Child abuse: Survivor shares his story of healing
SPECIAL SERIES THIS WEEK: All this week, KVAL News will bring you special reports on the problem of child abuse and neglect on the 5 p.m. and 11 p.m. nightly news and on KVAL.com. Coming up Wednesday: Laura Rillos from KVAL news reports on the challenges the Oregon Department of Human Services faces when investigating reports of child abuse.
EUGENE, Ore. -- Growing up in Ohio, Lewis Luchs and his three younger siblings slept on a single mattress on the floor.
"We were so cold, and our mother wasn't there, that we built a fire of newspapers on the floor," he said. "During the night, I could feel the paws of rats running across the top of the blankets, and once in a while, whiskers on my face."
Just as bleak were two years he spent in an Ohio orphanage after being abandoned by his biological parents.
Luchs recounts the ordeal of being an abused child in his book, "Children of the Manse."
The book also chronicles the way forward for Luchs away from his abusive childhood.
"I wrote it to honor adoptive parents," he said. "I wrote it because it's a story of hope."
That life beyond child abuse began in 1943.
Ohio minister Fred Luchs and his wife, Evelyn, who at first planned to adopt only little sister Janie, decide to take all her older brothers - including Lewis.
"The manse, which is what they called their house, was full of books," he recalled. "It was full of sports equipment. It was full of all kinds of opportunities."
For Lewis, that included the chance to develop a love of music and the piano.
AS the "boy-parent" to his brothers and sister, however, the transition was hardly smooth for Lewis.
"At times my heart was a tiny red volcano of anger that erupted in blind rage," he said. "At times my mind was a turbulent jumble of confusions. It would take a heroic effort on someone's part to love me."
He said it took a year before he could accept his adoptive mother's hugs.
"She called me, to her friends, her little 'ram rod'because I was so stiff," she said.
But the buildings blocks to a better life came together, leading to a career for Luchs in the U.S. diplomatic corps all over the world.
"I think too many have come to believe that the victims of child abuse are going to become their parents, that is, they are going to repeat their mistakes," he said, "and they don't have to."
After retirement came five years as a volunteer for the Court Appointed Special Advocate program, or "CASA," where he has worked to guide children who are in foster care to the kind of happy ending he found: a home in harmony.
