David Marich has lived with shame and anger for years.

The shame, he said, dates to 1984 when he delivered newspapers in Mili­lani. One of his customers — a single man living by himself — befriended Marich, then 14, and paid the youth to do small jobs in his apartment. The man was helping the teenager earn money to attend a Def Leppard concert in Honolulu.

On two occasions, Marich said, the man sexually molested him inside the apartment. For about a decade, Marich added, he told no one what happened.

But over the years, Marich, now 50 and living near Seattle with his wife and son, said he became increasingly angry at the man from his paper route.

That rage, coupled with the heightened national attention on sexual harassment, recently prompted Marich to tell his story to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. He noted that most of the media attention on the #MeToo movement has been about female victims.

“Up to now, I’ve been ashamed,” Marich said in an email to the newspaper. “But now I think that since the women are allowed to have a voice, I feel the men should, too. And I do not care about the consequences.”

Other than telling therapists and two close friends in the 1990s, Marich largely kept the alleged abuse to himself, a haunting secret that he said contributed to long-standing problems with depression, alcoholism, anger, post-traumatic stress disorder and sexual confusion. A stint in the Army, which included participating in the invasion of Panama in 1989, exacerbated his PTSD.

“I was basically lost for years,” Marich, a case manager for mentally ill patients, told the Star-Advertiser. “I had no idea who I was.”

Marich’s case differs from many of the ones that have captured national headlines. Those mostly involved alleged abusers who held high-powered, influential positions as corporate chieftains, Hollywood celebrities, media moguls and politicians. Many stepped down or were fired from their jobs after the accusations became public.

Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly and NBC anchor Matt Lauer were among the many felled by abuse, assault or harassment accusations, mostly linked to workplace behavior.

Hawaii has its own example: Former House Speaker Joe Souki resigned last month, paid a $5,000 fine and publicly apologized for inappropriate behavior to settle sexual harassment accusations from several women, including former Department of Human Services Director Rachael Wong.

Lack of support in isles

Despite that high-profile example, many advocates and others say Hawaii has been slow to embrace the #MeToo movement.

They say too many barriers, including cultural ones, remain in the islands, making the reporting of abuse too difficult, costly or risky for victims.

“Young millennial women are told to their faces, ‘You’ll be dead (career-wise) in this town’ ” if you pursue a case, said Khara Jabola-Carolus, executive director of the Hawaii State Commission on the Status of Women. “The path is full of land mines.”

Wong said her attorney spoke of clients who had to leave Hawaii after pursuing harassment cases because they no longer were employable here.

And while Wong said she received hundreds of messages of support privately once she went public with her accusations, she was surprised at the lack of public support.

Wong also received plenty of backlash in the social media arena, which friends told her about (she is not a social media user) and in other online forums.

“I was shamed, I was judged, I was questioned,” Wong told the Star-Advertiser. “Imagine if I didn’t have such a bland background,” adding that someone with a controversial past would receive even more blowback.

Seeing the dearth of public support, the lack of change to the status quo, expected backlash and knowing the hurdles to reporting harassment — Wong had to hire an attorney, line up witnesses, follow up with documents, take time off work — she believes victims will continue to be reluctant to come forward and the #MeToo groundswell happening elsewhere won’t take hold here.

“The default is not to believe,” Wong said.

The lack of a groundswell here seems evident in data from two agencies.

Calls to the Oahu hotline of the Sex Assault Treatment Center have not risen significantly since the fall, when #MeToo took hold, according to center officials, though some clients in treatment there have been talking about the movement.

Similarly, the number of complaints related to sexual harassment or discrimination in the workplace filed with the Hawaii Civil Rights Commission over the past six months have not been out of the ordinary, according to William Hoshijo, its executive director.

Clare Rountree, a psychologist, said since the fall she has picked up eight new patients with histories of sexual abuse, including three who specifically mentioned the #MeToo movement as a factor in seeking treatment.

Coming forward

Knowing that more people are coming forward “helps to de-stigmatize the shame and embarrassment that many sex abuse survivors feel in telling their stories,” Rountree said.

Marich, the Washington state resident, was motivated to tell his story partly because he wanted to get back at his alleged abuser, who is in his 70s and still runs a business on Oahu.

Marich urged the Star-Advertiser to name the man, whom he described as a scum and monster.

But the Star-Advertiser is not identifying him because he was never arrested, charged or convicted of a crime. In a phone interview, the man denied abusing Marich and said he didn’t know why the person he befriended long ago would accuse him of molestation.

“I’m sure that it must be real to him,” the man said. But “there was nothing that (happened) I would consider inappropriate.”

After the Star-Advertiser told Marich that his alleged abuser would not be named in the story, he agreed to go forward anyway.

Advocates applauded him.

“The more survivors share their stories, the more it could break down those walls of isolation that keep people silent,” said Jeff Dion, deputy executive director of the Washington, D.C.,-based National Center for Victims of Crime.

Adriana Ramelli, executive director of the Sex Abuse Treatment Center, part of Kapiolani Medical Center for Women & Children, echoed those sentiments.

Survivors sharing their stories is “such a positive because one of the biggest problems of sexual assault is silence,” Ramelli said. “It’s an extremely difficult topic to talk about.”

Oahu resident Andre Bisquera, 42, who was sexually abused as a child by an older half-brother when his family lived in Washington state, said he didn’t tell anyone about what happened until he was 27, citing shame, confusion, masculinity concerns and other factors.

“I just wanted to be a normal kid,” said Bisquera, who now is on the treatment center’s board and publicly advocates for legislation to help combat sex abuse.

Striving to be believed

In a lot of abuse cases in which a victim comes forward, the outcome — getting a criminal conviction, for instance, or causing the offender to lose a job — is not nearly as important to the victim as being believed, advocates say.

“The outcome is almost incidental,” said Evie Yanagida, clinical program manager for the treatment center.

If Marich’s allegations are true, experts say his case would be much more representative of the sexual abuse problem plaguing the nation than the high-profile examples that have made the news in recent months.

People more commonly are abused by someone who is not a celebrity, high-powered executive or politician. They typically know their abusers, often a family member, coach, teacher or healthcare professional.

Kamehameha Schools recently agreed to pay $80 million to settle a lawsuit involving 32 plaintiffs who were sexually abused by a now-dead psychiatric consultant decades ago.

While Marich decided only recently to go public with his story, he told two close friends about his alleged abuse long before making that decision.

Jennifer Bennet, 46, who used to date Marich while they were going to college in California in the mid-’90s, said he confided in her back then, speaking of being sexually molested as a teenager.

“He was messed up because of what happened,” Bennet told the newspaper. “He questioned everything about himself.”

Rachel Marich, 48, his wife, said Marich told her in the late ‘90s about his alleged abuse, reluctantly sharing just a few details. They got married in 2000.

“For the longest time, he did not want to talk about it at all,” his wife said.

After Marich got out of the Army in 1993, he said he told a therapist in California about the alleged abuse. It was the first time he had spoken to anyone about what happened.

Around the same time, he called his alleged abuser in Hawaii to confront him, and the man sent him $200 to buy his silence, according to Marich. He said he also called the Honolulu police but was told the statute of limitations for sex assault had lapsed.

The alleged abuser acknowledged sending Marich money but said he did so because Marich asked for financial help. He said it was not out of character for him to send money to people he knew who were in need.

Even though Hawaii has been slow to embrace the #MeToo movement, some advocates are encouraged, especially as younger women who have not been as exposed to the traditional barriers speak up and demand change.

“I don’t think it’s hopeless,” said Jabola-Carolus, head of the commission on the status of women. “I think the tide is turning.”

If the tide does turn, she added, “it would open the floodgates, not to complaints, but to healing. That’s the better framework.”