Norwood Young didn’t want to be the reason for destroying his seemingly perfect family, so he wound up demolishing his own life by remaining silent about being the victim of years of sexual abuse, starting at the age of 7 by a male cousin. He found a way, or so he thought, to cope with his painful past by attempting to wipe it out. This meant undergoing 15 years of cosmetic surgery in an effort to erase the face of the “pretty boy” who endured the abuse.
Young, who doesn’t want another child to make the same mistakes, says, “Go run and tell!” He’s hoping that his recent appointment as spokesperson for the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, which seeks to also end sexual abuse, will deliver that message. And Young and California 52nd District Assemblyman Isadore Hall III plan to go in front of the state assembly, early next month to pass a resolution to proclaim April as Child Abuse and Sexual Prevention Month.“We are so busy protecting our families and protecting the accusers that we have made the [discussing sexual abuse] taboo. It’s not taboo for people like myself,” explains Young, who chronicles his story in the memoir Getting Back To My Me. “Keeping the secret is what put me in jail. I had highs and lows like drugs and parties to cover up. This all stemmed from secrets. Imagine being 7 or 8 keeping something quiet that long. I kept drinking. I kept getting surgery.”
His secret was compounded by the fact that by the time he was 14, Young had already contracted four STDs! Subsequent abusers included older ladies.
“Being with women, people saw it as consensual. It was still abuse because I was a minor,” says Young. “It wasn’t until I was writing this book when I said, ‘Hey, if I was 14 and she was 36, she was molesting me too.’ All my life I knew that I had participated in something that was dark and something that was a secret. I just thought it was sexual behavior that shouldn’t be discussed. I did not attach it to rape. I did not attach it to abuse. I did not attach it to criminal [behavior]. I did not attach it to sickness.
That’s what it was. When I watched an episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show in 1986, that’s when I knew for the first time I was abused. I was a victim of a sick criminal who would hold me down, pin me down and make me bleed.”
Young, an already stunningly attractive man noted for his model good looks, had an affair with cosmetic surgery that included, among other things, a series of nose jobs, cheek and chin alteration.
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