“When Martin was in his 40’s, he came home from work early one day. The TV was on, and the Oprah Winfrey Show was being broadcast across Johannesburg, South Africa. Martin stood, stunned, tears flowing, listening to men speak about the sexual abuse they suffered, the struggles they endured, the healing that had brought them to a television studio in Chicago. “It was like a giant came to me and lifted a one-ton weight off my shoulders. For the first time, I could breathe.”
The Oprah show on male survivors was a dramatic turning point in Martin’s life, but it was not the only one. The abuse that scarred his childhood left him with much to remember and much to heal from.
Martin was sexually abused by multiple perpetrators over much of his childhood and adolescence. At age five, he was abused by an adult woman. At age 12, he was raped by another adult woman. The vacuum of love in his family left Martin vulnerable in later childhood; he needed love, and sexual predators sensed his need, and they preyed on it.
Martin built formidable defenses to protect himself from a punishing world. He withdrew into an inner shell, unreachable. He had acquaintances but no real friends. He became an expert in diminishing himself and the footprint he left in the world. He figured if nobody noticed him, nobody would hurt him.
He discovered alcohol at 13 and never looked back. He quickly became a weekend binge drinker and eventually graduated to a bottle a day. Then one day, he woke up in his backyard, hungover. He staggered into his house, disheveled, leaves clinging to his hair and clothes. He stopped outside his sleeping daughter’s bedroom, and a terrible thought shot through him: what would she think if she saw him like this? Overwhelmed with shame, Martin vowed never again to touch alcohol. And he never did.
After the Oprah revelation, Martin read everything he could find about male survivors. He quickly discovered that there was virtually nothing available for men in South Africa. So he launched Matrixmen, a peer support group for male survivors in Johannesburg. Martin continues his work and his healing, and he hopes to support the formation of support groups across his country.”
