Diana McDaniel is single, lives in a modest apartment and works full time to support herself.

Yet every week for nearly three years, she has volunteered her time to break a cycle that she and her daughter were once a part of – child abuse.

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As a parent aide with the Exchange Club Center for the Prevention of Child Abuse of Dallas-Fort Worth (EXCAP), McDaniel works at least three hours a week with families who are at risk of child abuse and neglect.

McDaniel and 13 other parent aides provide the families with companionship, parenting advice and assistance with basic needs.

“I do this to stop the cycle because our kids are our future,” McDaniel says.

“These are the people who one day will be in charge, yet so many of them have these skeletons in their closet.”

As an EXCAP volunteer, McDaniel has worked with five families since she began, donating more than 180 hours to the cause of child abuse prevention.

Margaret Patterson, EXCAP executive director, says McDaniel epitomizes selflessness in terms of “helping people.”

“Diana has helped families in a variety of ways. By offering herself as a role model for people to aspire to, she has helped mom’s get jobs and helped kids get the love they never knew,” Patterson says.

Parent Aides undergo 12 hours of intensive training with professional counselors before they are allowed to begin volunteering.

“They worked hand-in-hand with me, but what really qualifies me is the fact that I’ve been through this. – I have empathy for these people,” McDaniel says.

While living in Florida, McDaniel discovered that her second husband had been sexually molesting her daughter since she was nine. As she began the process of filing for a divorce, her husband, a policeman, committed suicide.

Frustrated and angry, McDaniel and her daughter, who was 14 at the time of her stepfather’s suicide, began therapy when they moved to Dallas in 1985.

Through continued counseling and public speeches about her experience, McDaniel says her daughter, now 24, is proof that victims can live healthy lives.

McDaniel says she will share her experience with families if she feels it will help them to open up. What she has found is most parents who abuse their children were themselves abused. It is important for them to recognize and talk about the abuse to make sure it won’t happen again, McDaniel says.

“I tell them to consider the abuse a scar. It will always be there, but if they deal with the anger and frustration, the scar will get smaller,” she says.