Child Abuse Man Retreats From the Area’s Streets
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Words that are in ALL CAPS indicate words spoken or written by Paul from his booklet in 1975.

The streets of Eugene seem bare today because The Child Abuse Man has called it quits. He's moved to the vague sterility of the Internet, of all things, and we're poorer for it.

On the street, holding his hand-lettered cardboard sign that said, "HELP STOP CHILD ABUSE," he was like the fresh scar that we could touch and feel.

On the street, we could see the pain in his eyes. We could hear his flat voice and read his haunted text, with it's curious capital letters and it's awkward phrasing:

I WAS ABUSE WITH MY TWIN SISTER FOR 18 YEARS. OLDER BROTHER AND SISTER WAS NOT ABUSE. I WAS SAT ON HOT STOVE, EAT MY OWN STOOL, EAT MY OWN VOMIT, TIED UP AND BEATEN WITH A STICK AND BELT, ENEMA TREATMENTS IN AN AWKWARD WAY, BEATEN ON THE HEAD WITH A STICK, STAND IN CORNERS FOR LONG HOURS, EAT MANY BARS OF SOAP AND BLACK POWDER, STAND IN THE SNOW WITHOUT SHOES. I CAN GO ON AND ON.

For years, he stood on the street corners in Eugene and Springfield, rocking back and forth and holding his sign tp passing cars. He was easy to spot: a short, stocky, dark-haired man with glasses, often wearing headphones and with a Sony Walkman tucked into his pants.

Now he's off the streets. The child Abuse man, whose name is Paul McLaughlin, says it's too dangerous out there.

"Many people threaten me, cuss, shoved me, hit me, almost hurt my wife, he wrote in a letter to The Register-Guard last month. "As a child I was tormented for 18 years from severe abuse and I need no more hurting in my life."

Maybe you remember his story, which was recounted in a 1992 Register-Guard article. He and his twin sister, Paula, were born Oct. 13, 1948, in Donora, Pa.

The twins were the fourth and fifth children of (father) and (mother) McLaughlin, a brutal, dysfunctional pair who fought constantly. He beat her up, and she took it out on the twins. "The minute he walked out that door to go to work, Paul and I would get so scared," Paula McLaughlin recalled in the article. "We knew she was going to do it. She did it every day."

Sometimes she stood at the stove, flicking the gas burner on and off and glaring at the twins. Her mouth would form the silent words of warning: "You wait."

Paul McLaughlin nearly died when he was 2. He was admitted to the hospital with what a doctor described as bruises over his entire body and a severely contused head." He vomited persistently and appeared to be under nourished. He spent 48 days in the hospital.

(mother) McLaughlin told people that Paul had tumbled down the steps in his stroller. No one believes her now.

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