Don Campion has ended his silence about the abuse he and others suffered at the hands of a police officer.
The 53-year-old from Chatham, Ont. said he suffered from various abuses from an OPP officer who worked in his community. The attacks happened over the span of about five years in the mid-80s. He wasn’t the only one. About eight other abuse survivors came forward with similar stories.
But after 23 years of silence, Campion decided to stop his silence.
“It is something you carry with you every day of your life,” Campion said. “You’re dealing with the shame and the guilt. It doesn’t get easier but strangely enough, it gets better. It’s alright for a man to have these feelings and it’s alright to talk about them.”
Campion successfully sued the OPP and received a small settlement but he never faced his abuser. He said that officer killed himself before the charges went to court.
When he started to talk about the abuse, he said many people didn’t believe him and criticized what he was saying but he continued to speak about what he had experienced.
During the years of the abuse, there wasn’t a place for him to turn to for help. Things have changed over the years and he said he’s glad that services are around now to help those that need it.
Campion told his story to a room full of mental health professionals and community organizations at the Da Vinci Centre. He added he wanted to let people know that they didn’t have to suffer alone.
“It’s a long road to get from there to here,” he said. “If I can help anybody along the way with my story then I’m here to speak for the ones that can’t.”
Tom Wilken, who has written about men recovering from sexual abuse, said
“We need to be talking about this it is a big problem in the community,” Wilken said. “If we don’t talk about it as professionals then we’re encouraging people that we see to stay silence about this as well. There’s that masculinity that real men aren’t victims. One of the most dangerous myths out there is that women are victims and men are abusers but if you look at the stats that’s not true.”
Around one in six men have experienced abuse in some way and around 37 per cent of sexual abuse victims are male. He said there are around 9,000 male victims in Thunder Bay who has been subjected to abuse.
Wilken’s gave Thunder Bay a lot of credit for its work on giving men a safe place to go to get help. While there’s still some work to do, he said the most important thing to do is letting men know where those services are.
