I started to lose grip on reality a bit.
I started to feel...question whether the abuse ever really happened.
And I started to question, 'Had I made this up?
Did I dream it?'
The a-ha moment came not from me suppressing it, but the a-ha moment came when I realized
what is happening is not something that should be happening.
My name is Kyle Stephens.
I have a degree in engineering.
I'm an athlete.
And I'm a sexual abuse survivor that helped put Larry Nassar behind bars.
"Perhaps you have figured it out by now, but little girls don't stay little forever.
They grow into strong women that return to destroy your world."
So Larry was friends with my mom and my father.
To me, he was not a big, powerful doctor.
But, he was always a little goofy.
A little strange.
Um, a little off in his own corner.
He was always trying to hang out with the kids.
I was six years old when he first sexually abused me.
"This one was before I was abused.
And things could have been so different for that little girl."
I told my parents when I was in sixth grade.
And they didn't believe me, and they chose to believe Larry Nassar.
For that whole year, my parents had been trying to get me to admit that I was lying.
And that was a pretty brutal year.
And I was sitting on the floor and my dad looked down at me, and he said, "If you don't
tell the truth, I will make your life a living hell."
Until I was leaving for college, my parents, um,
it was just a known fact that I was a liar.
I really had to find strength within myself and remember the abuse consistently,
so that I didn't forget that I wasn't a liar.
"I've been coming for you for a long time.
I've told counselors your name in hopes that they would report you.
I have reported to Child Protective Services twice.
I gave a testament to get your medical license revoked.
You were first arrested on my charges."
Our society is conditioned to put the reputation of a perpetrator above the welfare of a child.
And it baffles me that we're so afraid that someone may lose their job,
that people may think about this person differently,
or that maybe they'll lose their marriage.
But we don't think that maybe it's for good reason.
Maybe this guy shouldn't be a doctor anymore.
Maybe people should think of this person differently.
Those child molesters are controlling all of us, not just those children.
But they're controlling all of us to feel that shame, feel their shame for them.
And it keeps us all quiet.
And keeps them at large.
In 2016, my dad took his own life.
My father was experiencing extreme pain that made him unable to work.
My father's self-loathing that stemmed from his defense of Larry Nassar contributed to
his choice to commit suicide.
Children need to understand that their body is their own,
and if they're uncomfortable with being touched in a certain way,
they, one, can tell that person that it's not okay,
but, two, they can come to their parents and say, "Hey, I was really uncomfortable today."
All of our solutions, all of our solutions need to be incredibly victim-centric,
and make it easy for the victim.
Because if it's not easy, they still have things to do in their life.
They still have jobs, they still have school, they still have goals, they may have children.
They still have a lot of stuff to do to survive.
So if we're going to help them heal, we need to make it incredibly easy for them.