A 50-year secret: 'He ripped all my innocence away'

WARNING GRAPHIC CONTENT: John was a young teenager excited he could bike into town on a Friday evening on his own. But while he was at the bank, a 'friendly and well-spoken' man asked him for directions. By the end of the evening, John's innocence was 'ripped away'.

One in six boys will be sexually abused before they are 18. In this video series, 10 men have told their stories. All grew up believing they were the only ones it had happened to. Now they want other victims to know they are not alone and, if they are ready, help is there for them.

John spoke to CTV as part of its Challenge the Silence series, here is his story.

For fifty years, John kept his childhood sexual abuse a secret. But two years ago the burden of that secret consumed him.

John is speaking out about his experience because he does not want anyone else to suffer in silence.

"I got sexually abused a long time ago.

“Once as a very young child and I can’t bring myself to talk about that,” he said.

"And then once again when I was a young teenager at school."

It was a stranger, who sexually assaulted John when he was a teenager.

“I went to town one night on my bike...around eight o’clock.

“As I was about to leave the bank, I was approached by a well-dressed and well-spoken gentleman.”

He was friendly and needed some directions, John said.

“We were brought up to help people of course.”

He figured out that I wasn’t going to meet my father at work for another hour or so, John said.

The man said he was lost and said he would appreciate it if i showed him around the city, he said.

“’I’ll give you a fiver’ the man said.

“That was a lot of money to me,” John said.

"It was starting to get dark, I wasn’t afraid. I wasn’t aware there was anything wrong.

He lead me up to a house and said he had left his wallet inside and that I should come in and get the money, John said.

"He closed the door.

"I was trapped.

"I honed in thinking ‘I’ve got to escape from here’. I knew I had no show because he was a lot taller and stronger than me.

“I didn’t know what he was going to do.”

John pauses for a moment as he speaks about his experience.

“He sexually assaulted me.

“I can still picture his face that night. I can still hear him talking to me. I can still feel him touching me... I can still feel the sensation of him forcing his way into my personal private space, as he ripped all my innocence away from me.

"I thought of making a run for it. Although he wasn’t vicious, I was still terrified.

"I didn’t know...what he was going to do. There was no-one around."

Then he said ‘you’d better go and meet your father’, said John.

"I walked in there and I never said anything."

I never told anybody, he said

"It was the 29th of October 1965 when he did that."