When Karl Outerbridge embarks on one of his gruelling six-hour cycle rides he often wishes the journey will never end.

A former top local athlete, cycling is Outerbridge’s sanctuary: a safe haven where he can temporarily escape his tortured mind and the unspeakable horrors he was subjected to as a boy.

Outerbridge said he was first sexually abused as an eight-year-old by a near neighbour before suffering at the hands of a “very controlling” abuser well-known to him until he was 16.

The horrific experiences transformed Outerbridge, a happy-go-lucky child, into a troubled teenager on the inside, and now, at the age of 49, someone who continues to struggle with the day-to-day challenges of living with his demons.

“People don’t realise that sometimes when I’m riding, I’m riding because I don’t want to stop, because when I stop and go home my brain will get hijacked and I’ll become severely depressed, so I just keep riding,” Outerbridge said.

“Whenever I go through dark patches, I fall back on that bike. It’s helped me out in all other aspects of my life, particularly on the days when I’m struggling.”

Outerbridge, who represented Bermuda at the Pan Am Games in Cuba in 1991, decided to speak about his ordeal after Andrew and David Bascome revealed they had both been sexually abused as schoolboy footballers.

Although cycling has been a valuable coping strategy for Outerbridge, the psychological scars run deep for him, affecting every facet of his adult life, both personally and professionally.

Despite all of this, he was still able to forge a successful career in the reinsurance industry at Aspen Re before venturing into the firefighting profession, where he was based at the LF Wade International Airport.

Outerbridge then turned his hand to running a business, Outside the Box Thinking, that combined all of his passions, offering cutting-edge technology products.

In 2011, however, a chain of distressing events re-triggered his childhood trauma, with his life unravelling over the next few years with Outerbridge eventually finding himself homeless and attempting suicide.

“It’s had a direct impact on my mental life and held me back a lot,” Outerbridge said. “It’s damaged me, damaged my relationships, and I always felt inadequate, like having a dirty secret sitting behind me.

“Having that octopus stuck on my back — well, it’s the strangest feeling — it’s hard to explain.

“I’ve overdosed a few times, gone over the counter a few times, but I’m like, ‘Dude, you’re still here, so that must mean something’.

“Around 2011 I got re-traumatised and that was a whole new level. There was no way I could have suppressed or pushed it down.

“I had no more room to suppress anything. I used to be the quiet guy when I was cycling, but I turned into this guy who was cursing all of the time, I was violent and wanted to fight people. I was in a flat-out rage.”

Outerbridge said he has “gone through hell” searching for the psychological support he requires to deal with the sexual and mental abuse he has suffered.

Not only does he believe that Bermuda’s cultural climate has not always been conducive for victims to share their experiences in public, he feels that adult sufferers can struggle to get the help they need.

“Bermuda treats people like they’re caterpillars,” he added.

“Once you’ve hit 18, you’ve transformed into something else and whatever happened in the past has disappeared.

“It hasn’t gone anywhere, though. You can re-traumatised as an adult.

“It’s almost like getting a third-degree burn; if you don’t treat it all types of things can get in there. I still feel like that child who never got that protection.

“There are some great programmes likes Scars [Saving Children and Revealing Secrets], which identify the problem, but what happens after that? You can find the charities, social workers and psychologists to give to you therapy but no one actually stops and says, ‘Who actually did what to you for you to react in that manner?’

Whenever the dark memories of his past resurface, Outerbridge tries to emerge himself in his recollections of riding for Bermuda at the Pan Am Games, alongside team-mates Elliot Hubbard, Clark Tear, Michael Lee, Vance Stevens and Kevin Tucker.

“My girlfriend’s brother introduced me to cycling and that was it; I never put the bike down,” said Outerbridge, who competed in the road race and time-trial.

“In many ways David Sabir [the Bermuda Football Association general secretary] saved my life when he opened up Winner’s Edge and created their bicycle team — that’s when another little world opened up to me.

“Qualifying for the Pan Am Games was the highlight for me. When I have my darkest days I just think about how I felt at the start of that road race.

“The guy next to me was an American rider named Bob Mionske, the top dude and on the same team as Lance Armstrong.

“All I could picture were the guys at works and engineering, the guys who build the bus stops, saying to me, ‘How are you going to let that guy beat you? Come on bie, ride that bike!’

Outerbridge is still riding that bike. It is unlikely he will ever be able to stop.