According to the World Health Organization, one in three women globally has suffered physical or sexual violence. Many keep their attacks a secret. But women are now feeling more empowered than ever to bring their stories out of the shadows, thanks to the social media movement through the hash-tag MeToo. Karina Huber has more.

 

Lisa Lieberman-Wang - a relationship and emotional breakthrough expert - walks with confidence today, but that confidence was hard earned. At the age of 16 Lisa was date raped. The incident and another inappropriate encounter with a man two years later set her life on a path of destruction. She kept her abuse a secret for a long time.

 

LISA LIEBERMAN-WANG RELATIONSHIP EXPERT Secrets kill the person holding them. A lot of times we hold things in so we don't want to let anybody else know and it manifests into something more. For me it ended up turning into internal hatred of myself - why did I put myself into this situation? How can someone smart be so dumb? How does this happen? And I just remember blaming myself for years.

 

That blame lead to eating disorders that affected every facet of Lisa's life.

 

KARINA HUBER NEW YORK Stories like Lisa's are being shared around the world like never before-thanks to social media. The numerous allegations of sexual harassment by Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein has unleashed a global conversation about sexual abuse.

 

On October 24th, the hashtag #MeToo had logged - over a week and-a-half - more than 1.7 million tweets from roughly 85 countries. It's also been trending on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. The hope is that it will be more than just a social media campaign but a tipping point that will affect real change.

 

DARREN CAMPO NYU PROFESSOR OF MEDIA AND TECHNOLOGY "I've never seen in 25 years the kind of impact that we've seen in the past few weeks and there's been so much dialogue. It feels to be like one of those moments where we've made a lot of progress in a short amount of time."

 

Lisa, who now works to help other victims of sexual abuse, believes Me Too has staying power but she'd like to hear more stories about how victims have moved on.

 

LISA LIEBERMAN-WANG RELATIONSHIP EXPERT What I would really like to see happen right now is to give the women the tools and the men. The tools to discern what's appropriate, what's not appropriate. What your rights are. How to protect yourself. To understand what's the difference between flirting and what's abuse. To know the difference. And to love yourself enough to say no and not accept any poor behavior in any manner. Karina Huber, CGTN, New York.