Diana Brennan, branch executive director at the Melrose YMCA, said that the former employee’s crime was a stimulus to take action. The Melrose branch still holds training sessions with Darkness to Light materials in what they call Shine a Light .

“We really owed it to the community to take a proactive stance, to do everything we could to prevent it from happening in the future,” Brennan said.

Brennan said that the prevalence of child sexual abuse is shocking.

He noted that participants in every class in the Melrose program have offered personal stories.

“We’ve always had somebody privately disclose their connection or battle with sexual abuse,” she said. “It’s a real reminder that this is more prevalent than society really wants to talk or think about, so we will continue.”

A man who took part in the training in Woburn last month said that, as a 12-year-old boy, he was a victim of sexual abuse by his priest.

“I never came forward. I never told my family,” said the man, who asked to remain anonymous. “I believe that this trauma really affects peoples’ lives.”

After a battle with addiction for more than two decades, he said, he overcame fear to attend the session last month and was considering becoming a facilitator for future abuse prevention programs.

Norton stressed the importance of educating more adults about child sexual abuse, because children often do not suspect danger when it is near.

“Kids are really educated on being aware and ‘Don’t talk to strangers’ and all those kinds of things, and that’s great,” said Norton.

However, she cited a Darkness to Light statistic: 90 percent of children who are sexually abused know their abuser.