PENNSYLVANIA
Reading Eagle
Editor’s note: This story contains explicit content.
The harrowing stories are each unique. They’re set in different neighborhoods. They revolve around different characters. They outline different circumstances.
But a common thread binds them together.
Each begins with a child whose youth and innocence, they say, was ripped away by a man they trusted above all others and who wielded incredible power over their lives. And each ends with an adult, who decades later, is still grappling with the pain.
As Pennsylvania and neighboring states consider whether to partially reopen a window for people sexually abused as children to seek legal justice, more abuse survivors are stepping out of the shadows to tell their stories.
They seek to remind politicians that the wounds and scars left by abuse are very much part of the present.
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