I can still remember the look of stunned silence on the faces of the talk show hosts.
lt happened almost 30 months ago, late on a Sunday night. A good friend of mine was hosting a live sports talk show on a TV station in Omaha, and the topic of discussion was the Penn State sex scandal story that had broken a few days earlier.
The story was already a few days old when my good friend, Travis Morgan, and his sidekick were discussing the issue of the Gerry Sandusky scandal that had rocked the world of college football. Almost immediately after reading the grand jury investigation, my world was rocked as well.
As a survivor of sexual assault, the news of what Sandusky had done to numerous young boys reopened some old wounds that I had been working hard to close up regarding my own experience from more than 35 years earlier. The “experts” on TV spent all of their time talking about everything BUT what they should have been talking about – how will this impact the Penn State football program, how this would impact the legacy of legendary coach Joe Paterno, is this a unique situation or are there other coaches out there abusing their authority, etc., etc., etc.
Travis and his co-host were going down the same road, and as a fellow journalist and sports writer, I could appreciate him wanting to hear from his viewers and get their opinions on these same sports-related questions. But he had a devoted viewer with a different question that needed to be answered – what impact is this going to have on the kids who Sandusky attacked?
When I called and asked that question, I began to talk about my own experience as a survivor of sexual assault. I had the TV on mute to avoid any feedback and was letting it all hang out. As I made my point, my friend’s mouth dropped and he stared back at the camera – he was blown away with the news that an old friend of his was, for better or worse, talking about his experience on live television in front of a potential audience of hundreds of thousands of people.
Fast forward a little more than a year – Travis is a native of the small Northeast Nebraska town of Walthill and took over as the new sports director at KCAU in nearby Sioux City, Iowa. It was a homecoming for Travis, as he had worked previously at other stations in town and was a local boy at heart. His station had broadcast a story about me earlier that summer after I began work on “Call Me A Survivor,” but he wanted to follow up with a feature on my experience and inform viewers on some of the facts and figures surrounding child sexual assault.
I know how much work can go into writing a major feature story sometimes, but doing something for TV is altogether different. We did two interviews – one at my house and one at the station – and he shot a variety of other footage of me, from my first major speech about my life and my book to video of me working in my job as managing editor and sports editor of The Wayne Herald. He started working on the story in January, but it would be five months before the story hit the air. Click here to check out his story.
The story was very well-received, according to comments I heard from people who saw the story, and it’s a fantastic piece that Travis put together. It was SO good, in fact, that the story was recently honored by the Iowa Broadcast News Association as a first-place feature story. I’m thrilled that Travis thought enough of the story to do such a wonderful job on it, and considering his talents and what he did to put the story together, it was a very pleasant surprise when I ran into him at a hockey game and he told me the good news about the award.
I think back often to that Sunday night in November when I first told my story to an audience on live TV and, literally, stopped the program in its tracks and stunned the host with news about his friend that he was not even aware of. It took a lot of courage for me to talk about my experience on a live program like that, and I’m thrilled that my good friend felt enough of the story to make the most of his talents as a storyteller and broadcaster to share my experience with his viewers and be awarded with a first-place honor as a result of his efforts.
I hope the video of his story that is attached here will help survivors open up and shatter the silence by telling their stories of survival from child sexual assault. Silence is no longer an option, and I encourage fellow survivors to tell their stories to someone, anyone and everyone.