Mike Avery said his appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show was a powerful experience.

A P.E.I. man appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show this week in an episode about male survivors of sexual abuse.

Mike Avery was among 200 men Winfrey invited into her studio for the show. She described them as coming from all walks of life and all had been sexually assaulted as boys.

The show reaches tens of millions of people around the world. The men talked about what happened to them and the impact it had on their lives. Avery said it was a difficult experience, but he was glad to be part of it.

"I shed probably five pounds of tears. Some of them were joyous tears, some of them were sad, but it was necessary. I'll tell you, I was certainly a changed person," he said.

The Charlottetown man was 12 when he was sexually assaulted.

It is estimated that one in six boys is sexually abused. Winfrey herself was abused as a child and said she did the show to try to end the stigma attached to men who were sexually abused.

'Time to end the shame'

"It's time to end the shame and the fear and the guilt and the secrets. No more," Winfrey said.

"It was unbelievably powerful and educational. I had 15 years' experience in advocacy, but I never experienced anything so phenomenal — to have that many people that went through it and were able to articulate very well their phenomenal abuse," Avery said.

He said an international show such as Winfrey's is a big step to help people understand how child abuse happens and the trauma it causes.

Much more needs to be done, he said, with more resources directed to providing counselling. "We need to talk," he said of survivors. "As a society, we just have to change. We have changed lots of other things in 100 years, so this is going to be major change coming for male survivors, which is great."

The Oprah special was the first in a two-part series. The second part airs Friday.