N.L. sex abuse survivor wants to be a voice for other victims
Victim wrote book about experiences, spoke publicly with CBC
Sex abuse victims are often too ashamed and scared to tell their stories, but one Newfoundland man has lifted a publication ban on his own case of abuse to tell his story.
For two and a half years, Matthew Burry was abused in secret by a man in Greenspond, Bonavista Bay, first being lured into hanging out one-on-one, then morphing into full-blown abuse.
Burry was 12 when the abuse began.
Scared by threats of losing friends and family if the secret came out, Burry's abuser categorically blocked his victim from telling anyone about the abuse.
I basically just kept this to myself for a long time and it just bottled up and bottled up.- Matthew Burry
"I basically kept it to myself," Burry told CBC News.
"He basically brainwashed me to believing that if I told anyone that I would lose my friends and my family wouldn't love me anymore, and that they'd send me to a boy's home."
The abuse stopped after family members noticed the man lurking outside the family's home. The pain stemming from being victimized did not.
"People in Greenspond treated me 50/50 — some treated me good, and some treated me and my family kind of bad, because he was a member of the church and the people of the church didn't like what they heard."
In Grade 10, depressed and suicidal, Burry was ready to tell his story on the stand. At the last moment, his abuser pleaded guilty.
The confession set off a chain of events that included years of bullying, hospitalization for mental illness and eventually dropping out of high school.
Part of Burry's inability to heal, he said, was that he wasn't able to tell his story of abuse — a publication ban blocked him from publicly identifying himself as the victim.
"I basically just kept this to myself for a long time and it just bottled up and bottled up."
After the Crown prosecutor denied his request to lift the ban, Burry said he wrote several lawyers and eventually got the ban lifted.
Burry began to write a book about his experiences, and was able to speak publicly to CBC.
"I just feel it's the right thing to shed some light on what happens behind closed doors that most people don't understand or realize," Burry said.
"He was an adult, I was a kid, and he knew [the] difference ... and I was just too young to understand what happened."
Now 25, Burry has moved from Greenspond to Gander, where he's starting running.
"It's a lot of benefits I experience. I feel a lot more happier and just a lot of benefits I find with the running, happier, [I] enjoy life more."
