Angela Shelton left North Carolina as a child, fleeing a past she didn't want to talk about. This weekend she will return to air a family history sure to make many cringe: Shelton says she endured five years of sexual abuse by her father, beginning when she was 3 years old.

Now 35, Shelton has made a career of talking about the horrors of her childhood in North Carolina, often in vivid detail.

She made a film in 2004 in which she confronted her father on camera, and this month, she published a book about her struggle to overcome the emotional ravages of abuse. She travels the country promoting her products and encouraging women to overcome the self-loathing that often comes with sexual violation, sometimes inspiring public confessions and wild, rage-venting sessions.

On Saturday, she will take the stage at UNC-Chapel Hill.

She likely will be greeted by a mob of supporters. In speaking about a topic that many keep fiercely private, Shelton has become a sort of cult hero among abuse survivors.

"She was the first person who said to me, you can stand up for yourself and be loud about it, because it was wrong," said Sarah Stauffer of Cary. "Angela Shelton was the first person, other than my therapist, to be outraged on my behalf."

Stauffer, 28, has accused a family member of sexually abusing her as a child. He was never prosecuted, and her family blamed the man's actions on marijuana use and encouraged Stauffer not to talk about the abuse.

Stauffer began corresponding by e-mail with Shelton in 2004 at the recommendation of her therapist, who had seen Shelton on "The Oprah Winfrey Show." With Shelton's encouragement, Stauffer said, she filed a rape report in Louisiana against her alleged abuser and cut off contact with her family. She said that action has changed her life.

For Stauffer and many other victims, Shelton has broken through the shame that keeps them silent. Shelton tells women to confront their abusers, to tell their stories publicly and to ignore those who are uncomfortable.

"What the silence causes is all this horrible self-abuse," Shelton said this week from her home in Los Angeles. "I talked to a woman whose father used to tell her, 'You're lower than a dog.' And that's what she went through life thinking."

'Epidemic of abuse'

Shelton said she didn't plan to bare her family's story. When she started her 2004 film, "Searching for Angela Shelton," she was a television writer in Hollywood who had gained some notice by co-writing the 1999 film "Tumbleweeds."

She intended to do a lighthearted documentary in which she talked to every woman in America with the name Angela Shelton. She envisioned a comedy.

Instead, she found herself collecting story after story of women who had been molested, raped or victimized by domestic violence. Twenty-four of 40 women she interviewed for the film admitted they were abuse survivors, and none of their abusers had been prosecuted, Shelton says. After the film was released, she said, four more of the women told her their stories of abuse.

Shelton says the stories opened her eyes to what she calls a "silent epidemic of abuse."

The film quickly morphed into an exploration of her own past -- one she has now told hundreds of times and recorded in her new book, "Finding Angela Shelton."

Shelton lived in Asheville until she was 3, when her parents divorced. Her father, a well-known church-going salesman with financial resources, won full custody. She moved with him to the Charlotte suburbs, and he remarried, to a woman with two children of her own.

Shelton says her father and stepmother forced the children to be naked in the house and to examine each other's bodies. As time passed, they began molesting all three of them. When her stepbrother was 12, he also began molesting the two girls, a fact he admits in the film.

Shelton refuses to reveal her father's name. He now lives in South Carolina and does not share her last name.

When Shelton was 8, her stepbrother told his father about the abuse and all three children were removed from the home. Shelton says she spent several months in foster care before being returned to her mother, who now schedules her daughter's public appearances.

A knock on the door

When filming for the documentary took her to South Carolina, Shelton says she felt compelled to confront her father, whom she hadn't seen since she was a teenager. She knocked on his door, film crew in tow.

The movie shows her sitting sullenly by his side, his faced blurred, as he emphatically denies molesting her or her step-siblings. She quietly accepts his denials, but afterward has a screaming, emotional meltdown.

Shelton says that meeting with her father was the beginning of a three-year healing process. She compares the pain of confronting her past to removing a sword from her gut. Now, she says she wants other women to do the same.

Her movie was provocative enough to get her appearances on "Oprah Winfrey," "Larry King" and "48 Hours," among others.

She now supports herself largely with her Web site, www.angelashelton.com, which she uses to solicit donations and sell copies of her film and her book, along with stickers and T-shirts with self-affirming slogans such as "I'm an Angela Shelton" and "I love you. Squish." The second is a mantra that Shelton says she used to replace negative thoughts that often led her to "freak out" and hit herself.

A nationwide network of supporters, which dubs itself the Army of Angels, helps promote her wares and spread her message about breaking the silence.

Kate Finlayson of Pittsboro is a part of that network. She first saw Shelton speak at N.C. State University in 2004, when Shelton was still working on her film.

Shelton showed the audience her technique for releasing anger, savagely beating a chair with a baseball bat. Then she invited audience members to come onstage and hit the chair. Finlayson was the only volunteer.

"I really felt like I was just carried up there," says Finlayson, 53. "I still think about it and think, 'How did I have the guts to do that?'"

Finlayson then told the audience of being abused by her father and of the lifetime of unhealthy relationships and self-hatred that came afterward.

Since that day, Finlayson says her life has changed. She says she overcame the chronic pain and unexplained rashes that had plagued her for years, along with her low self-esteem. She started a new career as a teacher of Nia, a combination of dance, martial arts and yoga, which takes her on trips around the world.

"It's just that that overwhelming burden of shame and victimhood that I carried with me for so long isn't there anymore," Finlayson said this week. "My life is mine."

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