Stop Child Abuse Now (SCAN) - 1386

Tonight's special guest is Lori Lamb from Peoria, Arizona, who suffered sexual, physical and emotional abuse in her childhood. Her eldest brother began to sexually abusing her when she was 4 years old. "Over the course of the next 10 years I was raped, sodomized, physically and emotionally tortured by him," Lori says, "often, right under my parents' noses. If they noticed, they didn't care." By the time she was a teenager Lori realized her brother despised fat women. "I gained more than 100 pounds in less than a year," she says, "... my parents said nothing." The sexual abuse eventually ended but Lori was left to deal with the mental anguish, degradation and lasting effect of 10 years of sexual abuse. Like many other victims, she chose to deal with her self hatred, "by eating my feelings and fears." Lori made poor relationship choices and ended up in a relationship with "an alcoholic who beat the hell out of me and convinced me I'd asked for it. And I believed him for a long time." Finally she found a good life partner and was married to him in late 2005. Despite this, and despite finding a good talk therapist and even doing EMDR to begin to process her childhood and make peace withy overwhelming guilt, fear and self loathing, Lori attempted suicide twice. "By the end of 2008 I was finally feeling a shred of peace," she says. "It took another full year for me to at last to put the history book of my life on the shelf." Lori later had weight loss surgery which helped her drop 150+ pounds. She and her husband recently celebrated their 10 year anniversary. Lori reports she's healthy, happy and sane. "Today, I am not just surviving ... I'm thriving."