On this episode of Our American Stories, as a teenager on Mississippi’s Gulf Coast, Valerie Habeeb endured years of sexual abuse by an older man who exploited the absence of her father and the vulnerability she carried with her. She kept what happened secret for years, carrying shame, anger, and pain into adulthood even as the people around her believed she had everything together.

Lee Habeeb shares his wife’s journey of faith and forgiveness, from reconciling with her mother and the father who had abandoned her to eventually forgiving the man who abused her. Through her Christian faith, Valerie came to believe that forgiveness did not erase the past, but freed her from being ruled by it.

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