WCN Presents: [John-Michael Lander] An Athlete’s Silence
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John Michael Lander is a former Olympic-bound diver, actor, author, speaker, and advocate.

His words and efforts have been seen everywhere from Time Magazine to the TED Talk stage. He has entitled his experiences of sexual abuse and trafficking, An Athlete's Silence. By sharing his story, his goal is to bring awareness to predatory practices in the athletic and educational worlds, as well as to change the way society receives sexual abuse victims.

I am so honored he joined me today to discuss how he's transformed all that came next for him into healing for athletes of all ages.

The Broken Cycle Media team is also extremely grateful for John Michael's continued advocacy and time on What Came Next. He will be sharing some updates about his journey in episode 78 and even host swaps in episode 79 on the What Came Next feed. Be sure to head to What Came Next on your preferred podcast platform and subscribe to hear more of John Michael's journey and from many other powerful survivors.

I'm John Michael Lander. My loved ones would say that I'm caring, empathetic, easy to talk to. I think that's one of my superpowers. I care a lot about people. I want to hear where they're coming from and what they're going through.

I'm a former Olympic diving contender. I was one of those energetic kids. I was happy. I look forward to the next day all the time for the new experiences that I was going to see and live with. Everything was a new discovery for me every day. I was excited about sharing that with my parents. I would do flips off the couch all over the place. I was somersaulting, all this kind of crazy energy. When they took me to the pool and I was doing it in the grass, there was a

Lifeguard said, "Hey, why don't you try that off the diving boards?" And I said, "Sure, why not?" So I tried it. The next thing I know, he introduced me to a coach and that day I learned four dives. As a younger kid, I don't think there was any limitations of what I could be. I believed that I could do anything I wanted to. And that's what I tell my parents. They'd say, "Okay, that's great." It wasn't until when the abuse started happening did I lose that side of myself.

As I said, diving came very natural to me. I raised in the ranks really quickly, especially in the age group program. I qualified for the Junior Olympics. I went and I took eighth place. I was so ecstatic. I thought this was so cool. When I came back, a lawyer had followed this story in the local paper. He

He contacted my mother. He basically groomed my mother at this time, telling her that the only way that I could get to the Olympics or move forward or get a college scholarship would be through his group of friends who were professionals who could sponsor me, help take the load off my parents and pay for my diving, my pool time, my coach's time, swimsuits, competitions, travel, lodging and all that kind of stuff.

After a while, my mother started to realize that this could be a possibility. He also promised my mother that anything that any of the professionals did, that they would help my family. If we needed eyeglasses and if one of the professionals was an eye doctor, we got free exams, we got free glasses, that would take care of my parents. The only thing he made her promise is that she would help me.

She would have me at the right place and dressed at the right time, ready to go whenever these professionals needed me. That's how she saw the whole thing. She thought she was doing me a huge favor. It wasn't until after he had really gotten her confidence that he ever came to me. It was this whole process over months. And he started taking me out to dinner and he started to listen to me and ask me little questions like, how's school going? What's your favorite subjects? What's your favorite music?

finding all these little things about me, which was really interesting because at that time I was having a struggle trying to connect with my father. This father figure was giving me the time of the day. He was paying attention and that was really attractive to me. He basically told me that if you want to go to the Olympics and get a college scholarship, I can help you. All you have to do is meet with my other friends, my other professionals, go on these meetings with them, make sure that they're happy and everything will be cool.

All I need from you is that you do really well in school, keep your grades up, do really well at meets, go to every practice that you can and be the best person that you are.

He also explained to me that these professionals are telling my parents that they were just going to take me to dinner or go see a play or a movie, maybe a party, and then bring me back. That's all that they were telling them. So I basically said, sure, let's do it. He drew up a contract. I agreed. I signed the contract and I moved forward with it.

I was going to these events, we call them. Sometimes there were just one person that would come out to the farmhouse where I grew up at and pick me up. My mother would make sure that after the event, I would sit on the side of her bed and tell her everything I had for dinner, what happened. But of course, I couldn't tell her everything because I was still not sure what was happening.

I remember the very first time was with a doctor who was 60 years old, took me to a Motel 6 of all places. It was a dirty place, it was gross.

I didn't understand while I was here, being 14, not knowing exactly what I was supposed to be doing. And then all of a sudden, I realized as things were moving into a certain direction, my body froze. I didn't know what to do. I just couldn't move. And when the event was over, it was over. And I couldn't grasp my mind around what this was. I felt weird. I

I felt shameful. I felt embarrassed that I allowed this to happen. But then I quickly realized that maybe this is part of what it takes to become an Olympian. So I quickly found a way to normalize that just so that I, in my teenage brain, could comprehend what was happening. There were these parties that they would take us to. At the parties, there would be

maybe five young men, mostly college kids. They would line us up. They had us wear certain things. And I always had to wear a white Speedo because I was the diver and they wanted to show that off. These guests would come in and they would go down the line and they would ask questions or they would touch us.

They would grab an arm or whatever. They were sizing us up. And then they went into a back room and they bid on us. They had a silent auction on which boy they wanted. And the winner of the highest bid for each, that boy would go with that professional for that evening.

We would either leave the house where it was being taken place at or we'd go to another room. The boy who raised the highest amount got special gifts. Most of it was your tuition paid for, your books paid for, whatever it was that they wanted to pay for, they were going to take care of that.

Early on, when I was 14, I was told that I was going to have one main doctor who was going to take care of me. That doctor was Dr. Strauss at Ohio State University. If I had any ailments, I was taken up to OSU to his clinic on campus, and he would be the one that took care of everything. That was kind of strange to me because there were doctors that were closer to my family that would make it easier. He took a special liking to me.

Dr. Strauss was not a very big man. He was probably about the same size I was at the time. He was very nice to me. I was confused because all the other professionals were kind of curt and quick. He took his time. He would say these incredibly nice things. And it got to the point that I would spend the weekend or a whole week at his house. I thought I was the only special one. I

I didn't realize that there were others that he was doing this to as well. And I remember I went to my coach to report, wait a minute, I think this is not right. The coach basically told me that this is something that everybody does. If you want to keep your place on the team, you won't talk about it to anyone. We all deal with this. You just have to suck it up and go forward.

As we know, Dr. Strauss, after he committed suicide, has been brought up in charges. Ohio State has paid out millions and millions of dollars to survivors. My story has been denied three times because I was a teenager. They've used the argument of statute of limitation, which had run out.

As a 14-year-old Olympic-bound athlete, the adults that were entrusted in my training, they groomed and trafficked me into silence, causing one of the most exciting times of my life to be filled with guilt and shame. I refused to even acknowledge that I was trafficked until about two years ago when I was working with a researcher out of France. I was sharing my story and she said, "Wait a second, you know you were trafficked." And I said, "No, no." Because it involved my mom. My mom was a part of that group.

I really had a hard time believing that until I started to realize what trafficking is. I still continued on and won gold medals at the Norway and Danish Cups throughout this whole experience.

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By the time I was getting ready to go to Norway and Denmark, I had just turned 15. I wasn't sure what was going on. There was anger because I knew that this was sex, but I didn't understand what it really meant. I didn't like these people. I knew I had to do what I had to do because I promised already. So I felt guilty about that. And going into school every day and trying to act like everything was normal and thinking there's something wrong with me.

At home, my father was very religious and he would start throwing Bible verses at me. One of them was, if you lie with a man, then you're an abomination. And he would call me an abomination, which made me wonder, did he know? Was he aware of what was happening? Because I thought this was all set in a very secretive situation. ♪

I remember winning the gold medal. I was in Norway and I called home and it was really early here. My dad answered the phone. I said, "Dad, it's me." I told him that I had won the gold medal. He said, "This is the worst joke anyone has ever pulled on me. My son would never win the gold medal and hung up on me."

There I was at this payphone and all these photographers were around me. I was dealing with the whole fact of I can't hang up now or they're going to find out something's wrong. So I just kept going, just like I've been doing with everything else in my life, creating a story so that I can make sure that everybody else was okay, that I could take care of them and not take care of myself.

One night, the car came up to pick me up and I said, I'm not going. I told my mother, no, I wasn't. And she's trying to force my jacket on me. And I said, forget it. I'm not fucking going. She says, watch your language. And I said, why? She says, you need to be that nice kid that you are, polite and understanding. And I said, I don't want to go.

She said, he came all the way out here. It would be rude to make him wait any longer. You have to go. I thought, okay, I'm going to break this now. I'm going to say it. I'm going to tell her. And maybe this will all be over with. And I basically said that he touches me. And she looked at me kind of funny and she said, where? I said, down there. And she goes, what do you mean down there? And I grabbed my crotch and I saw this look on her face. It was kind of a mix of surprise and disgust.

Then I remember her lips getting really tight. And then all of a sudden her eyes changed. She leaned back and she slapped me across the face super hard. She said, it's not nice to make up lies about people. That person is a pillar of the community. And if anything ever happened, it must have been your fault. Now you get your ass outside into that car right now and don't embarrass me anymore and

And then you'll come back and you'll tell me exactly all the good stuff that happened. And she told me that it was my job. That was the thing that really hit me hard, that it was my job, that everyone was helping me become the Olympian that I wanted to do. I had to do my part.

I remember speaking to my mom about it again without ever telling her what was really happening. And she basically said, I should be honored and feel privileged that these people are taking an interest in me, that there are certain sacrifices as an athlete and as a hopeful for the Olympics that I was going to have to deal with. I, in my teenage brain, just assumed this was part of that. And so I never again spoke about anything that happened

I continued going through the process of meeting with the professionals. The times that it became violent, they weren't going to go back to the group of professionals and say anything horrible because then they'll look bad for them. So I relied on that. There were times that I had to find my own way home because they were so upset with me. But that's how I survived and got through it the whole time.

Even though I can see myself in those places with the professionals, there was this weird feeling of never being alone. I knew that if I could get through this, it would be different. I can change it later on. I could do something with this. There were times I felt like I left my body and was watching from the corner of the room. I see the whole thing happening, but I didn't feel it. And when it would get really violent, that was my modus operandi. So that's what happened throughout my four years of high school.

At home, I felt like there was no place to turn because they were not going to believe me. My mom obviously made that clear. I couldn't carry all that weight with me, so I'd find ways so that I could accept it. I would tell myself that I must have deserved this. So that became a label, and that's the kind of life I lived. That's what I assumed was what I was going to be for the rest of my life.

There were still moments that I broke through this negative, unselfworthy idealization that I had of myself to win the gold medals, to get the scholarships. There were these moments that were still intact that said, wait a minute, you're worth something. You're worth more than what these professionals are telling you. I decided that I needed to get away. So I started to plan my escape. I was looking to go to some university far away.

I wasn't going to go to Ohio State University. That's where everybody was pushing me to go. And I said, no way. In 1981, I accepted Irvine. I was accepted as a pre-med major. And so I went out there. I thought that I could reinvent myself.

I can really become the person that I wanted to be without all this back history. What I didn't understand, the professionals, although I was thousands and thousands of miles away from them, still were in control of paying for things while I was at school. The things that weren't covered by the scholarships, they were paid. My mother had connected them with that information.

And so they were still holding all the cards, which I didn't know about. On the first day of moving into the dorms, I somehow offended a grad student who had said something to me. By that time, I was so desensitized about people around me. Everyone joked around and called me the ice prince. I was kind of popular in a way. People knew who I was because I had won the gold medal in Norway and I won the gold medal in Denmark. I was supposed to be this next hopeful for the Olympics.

especially since swimming and diving was such a big sport. This grad student that I had offended somehow started following me and leaving notes for me. Of course, in my mind, I thought I had a secret admirer. This was just kind of neat. Someone close to my age, oh my God, someone likes me.

Things started to build up and he started to leave these messages on my dorm room door. He left them in my classrooms off the desk that I was sitting at. He would leave it at the pool practice on my duffel bag. This person had access everywhere. It just kept getting more and more. And I remember sharing it with a doormate of mine named Sue. She started realizing these aren't what you think they are. This is something not good. They

They started to become very explicit, just kept escalating. I remember being at the library one night trying to finish up a paper and this person followed me there. I went to the bathroom and he came in and put a card in my back pocket and left. When I pulled it out, it was this map. It had no names. It just said, you got to go 25 steps. So I followed it, treasure map.

It ended up being his apartment. One thing led to another. He started offering me wine and he said I had to drink it. And of course I drank it. Then the next thing I know, the room is spinning. I was out of control. I couldn't move my body.

The next thing I know, I woke up in a wooded area on campus and I knew that I had to go to the emergency room. There was no way that I could hide this. I had been raped. I had his claws right down the chest. I had marks all over my body. I was bleeding. When I did stumble back to my dorm room, Sue was the first person who found me. She went with me to the medical center. That in its whole self is a retrial.

It was a re-traumatizing experience because at that time, we were told that men could not be raped. Going through the rape kit and everything was demoralizing and it was embarrassing. But the thing that was really interesting about this incident is I had just gone through four years of high school with all these professionals and I took this one person that broke me. I was never going to be the same. I just knew that. I became very ill. I couldn't eat. I couldn't do anything.

They said, no, you basically have flunked out of college. You got to go. What had happened is they had contacted my parents. My parents contacted the lawyer and the lawyer was the one who brought me back home and put me back in to the circle of these professionals. It was one of those crazy times. I got healthier again and I decided that I would go to a university close to home. I just didn't want to give up. It was my escape, I think. And while at Wright State University, I

I met a professor of dance. I remember the first day in class, she looked at me and said, "Meet me in my office." She was the first person to ask me what was going on. Her compassion just started to melt me down and I felt that I could trust her and I shared as much as I could that first time. Then we started sharing more and more and more. She became the first person that was going to help me escape the professionals because the professionals had already regained their control over me.

I had met a young girl who was a theater major. She and I became very close and she was auditioning for a play and she asked me if I'd be a part of it with her and I said, "Sure, why not?" So I went to the audition. There were two auditions going at the same time. There was the play for the school and there was a movie of the week that was being shot on campus. It came out that I was cast in both the play and the movie of the week. And so with that kind of schedule and plus diving,

The counselor said, why don't we move you over to the theater department because you're doing all this theater stuff. You won't lose your scholarship. And so that's what I did.

After the movie The Other Week was released, I got a part on General Hospital. So I was driving up to Los Angeles to do these bit parts. I was overwhelmed by how much money I was making. And it was exciting because it was not with any of the professionals. I thought this was my way out. The professor at Wright State contacted the All My Children casting director. And those two coordinated a way for me to get back to LA, find a place for me to live so that the professionals couldn't find me.

I think acting was therapy for me at the time.

I had this anger and it was able to put it out there for a minute into the entertainment business. I basically put myself back into situations where I was being propositioned from Hollywood. There were many times that I lost roles because I would not sleep with the director or the producer. There were many times I'd go to an audition and I'd get down to the five of us and I would be told that I'd have to do the audition in my underwear because they wanted to see what my body type was.

There were many times I did it and I was with a really tough agency and yet there was still this blockage that I wasn't able to go all the way all the time. I had already normalized sex so much that it didn't mean anything. It would have been so easy just to go ahead and sleep with them. It was like this little voice within me would say, "You can't do that. Don't do that." But everything else says do it. And then I would beat myself up because I didn't do it. All right, I'm going to leave one fire and go to in the next.

Eventually, John Michael left the entertainment industry and began teaching high school English as a way to advocate for and inspire youth.

I remember teaching high school. I had a sophomore come into my classroom one day and tell me that he had a boyfriend. He said that he was older. So I said, how much older? And he said, 35. And I went, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. Does your mom know about this? He said, yeah, yeah, they're fine with it because he pays the bills and buys the groceries. And at that moment, I was face to face with my 15-year-old self. And it was just mind-blowing. I

I told him that I was going to have to report it because as teachers, we have to do that. And he seemed relieved almost like he was fine with that. When I did go to the assistant principal and I shared the story, she says, oh yeah, we already know about that. There's nothing that we can do because his mother and grandmother are aware and supported. And there was this thing inside me that clicked and said, I can't be here anymore.

I found myself going down a really dark spiral after that. All these memories started flashing back. It was like Pandora's box was flown open. I got really depressed. I said goodbye to my two Boston Terriers. I wrote a goodbye letter.

All of a sudden, that inner voice said, no, no, this isn't fair. This isn't fair for Nathan to come home and find you like this. I realized that just because I'm hurting, I can't inflict that hurt on other people. I went into the living room and I fell and I cried one of those really ugly blubbering cries. I finally, when I was exhausted, stood up and said, I'm going to break my silence. I think that was the pivotal moment for me.

The incident with the student was in 2007. I removed myself from school. After I left the school, I started with a therapist. Before I had my first therapist, I was rejected by five. Once they found out that I was a male sex abuse survivor, they didn't want to have anything to do with me. They would give me excuses like, we're just not a fit. You need to find somebody else.

Again, it was my fault. I had gone through so many therapists and I hated them because some of the traffickers were therapists and psychologists. I would walk into an office, I was already defensive. But this woman thought outside the box. She was the first person that started to help me realize what was going on. She started to have me journal, which ended up being my book. She knew that she had to break through to me. We were talking about forgiveness.

And the first thing she said to me is that survivors need to grieve the loss of their self when the abuse started happening before they ever can go on and start to heal, before they can forgive themselves. They have to grieve that child part of them that was abused and taken away from them. And if we don't do that, we carry that hole in our heart or our soul with us, and we're not able to connect all the dots. I started thinking of that little 14-year-old kid who

whose first experiences was with 60-year-old professional in the Motel 6. And I could wrap my arms around him. I realized that it wasn't his fault and it wasn't my fault and that we're one and I miss him. And that was able to bring us back because I totally disassociated myself so many times. Through the process, we just focused on the present. We started hearing how I would say certain things and the negative talk that was involved. I

I could change the negative talk from where I am right now, and I would only have to go back to the past when I was ready or when I wanted to. I could change how I talked right now, and that could change my future. I had the big hang-up. Although I had been groomed, I

I felt that I was responsible in the sense that I went with it. That has not been discussed about very much. The traffickers that I dealt with are no longer alive. And I carry the guilt with me all the time that I did not go and report more. Years later, I ran into boys who were being trafficked by these same professionals before they all started to die off.

So I had this guilt that I allowed these other young men to be abused. And I think that was the biggest step for me is when I started to realize that it wasn't my responsibility. This is only you re-victimizing yourself and punishing yourself even more.

I'm Dan Taberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at the high school in Leroy, New York. I was like at my locker and she came up to me and she was like stuttering super bad. I'm like, stop f***ing around. She's like, I can't. A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms, and spreading fast. It's like doubling and tripling and it's all these girls. With a diagnosis, the state tried to keep on the down low. Everybody thought I was holding something back. Well, you were holding something back intentionally. Yeah, yeah, well, yeah.

No, it's hysteria. It's all in your head. It's not physical. Oh my gosh, you're exaggerating. Is this the largest mass hysteria since The Witches of Salem? Or is it something else entirely? Something's wrong here. Something's not right. Leroy was the new dateline and everyone was trying to solve the murder. A new limited series from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios. Hysterical.

Follow Hysterical on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. She struck him with her motor vehicle. She had been under the influence and then she left him there.

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I started to do research because I started to understand that there was something that I was hiding.

One of the first organizations that I connected with was Darkness to Light. It was there that I started to realize that maybe my story is real. They were the first group of people that started saying that you do have a story that needs to be heard. And they encouraged me to move forward. While I was going through my discovery of myself, I wrote a book and it came out of the notes through my journal when I was going through the therapy with the last therapist I had.

Surface Tension is the title of the book. I started writing my book and then I did the TED Talk and then I started speaking out. I just wanted to be able to help one person. When we were in the process of rehearsing to present the TED Talk, we were all trying to figure out what is the title going to be. One of my mentors, we work with mentors when we're going through the TED Talk process. Basically, she said, it's an athlete's silence. So that's what my TED Talk became.

After I did the TED Talk and it was released, NACOSI, the National Coalition to End Sexual Exploitation, invited me to be a keynote speaker in Washington, D.C. for their global summit. They wanted the Athlete Silent story. So I thought, oh my God, this is interesting. I developed an Athlete Silent website and organization so that I could be the voice for the athletes who were not able to speak up at the time. Now it just has grown to be what it is today.

There was something else that I wanted to share that was interesting. Once my book came out and once the TED Talk was over, it seemed like I lost a lot of friends. People normally around me, I would call friends, all scattered. It was the strangest feeling and interesting dynamic. This ability to be transparent in this share and be able to say it for the first time, because the TED Talk was the first time I expressed what happened in public to anyone.

That's why that is such an important and special moment for me. But I lost so many people, so many friends who stopped calling me, ghosted me and everything. And then through Nicosia,

Grace French, who is one of the founders of the Army of Survivors, reached out to me and asked me if I'd be interested in being on their board. I said, "Definitely yes." I didn't even think twice about it. I jumped at the moment because I wanted to learn what is it to stand up and speak for someone. I was at Ohio State speaking to the first-year medical students about how to speak to survivors.

After the panelists were finished, several doctors came up, our future doctors, and told me their story. I just revel in the fact that I was able to open up so that they can feel safe to share their story. I remember speaking on Capitol Hill not too long ago. I got to go to all these different delegates and speak and share my story, which was incredibly powerful.

Writing was very healing to me because I had to sit silently by myself and do it. That was like being with me and the sides of me I had disassociated from.

Writing opened that up a lot for me. Speaking brings out a totally different aspect because speaking the words out loud for me made me own the words. If you look at my books, I wrote the books as fiction. I was not at the time ready to own the I in those stories. Although the stories are all true and the situations are true, I'm not ready to own the I in those stories.

I just wasn't ready to put myself there. I think our society is still not understanding how long it may take a survivor to express or to share their story. And it's also the fear that they don't want it to be too close to home. And yet it could be happening right next door. It could be happening inside their house. I think the interesting thing is speaking publicly in front of people

You give out the stats that one in four female and one in six males are sexually abused before the age of 18, you see them all start counting and looking around. And it's just incredible to watch. It's just one of those things that I think our society is still not able to wrap their brains around or to accept because we're taught not to. But when I'm speaking in front of people, there's so many different emotions that happen and energies that are flying around. I'm actually owning the words like I'm doing here with you.

I've owned so many new ideas that I have suppressed or never thought about until now. That's amazing. I just think I see things in a different way than I did back then because I've told my story, which is so healing. Sharing it different ways and at different times with different people will bring out different aspects. You're like peeling back the layers of that onion to get to that center and it's freeing.

People think that, oh, you must be so comfortable doing that. No, I don't know about you, but before an interview or anything like that, I go through some major things. There's fear, there's anxiety, there's all these things that come up before I share. And then after I share, I just feel elated that I was able to share on a level that was different from the last time I did it.

It's emotional every time. The healing process is a lifelong process. It's something that we will be working with for the rest of our lives based on what happened to us at whatever age you were when it first happened.

We are dealing with this every single day. It's not going to be one day you wake up and it's all over. Or you went to a therapist for a year and you're miraculously healed. I find that I'm more sensitive to what other people are going through because I went through my story. I look at that as my superpower. I think that's something that is empowering. Not that I want to celebrate that I went through the abuse. I don't. I don't forgive those people for what they did.

But it's what happened. And now I'm here. I have this ability that I really feel I can connect on a different level with a lot of people. And I'm now trying to help other survivors go through their experience and understand that they could change from where they are right now.

Do you have any advice for someone overcoming childhood trauma or even for parents of youth athletes that want to lead with a more trauma-informed mindset? Let's focus on the parents first. Talking to my mother years later, of course, and just recently, she said to me, instinctually in my gut, I knew something was wrong, but I didn't want to create a problem because what if I was not right?

I was worried about what other parents would think of me and I didn't want to hurt someone's life. She said, I never took care of you first. I was worried about them first. I think parents need to be advocates. They need to go into the institution and interview the institution and the coach to see if they are good for their child. I think the parents need to also do the background check on the coach because many times the

The diving season starts up and we don't have a coach yet. Practice starts next week. We need somebody. All that looks good on paper. We'll hire him. No background check. That coach could have come from another place where there was accusations. They don't check all the time. You're putting your child's life in this person's hands. Also, I think the parents need to listen to what the child is saying about practice and about the coach.

I was a meticulous kid. I couldn't have dirt on me at all. I would change clothes three or four times a day. And once the abuse started to happen, I stopped changing clothes. I thought that that would get my mother to ask. Then I stopped taking showers. My mother made the excuse when I've talked to her recently and she said, "I just thought that you were rebelling. You were in the pool all the time so you didn't really need a shower." Children will do things like that. And if you feel like something's going wrong, ask.

There's only about 15% of parents that know what their children are doing online. That's so sad to me because predators are going into online games, chat rooms, any type of social communication to find these children. They are grooming, just as I was groomed, they're grooming online. People are still not looking at this seriously.

You may not know exactly what the abuse is, but listen to yourself. Go inward and be brave enough to explore that. Also realize that it's not your fault. You're not alone. If you really are truthful with yourself, you will understand and you will find the answers. It may take a while. It may take professional help that you need to go and get. I highly suggest talking to someone. I highly suggest journaling. Share your story when you're ready. If you're not ready to share your story, don't do it.

But make sure that you acknowledge and accept the story for yourself. Once you start to understand what the truth is for you, then you could start choosing who you want to share your story with. What is coming next for your mission towards awareness and prevention?

I'm working right now with a group called Survivor Space. There's survivorspace.org and I'm writing content for them. And that's where all survivors are coming together to share and help other survivors. There's poetry on there, there's essays, articles, content, legislation stuff. It's just this incredible group of people to help give a safe space for survivors to explore and find out more information.

I was interviewed by the Academy Award Director, Ava Ordner. They are putting together a documentary to expose and share the stories of Ohio State and the Dr. Strauss survivors. So that's been a really interesting situation to be able to be a part of that with the other survivors that I didn't know. That's the next big thing I'm trying to do. Again,

predatory internet grooming. I'm really starting to shout that out to everybody so people can hear it. Going to work on the new book, sharing content and trying to do speaking engagements. Thank you so much for being so open and honest. Where can people follow you if they'd like to remain part of the conversation with you? I'm on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn. I also have an Athlete Silence Facebook page as well.

I am just incredibly moved by what you've managed to do despite some awful experiences. You're such an inspiration. Thank you again for everything. I appreciate you. I will be following your journey. I want to thank you, Amy, from the bottom of my heart for creating a safe space in order to share my story.

and to realize new things that I had not previously acknowledged, which happened several times in our conversation. And I also want to thank you for sharing this space with other people to share their stories of abuse, of traumatic events. What you're doing is helping so many people. Its ripple effect is going all over the world and people are starting to hear you. It's incredible. So thank you.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, trafficking is the coercion or trade of humans for the purpose of forced labor, sexual slavery, or commercial sexual exploitation. It often uses force or fraud as manipulation tactics.

In 2020 alone, the U.S. National Human Trafficking Hotline received 51,667 substantiated reports of human trafficking. That is to say, it is much more common than one would hope.

According to the foundation Darkness to Light, roughly 1 in 10 children face sexual abuse before the age of 18, although that statistic is affected by the high prevalence of non-reporting that takes place. In fact,

the same study estimates that around 86% of childhood sexual abuse and assaults go unreported. The average age of victims disclosing their abuse is 52 years old.

Organizations like End Violence Against Women International, the Army of Survivors, and many more are working towards creating preventative measures to combat childhood sexual abuse and give existing survivors more tools and resources while reducing the number of future victims.

That is all to say you are not alone, friends. For additional resources, be sure to read the episode notes and visit somethingwaswrong.com forward slash resources. Don't forget to subscribe to What Came Next on your preferred podcast platform to hear from many more inspiring survivors. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. Next on What Came Next.

By the time I was 12 years old, the courts had given my parents a decision. Either they were going to send me to reform school or I would have to be shipped off to military school. My mother drove me, put me on a train by myself to a military school. I'm scared to death and now I'm feeling double abandonment.

What Came Next is a Broken Cycle Media production co-produced by Amy B. Chesler and Tiffany Reese. If you'd like to help support What Came Next, you can leave us a positive review, support our sponsors, or follow Broken Cycle Media on Instagram at Broken Cycle Media. Check out the episode notes for sources, resources, and to follow our guests. Thank you again for listening.

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