MILFORD (MA)
Boston Globe
By Susan Chaityn Lebovits | January 15, 2006
Barbara Hansen can't recall exactly when the sexual abuse began, but the Milford resident thinks she was around 3 years old.
Her grandfather would take her out for ice cream, and touch her.
''Don't tell," he'd say.
By age 8, she said, she avoided him and the abuse eventually ended.
But three years later, while attending a Bible camp in New York State, Hansen said she was molested again, this time by a youth pastor. The familiar words, ''Shhh. Don't tell," were chilling.
Hansen, now 61, shares her story in ''Listen to the Cry of the Child: The Deafening Silence of Sexual Abuse," a book she published herself in 2003 that is now available in local bookstores and online. It's written in the first person and heavily interspersed with writings from the New Testament. Although sales have not broken even, she said she was more concerned with ''getting the message out there, and help for those in pain."