CityView Magazine

26 April 2023 And Roberta Humphries and her staff always are there with a receptive ear and an open heart. "ey are reported through the Department of Social Services or law enforcement agencies," she says. "It's basically sexual abuse under 18. We see kids that are drug-endangered or trafficked. We'll see survivors of homicides." 'I won't tell what you just did' If anyone can tell you about child abuse, it's Roberta Humphries. "e definition I like best is 'the ability to become strong, healthy or successful again aer something bad happens,'" she says, outlining the goal of the Child Advocacy Center. "I don't know if resiliency is innate, learned or just an outcome of circumstances or a little of all three. I definitely think I learned how to be resilient from watching how my parents lived their lives. It is the life skills and determination that I learned from my parents that has helped me to survive and succeed despite some very difficult events in my life. "But I also think my ability to bounce back was somewhat out of necessity, and I guess as my mother would have said, it is just that we were made of sturdy stock." She gives thought to her own experience of child abuse. "I was sexually abused by a very dear family friend and neighbor, who was like a surrogate grandfather to all of us," Humphries says. "I was 4 when the abuse began. I remember him saying aer the first time that he sexually assaulted me: 'I won't tell what you just did.' So, with those words echoing in my head, I knew for a fact that I had done something wrong, I was to blame and I became too afraid to tell anyone what was happening." e surrogate grandfather was her first sexual predator. He would not be her last. "Unfortunately, when I was 8, another child predator entered our family in the form of my older sister's boyfriend, who eventually became her husband and, thankfully, ex- husband," Humphries says. "But not before he terrorized me for five years. Being abused by a second person reinforced in my mind that something was definitely wrong with me. Unfortunately, with everything my parents taught me, they never taught me how to protect myself from sexual predators because that wasn't something talked about when I was growing up. "I didn't have the words to explain what was happening to me, and so I just didn't tell anyone. And I truly believed that I was the one at fault." Humphries did not reveal being the victim of child sexual abuse until age 39, when she told her story to a therapist "and true healing began." A promise made, a promise kept e healing would be a catalyst to help other abused children. "I vowed that someday, I would make sure that what happened to me didn't happen to other children," Humphries says. "I could never restore the childhood that these two men robbed me of, but I could free myself from their control over my adult life and I could help other children. So, when the opportunity arose 13½ years ago to become Roberta Humphries, right, talks with Renee Pridgen at the Child Advocacy Center. Humphries will retire in June after 1 4 years as executive director.

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