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Family Secrets is a production of IHeart Radio.

This episode contains discussion of sexual abuse and suicide.

Listener discretion is advised.

Traumatic memory is fragmented and non-linear for a reason.

My brain, but my family, wants me to leave these memories buried.

It had done its job, detaching from my body, playing possum, so I wouldn't suffer my perpetrator's abuse in real time.

But I have forced my brain to follow the trail of somatic breadcrumbs I remember,

sounds, smells, tastes, and bodily sensations,

down the path to my solidified memories.

Even as I type these words, my brain fights me, tries to persuade me to give up, then acquiesces, reluctantly loosening its grip and letting the words flow.

That's Kate Price, sociologist, associate research scientist at the Wellesley Centers for Women at Wellesley College, internationally recognized child sex trafficking expert, an author of the recent memoir, this happened to me.

Kate's story is one of the most haunting and powerful I've ever heard, which, given the scope of this podcast, is saying a lot.

It's also a story of an extraordinary human being

who refused to allow what happened to her to consume her.

Ultimately, it's a story about memory, familial history,

tenacity, redemption, grit, and grace.

I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is Family's Sec secrets, the secrets that are kept from us,

the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we keep from ourselves.

The landscape of my childhood was incredibly dark. I spent a lot of time hiding, a lot of time just with my head

in a book trying to survive. And then also just living this dual life of presenting as an athletic

...