Stop Child Abuse Now (SCAN) - 1256

Tonight's special guest is Dorinda Korlacki from Rehoboth, Massachusetts, a survivor who was abused by her father until age 9. Then she told her mom. "That was the moment my life changed," Dorinda says. Her mother removed she and her brother from the house, and they all began to attend therapy. In middle school her dad tried to assault her yet again. "I told my mom, who in turn told my therapist. She told my mother not to say anything," she reports. "I started breaking down and going into depression. I didn't go to school, stopped my therapy, and I started smoking. The school filed truancy charges on me." They ended up in court, where a judge was told of her father's abuses, and he discovered no police reports had ever been made. "After court I was taken to a room with a female officer to give my statement," she says. Her teens and 20s were a time of turmoil and drug use. At 15 she began seeing a boyfriend who was 25, was hospitalized on 2 occasions for suicide attempts, and she got pregnant at 16. The birth of her daughter caused her to clean up and leave her boyfriend. "At age 21, I met my future husband. I became pregnant and had my second daughter by age 23. We were married a year later." In her 30s, Dorinda's brother's wife revealed he'd been "diddled" by their father, too. "This was another turning point in my life," she says. "We did not discuss it any further than me informing him of what she had said." When she was 40 her brother finally decided to talk about their shared abuse, which sent Dorinda into a deep depression. Last year things changed. "I made a conscious decision to actively participate in my own healing regardless of how it affected others. This is where I am today, on my journey to recovering."