The following is an original production.

Of WTCI.

Marilyn Van Derbur has always been the picture of perfection.

Growing up in Denver, Colorado, she excelled in academics, athletics and volunteerism.

Her father, Francis Van Derbur, a wealthy socialite and philanthropist, was a pillar of the community.

In 1958, she was crowned Miss America, a title which led to an immensely successful career as a motivational speaker.

She has been named Outstanding Woman Speaker in America, spoken in over 300 cities and has been inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame.

But more than all of this, Marilyn Van Derbur is a survivor.

In 1991, she spoke publicly for the first time about a horrific secret that she had carried for almost 50 years, a secret that she calls the greatest accomplishment of her life.

Surviving incest.

So from an outsider's perspective, would you describe what your family must have look like to someone when you were growing up?

We were a picture family when I was crowned Miss America.

They called me the debutante family atmosphere.

A gag on that a little bit, but that's true.

I'm the youngest of four daughters.

We're all two years apart.

We were all queen of everything.

We all got the best grades.

We were a beautiful family.

And what was your life like in an insider's perspective?

Well, I remember when I first went into therapy, my psychologist said, you need to go back and really figure out what your life was because you really made it up in your head.

And as difficult as this is for most people to understand or to believe, it is common, it is common for children who are intensely traumatized to repress those memories.

It's called dissociation.

How could I get up and go to school in the morning and get A's and sing in the choir and ski on the ski team?

If I had to remember what was going to happen that night when my father came into my room, there was no help.

There was no one.

There was.

There was no one.

Even in looking back, there was no one I could have turned to.

And so for 13 years, from age five to age 18, when I left for college, my father came down into my room around nine, 10:00 at night, and my mind found a way to split.

And I was the happiest child.

I was as perfect a teenager as you could ever want to meet.

And I loved my life.

And that's what I that's how I survived.

I know the one question that most people, if they don't ask, at least have on their minds.

Where was your mother?

Thank you for asking that.

I was my mother when I was older than ten.

We moved when I was ten, so I'm guessing 11 or 12.

It was about 11:00 at night.

My father was at my room and coming down to my room.

I asked for the maids room.

There were six bedrooms and I had the midterm.

So you walk down a long hallway and then down three linoleum steps.

And my mother wore They're called mules.

It's a very dressy bedroom slippers.

So she had that hard heel.

And all of a sudden, we didn't hear on the carpet, but all of a sudden, we heard the first step.

And my father just froze.

And everybody from my mother froze.

Everybody froze.

And then another step and then another step.

And I knew she was coming and I knew it would be over.

And then I heard her turn around and go back and I knew she would never come.

As a frightened child with no one to turn to for help.

Marilyn did something that is common for many survivors of intense childhood trauma.

She split her mind into Marilyn, refers to these two halves of herself as the day child and the night child.

In this way, with neither side consciously aware of the other.

She was able to lead a happy and normal life well into her twenties.

At the age of 15, she met the love of her life, Larry Adler, and was able to develop a normal romantic relationship that would later become a healthy and supportive marriage.

It was at this age that she also met Didi Harvey, her church's new youth minister, and the man who would eventually crack the perfect facade that Marilyn's dark secret hid behind.

So for most survivors, as you said, you kind of compartmentalize these two lives.

So this was a memory that really didn't come to bear until you were well into your twenties.

When I was 15, a new minister, a new youth minister came to Denver, and for nine years he just kind of noticed.

Notice just little things that just didn't seem to make a lot of sense to him.

I was desperately in love at 15 with Larry, and when I was in my early twenties, I married someone other than Larry and divorced in three months.

Not marrying Larry was the huge piece to the puzzle for him.

It didn't make any sense at all to him, to everyone else.

I was as perfect a teenager, Miss America, as you could possibly always smile on my face.

And he's thinking, I just am not buying this.

And so he moved from Denver to take over Santa monica Church.

And as I flew to Hollywood to do whatever I was doing after Miss America, I would call him and I'd say, Hi, I'm in town, but I don't have time to see you, but I just want to say hi.

And one day it clicked for him and he said, She does want to see me.

She doesn't want to see him.

And the next time I called him, it was different.

I said, Hi, I'm in town.

Don't have time to see you.

He said, Where are you?

I said, I'm at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

He said, Stay there.

And it was said, Stay there.

There was no.

And hung up the phone.

And he pulls up and we go into the beautiful lunch area.

And then he he said I'd been down every other road.

There was just nothing.

I'd I'd tried every scenario.

And then he said something like father bedroom, nighttime.

I don't remember what he said.

I just remember I just bent down with just gut wrenching.

I sobbed and sat and sobbed.

And finally I just looked up and I said, Don't tell anyone.

And he asked the most brilliant question If I had been DiDi, I would have said, okay.

He said, Who don't you want me to tell you?

And I said, Larry.

And he said, Then he's the only one we have to tell.

He somehow got me to call Larry that same day.

We went right from the dining area to the phone.

And I called Larry in Denver and I asked him to fly.

And for the first time ever, he said to me, I've come for nine years.

I'm not coming anymore.

And I hung up the phone and I cried partly out of joy that I wasn't going to have to.

How how do you how do you tell him that when he was kissing me at the door when I was 15, 16, 17, 18, when I was a perfect teenager.

How do you tell him that?

Then I went down the hall room to my father.

How.

How do you how could you possibly say those words?

I hung up the phone and he said, What's the number?

And he called and he said, If you have ever loved her, I asked you to come.

And so the next morning he came and I just put my head down and I was just crying so hard.

Waiting for Didi.

Just, you know, waiting for Didi.

Just waiting for Didi.

And he said, Marilyn has something to tell you.

And I said, Can't and will wait until you can.

This man was just brilliant.

He knew that the speaking of the words, that's the first step of healing is the speaking of the words.

And so Larry and I began our journey.

How did the unfolding of this story go from you coming to terms with this yourself, Dee Dee, bringing this out, confronting this with Larry, with the one person who really you had to and who would support you and had supported you your entire life to then this becoming such a public discourse.

Well, my my, my greatest nightmare would be that people would know.

If people knew my life was over.

Everything that I had worked for.

I had built such a so much respect.

I was a public speaker.

I'd been named the outstanding woman speaker in America.

I just was successful.

Successful.

But if anybody ever knew that my belief system and every almost every rape survivors belief system is if you know this about me, then my life is over.

You will never look at me the same way again.

I traveled, I continued.

My speaking nights were I had night terrors.

Every night I have night terrors every night.

Every night I was scared.

I had I had a panic attack every day because as people were introducing me as this wonderful woman inside this voice as saying the night child is saying, oh, no, you're not you're not anything that they're saying in that introduction.

And so inside of me was this war of of worlds.

My body went into physical paralysis when I was 39.

I came home from a successful speaking tour and just I just had to lie down.

And usually I always go to sleep in a tightly opposition.

Every part of my body is locked as tight as it can go.

And that day, during the day, I lay in bed with like a dead person.

And I had paralysis spells for 12 years from 39 to 51.

And it took a long time to figure out.

I went I went to the hospital.

I went to the Mayo Clinic.

I went back to the hospital in Denver.

Doctors just said, you know, we just can't find anything.

I'm in paralysis, can't find anything wrong.

One day, oh, it started when my daughter turned five.

It was her age that was triggering all the memories and the feelings of what happened to me when I was five.

And one day I gave a speech in front of about a thousand insurance salesman in in Dallas.

And I just this voice inside of me just kept saying, you know, you can't stop this.

You can just stop it.

And I've done it so many times that my speech I kept giving my speech and I just thought, I'm just not I never I can do it.

I can do it.

And I knew that that was it.

And from 45 to 51, I could barely dress myself.

I was in what we call recovery.

And that's when the memories and the feelings come back.

And just the feelings, the feelings come back and they come back as if it's happening in real time.

And the healing process is to take all those feelings that you stuffed.

I never spoke to my father at night.

13 years, over 600 times.

I always pretended to be asleep.

Where did I put that humiliation and rage and the hardest thing to ever say.

Pleasure.

That's.

That's.

That's really hard.

That's really hard to say.

It just all of these all of these feelings.

Where do you put them?

You put them, but they're there.

And when something unlocks them, which again, was my daughter's age, all of these feelings start coming up.

I checked myself into a psych ward when I was 15.

When I was 51, I said to Larry, one day, I think I, I think I'm coming through this.

I haven't sobbed for weeks.

I think I'm going to get through this.

And then I knew that I could never go back to what I did before.

I had I had to help.

I had to help.

It's just the most brutal process.

But how could I help if anybody knew?

Colorado's Miss America, then my life would be over.

So to make a long story short, I set up an adult survivor program.

I'd have nothing to do with it.

Nothing.

I would set it up, get the funding, do all that.

But anyway, it leaked out to a reporter, and when I was 53, May 8th, it was a front page story in the Denver Post, and that was the end of my life.

I thought it was actually the beginning of a really blessed opportunity to reach out and help.

Marilyn's fear of shame was quickly washed away as she began receiving bags of letters from survivors around the country.

Their message was clear Marilyn's very public admission of a very private pain was enabling survivors of sexual abuse across the country to work through their own trauma and shame.

And after almost 50 years of secrecy, Marilyn was finally able to speak the words she had kept silent for so long and have the most difficult conversation of her life.

How difficult was it to ultimately confront your father?

When I got out of the hospital, I had always said to Larry, I will do every I will do everything I can to work through this to find an end to this.

It just seemed like it was never going to end the craziness of it.

And so one day I called my father and I said, I need to talk to you.

I said, Come on over.

I said, No at home, the home in which I had grown up.

He sat down on the far side of the table, and I said, This is the most difficult thing I've ever done.

And he said, I'll be back in a minute.

And he went up the long winding staircase, and I waited for a toilet to be flushed, A phone call to be made.

Came back instantly.

There was absolutely no doubt in my mind he had a gun in his pocket.

I didn't think it.

I knew it.

It flashed in my mind.

But I was there because I had to speak the truth.

Fortunately, my rage hadn't come up yet.

I came in love to tell him how I felt, but not accused.

Not angrily accusing him.

He said if I had known what it would do to you, I never would have done it.

I found out when I was 56.

I confronted him when I was 40 that he never stopped.

A woman wrote me a letter after my story went public to say that my father had sexually violated her about 20 times.

When he was 74, he died of a heart attack at age 75.

He never stopped.

They never stop.

When we finished our conversation, I rose to leave and he pulled out the gun and he said, If you had come in any other way, I would have killed myself.

This was the message he was giving me.

If you're thinking of exposing me, take a good look at what's going to happen.

Very powerful.

Very powerful.

The only time we ever.

Only time we ever spoke of it.

And then he died before it was actually.

He died before this story went public.

Yes, but my mother was still living.

I turned to her again and again.

This is when all the feelings come up.

As a child, I wasn't remembering being 45.

I was eight.

The feelings were of a child.

And I turned to my mother.

I finally went to her when I was 48 to tell her, and I was just sobbing and I was doubled over.

And when I looked up because I knew she knew what I was saying, she had her arms folded and she said, I don't believe you.

It's in your fantasy.

Now, if my mother wasn't going to believe me when I was a sex successful 48 year old adult, what chance what I've had as a child when my father was alive, powerful, intimidating and in charge.

No chance.

No chance.

As a child, I say in every talk I ever give.

If I had told as a child, I would have gone back to the judge or the lawyer and said, I lied.

I made it up.

So terrorize what I had been by my father and so unprotected, would I have been by my mother.

So it was 11 years after my story became public, after my mother died, that I said, Now it's time.

Now it's time to educate.

Time to write a book.

Couldn't have done it with her living.

It Couldn't have done it.

Couldn't have done it to her as much as as much as she was so unbelieving.

She hurt.

My mother, made a choice and she didn't choose me to Her death at age 88.

She never said the words I needed to hear, which were I am so desperately sorry I did not protect you.

Have you forgiven her?

I've been handed so many quotes from the Bible on forgiveness that I went to the Bible and I read everything there was to read on forgiveness.

I did all my research before I wrote a book.

I write about forgiveness.

And in the Bible it says if he repents, you must forgive.

If he repents, you must forgive.

Am I at peace with my mother?

I am.

Am I a peace with my father?

I am anger.

I've worked through all of it.

All of it.

I wasn't given a mother or a father, but my life has been richly, richly blessed.

In overcoming her own personal trauma, Marilyn has made it her mission to reach as many people as possible.

Her book, Miss America by Day, has received many honors and has helped bring stories like hers to the forefront of public awareness.

Today, she tirelessly travels the country speaking about sexual abuse and encouraging awareness, education and prevention.

She has talked with thousands of survivors, responding to emails daily and helping them cope with their own recoveries in the hopes of breaking the silence of traumatized children and adults around the world.

Marilyn always emphasizes the importance of supporting your communities Advocacy Center.

To this is the one safe place where children can go and speak the words.

It used to be that they would take a child to a police department.

They would take a child to a local hospital and have some doctor who really had never done this before examine a child.

It was just one trauma on top of another.

And now we have a safe place where a child can tell.

There's one doctor, there's one psychologist.

There's one.

It's a lovely, beautiful there.

Toys and cookies.

And it's a safe place for a child.

So if people want to help support your advocacy center.

I've answered tens of thousands of emails and I've spoken in over 300 cities.

And the reason that I get up every morning go to work is because of this sense that I have.

I haven't heard this sentence hundreds of times.

I have heard this sentence thousands of times when I was seven and my brother was 13 when I was six and my brother was 14.

Only the age has changed.

We do not know how to stop a man like my father, but we do know how to stem the tide of brothers inappropriately, touching younger or less powerful children.

They don't know when they're 13 and 14 that they are causing long term trauma.

They don't.

Did my father know my father knew?

Does a 13 year old boy say, you know, if I'm inappropriate with a younger sister, this will almost always cause long term trauma.

They don't know that.

And so I travel the country and I plead with parents to sit down with all of their children together and say, this is what is appropriate and this is what is not appropriate as you grow into your sexuality and a woman said, Well, I can't.

My daughter's only eight.

And I said, The most frequently reported age when it begins is age five.

It was age five with me, with my father.

And the most reported age is five with sisters and brothers as well.

A five year old doesn't need more information than she needs to be able to say no.

Mom and Dad talk to us about this.

Maya Angelou said, We did what we knew.

When we knew better, we did better.

We now know better.

We need to talk to our children.

When did you first have a conversation with your own daughter to tell her what had happened to you?

I'd hung up.

My daughter was with me and I'd hung up from a phone call with a family member.

I was, I'm guessing, 40, and I was sobbing.

I did a lot of that, not crying convulsively, sobbing.

And Jennifer said, What's wrong with me?

What's wrong, Mommy?

And that day I said to Larry, I just can't lock her out anymore.

I'm locking out my daughter.

I can't do it anymore.

Jennifer has to know the truth.

But I believed if she knew the truth, I believe this.

She would say, And I want you to be my mom anymore.

I believe that.

But I also know I was locking her out.

And so the next morning, we sat on the steps outside, and I just thought, I don't know how to tell her this.

She was 13.

She hadn't been kissed yet.

How is she going to possibly understand what I'm saying?

I'm sobbing, crying, trying to find words.

And she understood exactly what I was saying.

And I reached out to comfort her and she was rocking me.

She's rocked me for a long time.

And then she started crying.

And nobody had ever had ever cried for me.

And it was just such a profoundly moving moment of my life.

And she finally broke the silence.

And she said, you know, mom, you could change so many people's lives if people knew this about you.

And I said, Well, what if your friends knew Jennifer?

And she said they would respect you more.

My worst fear was over.

My daughter was not ashamed of me.

She saw the child within me as someone to be admired and and it was my goal to try to see myself through her eyes.

She's been a gift to me, and I hope I have been to her as well.

I have every confidence you have.

I think you.

April is Child Abuse Prevention Month.

To find out more about this topic and how you can help, visit CAC, H.C. Dawg.