I was 21 when I told someone the whole horrid saga for the first time. I took a weekend trip to Michigan to celebrate the birthday of my best friend from high school, and every heinous detail, every recounted word, came spewing forth. The relief was palpable. I wept. My friend cried with me, hugged me, took a long pause and said, “Well, Diana, hold on to your hat because the same thing happened to me.” The same coach. The precise same words. The mattress in the office shower stall. The same covert manipulation. The same special secret. And we soon learned that it wasn’t just the two of us. It never is.

When we confronted Coach, in front of our high school principal and the school’s lawyer, he knelt at my feet and whimpered. He said he couldn’t understand why I would falsely malign him this way. The next day he was fired. The principal told me that he had had suspicions, even reports from witnesses over the years, but that he had never caught him in the act.

At the end of all the proceedings, the principal asked me and my friend point blank whether Coach’s being fired from the school would be enough punishment for us. I took a minute to think — and said it would. Little did we know that he would jump right down to the next town and quickly be installed as head coach of a major university. Had I known this man would continue to harm more girls, had I had an inkling as to how deep the imprint of this man’s actions would run through the course of my life, I would have immediately pursued a criminal case.

Up until his death in 2014, Coach was celebrated by the coaching community, his town, his church. He made it into halls of fame and to the top of the coaching pyramid, the Olympic Games. And so is woven the fabric of the epidemic. These often charming individuals are lauded, presented with trophies for their leadership, from the piggish Weinsteins of Hollywood to the unscrupulous parental figures scattered throughout our suburbs. Statistics bear out the astonishing number of sexual abusers among us.

And therein lies the call for our speaking up. We need to construct an accurate archive of these abuses. And we need to prepare coming generations to speak up in the moment, rather than be coerced into years of mute helplessness.

Those who have found a platform to speak, and to be heard, within recent weeks have most likely forged unexpected connections as a result. Whenever I mention my case in front of a live audience, invariably women come up to me afterward and let me know that they too are survivors. They immediately command my full attention with a particularly steady gaze and they say, “The same thing happened to me — my stepfather.” Or “I’m a survivor, too.” Then we hug, long and hard. And we often find tears for each other. We connect. It’s our version of #MeToo.

One afternoon, after an appearance I made in Hilton Head, S.C., an elderly woman came toward me. Gingerly, she took both of my hands into hers, looked at me knowingly and, without saying a word, gave me a folded note. I slid it into my pocket, to read it later in private. Back in my hotel room, I read the note and called the number she had left me. She came to my room a couple of hours later.