KMRY radio host Ricky Bartlett breaks silence on sexual abuse with on-air interview of artist for Sexual Assault Awareness Month

Apr. 20—CEDAR RAPIDS — For perhaps one of the first times in his career on the air, boisterous KMRY radio host Ricky Bartlett had a brief encounter with speechlessness Tuesday.

As he interviewed Amana artist and fellow childhood sexual abuse survivor Emma Walker, his listener discretion warning doubled as a compelling reason to turn the volume up on their stories, recounted on the air in detail for the first time.

"We understand there could be children or people out there who may not have that voice to say something," Bartlett started.

In April, recognized as Sexual Assault Awareness Month, this 93.1 FM live interview was for those children and the present-day adults they had become.

But as they reached out to the silenced voices in radio land, there was irony in the fact that their own vocal cords hesitated to get out some of the words. In reaching out to the children needing help today, the pair managed to reconnect with their inner children, abused and neglected decades ago.

"Every month is sexual assault month to us. You and I are two different generations, and it still hurts to this day to bring it up," Bartlett said to Walker. "We were trying to get our younger selves the help we didn't have."

From ages 10 to 16, Bartlett was abused by a family friend in his native Georgia.

"They're still in there," Walker, 32, replied after recovering from a moment of silence herself earlier in the interview, when Bartlett stepped in to help her recover.

She was abused multiple times throughout her childhood, and survived domestic and sexual violence as an adult.

For Walker, the brief lapse of silence was a biological response from trauma — a moment when she had to tell her body that she was safe.

"I spend a great deal of my life trying not to think about it," she said. "When I'm thinking about it on purpose, I have to regulate my nervous system. It doesn't know whether I'm doing it on purpose or whether it's just happening."

For Bartlett, the interview made the experience as real as it was 35 years ago, when he physically fought his assailant to end the abuse.

"I live with it but never bring it up. It's kept in a little drawer on the mantle," said the radio host, 51. "When she started talking about it ... I relived that fear for a moment, and the pain."

The anguish, the mistrust, the frantic look around for his parents to help — all rushed back in an instant.

"It was an uncontrollable hit," Bartlett said.

Honing resilience

But Tuesday's interview was not just a portal to see the children they once were — it was a reflection of the resilient adults they've become.

Walker, an aspiring actor and multidisciplinary artist, has a volume of art to show for how she's been transformed. In photography, she likes to focus on abandoned spaces, paying special care to respect spaces that don't belong to her, after a life of enduring others who violated her space.

"I like that they're untouched. I can see the little details that are left untouched," she explained.

The Millennial artist inspired Bartlett, a Gen Xer, to talk about his abuse in more than passing detail. After reaching a sex trafficking victim through an art show, Walker's interview with creative publication Bold Journey, published in March, prompted Bartlett to say something more.

After nine years of being gaslighted about her abuse — being told it wasn't bad enough to be reportable, that it wasn't a big deal, that it evaded the definition of abuse — the acceptance of what happened started her journey of healing.

For years, unexpected things would trigger Bartlett, a man who never sought therapy. For years, he thought the abuse was his fault.

"Every time I hear 'school's out,' I think about that child, where their only release from that world is to get out of the house," he told The Gazette, as his voice cracked. "I think about that every time I hear schools are closed for an unexpected reason, and I can't do anything about it."

Bright and early Tuesday was the time he realized something: "I can help these kids say 'stop,' to tell someone, to scream it to the top of your lungs."

After being raised in a culture that doesn't utter past grievances — a culture that reinforced his abuser's threats against his and his family's lives — the man with a microphone reclaimed his abuse as a weapon.

Now, he points it squarely at his life's adversities.

For years, the double amputee's brand of optimism has inspired others without dwelling on the past. But with his daughter growing older, he wondered: Is the world that fostered hushed tones around his abuse the same one that abused children are met with today?

In a culmination of revelations on the air, light and sound became one element for a new purpose this week.

"Silence ends when you know your own life experience can be a lighthouse for someone else's silence now," he said.

After the interview ended, Bartlett played "Human" by The Human League, a song he couldn't listen to after hearing it during an episode of abuse.

Until now.

"The tears I cry aren't tears of pain; they're all to hide my guilt and shame." The song segued to the next radio segment.

Recognizing and helping survivors

Bartlett advises parents and guardians to keep a close eye on how children act. Childhood sexual abuse, usually perpetrated by someone a victim knows, can be signaled by behavior in different ways.

For 10-year-old Ricky, it started with dressing in all black as he developed depression. He disliked being touched in any way by his mother, who noticed wild mood swings. When he was enrolled in football, he used plays to act out magnified aggression on other players.

When his dark persona drew attention, he started becoming a social chameleon — developing the upbeat personality he's known for today.

Walker, who went through a dozen therapists to find trauma-informed health care providers, said support for survivors is hard to come by. She advises others to be the support that survivors need.

And, importantly: Believe victims when they tell you.

"It can't be rushed," she said. "It has to happen in your own time."

Comments: Features reporter Elijah Decious can be reached at (319) 398-8340 or elijah.decious@thegazette.com.

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