment, you could have clothes. And I'll never forget the night that they told me about this. This was in Biddeford on Pike Street. I was starving and the girls fed me macaroni and cheese with tuna fish and peas. And that was the best meal. I mean, I was so hungry. And by the next morning it made sense to me. So I said, sure. And so they introduced me to two men, two pimps. And what I didn't know at the time is one of them was a well known pimp in this area who had very much, like we hear about now, there's a whole underground thing with prostitution. There are houses all over the place, actually all over the United States, like a web. And he was a part of one in Lowell, Massachusetts. So the two men, just for descriptors, one was black, one was white. They were called Salt and Peter, excuse me, Salt and Pepper. Salt was the white guy, his name was Peter. And that's the guy that I chose. And actually that was a total God job. I didn't know that he was the safer one at the time. It just went with my gut and it proved probably to have saved my life to pick him. And then as soon as you say yes, well, that's it. You have just made a deal with the devil and blood and there's no getting out of it, you know. And so now they start training you. They tell you what you're going to wear, the color of your hair, what the rules are. And so there is a subculture set of rules. When somebody approaches you, if you don't ask them if they're a pimp, if. If you don't ask them if they're a cop, what will happen to you, what the punishment is if you don't obey. You have just said, I am a slave. And that's it. You are now a slave. You can't go anywhere. You have no money. You're given a pack. I got a pack of cigarettes a day, a place to live that I could not leave, and was told where to go and when to go and what to do. One particular time I was sent to. And there were five men who were supposed to be on a hunting trip had told their families they were on a hunting trip and they had hired a few girls to entertain them that night. I was the only one that showed up. And those girls, the men didn't care that I was the only girl there. I was 15, I was 5ft tall, I was size zero. I had bleach blonde hair, homemade tattoos, and braces on my teeth, you know. And so at that point, I was. I didn't want to live and I was afraid to die. I didn't grow up religious, but we believed in God. And I had heard about hell and I had heard about incarnate reincarnation. So I went out in the backyard and I talked to God. I'd hoped it was God. And I said, look, if I am reincarnated and I come back in a worse life than this because I killed myself, that would be awful. And if I went to hell because I killed myself, that would be awful. So I felt like I was stuck between hell and hell. And I said, if you're real, if you really, you know, exist, then help me. You know, help me get out of here. There is. People will say, well, why do girls stay? And there's a whole brainwashing thing when you're young and somebody takes you for a car ride and then turns off the lights and it's a no moon night in Maine and you can't see your hand in front of your face. And he stops the car, turns off the lights and says, I could kill you right now and no one would ever find you. I just want you to know that. I want you to know how fast you can disappear. They also tell you that they're good friends with police and law. So, for instance, as a runaway, I would periodically call my parents and say, I'm okay. Click. Just so they wouldn't worry. Because I felt like it was me, like I was the bad one, not my parents. So I wanted them to not worry and know that I was safe. And there was a. I hadn't done that in some time. And there was a warrant out for my arrest because people were wondering, where is she? So my pimp took me to the Biddeford Police department and just walked me in the door and said, let them know you're okay. And the person that I talked to just sort of sat back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. Hey, how you doing? How's your uncle? Just wanted to make sure you were okay kind of thing. And I'm thinking, Satan is 10ft behind me. Why don't you take me into a private room? Why don't you talk to me? You know, just crazy. And then the pimp walked me out, you know, and back to work we go. So anyway, I'm outside and I'm having this conversation with God and I'm totally brainwashed that this is Satan and he's going to kill me or he's going to send me where Peter sent where Pepper sent his girls to Lowell, Massachusetts where the pornography was made. And the girls who disobeyed and went there would come back with awful stories of just horrific things that were done to them for the sake of a film and punishment, you know. So my odds of what was going to happen to me if I stepped off the grounds there weren't great. But something inside of me said, walk down the street. And every step I took away from this house, I was thinking, boy, if Peter drives in, I could say, you know, I saw something shiny in a road. But the further down the road I got, the more terrified I was. And the first house that I came to, I knocked on the door, a woman answered and as soon as she cracked open the door, I bolted in. And I said, I need help. And she just happened to be going to Crossroads for Women the next morning. What are the odds? And so she called them and said, hey, you know, got this crazy teenager here, can I bring her? Now Crossroads is for women and it's a 30 day program. They let me come at 17 and they let me stay three months. So it was just an amazing opportunity for me to have a safe place to go. Of course I didn't sleep that night. I stayed wide awake. And later on I found out someone did get shot. They did go looking for me. You know, when people sell drugs, they have to find the drug, conceal the drug, sell the drug, get more drugs. But with girls, I mean, you can make a pimp way more money than drugs. They can just sell you, sell you, sell you, sell you. They don't have to conceal you. If you're in the car and the cop pulls you over, the cop isn't going to say, hey, there's, you know, there's a prostitute. So it was quite an ordeal leaving and then re establishing a connection with my family. And then there's the surviving. The surviving. You know, when people come back from war, when you're in the trenches, you're just surviving. And then when you leave that surviving environment now, it's just like fallout, right? And there's post traumatic stress disorder, panic Attacks, chronic panic attacks, anxiety attacks. And people say, well, why do people go back to the street again? Why do they? Because it's easier than surviving. You know, the whole surviving part is just really huge. So I use my story to kind of show that timeline, to show that what happens to you when you're a child being sexually assaulted and then this whole sort of fallout, like nuclear radiation. When we have a nuclear radiation leak, there's this huge fallout. It's the same thing when we sexually abuse our kids. Did you see the movie Spotlight? That was pretty amazing thing. What stood out for me was how not only the church, but how the community and even the families wanted to keep the victims quiet. And people really didn't understand. Well, why did they do that? Well, because the priests were like family. How much more so do we want to keep things quiet when it comes to our own family families? So in our own families, our own family unit, that's where not only the victim comes from, but also the perpetrator comes out of that too. So people in Maine are wonderful about saving animals. You know, last winter we had that kennel burned down to the ground. There were truckloads of dog food and cat food and crates and all this stuff for the animals. But when it comes to child sexual abuse, man, that's a sticky topic. That's really taboo. We really don't want to talk about that. We don't want to think that it's happening here. And I think that's because it's so close to home. And instead of demonizing, we really need to have compassion for the family unit, have compassion for the victims, have compassion for the. For the family, where not only the victim but the predators reside. And look at it in more of a compassionate point of view around it. And we need to let the people in Maine know what's going on because they just, they're like blown away by the numbers. So I try to keep it very Maine centric. I'm not bringing in New Hampshire or New England. I'm saying let's just look at Maine, not Biddeford or Lewiston, but let's look at the whole state and see that one in four girls and one in six boys are being sexually molested in the state of Maine. That the average assault for a predator is 150 assaults in the career of that predator. It's 150 assaults in their lifetime. We're not going to feel safe by knowing where. If we use the sex registry for the state of Maine, those are the dumb ones. Those are the ones that get caught, the smart ones, are still out there, and it's not a curable thing. I mean, back in the 40s, we were looking at depression and homosexuality as something that we would send our family members to the sanitarium to get electric shock treatments to cure them. You can't cure what people's innate sort of desire is, but there is something that we can do. Well, there's two kinds of predators. There's one that is passing on what was done to them, and the other one that is just sexually attracted to a child, and we can't cure that. But there are lots of things out there that we can lessen the cravings and have zero tolerance. We can have zero tolerance and compassion at the same time. And I think if we hold that space, that families would be more open to talking about it and saying, hey, my uncle, my brother. I mean, the people who are being victimized are being victimized by the people that they love and trust. The odds of a stranger abducting and raping your child is like winning the megabucks, you know, but the odds of it happening from some someone that they know and love, that's more probable. So we have to, in my mind, create a space of compassion so people are willing to talk about it. And it's in the talking about it that we can really heal what's going on and make that cultural shift. I went to this sex trafficking training last year and they said, what was domestic violence with? Called 40 years ago, and everybody was quiet. And she said, marriage. She said, 40 years ago, if your husband was beating the crap out of you and you called the police, the police would say, well, what are you doing to piss him off? Knock it off. If you went to your church and said, my husband is beating me up, the church would say, we're really not into that. Into divorce. So how about a marriage enrichment weekend seminar? And then of course, the black and white issue and women's rights issue. Forty years later, we have a semi black president. We have a gay pride parade. We're no longer sending people to the sanitarium for electric shock. What happened between 40 years ago and today? A cultural shift. How do we create a cultural shift, create a safe space and talk about it and have these sorts of conversations. And that is going to hopefully make people say, okay, it's time for me to do my own work and time for me to out my family in a really compassionate, loving way and let the healing begin.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Katherine, how can people find out more about the sex trafficking that's going on or how to stop the sex trafficking or more about stop trafficking me www.stoptrafficking

Catherine Mossman:

again stoptraffickingme.org and they can email me stoptraffickingmemail.com

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

we've been speaking with Kathryn Mossman who started Stop Trafficking Me as a result of her own personal experiences. I give you so much credit for the work that you're doing and I appreciate your coming in today and I wish you all the best in the reaching all the 1.3 million people in name. I hope that we can get the word out there.

Catherine Mossman:

We will and thank you for this opportunity. This is such an important piece of the conversation, using our media and spreading the word. So my hat's off to you. I really appreciate. I'm really grateful to be here. Thank you.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You have been listening to Love Maine radio show number 244, stopping sexual abuse. Our guests of inclusion Melissa Bednarowski and Kathryn Mossman. For a preview of each week's show, sign up for our e newsletter and like our Love Mean Radio Facebook page. Follow me on Twitter as DrLisa and see my running travel, food and wellness photos as bountiful1 on Instagram. We love to hear from you, so please let us know what you think of lovemain Radio. We welcome your suggestions for future shows. Also let our sponsors know that you have heard about them here. We are privileged that they enable us to bring Love Maine Radio to you each week. This is Dr. Lisa Bellio. Thank you for listening to our Stopping Sexual Abuse show and thank you for allowing me to be a part of your day. May you have a bountiful life.

[Unidentified voice]:

Where I've been I can't stay why would you want to know what happened Anyway, even though I'm here today it's not enough for you to hear the words I say when you ask me I say la la, la When I answer you say la la, la, la, la don't tell me you don't want to hear the ins and outs My whereabouts and how I spend my time without you La, la, la. Who is it and is it real? Will I walk away if you change how you you feel? Believe you me, I'd rather be in 4096 than here in 103 and when you ask me I say la la, la and when I answer you say la la, la, la, la don't tell me you you don't want to know the ins and outs my way about and how I spend my time without you.

Catherine Mossman:

Sa.