Edmond Town Hall's "Newtown Talks: Conversations on Culture, Society, and Change" series will continue this month with actor Anthony Edwards and author Stephen Mills, who will discuss the incredibly difficult, but important subject matter of preventing child sexual abuse (CSA) and breaking the stigma surrounding male survivors and victims.

The event is planned for Thursday, January 16, at 7 pm, Edmond Town Hall, 45 Main Street. As with the other conversations in the series, the program will be moderated by Suzy DeYoung and Lee Shull.

General admission is $40, while preferred seating and "skip the line" book signing tickets are $55. Tickets can be purchased in-person at Edmond Town Hall or online at edmondtownhall.org.

In addition to being a Golden Globe-winning actor appearing on-stage and in premiere Hollywood films and TV, Edwards is a CSA survivor who served as the Chairman of the Board of 1in6, an advocacy organization dedicated to male survivors of sexual abuse.

The acting mentor Edwards befriended at the age of 12 was the one who betrayed and profoundly harmed him and his friends, but it was acting itself that saved him. His deep love for acting and the trust and connection it creates between actors gave him a pathway to heal. He forged a successful career in television and film, but compartmentalized his trauma for decades.

Edwards happened to run into his abuser years later at an airport and expressed his outrage at what he did to him. The abuser told Edwards he had gotten help and was no longer hurting kids. When his abuser's name showed up in the media for allegations of sexual abuse in 2013 however, Edwards, then 52, said that he felt all of his rage resurface.

"I realized that he'd lied to me 20 years ago about how he had gotten help and that he was no longer hurting kids," Edwards explained. "All of that was a big lie."

Edwards, who recently returned from a trip to London, told The Newtown Bee on January 9 that the compartmentalization he experienced is typical for many men, as the average time for a man's disclosure of CSA: between 30 and 40 years.

"So it's classic that I didn't really start talking or looking at this event or situation until I was 52 years old," Edwards continued.

From that moment on, Edwards said he started to look at and understand what happened to him. That led him discovering and learning about 1in6, which was set up 10 years earlier.

The organization is named after the statistic that at least one in six men have experienced sexual abuse or assault at some point in their lives. Edwards thinks the statistic is probably higher than that. Putting that into numbers, Edwards said that is over 30 million American men who have experienced childhood sexual abuse, trauma, or assault.

Around 2017, Edwards said, he was in Law & Order True Crime, a true crime anthology series whose first — and currently only — season focused on the Menendez brothers murders. Edwards played Judge Stanley Weisberg, who oversaw the brother's trial.

Edwards knew he was going to have to do publicity and talk about the show, and wanted to bring awareness to childhood sexual abuse at that time. He said by not being able to honestly say, "hey, this happened to me," he would be continuing the darkness and shame surrounding the topic.

"I also realized that, because of the success I've had as an actor and how people knew me, I knew I could very simply set an example of taking shame away, because shame is a big silencer," Edwards said this week.

Devastating Impacts

Mills is the author of Chosen: A Memoir of Stolen Boyhood, and is also a CSA survivor. Since 1982, he has advised and written for a wide range of public interest organizations in the fields of human rights and environmental protection. He serves as an Ambassador for CHILD USA, a nonprofit dedicated to preserve and strengthen children's rights, and is on the board of Darkness to Light, a national organization that empowers adults to prevent CSA.

In his third summer at a Jewish sleepaway camp, soon after he turned 13, Mills was given special attention by the new camp director, a very well-known and revered social worker in Jewish camping circles, according to Mills. That same camp director began grooming Mills that summer.

Mills said the sexual abuse started later that fall, after the director received permission from Mill's mother to take the young boy to camp by himself under the pretense of needing help for some work at camp. The abuse continued for about two years and occurred in many different locations, with many of them happening throughout different places in Connecticut, according to Mills. At one point, the camp director even took Mills to the Bahamas.

Mills described the sexual abuse as having devastating impacts on his life as a kid and "completely reshaped my adolescence."

"After the first assault, which I experienced really out of my body and completely dissociated, it triggered a lifelong struggle with dissociation, and a ton of anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation as a teenager," Mills said.

It was later when Mills was in his early 20s that he first realized the perpetrator moved on, had worked at two more Jewish sleepaway camps, and was abusing other boys. At that moment, Mills said it was like a "light bulb went off." That was when he realized he was not alone in what happened to him, he said. That menntality is not uncommon for victims to believe because they are so isolated by the abuser, he noted.

In the summer of 1978, Mills confronted his abuser and senior staff members at the summer camp. He said he learned a lot of the staff either suspected or knew the director was abusing children, but no one had done anything to try to stop him.

"That was my first run in with this sort of conspiracy of silence that surrounds the sexual abuse of children; how prevalent it is and how difficult it is to break through it," Mills said.

The personal experiences of both Edwards and Mills led each to their lifelong advocacy to prevent CSA.

The "Newtown Talks" series is far from the first time they have worked together. The two first connected shortly after Chosen was published in April 2022. Edwards read the book and called Mills to get in touch.

The pair met in New York City while Mills was on a book tour and spent the day together, bonding over not just their experiences, but their shared determination to bring the issue of CSA to the public in a bigger way, according to Mills.

"We've been working together ever since," Mills continued.

As for how their presentation for "Newtown Talks" came about, Edwards splits his time between New York and Newtown. Mills noted fellow Newtown resident and social worker Miranda Pacchiana featured Mills on her podcast "Truth and Consequences," which focuses on trauma and its aftermath, shortly after he released Chosen.

Mills said he became good friends with Pacchiana after the podcast. She and Edwards are also good friends, he said, as well as with DeYoung — who co-coordinates and co-moderates the series with Lee Shull. Between Pacchiana and DeYoung, Mills said they got the idea he and Edwards should be in the lineup.

Impact And Recovery

CSA is an issue that transcends gender, and impacts thousands of children across the world. Edwards and Mills both said there is a special stigma attached to boys and men as victims, though.

"Culturally, we're not comfortable with boys and men as victims," Mills explained. "We expect boys and men to be strong, to be tough, to move on and just tough it up."

Edwards said it is common for men to minimize their abuse and trauma. This is coupled with the fact, he added, that people who abuse children are masters at grooming. In Edwards's case, he said, his abuser kept a group of boys around him to not just take advantage of, but to give the outward appearance that "everything was great."

"[He wanted it to appear] that this was a wholesome, wonderful group, while he could then commit more of his violence in private," Edwards said.

He continued by saying this pattern of abuse makes it easy for men to silence themselves.

"We live in a homophobic society, a misogynistic society, where men aren't supposed to be weak. They're not allowed to cry. They're not allowed to be vulnerable," Edwards said. "So it all creates the perfect foundation for silencing."

Nothing To Be Ashamed Of

Mills described how this mentality was so deep in popular culture that, until the late 90s, the sexual abuse of boys "was not considered a thing." He said there are plenty of survivors who, up until 10-20 years ago, would go to therapists and be told, "there's no such thing as the sexual abuse of boys" or "these things just happen."

Edwards said these stigmas and stereotypes created "a great foundation" for perpetrators to hide behind because of the internal shame victims feel after being abused. He also noted that a high percentage of violence done to children is done by people who are loved and trusted within the family, with perpetrators taking advantage of close relations or familial connections to continue abusing their victims.

That alone, Edwards said, is such a betrayal to a young psyche, because the young psyche "doesn't understand it." He said his friend, writer and fellow survivor Marty Moran talks about how a child's job is to learn, trust, and fall in love, while it's the adult's job to keep them safe. Perpetrators who want to pray on children find "chinks in their armor" and wedge into their lives.

The assumption some people have that boys can or will just say No to someone crossing a boundary with them, Mills added, "is an absolute fallacy and fantasy." Speaking from his own personal experience, Mills said "to have an adult male twice my size sexually assault me [at 13] ... in that moment, there is no thinking or saying No.

"The mind is not even thinking," he continued. "The mind shuts down, and the body goes into survival mode, which we know is fight or flight or freeze."

When someone goes into a state of shock like that, Mills said, that is the human body protecting itself. The body will do what it thinks is necessary, and that this is the reality of victimization of all children, whether female or male, he added.

"It's super important for people to understand that this is nothing to be ashamed of," Mills said. "My body did its job, which was to try to protect me; to try to save my life. That's a good thing, not a bad thing."

For Edwards and Mills, it is their goal to break through that shame and terrible feeling of complicity many survivors carry.

They also said the conversation around CSA has slowly been changing. Mills noted a huge milestone for girls happened when the case around Larry Nassar, who used his position as a sports doctor for the United States women's national gymnastics team to abuse hundreds of young athletes between 1996 and 2014, reached the public eye.

Mills said the ramifications from that case stem from one of Nassar's victims, Rachel Van Hollander, coming forward and speaking out, which led to over 100 other women coming forward about Nassar's abuse.

Edwards said when he published his op-ed in Medium talking about the abuse he faced and being a CSA survivor, it was around the same time the sexual abuse allegations of Harvey Weinstein came to light.

"And all of a sudden, you realize it was a time and moment which a lot of women needed to get together and yell and scream; to let that anger out and just ... band together," Edwards said.

The topic of CSA has been a comparatively "tougher hill to climb" for boys and men, according to Mills. He said culture began shifting in a big way with the revelations of continuous CSA in the Catholic church that began in the 80s, but did not get national publicity until the early 2000s with The Boston Globe's "Spotlight" investigative team's stories about the Archdiocese of Boston.

Nowadays, just about every city, and even many towns, have children's advocacy centers, according to Mills. These facilities put under one roof all of the resources — medical, legal, law enforcement, and psychological — a child victim might need if they want to report CSA. Children's advocacy centers are a very streamlined, victim-centered process that lets children tell their story and report in a safe environment, he added.

For adult CSA survivors, Mills said there are "fantastic" resources available online, such as the aforementioned 1in6. There is also MaleSurvivor, a nonprofit whose website hosts discussion groups and forums, as well as a national directory of therapists that specialize in the sexual abuse of boys and men.

"None of these things were around even 20 years ago, so it's just fantastic that there are all these resources now," Mills said.

Early Education

With the prevalence of people speaking up about the sexual abuse they faced, Edwards said "that's where you realize there's so much work to be done" to create more safeties and protections for children. He said this is what organizations like 1in6 and Zero Abuse Project, which is committed to the elimination of child sexual abuse, are working on.

"There's so much more to be done to create safety nets," Edwards said. "While you can never fully get rid of perpetrators, what we want and are going to do is shorten that reaction time from when violence happens to people being able to speak up about it."

Mills also said many parents and institutions are doing a better job of helping children from a young age name their body parts and understand that "you and you alone have the right to protect yourself and decide what gets touched and when.

"These are really basic things that we should be educating in children as much as we teach them about stopping at the corner and waiting for the light to turn green," he added. "We don't think twice about teaching kids that, and we should be doing the same about ... the integrity of their own bodies."

When parents teach children about that, Mills said children adapt to the information quickly and don't attach shame to it. He continued by saying children who have agency over their bodies and know that it's wrong for an adult to touch them are much better prepared to say something during or afterwards.

Raising awareness about CSA prevention is incredibly important for both men. Mills said when he goes to a community and speaks there, many people will often tell him "well, we don't have that problem here" or "I don't know any victims of child sex abuse."

Mills said that he tells them, "Trust me, you do. They just haven't disclosed it to you."

Part of the reason he said people do not speak up about CSA is because it is incredibly difficult to do, and they may not feel safe.

"The more we can talk about this and remove the shame and the stigma, the safer folks will feel to share it," Mills added. "The more we educate ourselves, the better of we'll all be."

For Edwards, one expression that means a lot to him is "Everybody has a very different and specific story, but everybody shares an experience." The goal, he added, is to listen to people and give them the opportunity to talk about what happened to them.

"I just want to be able to create that space so men can have that first conversation, because that's where lives change," Edwards said. "And where they go after that conversation, who knows, but it's important to create a safe place to say, 'Hey, this happened to me.'"

For more information about this event or the "Newtown Talks" series, visit edmondtownhall.org.

For more information about Stephen Mills, visit stephenmillsauthor.com. For more information about 1in6, visit 1in6.org. For more information about MaleSurvivor, visit malesurvivor.org.

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Reporter Jenna Visca can be reached at jenna@thebee.com.