Survivor Stories
Jerry Lachowsky

His mother’s suicide and years of sexual abuse have taken their toll, but Jerry has fought back. Decades later, he held his abuser accountable.

When Jerry was twelve years old, his family sat together on Thursday night, as they typically did, and watched “The Waltons” TV show together. The show ended with the usual series of “Goodnight’s” among the Walton family members, and then Jerry’s mother stood up and announced that she was going to bed. At 3 am that night, Jerry was awakened by a commotion. He stumbled into the hallway and saw a police officer. His mother had commit suicide.

So ended Jerry’s childhood. His family was shattered, and Jerry had no option but to bury his grief. But grief will not easily be buried. Jerry became a hellion, an uncontrollable not-yet-teenager who felt abandoned by his mother’s suicide and by his father’s inability to be a parent. And so Jerry was a prime target for a sexual predator.

At the age of 15, Jerry was targeted by the manager of a restaurant where Jerry found a job as a busboy. The manager groomed him, offered him alcohol, and then introduced him to drugs: cocaine, speed, and pills. As part of the grooming process, he proclaimed that Jerry was gay. And so for more than three years, Jerry lived under the pervasive psychological control of a sexual predator. It would be decades before Jerry would emerge enough from his control to apply the words that accurately described his experience: he was raped and sexually abused.

The legacies of this abuse are familiar. Shattered self-esteem. Profound shame and guilt and self-blame. Years of drug abuse. Intense confusion about his sexuality. He was never attracted to men, but it took years to fully own who he is.

Despite the lost years, Jerry has many accomplishments, including six years in the U.S. Navy. Those accomplishments are reminders to him of what he is capable of, counter-weights to the seemingly inexhaustible reservoir of self-doubt that the years of abuse created inside him.

It has taken decades, but Jerry has fought back, for himself, and for the boy who could not defend himself. Jerry filed a civil suit against his abuser, and he has, at long last, found a way to hold him accountable for his actions.

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