Hero Spotlight: Jack Dixon
Adult Survivor of Childhood Abuse Running to Save Young Lives
When Jack Dixon was eight years old and growing up in northern New Jersey, he met his new neighbor a few doors down the street. An older teenager, the neighbor invited Dixon over to play video games. Eventually, the neighbor began to show Dixon DHS tapes of pornography. Not long after that, he sexually abused the child.
Dixon’s abuser would later arrange for other strangers to abuse him. A classmate told him that he heard the neighbor was trying to traffic him to others. “After that moment, everything changed for me,” he said in an emotional and candid video on his YouTube channel.
“I started to perform so poorly in school. I started to feel just so depressed. One day in his fourth-grade class, tears overflowed his eyes, and he cried out loud to his teacher and the entire class that nobody liked him. “I just felt so worthless.” All the while, his hidden abusers continued to prey on him.
Many years went by without Dixon telling anybody. He became depressed and suicidal, lashing out against buried and fragmented memories he had trouble understanding. In August 2023, while working on his master’s, a friend recommended the Manga comic book series “Berserk.” One of its main characters was sexually abused. Around that time, a stray comment by his mother, who was visiting, triggered the memories of his abuse so many years earlier. He went into the bathroom to be alone and let out a soul-shattering cry.
When he told his wife, Kristien, that he had been sexually abused as a child, she immediately found a therapist for him.
“She is my rock foundation, "he said. “She’s all the support I could ever want.”
In addition to therapy, Dixon also decided to attend a support group for sexual abuse survivors. During his first group meeting, he had more flash backs of his childhood trauma and felt the magnitude of his pain.
Today, Dixon is 30 years old and is learning how to share his journey of healing.
He has his own YouTube channel called Jack is a Mimic , where he talks about a video game using coded language and video game terminology, to share his childhood sexual abuse and offer encouragement to others to share their story.
“Sharing [my] story is important because it feels like it’s an invisible problem,” Dixon said. “Unless you're a survivor, it’s hard to imagine what it feels like.”
He also gives his viewers advice on how to help survivors or people who may know or suspect someone to be a survivor.
“First, believe in the survivor, and if you are the survivor trust your memories. Second, unless you’re also a survivor of sexual abuse, don’t say ‘I know how you feel’. Third, is to become the love and support and compassion that all survivors deserve including yourself. Fourth, to either get help or encourage the survivor to get help. Lastly, healing is a journey, and many survivors keep a journal. I recommend journaling, writing your thoughts, writing your feelings, getting it out on a page, Dixon said”
Even though Dixon has made tremendous strides in healing through his trauma, he still feels deep pain at times. But he’s found an outlet in running with his wife. Since, 2020 they have run multiple half marathons, and the New York City Marathon.
When his wife got a bib for the Bank of America Chicago Marathon, Dixon knew that he wanted to run with her and support an organization that helps children in crisis—Mercy Home for Boys & Girls.
This year he joins the Mercy Home Heroes team to run the 2025 Bank of America Chicago Marathon, where he hopes to fundraise to make a difference for our young people.
Mercy Home helps young people address early trauma including the kind of abuse Dixon survived. Before coming to Mercy Home, 78% of our young people experienced some form of trauma, and 14% of our young people experienced sexual abuse.
“Knowing that there’s a place that has resources to help children who are in crisis, who might be hiding that they’re in crisis, and who might not even know they are in crisis, is so important,” he said. “That money is going to help a child in some meaningful way and to be able to potentially save a kid’s life, that’s indescribable.
Dixon will be fundraising through his YouTube Channel. And he can’t wait to run on marathon day.
“I’m ecstatic that I’m running for a cause that really means something to me.”
If you have been a victim of sexual abuse or know someone who may be abused or sexually trafficked, please contact the hotline number 1800-656- 4673, and visit https://rainn.org/ for more information.
