Keyon Dooling's long road back from sexual abuse

Keyon Dooling was, if nothing, outspoken in his two years with the Nets, a great interview, a ready veteran voice as the team finished up their time in New Jersey on one low note after another.

The Celtics rescued him and he got to the Eastern Conference Finals. Then, as Fred Kerber recounts, things changed. A victim of sexual abuse when he was seven, he got up from dinner at a Seattle restaurant and his world collapsed. He thought someone in the restaurant rest room had made sexual overtures and he got into a confrontation with the man.

"I didn’t think things that happened in my life could come back and haunt me," said Dooling, who had just finished a run to the Eastern Conference Finals with the Celtics and then was in a mental ward, over-medicated, paranoid, hallucinating.

Dooling went into counseling and ultimately wrote a book about his experience, out later this month, set up a multi-level website and sexual abuse hotlines. The basic tenet of all of it, "We are believers that not only can sexual abuse be prevented; if a child is victimized they can recover."

• Keyon Dooling had to hit bottom in NBA to confront abuse demons - Fred Kerber - New York Post