Sam Troth

I remember thinking fucking like with what I've been through and all the bullshit.

And if you can go through that and you're still here now, then this is just literally a walk like just one foot in front of the other.

Why did nobody ask?

How did nobody know what was happening?

And that broke me.

The best thing I ever did, man, was reach out for help, was reach out for professional help, was, you know, to tell the people around me that I loved, that I was fucking struggling and I was overwhelmed with the support that I got.

Yeah bro, yeah, yeah, I first reached out to you when I first did my first walk bro.

And I remember you sharing some of my content and supporting and yeah, it's been a while to get to this point, but it's good to be here bro.

Yeah, it's more than a social media platform, but we're on social media.

The road to healing Aotearoa, the whole kaupapa is around raising awareness around sexual violence and supporting and standing with survivors of sexual violence.

We've got some of the worst rates in the developed world.

We're second only to Australia when it comes to sexual violence and...

You know, one in five boys by the age of 18 and one in three girls by the age of 18 experiencing sexual violence in New Zealand.

So it's a huge, huge problem.

And I guess I've sort of taken it upon myself to do what I can as a survivor myself to try and push for some change.

So it was a pretty good upbringing.

We weren't a well-off family or anything, but we did all right.

Pretty good upbringing up until my whole life just took a dark turn.

So I guess starting at the start, bro, you know, I was sexually abused from the ages of 9 to 13 by a co-worker of my father's.

this man saw that my father and my mum were having some marital issues and some issues and he come in as predators do, bro, and saw an opening and groomed my parents and then was able to sort of, you know, spend time with me and, you know, all the typical things, gifts, you know, used to take me motorbike riding, shooting, all of those things and just slowly over time,