It should’ve been a night of triumph.

The governor of Maryland praised his courage. The bill he wrote and pushed for eight painful years passed — to backslaps and applause. A judge had cited the pending legislation in making public a watershed investigative report.

Fast, informative and written just for locals. Get The 7 DMV newsletter in your inbox every weekday morning.

But hours later, Del. C.T. Wilson (D) sat alone in a hotel room with a tequila, circumspect. The thing that drove him to wage this fight had defined his whole life and — many, many times — almost killed him.

“I hope this is my opportunity to close this, to turn this page,” Wilson said in an interview Wednesday. “But this is the darkest I’ve ever been.”

It took Wilson almost 30 years to talk about it. He was 38 when he first said it out loud, that he was raped. Many times. For years.

He hates every minute of disclosure.

But when he does talk about it, at least, the pain has a place to go. Something to do. It helps other people, they tell him. And that’s what he can do.

A Maryland lawmaker raped as a child can't get his bill helping other survivors passed

“That’s why I wrote my book,” he told me last week, as the legislation that defined him, broke him and terrorized him — the Child Victims Act — was about to pass. “You learn how to live your life because you have to hide it. Hide your pain. You have to hide your misery. Fake it ‘til you make it.”

Advertisement

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) acknowledged this...

Read Full Story: https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMiUGh0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lndhc2hpbmd0b25wb3N0...