Graduate Overcomes Her Past to Support Sexual Abuse Survivors as a Therapist and Advocate

Shari Botwin has provided expert testimony in high profile cases including against singer R. Kelly

When Shari Botwin began her master’s program at Rutgers School of Social Work, she was far from the thriving trauma therapist and advocate she is today. At 22, she was lost, overwhelmed, and searching for direction.

After graduating from Hofstra University with honors in psychology, she returned home to Cherry Hill, uncertain about her next steps. Being back meant reentering an environment that had never felt safe. She wasn’t yet ready to fully confront her past – the years of sexual abuse by her father and a mother who remained silent – but she knew she needed to build a future for herself.

“I clung to the belief that someday, someone would hear me,” says Botwin, recalling how, even as a child on the playground, she felt isolated. “I couldn’t let myself know the truth about what was happening to me, but I knew something was very wrong.”

Today, as a licensed clinical social worker, author, and speaker, Botwin is a recognized advocate for survivors worldwide. She also serves as an expert witness in civil cases involving sexual abuse – including the high profile case against singer R. Kelly – offering professional insight to support those seeking justice. Her struggles have given her a deep well of compassion and empathy – qualities, she says, that shape her work helping others reclaim their lives.

Finding Her Path at Rutgers

Before Botwin could help others, she had to find her own way forward. “In order to stay sane and stay alive, I told myself I needed to keep fighting,” she says. That determination led her to Rutgers, where she initially planned to become a school social worker, inspired by the guidance she had received from teachers throughout her education.

As she immersed herself in the program, however, she encountered concepts that struck a deeper chord. “I had classes that dealt with depression, trauma – topics that felt uncomfortably close to home,” Botwin says. “Sitting through those discussions, the emotions I had buried for so long were surfacing, demanding to be acknowledged.”

While at Rutgers, she found an important mentor in social work professor Myrna Marcus, whose clinical track courses reinforced what she was beginning to sense about herself. Marcus’s kindness and encouragement stay with her to this day. “I wrote about having suicidal thoughts in a paper. She recognized something was wrong,” Botwin recalls. “But I wasn’t ready to face it yet.”

Despite her turmoil and struggles with an eating disorder, she threw herself into the program, commuting to the Camden campus before taking classes in New Brunswick. Determined to be financially independent, she worked as a professional dancer, performing at bar mitzvahs and weddings to pay tuition.

“I was the most requested Philadelphia dancer,” says Botwin, who always found joy in music and theater. By her second year, she had saved enough to move out of her parents’ home and into an apartment in Collingswood.

Turning Pain into Purpose

Botwin didn’t begin therapy until she became a therapist herself. After earning her MSW in 1996, she took a job at the Renfrew Center in Philadelphia, a leading institution for treating eating disorders. There, she saw herself reflected in her patients – people using anorexia and binge eating to numb their pain.

With her therapist’s gentle guidance and support, Botwin found the courage to break through years of denial. She had spent much of her life repressing the reality of her father’s abuse. The betrayal ran deep – not just from him, but from her mother’s refusal to acknowledge what had happened. “My mom used to say, ‘Those are your memories, not mine,’” she recalls. “She was both an enabler and, in her own way, a perpetrator.”

Over time, she came to understand the connection between trauma, shame, and her eating disorder, which alternated between restriction and binge eating. As she healed, her professional focus sharpened. After two years at Renfrew, she opened a practice in Cherry Hill, specializing in trauma recovery, eating disorders, and anxiety. She also began speaking out and writing about her experiences, leading to her books Thriving After Trauma: Stories of Living and Healing and Stolen Childhoods: Thriving After Abuse. 

“For years, I kept my story locked inside,” Botwin says. “But I knew there were things I needed to express. I wanted to write the kind of books that would have given me hope growing up – books that offered both validation and guidance for those navigating trauma.”

Debra Goldsborough, a childhood friend and fellow alumna from Rutgers School of Social Work, was shocked when Botwin shared her story as an adult. “Shari always had this huge, electric personality,” says Goldsborough, a longtime school social worker at Lenape High School in Mount Laurel Township. “I had no idea what she was going through. I applaud her bravery. I’ll always be one of her biggest cheerleaders.”
 

Becoming an Advocate

Botwin is now a sought-after speaker and media contributor, providing hard-won insight into trauma and abuse. She works directly with survivors, helping them move beyond self-blame. She also works with families who have taken responsibility and ownership of abuse. 

Botwin’s advocacy expanded into the legal system when she began testifying as an expert witness in sexual abuse cases. “I went to both Cosby trials in 2017 and 2018 as a writer and advocate,” she says. “That’s where I met prosecutors who later asked me to testify in the sexual abuse trials against R. Kelly and his business manager. At first, I laughed. I didn’t think a licensed clinical social worker could do that. But I learned I could, and I’ve testified in several criminal and civil cases on behalf multiple survivors since.” 

One of her most significant cases involved Stuart Copperman, a Long Island pediatrician accused of abusing 77 women when they were children. “It was a two-year case, and each survivor had their own hearing. It was incredibly powerful,” she says.

Botwin has not spoken to her mother or sister in years. Her father died in 2003 at 63, but the family rift remains. Despite this, she has made peace with her past and continues to find strength in the life she has built, including being a single mother to a teenage son.

For those struggling with trauma, she offers simple but powerful advice: “Tell someone. Don’t do it alone. Find a witness. What happened to you wasn’t your fault, and it doesn’t define you. You are not broken – you are just like everybody else.”