Title: Come Here
Description: For the first time, a distinguished American breaks the "code of silence" as a male incest survivor. In Come Here, Dr. Richard Berendzen courageously speaks out on his childhood sexual abuse, the effects of which, decades later, returned to drive him over the edge. Richard Berendzen was only eight years old the afternoon his mother called, "Come here," from her bedroom. That innocuous, two-syllable summons marked the beginning of a waking nightmare. During the next three years, Richard became the passion and prey of a woman whose violent mental instability took the form of repeated incestuous assaults on a child who was powerless to resist. Still, when the abuse stopped, Richard found the strength to put it all behind him and get on with his life - or so he thought ...

Not until Dr. Berendzen was in his early fifties did the secret he had so long repressed return to haunt him. An eminent astronomer and academician who had transformed American University in Washington, D.C., from a party school into a first-rate university, he was a devoted husband and family man whose only notable "vice" was workaholism. When his father died and Berendzen returned to his parents' East Dallas house, to the very room where he had been abused, something snapped. The shattering events that ensued are recounted with remarkable candor in Come Here. Overwhelmed by a flood of forbidden memories and unanswered questions, Dr. Berendzen began making bizarrely suggestive phone calls, which were traced to his office. Forced to resign his post, he entered the renowned Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he was diagnosed as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and commenced a slow and tortuous recovery process.

Writing with collaborator Laura Palmer, co-author of Elizabeth Glaser's In the Absence of Angels, Richard Berendzen has given us the beautifully composed, personal story of a man of science whom only the restorative power of faith could make whole. For Come Here is, ultimately, a chronicle of hope and renewal, and of the human spirit's boundless ability to heal itself.
Subjects: Adult child sexual abuse victims, Psychology, Adult Children, Sexual Child Abuse
Places: United States
People: Richard Berendzen