NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- Matthew Bocchi was nine years old when he lost his father in the Sept. 11 attacks.
In the years after the attacks, Bocchi turned to a relative he believed he could trust to help him cope with his grief, he said in an interview with 1010 WINS' John Montone. That relative, however, took advantage of his trust and sexually abused him, he said.
His new memoir "Sway," which was published this month, recounts those experiences, as well as his subsequent struggles with drug and alcohol abuse.
"I wanted to get my story out there and spread some light on the fact that children of 9/11 went through a lot that probably wasn't talked about in the years to come," Bocchi told Montone. "I wanted people to realize that 9/11 was just the beginning, for me, especially."
Bocchi, whose father John worked in the North Tower of the World Trade Center, was at school on Sept. 11, 2001 when administrators pulled him out of class and told both him and his brother that a plane had crashed into their father's building. At the time, they said his dad "was safe," he recalled.
"Instinctively, I kind of thought something was up with that, but I didn't question it too much," he said. "When I got back home from school that day… I saw people at my house, and the footage was on TV, and everyone was in the living room on the phone calling my dad, calling hotlines. That I vividly remember."
Over the next few days, Bocchi "spent my hours calling my dad's cell phone and trying to get in contact with him and leaving voicemails on his phone, and begging him to come home," he said. About a week later, prosecutors and police told Bocchi's family his father had died, he said.
"I remember just loving my dad so much," he said. "I still do, but just loving him so affectionately back then and being so close with him, and just being told he's not coming back home, ever again, is a hard thing to process for a 9-year-old kid."
Trying to process his father's death, Bocchi started asking questions about how he died — questions only his uncle through marriage seemed willing to answer, he said.
At one point, his uncle falsely told him his father jumped from the towers on Sept. 11, he recalled.
"In reality, that wasn't the truth, but he used 9/11 as a way to exploit my vulnerabilities and sexually abuse me, and then I went down a path of drug and alcohol abuse for quite some time," he said. "(But) I was going through a lot at that time, and I wanted a father figure…. And he was that person."
For years, he tried to piece together what happened to his father on 9/11, scouring videos, photos and blogs documenting that day, he said. Now 28 years old and five years sober, he has realized that was "a horrible way to cope with my emotions," he said.
Bocchi, who currently lives in New Jersey, has spoken at schools in hopes of spreading a message of hope: that things can get better.
The writer still recalls traveling to the World Trade Center with his brother to visit his father at work. A memory from that time, he said, inspired the title of his book.
"We would walk up to the window, and he'd say, you could look down, and you could feel and see the building slightly swaying," he said. "The way I envisioned it was, the World Trade Center wouldn't always be swaying all the time. It would sway a little bit, and then kind of stop. And it would be back to being fully-grounded, and not moving."
"I went through a lot of life changes, where I was dealing with issues and tragedies," he added. "And then eventually, I was able to pull myself out of it and stand tall and grounded again."
