'In the middle of a nightmare'

By JEANNE MALMGREN, St. Petersburg Times Staff Writer

June 7, 2002

ST. PETERSBURG -- It's not easy to watch Samantha Monroe tell her story.

First, she looks directly at you, her blue eyes brimming with tears, a pair of vertical frown lines etched between her eyebrows. There's anger in her voice. A lot of four-letter words.

When she gets to the most painful memories, Monroe looks down at the table, pulls her long platinum hair out of a ponytail and runs her fingers through it, repeatedly. "I need a cigarette," she mumbles.

She's sitting in a busy cafeteria, but she doesn't seem to care if people see her crying or overhear the awful experiences she's describing. She wants to talk about what happened to her 20 years ago. She needs to.

"I was a 13-year-old kid," she says, "in the middle of a nightmare."

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Also see-
Drug Treatment for Teens- A Secret Shame
for a complete report on the first conference, held last year in Bethesda, Maryland.