Crowning Achievement

Last year Van Derbur self-published Miss America By Day, subtitled "Lessons Learned From Ultimate Betrayals and Unconditional Love." The book spent thirteen weeks in the top ten of Colorado's non-fiction bestsellers list, which tracks statewide sales of all books published in the country, and in May it won first place in the prestigious Writer's Digest awards as the Most Inspirational Book published in 2003.

Though printed under one cover, Miss America By Day is really two books disguised as one. The first is Van Derbur's autobiography, a survivor's tale. The second is perhaps the single best clearinghouse of meticulously sourced information on the pervasive evil of childhood sexual abuse in this country, as well as a "how to" guide on how to talk to children about inappropriate touching by those they know: their siblings, coaches, priests, babysitters and fathers. (The vast majority of sexual assaults on children are committed by family members or acquaintances, not strangers.)

John Johnston

 

 

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• Van Derbur
• Miss America
• Ronald Reagan
• Sexual Offenses
• Crime

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"We are just now beginning to come of age with this problem as a society," Van Derbur says. "It would never have entered our minds thirty years ago to worry about our kids at camp." It is a few days after the death of former president Ronald Reagan, and she holds up that day's USA Today, in which Reagan's son, Michael Reagan, reveals that he was sexually abused by a camp counselor when he was a boy. "It's like Maya Angelou says: 'We did what we knew. When we knew better, we did better.'"

Almost fifty years after the terror ceased for the nightchild, Marilyn Van Derbur's doing better.

"The truth was devastating to me," she says, "but it did set me free."

And then she smiles.