VERMONT
Times-Argus
Dan Gilman was a 15-year-old free spirit when, climbing a tree lurching over a friend’s aboveground pool July 28, 1972, he leapt upward.
“I imagined I was one of those cliff divers they show on ‘Wide World of Sports,’” the Vermonter says. “In that split second, everything was light and sparkling and summer was perfect and I was the center of attention.”
Then it all came crashing down. Fracturing his spine, the teenager was paralyzed from his shoulders to the soles of his feet.
“This is bad, this is bad, this is bad,” Gilman thought as he lay in a hospital bed listening to doctors give him a less than 1 percent chance of recovery.
Feeling helpless and without hope, the boy accepted a priest’s invitation to receive “the Lord’s blessing.” A clergyman’s hands hold healing powers, the stranger said as he pulled the curtain for privacy.
Gilman knows this is the point where most people tune out. For decades, the lifelong Rutlander stayed silent about his sexual abuse as he struggled to harness the lingering feeling in his left biceps and shoulder to power a motorized wheelchair and mechanical arm.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.