Illinois

Light shines out of darkness: Years later, victims of Catholic Church sex abuse scandal encourage healing

by Molly Parker

OZARK — Paul Wesselmann remembers well the day he made the decision to reach out for help for the sexual abuse he endured as a young teen. It was 1994 — the year "Forrest Gump" was buzzing as the must-see movie of the summer. Wesselmann, then a young man in his 20s, went to see it alone. On the way to the grocery store after leaving the theater, he had to pull over because he was sobbing so hard.

It was that famous scene where Forrest came looking for Jenny because she didn't get on the bus for school that morning that rattled him to the core. As Jenny's father stumbles drunk outside with a flask in his hand and yelling for his daughter, Jenny tells Forrest to run. They head out into the cornfield behind her Alabama shack as her father chases after her, and she hits her knees and says, “Pray with me, Forrest,” and then begins to chant, “Dear God, make me a bird, so I can fly far, far, far away from here.”

The implication made in the movie — expressed through Forrest Gump's naiveté; he described Jenny's father as “a very loving man” — was that young Jenny wanted to get away because her father was sexually molesting her and her sisters. Wesselmann was struck by how much he related to the character's desire to be transported from that horrid abuse — as it happened in real time, and the many times after that it played like a broken record in his head.

Shortly afterward, Wesselmann said he picked up the phone and scheduled an appointment to see a counselor. He realized that he could no longer shove into the dark reaches of his soul the tragedy he endured as a young teenager at Camp Ondessonk in the early- to mid-1980s.

There, as a camp counselor and trainee, Wesselmann, who grew up in Carbondale, said he was molested and raped between the ages of 15 and 17 by Father Robert Vonnahmen, the camp's founder and longtime director, and an assistant director — both of whom are long removed from the camp.

Without excusing what was allowed to transpire there, Wesselmann stressed that the people who perpetuated the abuse, and the others who allowed it to happen, have not been affiliated with the camp since the mid-1980s. Today, Wesselmann said he believes the camp is in good hands, and is a place that offers many wonderful opportunities for young boys and girls to enjoy the outdoors while developing self-esteem and self-reliance. Wesselmann said he understands that many people have cherished memories about the summers they spent at Camp Ondessonk, and he counts himself among them.

'I was just a kid'

At present, Wesselmann lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, and is known as the Ripples Guy for the motivational talks he gives to businesses, schools and associations that are based on the concept that one positive action can create ripples of others.

He credits the many skills and traits developed during the nine summers he spent at Camp Ondessonk as a camper, and later a counselor, with many of his personal and professional successes in adulthood.

And despite that many of his positive memories are overshadowed by the abuse he endured, Wesselmann still calls it “one of my favorite places on the planet” — as he put it in a letter to the Catholic Church a few years ago stating his case for the church to continue covering the cost of his therapy.

It is that juxtaposition of the good and evil surrounding the wooded, rustic campsite in the Shawnee National Forest in rural Johnson County that has made healing so excruciatingly painful and challenging, Wesselmann said.

“One of the reasons these memories are so awful is that they were created when I was just a kid. I randomly relive these moments of feeling so confused and so alone and so terrified,” Wesselmann said this week in an interview with The Southern conducted via email and by phone.

“These memories are disturbing not only because I didn't LIKE what was happening to me — they are so much worse because I was too young to really UNDERSTAND what was happening to me (emphasis is Wesselmann's).

“It seemed logical to my adolescent mind that it happened because of something I did wrong or that I somehow deserved what happened.

“Even though I'm almost 50 years old, and even though I've had over 20 years of therapy that has been helpful in many ways, these thoughts and feelings still echo in my soul. And there are still times when I believe them.”

Lessons learned from tragedy

Wesselmann said he agreed to speak out about the horror of child sex abuse as part of The Southern Illinoisan's month-long April series in recognition of National Child Abuse Awareness Month because he believes what happened in Southern Illinois should not be forgotten.

By speaking out, Wesselmann said his intention is not to inflict pain or shame on the church or camp, but rather, so that lessons can be learned from it and that such a tragedy of systemic abuse and widespread dismissal and cover up is never repeated — by the Catholic Church or any other organization. And so that people may understand the depth of the damage that sexual abuse inflicts upon a child long after they are grown, even in some cases long after the perpetrator has died.

And of equal importance to him, Wesselmann said he hopes his story may provide some sense of comfort to someone else going through a similar situation, and give them the hope and strength to get the help they need to move forward in life if they haven't yet taken that step.

Victims of sexual abuse live with that horror for a lifetime, Wesselmann said. That's especially true for people victimized while they are children, before they have the capacity to understand what is happening, and particularly when the abuse occurs at the hands of a trusted and admired adult, as is most often the case in child sex abuse cases. Rarely is the abuse perpetuated by a stranger.

Vonnahmen, despite that he was never formally charged with any crimes, is widely regarded as one of this region's most notorious alleged child predators. That said, the child sex abuse epidemic stretches far beyond Vonnahmen and the Catholic Church.

Illinois Department of Children and Family Services data indicate that child sex abuse in the region is a longstanding and widespread problem. As is the case with abuse and neglect rates overall, child sex abuse rates in Southern Illinois also are much higher than the statewide average — double or triple the rates in some regional counties. Wesselmann said that if his story touches the heart of just one victim, he will consider the difficulty of sharing it well worth it.

“When I cross paths with adults who are abuse survivors, or adults who are trying to help children who they believe were abused, I tell them the bad news and the good news,” Wesselmann said. “The bad news is that childhood sex abuse is soul-crushing, especially when committed by adults in positions of power that we trusted.

“And the earlier the abuse begins and the more frequent it happens, the deeper the scar tissue runs. The good news is that scars are a sign of healing as much as they are a sign of injury. There are many good resources and therapies out there that have provided significant healing to abuse victims. The best news is that it turns out that we humans are remarkably resilient creatures.”

Untangling dark thoughts

After he was abused as a teenager, Wesselmann said one of the most difficult personal issues he had to sort through came when, as a young man, he acknowledged to himself that he was gay, even before coming out to his friends and family. Once he acknowledged that fact internally, Wesselmann said he lost the will to live. The next week, Wesselmann said he was hospitalized after his first of what would become multiple suicide attempts.

Wesselmann said he didn't want to live because he had developed a distorted belief — based on the abuse he endured as a child — that if he was gay, that meant he would eventually molest other teenagers as he had been molested.

Wesselmann said that even though he had zero desires in his heart or mind to do that, he assumed that he would have no choice but to eventually morph into a pedophile, and that's why he wanted to take his life — he assumed it would be better to be dead than to end up like his perpetrators. It wasn't until months of therapy that he was able to untangle these dark thoughts, he said. Over time, he came to understand that just because something evil was done to him, that in no way meant evil lived inside of him, and that being gay had nothing at all to do with pedophilia.

“I didn't really experience it as a burden or trauma at first … it just seemed a normal part of life because that was the life I knew,” Wesselmann said of the feelings he experienced as a young man in the early years after the abuse ended. “I think the most damaging outcome of the actual abuse was assuming that my feelings of attraction to other guys was somehow related to what happened to me, and the fear that I myself could/would become a predator terrified me for years — well into adulthood in fact. The church's concealment of the abuse contributed to the shame I felt, and made it tough to trust and respect others.”

'It was life-changing'

Another individual who said he was raped at the camp in the mid-1980s also wanted to tell his story, but anonymously. The 47-year-old man asked only to be referred to as JT. He lives in Southern Illinois, but the newspaper is withholding his hometown to protect his identity. The newspaper interviewed JT in March in his therapist's office in Carbondale. His story further illustrates the lasting trauma of childhood sexual abuse.

“I was a child. I was 14. I thought I was going to the most wonderful place in the world, Camp Ondessonk,” he said, recalling the events that shattered his life. “For me, what happened was not wonderful in any way. It was life-changing.”

JT described being sexually attacked by Vonnahmen while he was a counselor in training in mid-June, 1984. JT said other camp leaders knew about the abuse, to him and others, and did nothing. JT also said he wanted to come forward with his story because he knows many others out there are struggling as he is, and he wants them to know they are not alone.

Into adulthood, JT said he suffers night terrors — which he describes as far worse than nightmares.

“I literally sleep anywhere from two to three hours a night,” he said. “I have problems eating because I'm so nervous. You feel like you're on the outside of the world just looking in. You can't engage and you don't know why.”

JT said that one of the many frustrating things about the situation is that it didn't seem as though as much national press attention was paid to Vonnahmen, what happened at Camp Ondessonk and in other Southern Illinois parishes, even though the sex abuse scandal hit particularly hard here. In total, 13 priests and one prominent deacon were removed from their pastoral duties in the 1990s from the Belleville Diocese, which oversees parishes in roughly the bottom third of the state.

“But my God, what happened here was a tragedy, a huge tragedy,” JT said. JT said he only came forward with his story to the church last year, in April 2016, after therapy helped him gain the courage to contact the diocese. Looking forward, he encourages people to reach out for professional help, and not be afraid or ashamed to do so regardless of where they are in their healing journey.

Vonnahmen defrocked in 2007

Though Vonnahmen was removed from his position as director of Camp Ondessonk in 1985, shortly after Wesselmann and others came forward privately with allegations, Vonnahmen was allowed to continue his role as a priest at a church in Elizabethtown after that.

It wasn't for another eight years until the church found him unfit for ministry and removed him from his priestly duties; it was 22 years later that he was laicized, in 2007.

Meanwhile, The Roman Catholic Diocese of Belleville, to which Vonnahmen belonged, has funded and continues to pay out large sums in court settlements and voluntary payments to fund therapy for victims of Vonnahmen's and other pedophile priests who were assigned to parishes throughout the Metro East and Southern Illinois. Both Wesselmann and JT said the church continues to pay for their therapy services.

Wesselmann said he is thankful, on one hand, that the church has made these payments, but also continues to press for the church leadership to confess publicly and apologize for what transpired. That includes not only the abuse, but the fact that those at the top of the diocese's hierarchy were informed about what was going on, but did not act with enough expedience or in a manner that indicated they understood and acknowledged the gravity of the situation, both Wesselmann and JT said.

While private acknowledgements and apologies have been made to Wesselmann by church leaders over the years about the fact that they didn't do more or act sooner, he said it would mean more, and provide a greater level of healing, if the apology were made public.

“I've never gotten the sense that the Catholic Church as a whole has recognized its need to publicly confess these sins even though its own holy sacrament of reconciliation is a core tenet of their faith,” Wesselmann said. “I'm confident their public statements could seem more authentic and therefore be more cathartic if they came from leaders who had the capacity to comprehend and fully acknowledge the spiritual holocaust the church unleashed on so many of its own members' souls — made significantly worse by concealment and denials.”

For example, he said, Vonnahmen should not have been allowed to continue his role as a priest after being removed from the camp in 1985. And he should not have been allowed the ability to oversee a religious-based nonprofit, Catholic Shrine Pilgrimage, which operated a travel agency and led trips to religiously significant sites worldwide, and through which the San Damiano Retreat Center was built on an expansive piece of property between Hardin and Pope counties. In the early 2000s, when questioned about Vonnahmen's activities by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, a church leader stated that Vonnahmen had been asked to note in his advertising materials that his group has no ties to the diocese.

Despite the terror Wesselman and JT say Vonnahmen inflicted on them and others, Vonnahmen lived on that beautiful piece of tax-free property in what was essentially his own personal luxurious retirement villa that offered stunning views of the Ohio River. The church did not return a phone call seeking comment by deadline as to the concerns raised by Wesselman and JT.

Mixed emotions at Vonnahmen's death

Vonnahmen died on May 8, 2016. The church did not note his passing, but Wesselmann and others did.

The evening he learned of Vonnahmen's death, Wesselmann posted the news on his Facebook page with a statement that ended: “His passing may be another opportunity to mourn the more carefree childhoods that many of us never got to experience, and to acknowledge that the world is more complicated than we would like to believe.”

After years of therapy and internal work, Wesselmann said that while there is no way to entirely erase the depth of pain that comes from being sexually abused as a young person, healing is possible. He wants other victims who may be at different places in their healing journey to know that a life filled with moments of joy and happiness and peace that surpasses understanding still is possible.

Lately, he counts his blessing for having picked up the phone years ago and scheduling an appointment with a counselor after finding himself frighteningly depressed by that scene in "Forrest Gump," and not really understanding why. Through therapy and over time, the pain has stayed in remission for longer and longer periods of time, he said.

“There are still moments, though, when pain re-emerges like a fresh wound. Something as subtle as the sound of certain voices or even smells can transport me back to a time when I felt really alone and afraid,” he said.

Wesselmann said that a few employees of the diocese have privately given sincere apologies. That, coupled with the fact that the church has covered the cost of more than 20 years of therapy has been “significantly helpful.” But he remains frustrated that the only public statements about the abuse he endured and reported was one that amounted to a denial. Publicly, the church has never offered an alternative or corrective statement to the only ones ever made publicly on the ordeal.

Therefore, as Wesselmann sees it, the church maintains its original assertions — that the camp leadership in the mid-1980s were removed from their posts because of financial issues and that the abuse Wesselmann reported to them years ago amounted only to “someone touching me on the knee,” as he said a church official relayed to the Belleville News-Democrat in the late 1990s — despite vast accusations and private statements made to the contrary.

“Observing up-close the capacity of several church leaders to publicly deny the truth while privately acknowledging my pain was frustrating. And heartbreaking,” he said. “That betrayal of trust, and the continued public denials of my story that they had privately accepted as true, makes it hard for me to trust others — especially authority figures.”

Wesselmann said he has come to terms with the fact that there are some answers or acknowledgements about the abuse he and others endured that he may never get. Wesselmann said he held out some small hope over the years that Vonnahmen might write him a letter of apology. When that letter never came and Vonnahmen died, Wesselmann wrote that letter himself — as if it were from Vonnahmen — and included all the things he hoped his abuser would tell him in repenting. It proved to be a cathartic exercise, Wesselmann said. It's one of the many small ways he's helped himself move on — one day at a time.

“I think what we hope for most is sustainable peace in the midst of inescapable pain,” he said. “When you're haunted by untamed ghosts of the past, you don't really get to decide when you'll have to relive some of the most terrifying moments of your life.”

But Wesselmann also added that he has found some peace from recognizing the abuse did happen, and that he is not alone. “Lots of other people have survived really tough stuff and figured out how to keep moving forward,” he said.

“It turns out that even after extreme darkness, there is still life to be lived, joy to be felt, and happiness to be experienced. And that is worth remembering.”

http://thesouthern.com/news/local/light-shines-out-of-darkness-years-later-victims-of-catholic/article_1bafa035-1394-5a83-a075-7450d46a682d.html

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Prevention is the only Cure for Child Abuse

by Marisa McPeck-Stringham

I read stories about infant abuse every day. It's my job to document cases of abusive head trauma (commonly referred to as shaken baby syndrome) in infants and incidents of child abuse where the child's crying, unfortunately, is the trigger for abuse.

After particularly harrowing stories of abuse, as a mother and as a professional, I always ask myself how this situation could have been prevented. What could have been done to ensure that baby had been safe from harm?

It's estimated that approximately 683,000 children in the United States are the victims of abuse and neglect every year. The Department of Health and Human Services officials report that in the fiscal year 2015 alone an estimated 1,670 children died as a result of maltreatment.

The best way to combat child abuse is to prevent it before it ever happens

Prevention is the key to ending child abuse, and fortunately we have an entire month dedicated to National Child Abuse Prevention. In 1983, President Reagan designated every April as Child Abuse Prevention Month to be an annual observance dedicated to raising awareness about child abuse and strategies that can keep children safe.

Two of the most powerful words in the English language are “you” and “help.” So, how are you helping to prevent child abuse, not just during the month of April, but every day of the year?

This April we have the chance to come together in our communities and say we will not tolerate the abuse of our children. We have to work together, not just as parents, grandparents, or relatives of children, but as citizens, to look after the welfare of our children.

Often the difference between a parent who abuses and a parent who doesn't is education, access to resources, outside support, well-developed coping strategies, and financial help.

What are the ways you can help?

Education

One of the most important keys to prevention is education.

Dr. Kathryn McCans, chair of the New Jersey's Child Fatality and Near Fatality Review Board, says, “Through education and awareness, people can make better choices.”

There are many educational resources available to parents and community members in preventing child abuse.

Many organizations offer evidence-based parenting videos and education for free or at a low cost, like Boys Town.

Education is powerful. For example, being taught about your baby's normal crying patterns and having age-appropriate realistic expectations for your child can help you dial down the stress in your home, take the pressure off you as a parent, and aid you in making healthy parenting choices.

Before our first child was born and during the course of parenting, my husband and I have taken parenting courses to help educate us on becoming better parents. We were given valuable tools and resources in dealing with difficult situations with our children. Education only makes for a better parent.

Support

Crying is the number one stimulus for the abuse of an infant. Offering support to a parent with a baby can be a great way to help reduce incidents of child abuse. Offer to babysit so the parent can take a break and engage in some self-care behaviors (napping, showering, or relaxing) or bring a meal to the home. Let them know they can call you whenever they feel frustrated or overwhelmed and you will be there to provide respite.

If you are that parent with a crying baby, know that it's okay to take a break and to ask for help. It's okay to seek out support and help from your relatives and friends. It's okay to put your baby down in their crib and walk away for a few minutes, checking on the baby often, and take time to cool down. This doesn't make you a bad parent. It makes you a parent who knows their limits and finds support before abuse can ever be a possibility. I have given myself many “mommy time-outs” over the last 16 years of raising children.

Support family friendly policies

A recent study by the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control and published by the British Medical Journal (BMJ) showed a correlation between paid parental leave in California between the years 1995 – 2011 and a significant decrease of pediatric abusive head trauma hospital admissions. Family friendly policies that take financial stressors off of parents help to reduce the overall stress in the home.

Besides supporting family friendly legislation, you can support and advocate for family friendly policies at your place of employment. When children are well-taken care of, society benefits as a whole.

Volunteer

I work in child abuse prevention every day, but I also spend time in my community volunteering with an organization called, CASA or Court Appointed Special Advocate. I am an advocate with the juvenile court system who represents, along with their Guardian ad Litem, a child's best interests in court. Being a CASA volunteer is just one way to volunteer in your community to help with the prevention of child abuse.

Prevent Child Abuse America has many suggestions of ways you can volunteer in your community. Ask your community leaders, clergy, library and schools to develop services to meet the needs of healthy children and families. Find out if your local library has parenting resources, and if it does not, offer to help retain them. Promote programs in schools that teach children, parents, and teachers prevention strategies that can help keep children safe. Volunteer at a local child abuse prevention program. If you are in Northern Utah, my organization, the National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome, always welcomes volunteers to help us with our prevention and education programs.

Report

In my home state of Utah, every adult is a mandatory reporter of child abuse. This mandate differs in every state. As a social worker, I'm especially liable for reporting child abuse when I suspect it is occurring. I know it is uncomfortable to report to your local child protective services agency your suspicions that a child is being abused, however, you could save a child's life.

There are many reasons why you might be uncomfortable with reporting suspected child abuse. The most common fear is that you might be wrong and make a false accusation. You might believe that the alleged abusers would never hurt a child. You might feel fondness toward the parents of the child you suspect is being abused and it would complicate your relationship with them. You might believe that if you report it will only bring negative consequences for the parents or child. You might also feel apprehensive about getting involved. It's important to note, that no matter what, if you suspect a child is being abused, even if you are wrong, you will never regret standing up for a child.

Just remember, it's not your job to investigate abuse – that's the work of law enforcement and Child Protective Services. They rely on good people like you to be the eyes and ears in your community, watching out for the safety of every child.

If you suspect a child is being abused, please call the National Child Abuse Hotline 1-800-4-A-CHILD.

Donate Money

One of the simplest ways you can prevent child abuse is to financially support organizations who fight the tragedy of abuse and are dedicated to education and prevention.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that pediatric abusive head trauma is a leading cause of physical child abuse deaths in children under the age of five (5) in the United States. Pediatric abusive head trauma deaths account for approximately one-third (1/3rd) of all child maltreatment deaths. Babies who are less than one (1) year old are at the greatest risk of injury from abusive head trauma.

For almost 20 years, the National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome has been committed to its mission of preventing shaken baby syndrome/abusive head trauma (SBS/AHT) and promoting the well-being of all infants through the development of programs, policy and research, and educating families. Will you help us reach our vision of eradicating SBS/AHT and improving the overall care of infants?

The power to prevent child abuse is in your hands.

Please help.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/prevention-is-the-only-cure-for-child-abuse_us_58f4e1d8e4b04cae050dc93d

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Connecticut

State laws regarding investigation, prosecution of child abuse under scrutiny following Choate report

by Matthew Zabierek

WALLINGFORD — Following the release of a report that revealed several incidents of alleged sexual abuse at Choate Rosemary Hall since the 1960s, state officials and legal experts say state laws regarding the reporting of child abuse need to be clarified to allow claims to be investigated after the victim turns 18 years old.

State law currently allows the state Department of Children and Families to investigate reports of child abuse until the victim turns 18 and is considered an adult.

Once an individual reaches adulthood, DCF historically hasn't “accepted reports relating to potential victims if that person is no longer a minor,” said Julie Fay, a lawyer who specializes in school law at Hartford-based law firm Shipman & Goodwin.

Fay said existing state laws do not provide guidance for how DCF should investigate claims from an adult who alleges abuse as a child, “creating question as to how to handle information relating to suspicions that involve children who are now adults.”

“We need to make sure that we're crystal clear about how we respond to child abuse in Connecticut,” said Mickey Kramer, an associate child advocate with the state Office of the Child Advocate. “If the law isn't clear, then how can we expect DCF to respond consistently and reliably?”

Kramer noted that many students — including special education students — remain in secondary education after turning 18.

“The expectation should be that all students are protected from that kind of behavior,” she said, adding her office will advocate for the state legislature and other agencies to clarify current laws.

“I think everyone's concern is that there's someone still out there that poses a threat to children,” Fay said.

In July and December 2016, Choate Rosemary Hall filed reports of faculty sexually abusing students to DCF, however, the agency couldn't accept the claim, “indicating that the reason was that the former student was no longer a minor,” according to a report released last week detailing decades of alleged sexual assaults at Choate Rosemary Hall. Independent investigator Nancy Kestenbaum compiled the report at the request of Choate's Board of Trustees.

The report, which documents abuse by 12 teachers dating back to the early 1960s, stated that Choate “did not make any reports to DCF regarding adult sexual misconduct prior to 2010,” after the documented abuse occurred.

Police Chief William Wright said his department also did not receive any reports of sexual misconduct from the school in that time, which he said is “very concerning.”

Wright said Choate officials met with him just before the report was released publicly earlier this month to brief him. The department is considering a criminal investigation, but is waiting for other police officials to review the report before making a decision.

Since the 1960s, state law has stipulated that teachers in both public and private schools report cases when they have “reasonable cause to suspect or believe” that a child under the age of 18 has suffered abuse.

It wasn't until 2013, after the abuses mentioned in the report occurred, that the school first added a section to its faculty handbook describing mandatory reporting obligations, according to the report.

In some cases, Choate administrators knew of the abuse and allowed the abuser to resign before helping the teacher get a job at another school, according to Kestenbaum's report.

In one case, Edward Shanahan, who served as headmaster from 1991 to 2011, was informed by a female student in 2000 that William Cobbett, a faculty member at Choate for 41 years, attempted to kiss her at his house. Shanahan told Kestenbaum that he “understood” that Corbett kissed the student. The school did not notify police or DCF of the incident at the time.

In another case, Choate did not inform any government authorities of an incident in which former teacher Jaime Rivera-Murillo was accused by a 17-year-old girl of forcing her to have sex in a swimming pool during a 1999 school trip to Costa Rica, according to the report. Rivera-Murillo denies the accusation.

Both Shanahan and Edmondson “Ed” Maddox, then Dean of Faculty, were aware of the incident and Shanahan also prepared a report of the incident for the school's Board of Trustees, according to Kestenbaum's report.

Shanahan told Kestenbaum that he “was usually guided by parents' wishes regarding whether to” report child abuse to the government.

Rivera-Murillo was terminated and went on to teach at several schools. He served as principal of Wamogo Regional High School in Litchfield until April 2016, when Choate informed the school of the allegations.

If a mandated reporter doesn't report an allegation, he or she could be charged with a misdemeanor in Connecticut and may be subject to criminal penalties and fines of up to $2,000, according to statute.

Wright said that law enforcement could only charge an individual for not reporting, rather than Choate as an institution. Law enforcement would have to produce documentation or evidence that a mandatory reporter knew of abuse.

No victims have contacted the department to report an abuse claim since the report was released, according to Wright. Anyone who has experienced sexual abuse at the school is encouraged to call local police at 203-294-2800.

The statute of limitations for abuse of a child in Connecticut is 30 years, however, Wright said law enforcement is subject to the limitations that were in place at the time of the alleged abuse. Limitations can also depend on the severity of abuse, Wright added.

Fay said an increasing number of private schools are conducting similar investigations into sexual abuse to “engage in critical self examination” and review past policies.

Fay believes the reporting by private schools “signifies a new approach that schools are taking in trying to be transparent and acknowledge how things have been handled in the past to learn from it and do better.”

The one difference between Choate's report and those at other schools, Fay said, is the level of detail that was included.

“I think, by and large, schools are trying to do the right thing,” Fay said.

Other legal experts have been more critical.

“They did it because they were forced to,” Paul Mones, a lawyer who represents victims of sexual abuse, told the New York Times.

Mones noted that The Boston Globe ran a story about abuse at the school in October. “They saw the way the wind was blowing, and they knew they had to get out ahead of it,” he said.

“These are smart people,” he continued. “They knew they had to do something.”

http://www.myrecordjournal.com/news/wallingford/wallingfordpolicecourts/10241329-154/state-laws-regarding-investigation-prosecution-of-child-abuse-under-scrutiny.html

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Tennessee

After AMBER Alert, when to report potential child abuse

by Matthew Crowe

Almost two weeks after Elizabeth Thomas disappeared in mid-March, the Maury County school district announced a task force to review its parent notification system. The district says it will look at policies for any range of inappropriate contact between student and faculty, and look to include more checks and balances.

10News reached out to the Tennessee Board of Education, and found there is no required state guidance for teachers on mandatory reporting for the suspected abuse of a child. Without state oversight, districts are left to formulate their own training and guidance for teachers.

“Student safety and support is important to us, and at the request of a district, our general counsel and her team will conduct trainings for districts as well,” said Chandler Hopper, deputy director of communications for the Department of Education.

By Tennessee law, everyone is a ‘mandatory reporter,' and required to report any suspected abuse of a child.

Advocates for children say if you're unsure whether to report – air on the side of saying something rather than staying silent.

“I would say if you think something may be happening, if your spider sense is telling you, ‘that looks inappropriate, and I'm worried for that child,' – that's a pretty good indication that you should report it and let the authorities conduct an investigation or safety check for that child's welfare,” said Hugh Nystrom, who has years of experience as an advocate for children.

Knox County Schools was unable to provide anyone to discuss their policies, but sent 10News their policy for faculty / student relations.

Tennessee considers the following as abuse:

· Physical abuse : Non-accidental trauma or physical injury of a child, or failure to protect a child from harm.

· Neglect : Failure to provide for a child's physical survival needs to the extent that there is harm, or risk of harm, to the child's health or safety.

· Sexual abuse : When a child is involved in intentional sexual acts that produce sexual arousal and/or gratification for the perpetrator or sexual behaviors/situations in which there is a sexual component.

· Psychological harm : A repeated pattern of caregiver behavior or extreme incident(s) that convey to children they are worthless, flawed, unloved, unwanted, endangered. May include both abusive acts against a child and failure to act.

The hotline to report abuse is 877-237-0004. Callers can remain anonymous.

Failure to report is a class A Misdemeanor. It can carry a fine and up to three months in jail

http://www.wbir.com/news/local/when-to-report-potential-child-abuse/433217945

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North Carolina

Invisible scars — A face and voice of child abuse

by Kristin Zachary

The night was chilly, and I shivered in the backseat a little.

It was 1998. My mom was newly married with a sweet newborn, and the four of us were heading home after dinner.

“What time is it?” I asked, speaking without thinking first, as I was quickly learning had consequences.

The car grew colder with my stepfather's voice. The cruelty and curses he pitched at me pierced any false sense of peace the evening held.

Mom told him not to speak to me that way.

“Tell me what to do again, and I'll shove my fist down your [expletive] throat,” he shot back at her. He pulled over and told us to get out. I watched the taillights fade until we were left in the pitch black of night. Miles from home. No cellphone.

Mom carried the baby. I carried the car seat and diaper bag.

This instance of abuse is among many I suffered between the ages of 10 and 13. It has taken me 20 years to put a name to it, to end my silence.

Though I've shared bits and pieces of my childhood with family and close friends, an article that appeared earlier this month in The Daily Reflector made me realize that isn't enough. The article, about National Child Abuse Prevention Month, helped me realize I need to be a face and a voice for those who still are in hiding and silenced.

I watched my stepfather knock my mother to the ground and kick her. I watched him throw things at her. Punch, shove, scream. He even took a baseball bat to her once.

Often, the beatings came because she took up for me. And I blamed myself. I had asked the wrong question or did the wrong thing. I made him mad. “It's my fault,” I whispered to no one as I cried myself to sleep at night.

One Sunday morning, Mom wanted to take my sister and me to church.

"Tell Jesus to find you a [expletive] place to live," he shouted in her face. And just like that, we were homeless — one of the many times that would be the case, with us temporarily staying with family or my mom telling me we had nowhere to go but the women's shelter.

Eventually, he would apologize and convince us to come back. It was never long before it happened again.

One afternoon, I was doing homework with my door closed. He took out the trash, and because I did not have a new bag in the trash can by the time he came back, he burst into my room screaming.

Part of my punishment during my monthlong grounding was to take old scissors each day and trim the grass and weeds around the trailer. I was not allowed to wear gloves and would come inside hours later with my hands blistered and bloody.

He told me I was worthless. I was trash. I would never make anything of myself. I was stupid. I would never be good enough.

Twenty years later, the memories linger, still fresh. For a long time, I hoped they would fade as I grew older, that thinking about it would sting less.

But those scars, though not visible, will always remain.

Here's the really tough part: compared to many children who suffer abuse, I had it easy.

This is happening everywhere, and to even greater extents. Maybe it's happening in your neighbor's home. In a friend's home. Or a family member's home. It's happening.

What can you do to help report or prevent?

Resources

Prevent Child Abuse North Carolina -- https://www.preventchildabusenc.org/

TEDI BEAR Children's Advocacy Center -- http://www.ecu.edu/cs-dhs/tedibear/

Center for Family Violence Prevention -- http://www.c4fvp.org/

http://www.reflector.com/Columns/2017/04/23/Invisible-scars-A-face-and-voice-of-child-abuse.html

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Texas

HCSO deputies arrest 22 child abuse fugitives

by KHOU

HOUSTON - Almost two dozen people were arrested this week on child abuse charges, according to the Harris County Sheriff's Office.

Deputies arrested 22 fugitives wanted for crimes against children. The crimes range from Injury to a Child to Sexual Assault of a Child.

"In recent days we have seen some of the most disturbing acts of abuse on children by their own family members. Our children are the greatest asset for our future here in Harris County. Their safety and security against predators is a job we all take very seriously. Remember, we all have a moral obligation, any and all forms of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse and neglect on our children and take the initiative to report it to law enforcement." said Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzales during a press conference on Friday.

The arrests were part of a four-day Child Abuse Initiative with investigators from the Harris County Sheriff's Office Criminal Warrants Division.

April is Child Abuse Prevention Month and Crime Stoppers says there are more than 60,000 confirmed cases of child abuse in the state of Texas each year.

http://www.khou.com/news/crime/hcso-deputies-arrest-22-child-abuse-fugitives/433265443

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Tennessee

How 'grooming' plays into child abuse cases

by Raishad Hardnett

The father of 15-year-old Elizabeth Thomas believes her former teacher Tad Cummins "groomed" her for months before authorities say he kidnapped her in mid-March.

Grooming is a common term for child welfare advocates, and a term used a lot in the past few weeks as officials worked to bring Thomas back home.

Child advocates say they see predators "groom" their victims by taking incremental steps to normalize inappropriate behavior with the child. The more vulnerable, the easier to groom.

Christina Copeland, a forensic interviewer at New Hope Blount County Child Advocacy Center, has worked with child abuse victims for nearly 20 years. She says grooming is a common element in most child abuse cases, which normally involve victims who know their predators.

"The purpose is to desensitize," Copeland said. “The person who is doing the grooming is trying to gauge how they're going to react – are they going to tell somebody? And to give them situations that are just a little bit out of the norm.”

She says predators will often then manipulate victims into thinking an activity was their idea.

“And then that limits the number of people that you can tell about it because you don't want to get in trouble," she said.

Lt. Brad Anders is with the Knoxville Police Department's Special Crimes Unit. He works with the Department of Children's Services and other local, state and federal agencies on everything from missing person cases to child abuse and human trafficking.

"They'll just find someone, figure out what they're missing, and then try to fill that void and to develop a relationship,” said Anders.

With more public awareness in recent years, Anders has also seen more reports of abuse and, subsequently, more arrests.

"Now that we have TBI, FBI and the locals all working together on this, I think it's going to make a difference,” he said. “Our goal is for Knoxville to not be somewhere people are trafficked, but we have two intersections that come together where you could be anywhere in a day.”

Both Copeland and Anders agreed social media has made grooming faster and easier for predators.

Child advocates advise staying aware of what your kids are doing online. They also suggest keeping communication lines open with children and letting them know they will not face punishment for their honesty with you.

http://www.wbir.com/news/local/how-grooming-plays-into-child-abuse-cases/433215740

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West Virginia

How common is child sexual abuse?

by Katie Kuba

BUCKHANNON — Laura McDaniels came to the Buckhannon Rotary club's Tuesday meeting to dispel a common myth about child sexual abuse — that scary strangers crouching in bushes are always the ones to blame for victimizing children.

“That simply isn't true,” McDaniels, a licensed social worker and child advocate with Mountain CAP's Child Advocacy Center, told the club. “Child sexual abuse takes place under specific, often surprising circumstances. So when you think about perpetrators, I know a lot of times you think about the scary guy in the black coat hanging out in the bushes — stranger danger — but the reality is that 90 percent of children who are sexually abused know exactly who the abuser is, and it's a person that's in their life. It's neighbors, friends, family, coaches, teachers, someone in their life.”

The mission of the Child Advocacy Center, located at 26 N. Kanawha St. in Buckhannon, is to provide healing and justice for the victims of child sexual abuse, McDaniels said.

The agency became a member of the W.Va. Child Advocacy Network in 2008 and was accredited by the National Children's Alliance in 2013.

“How many of you can think of 10 children in your life, whether they're your own children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, neighbors?” McDaniels asked Rotarians. “I think everyone can think of at least 10 children in their life, so let's talk about some facts.”

McDaniels said 1 in 10 children will be sexually abused before the age of 18; however, only about one-third of incidents are identified.

“Emotional and mental health problems are often the first sign of child sexual abuse,” she said.

In West Virginia, a mandated reporting system is in effect, meaning adults over the age of 18 who know about or suspect child abuse are required to report it through a centralized reporting mechanism within the W.Va. Department of Health and Human Resources. Reporters of child abuse won't be held liable; however, if an adult – and especially a licensed professional, such as a social worker or counselor – knows about an incident involving child abuse and doesn't report it, he or she can be held liable, McDaniels said.

“So the main purpose of the Child Advocacy Center is to be a child-friendly environment which is a place that we can all get together as a multi-disciplinary investigative team, which includes our CPS workers, our law enforcement personnel including the prosecuting attorney's office, and also any sort of child treatment professionals, such as medical professionals/mental health professionals, and our mission is to provide justice and healing to victims of child abuse,” McDaniels said. “And I also want to point out that all services that we provide to the child are 100 percent free to every single child.”

That support includes facilitating forensic interviews, providing support and resources for children and their non-offending family members, and assisting with applications to the W.Va. Crime Victims Compensation Fund. McDaniels said the Child Advocacy Center has served over 600 children and their families since 2008 in both Lewis and Upshur counties.

McDaniels explained that a forensic interview prevents a child from having to re-tell their story multiple times to multiple people, which often causes them to relive the trauma associated with the event.

“The child comes in and speaks with our forensic interviewer, and while the child and the interviewer are talking in the interview room, there are closed-circuit cameras and a microphone and there's an observation room where the pertinent law enforcement, CPS workers and prosecuting attorney's office come and watch the interview as it's happening,” McDaniels explained. “It's recorded on DVD in case there's any need to re-watch it in the future. Then, we make referrals to mental health professionals so the child can begin healing, and we also make referrals to medical professionals so that the child can get a head-to-toe examination to make sure there's no injury.”

In 2016, the CAC conducted 41 forensic interviews, while it's done 16 so far in 2017.

In addition to the main services it provides, the CAC also supplies community education opportunities, two of which are with Talking About Touching and the Darkness to Light, Stewards of Children programs. Talking About Touching is a program designed for kindergarten-aged children that teaches them about appropriate and inappropriate touching; McDaniels delivered the program to 125 kindergarten children in Upshur County in 2016. Thus far in 2017, she's reached 53 kindergarten-aged children in Lewis County, she said.

McDaniels is also an authorized facilitator with the Darkness to Light, Stewards of Children program, which is completely free and offers continuing education unit credits to counselors and social workers.

“You don't have to be a professional to request this program,” McDaniels said. “You can do it for your church group, your group of friends, whatever — we just need two hours of your time to help educate you on what are the signs of child abuse and what should we be vigilant about to prevent child abuse from happening.”

To report an incident of child sexual abuse, contact your local DHHR office or call the state Abuse and Neglect hotline at 1-800-352-6513.

https://therecorddelta.com/article/how-common-is-child-sexual-abuse

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Iowa

Child sex abuse 'No. 1 hardest crime to prosecute'

Most of the cases in Linn County end with plea deals, not trials

by Trish Mehaffey

CEDAR RAPIDS — When a Linn County jury last year acquitted a man accused of sexually abusing a 16-year-old girl for more than a year, the teenager within weeks transformed from being “spitfire and comedy” to “emotionally boiling over,” her mom says.

“I didn't know,” said Kay, the mother, as tears filled her eyes. “She was 14 when she first told me. It came out in sporadic statements. She said, ‘Do you think I'm disgusting?' I knew then, and I took her to the police department. I knew not to ask any more — so I wouldn't compromise the investigation.”

The fact the case went to trial is unusual in Linn County — figures show most end in plea deals. But having gone to trial, it's not at all unusual the jury found the accused not guilty.

It is exceedingly difficult to make child sexual abuse cases stick at trial, according to prosecutors, police and advocates, because months may have passed before the abuse came to light, child witnesses may waver and there seldom is the additional physical evidence jurors crave.

“It's the No. 1 hardest crime to prosecute,” said Cedar Rapids police Officer Charity Hansel, who investigated sex and internet crimes against children for 11 years.

Hansel said she had a case several years ago where jurors asked afterward why police hadn't fingerprinted the child's genital area.

“Because it's not possible,” Hansel said. “TV crime shows and the internet is killing us because people see these cases where two felony crimes are solved in an hour, and there is all kinds of physical evidence and witnesses. In sexual assaults, 85 percent of the victims don't report and it comes down to he said, she said.”

REASONABLE DOUBT?

As is the case with most sexual abuse and assault incidents, The Gazette is not using Kay's full name in this article to protect her daughter's identity.

Kay said she did not know the details of what was alleged to have happened to her daughter at the hands of a relative until the trial.

Indeed, the major evidence in the case, as in many other such cases, was the child's testimony, said First Assistant Linn County Attorney Nick Maybanks.

“It should be enough to find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt if you believe the child,” he said. “She provided credible testimony with many details of the abuse. I have no doubt she was telling the truth.”

Kay said she and her daughter were in shock after the man was found not guilty. Her daughter broke down outside court and cried for days.

“It was her decision to testify, and it was important that she got to say what she wanted to say,” Kay said. “I just didn't want her to be hurt again. I'm not sure I could do it (testify). When you have a baby … you don't think there will be nothing to help,” Kay said, tears welling up again.

After the trial, jurors told Maybanks they believed the teen but needed “something more,” he said. They questioned the police investigation — things they thought investigators should have done. Maybanks said police were thorough, but there was no physical evidence.

“If prosecutors are going to be held to this kind of standard in these cases, then it will affect how we file charges,” Maybanks said. “I don't think there should have to be evidence of physical harm in order to prosecute a sexual abuse.”

CASES POSE DILEMMAS

Eighty-three child sexual abuse cases have been filed in Linn County since 2013, with nine still pending, according to unofficial numbers provided by the county attorney to St. Luke's Child Protection Center.

Of the 74 resolved cases, only six went to trial, and defendants were acquitted in five of those.

Sixty-one cases ended in plea agreements. Four cases were dismissed and two were transferred to Juvenile Court.

Maybanks estimated the conviction rate at 88 percent for Linn County child sex abuse cases over the last four years — a “fair rate of resolution” for the state and victims, he said.

But the best resolution, he added, may not be a trial. By avoiding trial, a child doesn't have to testify and tell strangers and a judge intimate details of how “their childhood is stolen.”

Maybanks said he always consults with parents about going to trial, but ultimately it's his decision.

“It's more important to me that we've helped a child,” Maybanks said while sitting at his desk, which has Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots and two racetracks for child victims to play with when they meet with him. “That's a bigger victory than putting away a person for more time.”

Penalties for child sex abuse crimes range from lascivious conduct with a minor, a serious misdemeanor that could bring a year in prison, up to felony second-degree sexual abuse drawing a 25-year term.

The offender must serve 70 percent of the sentence before being eligible for parole, and then on the registry for 10 years to life, depending on the offense. And also depending on the offense, the abuser is subject to special parole of between 10 years and life.

'JUST WANT IT TO STOP'

Hansel, now a school resource officer at Kennedy High School, has worked many high-profile cases, including the sexual assault and murder of 10-year-old Jetseta Gage in 2005. Roger Bentley was convicted of kidnapping and killing Jetseta in 2006, and his brother, James Bentley, who sexually abused the child, was convicted in federal court in 2007 and also in Benton County in 2008. Both are in prison.

“I can count on one hand how many children were not telling the truth in all the years I investigated these cases,” Hansel said. “Children are not mentally developed enough or experienced enough to make up a detailed lie and be able to maintain it.”

Hansel said the burden of proof for probable cause to arrest someone in sex abuse cases is high, and she never wanted to arrest an innocent person because then the “real suspect” would have the opportunity to abuse another child.

Sandra Fischer, a psychologist with Tanager Place, a Cedar Rapids center helping children and families, agreed with Hansel that children don't have a motive to lie about something as traumatic as sexual abuse.

Cases of parents “coaching” a child seldom happen, she said.

“Kids worry about it happening to another,” said Fischer, who starts her own practice in May. “It's not about revenge or justice for them. They just want it to stop and for someone to believe them.”

Children who've been abused, she said, are being asked to do something most adults don't want to do — talk about sexual acts. If a case goes to trial, they have to see the accused abuser in court and testify.

“Ninety percent of sexual abuse happens by someone the child likes, loves or lives with,” Fischer said. “It's not going to be a stranger. It's someone who has access to the child and someone they trust.”

Anastasia Wilson, victim/witness coordinator with Linn County Attorney's Office, said it's common that a child doesn't provide all the details of the abuse in the beginning of an investigation — instead revealing details over time.

Sometimes, more information comes out after a St. Luke's Hospital Child Protection Center interview, and then the prosecutor sends the child back to the center for another interview.

That interview is taped, along with the child's testimony, Wilson said. The video recordings usually are allowed at trial. But not always.

A judge in 2014 allowed Maybanks to show the interview of a 9-year-old girl who testified at trial she couldn't remember the sexual abuse. But as a 6-year-old, she told a Child Protection Center forensic interviewer that James Olds, 48, of Marion, sexually assaulted her, touched her, exposed himself and took illicit photos of her.

Olds was convicted, but the jury also heard other evidence, including that he posted a photo of the girl on social media, saying she was “sexy.”

Assistant Linn County Attorney Jordan Schier prosecuted a sexual abuse case two weeks ago where the judge didn't allow the video because the 7-year-old girl, at trial, recanted the sexual abuse she described in the video and said she didn't remember. The defendant was acquitted.

INTERVIEWING CHILDREN

Rosanne Van Cura, a supervisor and forensic interviewer with the Child Protection Center, said some children change their stories or take back what they've said — but it's not common. She also said there have been cases where the child may not tell anyone of the abuse for weeks or months. In one case, it was four years.

It's also not unusual, she said, for a child to provide different information to different people. Their age, she said, also impacts what details they can provide.

Van Cura said when a child is brought in for an interview, the interviewer first meets with investigators from the Iowa Department of Human Services or law enforcement to learn about the child, such as family and school information, medical issues and what the child has alleged.

The child and forensic interviewer go into one room; investigators observe from a room next door where the child can't see them.

The interviewer's questions are open-ended — avoiding yes or no answers, Van Cura said. Their job is to listen to the child and try to get as many details as possible, such as clothing worn by the abuser, what the room looked like, the lighting, the time of day.

These details can be used as evidence and can add to the child's credibility, she said.

“Many kids are matter of fact about it,” Van Cura said. “They may not be emotional. Others may be shy talking about it. Teens are usually different — more teary.”

Fischer said she thinks the emotion of the child can affect jurors.

“I think jurors expect kids to break down and cry or be able to fully tell their story like an adult,” Fischer said. “Kids communicate differently. And you have to remember by the time this goes to court, the child has been questioned numerous times and talked about the abuse.”

'THINK LIKE A CHILD'

Officer Hansel said it's possible to get corroborating evidence even when there's a lack of physical evidence.

“We can nail down as many details as possible, even the most insignificant,” she said.

In one of Hansel's cases, a little girl said she watched Brer Rabbit on the abuser's television, which was unusual because the old cartoon isn't generally available.

Investigators searched the suspect's home for a video but found nothing. They then checked video rentals and discovered the suspect's wife, who ran a day care, had rented a Brer Rabbit video. It didn't prove the assault, but it helped corroborate the child's story.

In another case, a 3-year-old girl described the man's genitals as green, which Hansel knew didn't make sense. But when she started thinking about what a child would see. Hansel asked the suspected abuser what color of underwear he wore. Usually green, he had said.

“We have to think outside the box — think like a child,” Hansel said. “Think like the victim.”

Maybanks agreed, saying he will continue to work with law enforcement to put together solid investigations and keep believing children who are brave enough to come forward.

“I want to make sure we can help as many kids feel they are safe and loved,” he said.

http://www.thegazette.com/subject/news/public-safety/child-sex-abuse-no-1-hardest-crime-to-prosecute-20170423

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Maine

Protecting children is everyone's responsibility

by Mary Murphy

April is Child Abuse Prevention Month, and youth-serving organizations across the country have been working this month to raise awareness and understanding about a topic that needs more attention in more communities: child sexual abuse.

Statistics reveal that about 1 in 10 children in the United States will be sexually abused before their 18th birthday. Sadly, in more than 90 percent of reported cases, the abuser is someone the child knows and trusts.

The YMCA of Auburn-Lewiston, along with other YMCAs across the country, will sponsor Five Days of Action for Child Abuse Prevention the week of April 24–28. During this week our Y will share information and resources with the community about how to recognize, prevent and report child sexual abuse.

While we are placing a special emphasis on this topic during the month of April, the protection of youth from abuse is our Y's top priority every single day of the year.

That's because keeping kids safe from abuse is essential to their healthy development. Studies show that children who experience adverse childhood experiences like sexual abuse are more likely to adopt risky behaviors like smoking and drug use, develop chronic health conditions such as depression and heart disease, underperform academically and die early.

Also, abuse doesn't discriminate. It happens to children of all ages, genders, races, faiths and socioeconomic classes. It is a broad-based, too-common crime in our country today.

The good news is that child sexual abuse is preventable, and at the YMCA of Auburn-Lewiston, we have taken this message to heart.

We have spent the last year updating our policies and best practices to reflect the latest research and trends in abuse prevention. This includes creating a staff position dedicated to abuse risk management for our entire organization.

All YMCA staff and volunteers are screened carefully at the time of hire and trained in Child Abuse Prevention and Appropriate Touch. In addition, all YMCA members are screened against the National Sex Offender Public Registry to help ensure no one can access the Y facility with the intention of abusing a child.

Every staff member at the Y is a mandated reporter who is trained to identify and respond to inappropriate behavior. These conversations can be difficult for everyone involved. To the extent that we can, we make a point to include families in the reporting process should we determine a report must be made.

Hundreds of children walk through the Y's doors every day. We are fully committed to doing our part to keep youth protected from abuse in our community, and we are asking you to join us.

Please stop by our facility during the Five Days of Action from April 24 through 28, or visit us during Healthy Kids Day, April 29 from noon to 3 p.m. to learn more about how you can get involved in this important effort.

I encourage everyone to start today. You can help the children in your life learn the difference between appropriate and inappropriate touch, and model healthy boundaries. That means listening to our children and respecting when they say “No” to unwanted physical contact.

As a community, we have an obligation to nurture our children and protect their only childhood. We must prevent child sexual abuse to live up to this obligation.

Mary Murphy is Chief Human Resources & Risk Management Officer at the YMCA of Auburn-Lewiston, where she has worked for more than 25 years.

April is Child Abuse Prevention Month, and youth-serving organizations across the country have been working this month to raise awareness and understanding about a topic that needs more attention in more communities: child sexual abuse.

Statistics reveal that about 1 in 10 children in the United States will be sexually abused before their 18th birthday. Sadly, in more than 90 percent of reported cases, the abuser is someone the child knows and trusts.

The YMCA of Auburn-Lewiston, along with other YMCAs across the country, will sponsor Five Days of Action for Child Abuse Prevention the week of April 24–28. During this week our Y will share information and resources with the community about how to recognize, prevent and report child sexual abuse.

While we are placing a special emphasis on this topic during the month of April, the protection of youth from abuse is our Y's top priority every single day of the year.

That's because keeping kids safe from abuse is essential to their healthy development. Studies show that children who experience adverse childhood experiences like sexual abuse are more likely to adopt risky behaviors like smoking and drug use, develop chronic health conditions such as depression and heart disease, underperform academically and die early.

Also, abuse doesn't discriminate. It happens to children of all ages, genders, races, faiths and socioeconomic classes. It is a broad-based, too-common crime in our country today.

The good news is that child sexual abuse is preventable, and at the YMCA of Auburn-Lewiston, we have taken this message to heart.

We have spent the last year updating our policies and best practices to reflect the latest research and trends in abuse prevention. This includes creating a staff position dedicated to abuse risk management for our entire organization.

All YMCA staff and volunteers are screened carefully at the time of hire and trained in Child Abuse Prevention and Appropriate Touch. In addition, all YMCA members are screened against the National Sex Offender Public Registry to help ensure no one can access the Y facility with the intention of abusing a child.

Every staff member at the Y is a mandated reporter who is trained to identify and respond to inappropriate behavior. These conversations can be difficult for everyone involved. To the extent that we can, we make a point to include families in the reporting process should we determine a report must be made.

Hundreds of children walk through the Y's doors every day. We are fully committed to doing our part to keep youth protected from abuse in our community, and we are asking you to join us.

Please stop by our facility during the Five Days of Action from April 24 through 28, or visit us during Healthy Kids Day, April 29 from noon to 3 p.m. to learn more about how you can get involved in this important effort.

I encourage everyone to start today. You can help the children in your life learn the difference between appropriate and inappropriate touch, and model healthy boundaries. That means listening to our children and respecting when they say “No” to unwanted physical contact.

As a community, we have an obligation to nurture our children and protect their only childhood. We must prevent child sexual abuse to live up to this obligation.

California

Tad Cummins arrest: Tipster reveals how teacher covered up identity

by Jason Hanna, Sara Sidner and Emanuella Grinberg

Yreka, California (CNN)Tad Cummins was an intensely sought fugitive, trumpeted from coast to coast as the Tennessee teacher accused of running off with his 15-year-old student.

But before his capture this week, he and the young woman he called his wife slipped into a remote Northern California community unrecognized and Cummins passed himself off for days as a down-on-his luck Colorado man who'd just lost his job and home, according to the man who eventually tipped off police.

Cummins was arrested -- and the girl was found safe -- Thursday outside a cabin in Cecilville, California, ending a 39-day hunt for the teen who was reported missing some 1,900 miles away in her hometown south of Nashville.

The former teacher is due in a California court Friday, facing federal and state charges stemming from her disappearance. The girl is expected to be returned to relatives in Tennessee Friday, her family says.

The two spent at least one night in the cabin, police say. But they'd been in the heavily wooded area 60 miles south of the Oregon line since at least last week, according to Griffin Barry, the man who says he eventually helped police capture Cummins.

Cummins and the teen arrived at a Cecilville-area gas station last week, apparently on their way to visit a commune, Barry told CNN affiliate KDRV.

Cummins, 50, told Barry he was 44, and that the teen was his 22-year-old wife, Barry told CNN affiliate KRCR.

"He was saying he was from Colorado. He said he had a house fire and he got fired from his job, and he had his last $10 or whatever," Barry told KRCR. "I gave him $40 and put gas in his tank."

The pair went to the commune but returned to the gas station Tuesday, apparently having been turned away, Barry told KDRV.

Barry said he offered Cummins work -- moving rocks -- and a place to stay: a small cabin for which Barry was the caretaker.

But Barry said he eventually became suspicious, noting that Cummins was driving a Nissan Rogue without any license plates, and that Cummins' companion spoke few words for herself, he told KRCR and CNN affiliate KOBI.

As he discussed and researched the pair with someone, Barry saw Cummins' picture online in an urgent Amber Alert widely distributed by authorities.

Cummins and a 15-year-old girl stayed in one of these cabins in Cecilville, California, this week, the property's caretaker told CNN affiliate KOBI.

He called police Wednesday night, KRCR reported, and authorities asked the caretaker to help them capture Cummins.

Thursday morning, Barry asked Cummins to come outside and help him build a rock wall on the property. When Cummins left the cabin, investigators were there to arrest him, the cabin's owner, Monk O'Hare, told CNN.

Siskiyou County sheriff's Sgt. Mike Gilley confirmed that his team worked with a neighbor to draw Cummins out of the cabin. Cummins was taken into custody. Elizabeth was walking behind him and was detained.

"There aren't words in the English language to describe the level of relief and elation experienced by the Thomas family," said Jason Whatley, the attorney for the girl's family. "Now begins another hard chapter, but for now, we celebrate."

'It only takes one tip'

Cummins and the girl disappeared March 13 as a police investigation into their relationship was heating up.

A high school health sciences teacher in the Tennessee town of Culleoka, Cummins had been suspended in February, less than a month after a student reported seeing him and the 15-year-old kissing in a classroom.

Surveillance video showed the pair at a Walmart in Oklahoma City on March 15. But after that, the trail went cold.

After the capture, Cummins was charged with one federal count of transportation of a minor across state lines for the purpose of criminal sexual intercourse, said Jack Smith, acting US attorney for Middle District of Tennessee. The charge carries a minimum of 10 years.

He also faces state charges of sexual contact with a minor and aggravated kidnapping, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said last month.

The girl is in federal custody and arrangements are being made for her return home.

The main concern is for her emotional well-being, TBI Director Mark Gwyn said.

"As we have said from the start, it only takes one tip," Gwyn said. "This is yet another example of the value of the public helping us to rescue a kidnapping victim."

Gilley described her condition as alternating between "stoic" and "emotional," understandable given the circumstances, he said.

"It was a very traumatic experience for her. Her mood was very alternating," he said. "The two obviously have a relationship ... her response to us and to law enforcement escalated up and down."

Estranged wife speaks out

Cummins' estranged wife, Jill Cummins, was "very emotional" when she learned both were found safe, her attorney, Michael Cox, said.

"She is excited that they were found and nobody was hurt," Cox said. "She has not spoken to Tad."

Jill Cummins had already filed for divorce, saying she felt betrayed by her husband. She had no idea why her husband went to northern California.

"This is not somewhere they had frequently visited," her attorney said. "I'm not aware that they had ever been there."

http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/21/us/tennessee-teacher-kidnapping-suspect-arrested/

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Pennsylvania

BTS and GRACE offer historic seminary course on child sexual abuse

by Religion News Service

“A primary reason why abuse victims are afraid of the church is because of the level of immaturity and ignorance they have experienced in how they are treated or handled by the community and leadership of a church.” – child sexual abuse survivor

Sexual abuse of children within faith communities is an extremely complex topic, and failing to comprehend and address it can have devastating and lifelong consequences. Yet, research shows that only about three percent of seminaries provide any preparation in child abuse prevention and response (according to the National Child Protection Training Center). Church leaders must be educated before-the-job, not on-the-job. Education about child sex abuse must be in tandem with education on studying scripture, preaching, counseling, and administration.

Biblical Theological Seminary (BTS) has teamed up with Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment (GRACE) to offer a first of its kind, 3-credit-hour seminary course that will educate, train, and equip future pastors and church staff members on protecting children from offenders and serving adult survivors of child sexual abuse. GRACE worked with the National Child Protection Training Center and a team of Christian theologians, pastors, counselors, and child protection professionals to craft this historic course.

In describing the need for this course, GRACE's executive director, Boz Tchividjian, stated, “The on-the-job training of pastors and other faith leaders in preventing and responding to child sexual abuse isn't working – it is dangerous and all too often has devastating consequences.

On-the-job training all too often results in greater harm to the very individuals who are most in need of protection and help.”

The course, offered in June, 2017, will cover topics such as:

•  Definitions and common dynamics of child abuse in its many permutations

•  Common spiritual, health, and mental health impacts of child sexual abuse

•  The common behavioral characteristics of child sex offenders

•  Biblical and theological foundations for child protection

•  Best practices in child protection policies, including mandated reporting laws and our moral obligation to report abuse

•  Best practices in responding to active sexual abuse allegations and dealing with past abuse

•  Components of a safe and supportive environment for survivors at church

•  The purpose and value of professional mental health care for victims and perpetrators

“The church must be a safe place for all, especially children. If the church is to fulfill its divine mandate, his followers must ensure that it is a protected environment where children can grow and reach their full potential. Jesus said ‘let the children come to me' and that presupposes that the church is a warm, nurturing and very safe place.” – Dr. Frank James, President of Biblical Theological SeminaryThis course is a significant step forward in creating a Christian community that better protects children and walks alongside survivors.

This course is currently open for enrollment. To learn more or to enroll, contact the Biblical Seminary academic office: academic@biblical.edu or 215-368-5000 X143

To learn more about this curriculum or the work of GRACE:

Contact

Boz Tchividjian
boz@netgrace.org

http://religionnews.com/2017/04/21/bts-and-grace-offer-historic-seminary-course-on-child-sexual-abuse/

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Bermuda

Opinion

The time is now to act on healing scars of sexual abuse

by Michael Weeks

Bermuda is an idyllic place of natural beauty and community connectedness. We abide by a deep sense of shared responsibility and belonging. Many of us have access to educational and economic opportunities that most in the world can only dream of.

But Bermuda also has its divisions and secrets. Concealed beneath the surface is a generations-old affliction, one that results in untold emotional hardship and shattered relationships.

An affliction that is a root cause for alcoholism, depression, anxiety, social isolation, poor academic achievement, adolescent pregnancy, eating disorders, violent crime, drug abuse, sexual violence and suicide.

That root cause is childhood trauma. And perhaps the most devastating of childhood traumas is sexual abuse.

As we come to the close of Child Abuse Prevention Month, the opportunity exists to bring our affliction into the light.

According to Bermuda's Department of Child and Family Services, from 2011 to 2014 there were 541 reported sexual abuse cases involving children between the ages of 9 and 14. For sexual assaults in any jurisdiction, the incidence of crime far exceeds the incidence of reporting.

Child sexual abuse is a persistent and pernicious public health problem. It is likely to be the most prevalent health problem that children face, with the most serious array of consequences.

“Epidemic” has been used with good intention to convey the alarming number of children affected by sexual abuse. But, by definition, an epidemic is an outbreak; a sudden and widespread occurrence of a disease or phenomenon.

Epidemics spike, but then they recede. Not so with child sexual abuse. More accurately, it is endemic in Bermuda. It is an affliction that is commonly and unremittingly found across generations in every race, religion and socioeconomic class. While there are risk factors that increase its likelihood, no segment of the population is spared.

While the endemic nature of childhood sexual abuse is true across the globe, Bermuda and many of the British Overseas Territories have a unique and particularly problematic dynamic. Childhood sexual abuse has been endured in silence for so long because we are so connected, so tightly knit. The unearned shame of children who are sexually abused has caused them to hide from those who are best able to help them because those people are connected to their abusers.

But through their advocacy work, the Scars charity is helping Bermuda to come out of hiding and is throwing off that contract of shame. Scars stands for Saving Children and Revealing Secrets, and the organisation is doing exactly that.

In October 2011, Debi Ray-Rivers, herself a product of rape and then a survivor of child sexual abuse, founded the organisation. Mrs Ray-Rivers has built an organisation that has been powerfully and swiftly embraced by the community and by youth-serving organisations island-wide. Local sporting clubs, churches, summer camps, charities and schools have mandated that adults working with children be certified in Darkness to Light's Stewards of Children, an American-based child sexual abuse prevention training, which Scars provides free of charge.

Through the work done by Scars, Bermuda has become the first country in the world to have trained more than 10 per cent of its adult population in the prevention of child sexual abuse. Because of its public awareness and public education initiatives, Scars is now a household name.

Parents are now having open, protective conversations with their children. Other organisations are establishing much needed policies and codes of conduct that divert offenders. They are altering their physical environments to keep children safe. Countless adult survivors are coming forward with their stories, not only during trainings, but also within their families where the abuse has frequently taken place. Support and healing are becoming more commonplace.

In fact, the close-knit nature of Bermuda, once a reason for secrecy and shame, is becoming our best asset in the movement to protect children. The embracing of knowledge and healing has been nothing short of phenomenal at the level of the everyday person.

However, the top-down systems have failed to do their part, sometimes deplorably so, to enact legislation and structures that would keep children safe. As of today, the commitment to our children by our people has outpaced the commitment by our governance.

Our community has been rightly outraged by the release of former police officer and convicted child sexual offender John Malcolm “Chalkie” White. As an example of the failing system at present, Mr White's original sentence of 22 years was reduced to 18 years on appeal. Permitted to opt out of treatment and rehabilitation while imprisoned, he was still released after only 12 years.

For 12 years, this man sat in prison without intervention. The opportunity for such intervention existed for 12 years. Today, his threat to children remains unchecked. Mr White is under no obligation to receive treatment. He has no obligation to be monitored by a parole officer. He has no limitations on his access to children in schools, playgrounds, childcare facilities and other establishments frequented by children and families.

And it should be acknowledged that his victims will see Mr White roaming the community with the knowledge that he has not undergone any treatment. I wonder how that must feel?

We need our legislative body in Bermuda to do its part.

We need the judicial system to mandate rehabilitation and therapy as a condition of eventual release.

We need that rehabilitation to be provided by professionals who are fully trained and vetted to understand the manipulative attitudes and behaviours of child sex offenders. We need that rehabilitation to be enforced by the prison system.

We need convicted sex offenders to be evaluated by a panel of professionals before their release so that they may be assessed for their risk to children. We need safe zones for children that convicted sex offenders may not enter.

And we need legislation that mandates child sexual abuse prevention training for staff and volunteers in organisations that serve children.

These needs have been made known, and supporting research is readily available to our politicians. Still, our community waits for their action.

The Bermudian community is being safely ushered by Scars through a process of awareness, education and commitment to the safeguarding of children. As they receive Darkness to Light's Stewards of Children programme, everyday people have given their hearts and their consistent effort to the cause of child sexual abuse prevention. Scars is committed to providing information and training to all adults that are entrusted with children in our community.

So, what is our commitment?

It is a myth that the issue is just now coming to the forefront in Bermuda. We have been aware of it for far too long without decisive action from our legislators. On behalf of the children of Bermuda, I say now is the time to act.

Michael Weeks is the Shadow Minister of Community, Youth and Sport, and the MP for Pembroke East Central (Constituency 16)

http://www.royalgazette.com/opinion/article/20170421/time-is-now-to-act-on-healing-scars-of-sexual-abuse

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Oklahoma

From anger to hope: Survivor uses childhood experience to help others

by Kaylea M. Hutson-Miller

Before and after - that's how Julie White describes her life.

Before – a carefree childhood in northeast Oklahoma.

After - when a close family friend did the unspeakable, and she became a child victim of sexual assault.

Julie's after began when she spent the night with her mother's best friend's family.

The man, a local pharmacist, would use the visit to enter her bedroom and rape her.

She was 9-years-old.

Telling her story

Julie first told a cousin about the incident. The pair were reading magazines and Julie was worried she might be pregnant. The cousin encouraged her to tell her parents.

Telling her parents about the incident, Julie then found herself at the police station recounting first what happened to a detective and later describing the abuse in detail, in a written report.

“I had to write out everything that happened,” Julie recalled. “I used verbiage that was absolutely not appropriate for a 9-year-old.”

A few days later, Julie told her story to Department of Human Services caseworkers. That disclosure eventually led to the forensic interview in a counseling room with dolls, a table and a video camera.

By that point, Julie had told her story six times.

After the forensic interview, Julie was taken to the children's advocacy center in Claremore for a physical exam. This meant Julie would need to tell her story for a seventh time to the doctor and nurse.

Julie said the medical personnel were able to document some physical findings, which indicated signs of abuse. Prosecutors later used this as evidence during the trial to prove the man's guilt.

Julie said her memories of the investigation are limited. She remembers the main things, who she told, and all of the exams.

She also remembers going to “tons of counseling” – first in one-on-one sessions with a therapist, and then later, in-group sessions.

“I knew it wasn't my fault, but I felt different than everyone else,” Julie said.

Advocacy centers

Julie's abuse came at the time before child advocacy centers in Ottawa and Delaware County existed.

Now when a child discloses abuse, law enforcement personnel have the child questioned by a trained forensic interviewer at a facility like Delaware County Children's Special Advocacy Network in Jay or the Ottawa County Child Advocacy Center in Miami.

This means the child's retelling of the story is limited to the forensic interviewer and the medical personnel.

Others working the case – including the detectives and DHS caseworkers – use the recorded interview rather than questioning the victim multiple times.

‘Horrible experience'

Eventually prosecutors brought the man to trial. The man hired one of the best defense attorneys, at the time, in northeast Oklahoma to fight the charges.

Julie, now as an adult, knows the attorney was simply doing his job.

But for the 10-year-old girl testifying, she describes her encounters with the attorney as “an absolute horrible experience.”

“I was so mad,” Julie said. “He made me feel so horrible.”

While she does not remember each moment of the trial, one remains etched in her memory.

“I remember puking in Ben Loring's trash can and laying in a fetal position by his desk,” Julie recalled.

She knows the judge called a recess in the case, and then Assistant District Attorney Barry Denney and others fought to have the judge allow her to finish her testimony sitting at an angle so she would be looking at the judge, rather than her abuser.

“I was a little kid, and little kids are vulnerable,” Julie said. “Going through the questions in detail was terrifying.”

Eventually the courts found the man guilty. He received a 20-year sentence for raping Julie.

The case would eventually prompt Denney – now a judge in Delaware County – to gather people together in Delaware County to form DCCSAN.

“I remember when they first started to raise money for DCCSAN,” Julie said. “I remember going to one of the first Winterset [fundraisers].

“I think the fact that we have this, is amazing. [Victims] shouldn't have to tell their story 500 times, to 500 people.

“In a way, I was envious. Why didn't they have this when I needed it.”

Moving forward

Julie said for a while, she was obsessed with knowing where the man was – especially after he was released from prison.

“I had the thought that he might be planning my demise [while in prison],” Julie said. “It sounds crazy, but a lot of victims worry about that.

“He made my life hell. He took my innocence away from me.”

At that time, lifetime sex offender registration was not required. At this point, Julie knows the man is free, living in northeast Oklahoma.

“You get through it,” Julie said. “It does happen.”

Eventually Julie completed her nursing degree. In her first year of nursing school, she decided to pursue the SANE or Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner's certification.

“It was important to me,” Julie said. “You have to be a nurse for a year before you can take the class, so I made it one of my first goals.”

Certified in Oklahoma, Julie is now working to earn the national certification.

She credits Denney, and the way he handled her case, for much of her success. The pair have remained friends to this day. Denney and his wife attended Julie's graduation from nursing school.

Julie works for a hospital in northeast Oklahoma. As a trained SANE nurse, she meets with victims and documents their stories. She also conducts the necessary physical exams, documenting in writing and in photographs any abnormal bruising, wounds or physical findings.

During those exams, she collects evidence of the assault, which is then turned to law enforcement officials following a strict protocol.

Julie said the examination also includes a discussion with the victims about all medical issues related to the incident, including sexual transmitted diseases and aftercare with their primary physician.

“The one thing I always tell them is to please follow up with an advocate,” Julie said. “There are so many resources available. Help is available.”

Julie said she became a SANE certified nurse for one simple reason – to help others.

“There are resources out there. People can help,” Julie said. “Victims are not alone. This can happen to anybody.”

Help is Available

Everyone, regardless of job, relationship or age, is mandated by Oklahoma law to report abuse.

In Title 10A, the state statute says “anyone suspecting child abuse or neglect must report it.”

If you, or someone you know, is a victim of physical, sexual or mental abuse, contact the Oklahoma Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-522-3511.

For more information about the services offered at DCCSAN - the Delaware County Children's Special Advocacy Network - persons interested may call 918-253-4539 or visit www.dccsan.org.

Changing the Laws

While Julie told her parents - and authorities - about the abuse when it happened, many childhood abuse victims do not, for a variety of reasons.

The disclosure often comes after the child becomes an adult when the statute of limitations for potential criminal charges for the offender has long pasted.

A bill, HB1468, currently moving through the Oklahoma Legislature, could change this.

Known as the Hidden Predator Act, it modifies time limitations for prosecuting certain sexual offenses.

Authored by Rep. Carol Bush (R) and Sen. David Holt (D), the bill has multiple co-sponsors including Rep. Ben Loring (D-Miami), Rep. Josh West (R-Grove) and Rep. Kevin McDugle (R-Broken Arrow).

West said he joined the bill, because as the spouse of a therapist who works with child abuse victims, he has seen the lifetime effects of abuse.

West said the bill, which extends the statute of limitations until the victim reaches age 45, allows survivors additional time to seek justice.

For McDugle, the decision to support the bill is personal.

When the legislation came before his colleagues, McDugle stood in the House chamber and began to relate his experiences as a teenage victim of abuse.

At the age of 14, McDugle, like many of his friends, was drawn to the “cool youth leader” within his community.

One night the youth leader invited a group of students to his home. McDugle said he went, not thinking anything about the event.

At some point the other students left, leaving McDugle alone with the man.

“The next thing I know, he's having me in his bed,” McDugle said. “His motives were inappropriate. He began to touch me.”

McDugle said he felt confused by the man's actions. Unable to drive, he felt trapped, unable to leave or seek help.

“It was a one time incident, but I've had to deal with it for 35 years,” McDugle said.

At the age of 42, McDugle felt bold enough to tell his wife, and then later his parents. He has since told his story through multiple platforms, in hopes it encourages other survivors to seek help.

McDugle believes most survivors do not seek help until they reach their 40s, when maturity helps them realize the abuse was not their fault.

Current laws in Oklahoma say that criminal charges may be pursued up to 12 years from the point of discovery. For adults, this means 12 years past their 18th birthday, or until the age of 31.

“It takes longer for a child to process abuse,” McDugle said. “This is an important bill.”

When McDugle's colleagues voted on the bill in February, it passed with no dissenting votes. He believes telling his story made the bill stronger, which led to the 92 to 0 vote in the House.

It has now moved to the Senate, where it has gone through the Senate Judiciary Committee and is awaiting scheduling for a floor vote.

http://www.grandlakenews.com/news/20170421/from-anger-to-hope-survivor-uses-childhood-experience-to-help-others

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Montana

Governor to sign Tara's Law paving way for school-based child sex abuse education

by Perry Backus

HAMILTON – For Tara Walker Lyons and the hundreds of other childhood sexual abuse survivors she has met over the past two years, the ink scribbled at the bottom of House Bill 298 will be much more than just a signature.

“When you're a victim of childhood sexual abuse, you're left with a feeling of helplessness,” said the mother of two from Hamilton. “There's an inability to fight back when something like this happens to you and your family.

“This has offered a chance for many to believe that if you work hard enough, you can make a difference,” Lyons said. “Tara's Law has given a lot of kids a goal.”

On Friday morning, Walker will join Rep. Ed Greef, R-Florence, and a small group of supporters – including four girls between the ages of 7 and 12 who themselves are childhood sexual abuse survivors – to watch Gov. Steve Bullock sign the legislation that will provide public schools with the framework to help educate both children and educators on how to address childhood sexual abuse.

It's been a long time coming.

Lyons was 12 when she was sexually abused by a relative.

She didn't really understand just how deeply that impacted her life until she found herself in treatment at the Montana Chemical Dependency Center for her abuse of alcohol.

“When I first started treatment, I felt like my life was worthless,” she remembered. “I had no hope at all.”

While she was there, Lyons discovered that she wasn't alone.

“I found out how pervasive childhood sexual abuse is,” Lyons said. “I had always felt like I could smooth things over and get through it by drinking. I found others who were living their lives with the same pattern. I learned that I definitely was not alone.”

In July 2015, Lyons took the first courageous step to offer her story to the public. With her young daughter asleep in the next room, she sat down in front of a video camera and told her emotion-charged story.

The 11-minute video went viral and doors that Lyons never knew existed began to open.

She began telling her story to inmates as part of the Montana Department of Corrections Victim Impact Panel. She created a Facebook page called “Defending Innocence” to spread the word. And she learned about a nationally recognized program, Erin's Law, that requires childhood sexual abuse prevention be taught in schools.

Erin's Law is named after author and activist Erin Merryn, who was molested by a family member between the ages of 11 and 13. When Lyons began her journey, Montana was one of six states in the nation where the law had yet to be considered.

As of today, there will be five.

“It's going to be a big day,” Greef said. “Tara will be front and center for all of the victims that she represents. This bill is just a beginning. It brings this issue into the spotlight. Now, people have to recognize that it exists.”

Greef named Montana's version of Erin's Law after Tara.

In order for the bill to pass during this financially challenged legislative session, Greef was forced to amend it to remove any source of funding.

“The early estimate was $190,000 a year,'' he said. "While OPI was very much on board and committed to the program, we all recognized that if we insisted on that funding, the bill wouldn't have gone through. I think this is a good place to start.”

Considering the fact that Greef didn't even know Lyons existed until the second week of January, the longtime legislator is in awe of just how quickly everything came together.

“A normal track for a bill like this would be two sessions,” he said. “The story itself on how this came together is remarkable. Doors were opened, contacts were made, green lights were given by leadership and OPI came on board. Every time you turned around, another door opened.

“Whether that be happenstance or divine intervention, it would be up to you to decide,” Greef said. “Having been here four times, I've never had a bill take the fast track like this one.”

That journey began with an email from Lyons, who asked the legislator if he might have a few moments to visit on a Wednesday afternoon.

“I didn't know what she wanted to talk about,” he said. “She said she was from Ravalli County. I said I would be getting out of a committee meeting at 4 p.m.”

At about five minutes to 4, Greef remembers looking up to see a young woman walk into the rear of the committee meeting room, but didn't make the connection.

“I sent her a text saying I would be available in about five minutes,” Greef said. “She answered back that she was sitting in the committee room.''

And so as the janitors went to work to clean the room, Greef listened to Lyons' story. When he asked her if she had a solution, she told him about Erin's Law.

“She told me that many of these kids don't have much of a home life,” Greef said. “Their first positive contact by an adult is often a teacher. A teacher is someone they can trust and someone who cares about them. They can talk to them.”

By now, it was nearly 5 p.m. and the Capitol was starting to empty.

“I asked her if she had the time to walk up to the third floor to see if we could find anyone to share this idea,” Greef said.

Around the first corner, they ran into Rep. Kim Dudik, D-Missoula. After chatting with her, they took a few more steps and found Rep. Diane Sands, another Democrat from Missoula.

Then they went upstairs and found House Majority Leader Ron Ehli, R-Hamilton, still in his office. Five minute later, Speaker of the House Austin Knutson, R-Culbertson, walked by and Lyons told her story once again.

“Here, in just a short period of time, she had met five key people,” Greef said. “Those doors were opened and it just continued on that way.”

The bill would eventually pass the House 93-5, and the Senate 46-4.

Lyons said the legislative session was an emotional rollercoaster for her, but she gathered strength from the four young girls who bravely told their own stories in an early committee hearing.

“I think, in the end, everyone could see the urgency,” Lyons said.

Friday's signing ceremony isn't an ending for Lyons.

“It's really just a new beginning,” she said.

Next week, she'll speak to inmates at the prison in Shelby. She wants to start a camp for childhood sexual abuse survivors. And Lyons wants to spearhead an effort to fund therapy for the victims of that crime.

Beyond all that, she is also planning on making the rounds to meet with Montana educators to ensure the education on the prevention of childhood sexual abuse actually takes root.

“And when the Legislature meets next time, I'll be there to try to get funding put in place,” she said. “This is too important. This has the ability to change lives.”

http://missoulian.com/news/local/governor-to-sign-tara-s-law-paving-way-for-school/article_2555471e-8838-5570-b3f7-3d3665d24b61.html

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California

Stigma of abuse often drives male sexual assault survivors to suffer alone

by Alex MacLean

Scott Sunday wasn't quite 18 when he left home swearing to never look back.

The year was 1980 and Sunday was graduating from Sunny Hills High School in Fullerton. Immediately after the ceremony concluded, he ran up to the stands where his stepfather handed him his ticket to escape — a signed pink slip to an old, white Mercury.

Sunday raced home where his clothes were already packed, tied a mattress to the roof of his car, and then he was gone, thinking his troubles were now in the rearview. However, it would take decades for him to come to terms with the trauma he experienced as a child.

For years after high school, Sunday said he felt totally lost and didn't know why. He suffered from depression, anxiety, and abused alcohol in an attempt to numb the pain he felt.

He spent four years in the Marine Corps, bounced around jobs, was in and out of college, and, after getting his girlfriend pregnant, thought that starting his own family would maybe help him suppress the bad feelings from his childhood.

However, it wasn't until Sunday was in his 30s that the now 54-year-old Twain Harte resident discovered he's one in six men who have survived sexual assault or abuse.

“It didn't make sense,” Sunday said. “Yeah, there was the physical and verbal abuse, but it just didn't seem to me that was enough for me to feel like that… until that last dream.”

The dream

Sunday first remembers having the recurring nightmare following the death of his father shortly after his 5th birthday.

Sunday had been adopted as an infant. His parents couldn't have children of their own as his father had been paralyzed from a car accident.

The nightmare would be the almost the same every night.

Sunday said he would fall asleep and hear a voice calling out his name, then he would walk outside as if in a state of hypnosis and he laid down in the driveway.

While gazing up at the night sky, Sunday would see a pinprick of light among the stars that would grow larger and larger until it was the size of the sun and he could make out the features.

The face was that of an angry ram, with curled horns, snarling at him and shooting smoke out of its nostrils.

Sunday would break from his hypnosis and run inside, slamming the door to the house and pushing tables and chairs in front of it, but then he would see it slowly burning through the door and furniture.

The next thing he would remember is being carried back to his bed by a female family member, who would tell him he was having a bad dream.

A couple years later, the dreams stopped, Sunday said.

Running from the past

Just before Sunday's 8th birthday, his mother married a widowed attorney who brought with him four children, turning the former family of three into a family of eight.

Sunday hoped to put the past behind him after escaping from the household on the night of his graduation, but the feelings of anger toward his female abuser would linger long into his adulthood.

By the time Sunday reached his 30s, the marriage to his first wife had failed and he was still struggling to come to grips with the anger he felt toward a member of his own family.

Sunday began going to group therapy and counseling in his early 30s to save the marriage with his second wife, Laura, who he met while they were both working for a telephone company in 1993.

While at a session, a nutritionist told Sunday that he had to eat healthier, and he explained that he had always had an unexplainable fear of fruits and vegetables, so much so that he would starve if alone on a deserted island with nothing else to eat.

The nutritionist told Sunday that such a severe aversion to a food item has been identified in people who suffered extreme childhood trauma, most likely sexual abuse.

“I was just like, ‘Nope that didn't happen to me,' ” Sunday said. “Totally in denial.”

Getting help

The realization of what really happened to him finally came after Sunday went home from work one day, bought a bottle of booze, and drank himself “into oblivion,” he said.

Sunday blacked out and left a message on Laura's phone telling her about a night where a male relative played sexual games with him while his family was in the room.

“She played the message for me and it was like an explosion,” Sunday said. “From that point on, flashbacks and just horrible, horrible memories started flooding back, but it wasn't until about three years after that the final piece came into play.”

Sunday said he was lying in bed one night when he had the recurring nightmare from his childhood again.

“I'm laying next to my wife, and I recognize my voice and see the light coming down the hallway,” Sunday said. “I stand up just as the sun was coming to my doorway with the same angry ram face.”

But this time, the image of the ram started dripping away like wax on a candle to reveal another face, that of the woman who abused him.

“From that point forward, it was probably the first time in my life that I started getting healthy,” Sunday said.

Speaking out

Sunday began unraveling more of the mystery through subsequent therapy sessions, finally coming to grips with the sexual abuse he had suffered.

“It was from about 5-and-a-half to almost my 8th birthday,” Sunday said.

In 2001, Sunday and his wife moved to Tuolumne County after she retired from the phone company.

Sunday now works as a technician for Microtronics, an electronic manufacturing company in East Sonora. Laura works as the community services director for the Center for a Non Violent Community based in Standard, an organization that provides support for people who have suffered domestic and sexual abuse.

For many years after realizing the sexual abuse had occurred, Sunday said he was unable to find much data or information about other men who had similar experiences.

Sunday was attending a national conference on sexual assault and domestic violence in Washington, D.C., with his wife last year when he stumbled upon a booth for the Bristlecone Project, a campaign promoted by the organization 1in6, which is intended to raise awareness about the number of men who have suffered unwanted sexual experiences.

“This gentleman, Dr. David Lisak, has talked to men all over the country and is trying to get the stigma off of it and make society aware that there are more men who have experienced this than you realize,” Sunday said.

The project also inspired Sunday to go public with his story.

Sunday shared his experience publicly for the first time last week in front of about 150 people, which included family, friends, colleagues and strangers, at an event put together by the Tuolumne County District Attorney's Office to celebrate Child Abuse Prevention Month and Victims' Rights Week.

“If I knew someone I could tell them without a problem, but it was different having a microphone in front of this gigantic group of people,” Sunday said.

The audience gave Sunday a standing ovation.

Sunday said a line of people formed waiting to talk to him. Some introduced themselves as survivors as well, while others said he had helped them understand dreams they've struggled to understand.

“It was overwhelming,” Sunday said.

Sunday said it's difficult to be an adult and deal with such feelings from the past, because the adult mind wants to rationalize those feelings and move on. He also said the difficulty men have acknowledging their experiences is rooted in societal gender norms.

“Boys aren't supposed to cry,” Sunday said. “Even as a kid, you're supposed to fight your own battles. Everything is about being dominant, being the alpha male. If you've been sexually assaulted, you're certainly not the alpha male, so what are you?”

Sunday said he plans to do more public speaking on the topic now that he's broken the ice. He also wants to get a certificate to become a drug and alcohol counselor and get training to handle crisis line calls from a male perspective.

Resources available

Due to the stigma, Sunday said he believes the number of men who have dealt with such experiences is more than one in six.

There are a number of supportive services available for survivors of sexual assault and abuse, including those offered at the Center for a Non Violent Community.

The center is recognizing National Sexual Assault and Abuse Awareness in April with flags representing each of the 101 survivors, including children and adults, that the center helped in 2016.

Almost 50 percent of those served in 2016 were survivors of human sex trafficking, according to Laura Sunday.

This year to raise awareness, the center is taking a special focus on male sexual assault and abuse.

During the Second Saturday Art Night event in downtown Sonora on April 8, the center asked musicians to put a single blue guitar string on their guitars that was intended to represent the one in six men who have survived such crimes.

Laura Sunday said sexual assault or abuse can happen to anyone regardless of the person's gender, race, or age.

Raising awareness and starting a conversation is important because such crimes are believed to be underreported.

“Much like domestic violence, sexual assault is kept very secret and private,” Laura Sunday said. “People don't talk about it, they don't want to think it's happening.”

Sexual assault can also have long-ranging effects on a person's life and family. Substance abuse is often common for people who have been assaulted, Laura Sunday said.

The center offers a 24-hour anonymous crisis line to anyone who has been assaulted. There are also a number of a services and resources available on the center's website.

For people who think someone close to them has been assaulted, experts say the best thing to do is offer a safe place to express themselves without fear of judgment.

Ginger Martin, coordinator of the District Attorney's Victim-Witness Program, said it's best to just listen to what the survivors want to say over offering opinions on what they should do.

“Ask what they would like you to do, and be OK if it's nothing,” Martin said. “I think the biggest thing for me is a secret should never hurt.”

http://www.uniondemocrat.com/health/5245444-151/stigma-of-abuse-often-drives-male-sexual-assault

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Florida

Tampa seminar modeled on child-abuse prevention gathering 40 years ago

by Hannah Farrow

TAMPA — Forty years ago, a seminar convened by the Junior League of Tampa riveted the community's attention on the growing problem of child abuse and led to the creation of a nonprofit group focused on fighting it.

One woman who helped organize the historic meeting hopes to replicate its success today with another seminar, Thursday morning, called, "Community Conference on Child Abuse and Neglect."

"It was that conference and the interest and enthusiasm to do something about child abuse that prompted me to say, 'I think we should repeat a conference 40 years later'," said Liz Kennedy, development director with the organization that arose from the first gathering — now called Champions for Children. "Great things happened, so my thought was we should have another community conference and look at where it is now."

Child abuse generated little public discussion in the 1970s, when it was known broadly as "child maltreatment," Kennedy said. The predecessor of Champions for Children, known as the Child Abuse Council, dealt mainly with "deep end treatment" of children facing the most serious abuse.

That changed about 20 years ago, Kennedy said.

"We began to realize we need to serve more and more younger children, reaching at risk families with prevention services," Kennedy said. "In a child's life, we need to intervene as early as possible."

In Hillsborough County, the child protection system monitors some 2,800 children deemed to be at risk of abuse — 1,430 of them in their own homes and 2,348 of them with another relative or in foster care. Each year, an estimated 12,000 child abuse complaints are lodged in the county, Kennedy said.

A child is entered into the system once a child protective investigator identifies some sign of danger from a caregiver. The investigator takes immediate action to ensure safety, which can include court-ordered services in the home of a caregiver or removal and placement of a child in foster care, said Adrienne Drew, with Eckerd Kids, which works with the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office Child Protection Division to support families in need.

"We need to figure out how we as a community can do it best," Kennedy said. "We're all still in this together."

The sold-out seminar Thursday at the Glazer Jewish Community Center in Tampa will feature presentations by the top state official working in child abuse prevention, Mike Carroll of the state Department of Children and Families, and Charlyn Harper Browne, senior associate with the Center for the Study of Social Policy, a Washington, D.C., based group that pioneered efforts to keep children safe in their own homes.

In an interview last week, Brown told the Tampa Bay Times she will speak about five ways of protecting children known as the Strengthening Families Protective Factors Framework. They focus on prevention as well as simple ways to develop a healthy family life.

"A two generation approach is extremely important," Browne said. "We can't just focus on children and send them back to a home where the parent hasn't learned, too."

Across the country, childhood, social service and child-abuse and neglect programs have adopted the framework into their policies, including the Children's Bureau — a federal office that works to reduce child abuse and neglect.

"We can't simply talk about preventing child abuse and neglect without promoting healthy development in parents and young children," Browne said.

West Virginia

Local agency educates community about child abuse

by Danyel Vanreenen

MARTINSBURG — In honor of child abuse awareness month, the Family Resource Network of the Panhandle led approximately 12 participants through the various steps and places a victim of child abuse might experience for the 2017 Eastern Panhandle Child Watch Event.

The first stop took participants to the Berkeley County Department of Health and Human Resources. The speaker at DHHR, T'zouri Oliver, talked to participants about the DHHR Centralized Intake process.

Centralized intake is one point of entry for all reports of suspected abuse and neglect, according to Oliver. The line is operated by professionals trained in the area of abuse and neglect, and it is open 24 hours per day, 365 days of the year.

Although anyone can call to report suspected abuse or neglect, some people in the community are required to report incidents. Medical, dental and mental health professionals, school teachers and school personnel, social service workers, EMS workers, law enforcement officials, members of the clergy, religious healers, circuit, family and magistrate court judges and others are required by law to report suspected cases of abuse to Child Protective Services.

According to a DHHR handout, the purpose of reporting abuse is to protect the children from further harm. According to Oliver, CPS can't protect children until a report is made.

In 2014, the Child Welfare League of America, a coalition of hundreds of private and public agencies serving vulnerable children and families reported, 4,962 victims of abuse or neglect in West Virginia. The number of victims increased by 5.7 percent from 2013.

Oliver said most cases and referrals in the Eastern Panhandle are drug related. However, DHHR defines abuse or neglect as a child whose parent, guardian or custodian harms or threatens the child's welfare by knowingly inflicting or allowing others to inflict physical or emotional injury, sexual abuse or exploitation, refusing to supply the child with food, clothing, shelter, etc, excessive corporal punishment, abandonment and more.

Oliver said every call received by central intake is screened. Operators must determine if the report meets the criteria for abuse or neglect. If the report meets the criteria, it gets referred to the DHHR office for further investigation.

Oliver said social workers assigned to investigate claims of abuse usually visit the children. Workers then complete a Family Functioning Assessment, which documents the incident of abuse or neglect, the nature of the abuse or neglect, child and adult functioning, parenting and discipline practices.

Workers are given 30 days to complete the assessment. However, if workers feel that the child is in imminent danger, they can create a protection plan. The protection plan typically places the child with relatives or at a friend's in a safe place, and workers have seven days to complete the Family Functioning Assessment to make a determination in the case. However, the parents have the right to refuse the protection plan.

Oliver stressed that DHHR and CPS always require the threat of imminent danger to remove children from a home, and the goal is always unification unless there are aggravated circumstances, which are serious cases of abuse or neglect.

Although DHHR and CPS always want to ensure child safety, some cases are screened out by centralized intake and instead referred to law enforcement. Oliver said CPS deals exclusively with caregivers of children. According to Oliver, if a child is abused by a neighbor without the caregiver's knowledge, the call could be referred to law enforcement for criminal prosecution, but CPS may not be able to take the case because the abuser was not the child's caregiver.

The event also took participants to the Berkeley Medical Center Emergency Room. Andrew Brown, an emergency room social worker, said drugs were the most prevalent form of child abuse he reports. However, according to Oliver, CPS must be able to document and observe parental drug use and document and observe the abusive effects it has on children. She said it can sometimes be difficult to intervene if the parent is a functional addict.

For a pediatric nurse practitioner of Berkeley Medical Center, the biggest challenge hospital staff faces regarding child abuse is overcoming the parents lack of education.

“My biggest concern is always education for the families,” she said. “Some families don't know why their kids need a primary doctor, why they need to take all 10 days of their antibiotics or why they need to vaccinate their kids. Abuse doesn't happen in a vacuum, and we're not able to provide enough education for the families.”

http://www.journal-news.net/news/local-news/2017/04/local-agency-educates-community-about-child-abuse/

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United Kingdom

Victims of child sex abuse within family environment 'let down by system'

by PA

Child victims of sex abuse within families are being let down by the system, new research has warned.

Young people are often left to report the abuse themselves when authorities fail to pick up on signs, a series of reports found.

Even after their experiences are disclosed, investigations into sex offences against children often take "considerably longer" than those against adults, the Children's Commissioner for England said.

Victims also often face long waits for therapy, the research showed, and many are blocked from having counselling in the run-up to their court cases.

Abuse within family environments is thought to make up two thirds of all child sex abuse, and as few as one in eight victims come to the attention of authorities, previous research by the commissioner's office found.

Some abuse survivors have now told how they felt "abandoned" after telling their families about the trauma they had suffered, and in powerful testimonies they spoke of their frustrations at a lack of support.

The commissioner's office released three reports on Thursday, looking at how abuse is investigated, the role of schools in preventing child sex abuse and things to be learned from survivors.

One 19-year-old woman said giving video evidence was "like it's (the abuse is) going on again, the whole thing's happening again".

Researchers from the University of Bedfordshire, in partnership with the NSPCC, spoke to young people aged between five and 19 about their experiences of abuse within a family setting.

Using information from the Home Office and Crown Prosecution Service, the commissioner's office found that a rise in sex offence reports was placing a strain on the justice system.

Investigations into child sex abuse can take an average of 100 days longer than adult cases, the reports found.

While many teachers feel confident they can recognise the signs of abuse, schools are not always fulfilling their potential roles in preventing incidents by educating children about seeking help, one of the reports said.

Children from the age of four upwards will be taught about healthy relationships and sex education will be come compulsory in all secondary schools from 2019, the government announced earlier this year.

Anne Longfield, Children's Commissioner for England, called for urgent changes to the system, looking to the approach in Iceland, where child victims are offered specific services to deal with their trauma.

She said: "It is clear from this research and the heart-breaking stories told by young people within it, that many child sexual abuse victims are being let down by the system."

She added: "Professionals remain dedicated to supporting the victims of abuse, but urgent changes need to be made to the way it is reported, the role of schools in preventing it and the criminal justice process in child sexual abuse cases.

"The Icelandic 'Barnahaus' approach, where services ranging from medical examination to therapy are provided to victims under one roof, has been proven to be successful in overcoming some of these hurdles and I hope it will be trialled in England."

Dr Camille Warrington, from the University of Bedfordshire and lead author of the Making Noise report, said: "We know that child sexual abuse flourishes in cultures of silence.

"Undertaking the Making Noise research project highlighted only too well children's own appetite and ability to help break that silence.

"It also emphasises the need for us as adults and professionals to improve the way we listen to and talk with children to prevent and respond to abuse - and the benefits that come from doing so."

Barnardo's chief executive Javed Khan called for compulsory lessons in schools to include topics like "sexting", consent and online grooming.

He said children should be assigned an independent advocate to help them navigate the court system when their abusers are brought to trial.

He added: "We hear every day how much children and young people at risk of, or who have experienced, sexual abuse need and benefit from our specialist services, but we know many more need our help too."

http://www.aol.co.uk/news/2017/04/19/victims-of-child-sex-abuse-within-family-environment-let-down-b/

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South Dakota

Rape survivor finds hope: 'You have to give yourself some grace'

by Danielle Ferguson

Kelsey Randall was a teenager when she was raped for the second time. She awoke to her drunk boyfriend on top of her, in her, choking her.

“He said that he liked the sound of me struggling,” Randall recalled. “I was crying and saying, ‘No.' He just kept it up. I remember thinking if I could just turn my head and get through it, it would be over sooner or later.”

Randall, a 30-year-old Harrisburg native, has been sexually assaulted three times. She was in second grade when an older child assaulted her at a Sioux Falls day care. She was a teenager when her boyfriend raped her and she was 25 when a friend pinned her down and threatened her life.

She's not alone.

In 2016, 107 rapes were reported to the Sioux Falls Police Department, a rate 25 percent higher per capita than the national average, according to FBI statistics. As a state, South Dakota shows a 50 percent higher rate and ranks second in the nation for forcible rape reports, behind only Alaska.

Those statistics are alarming at a time when advocacy groups highlight national and local concerns with Sexual Assault Awareness Month in April. But why are the numbers so high?

It could be an alcohol-inviting culture that starts at a young age, though alcohol is never an excuse for rape, said Michelle Markgraf, director of The Compass Center, a Sioux Falls nonprofit that helps survivors of domestic violence and sexual abuse.

“Someone who is going to rape is going to rape no matter what,” Markgraf said. “They'll go after vulnerable people.”

Pattern of reluctance

Randall didn't know she was sexually assaulted in her relationship with her boyfriend. She learned in high school that rape could happen by a stranger in an alley or an acquaintance, maybe. She never thought rape could happen by someone she loved, someone she had consented to have sex with previously.

That wasn't rape, she thought. It couldn't be. He was drunk. He didn't mean it.

She certainly didn't tell anybody. She feared anyone she told would judge her for staying with him for several years.

“It never crossed my mind to report it to the police,” said Randall, a South Dakota State graduate who worked as a teacher before returning to school this year to pursue her dream of becoming a nurse.

Sioux Falls Police Chief Matt Burns is hoping to shift that mindset of reluctance for local rape survivors.

“We want to make that victim as comfortable as possible,” Burns said. “We're going to be as sensitive, professional and caring as necessary to get them through this trauma.”

The majority of rapes, in Sioux Falls and in general, are committed by someone the victim knows, both Markgraf and Burns said.

It's a contributing factor to why many survivors don't report the crime in the first place. They may not want to get that friend or significant other in trouble. They fear judgment from people who don't understand the situation.

“They may not want to face the embarrassment,” Markgraf said. "No matter how much we say, 'It's not your fault,' they think it is."

If someone does choose to report, they have a limited window to do so if they want evidence for a case. Police can get evidence about five days from the incident, Markgraf said. But Burns says the sooner, the better.

“The sooner you make the report, the more evidence we can collect,” Burns said. “The recollection of the event is fresher. Everything is better closer to the incident.”

Finding the strength

Randall reported one of her rapes – the third – to law enforcement, only to get walked out of the station with an officer's business card and a “we can't help you.”

Randall was a 25-year-old high school teacher in Minot, N.D., when she was assaulted for the third time. She and her friends liked to gather and belt out songs at a local karaoke bar. On such a night in January 2012, she ended up with one of her male friends at his apartment, his roommates sleeping in another room.

He pinned her down.

“I remember thinking I was not going to make it,” Randall recalled. “I thought he was going to choke me to death.”

She remembers fighting, but doesn't know exactly how she escaped his grasp. She remembers screaming during the rape itself. She thought maybe if she yelled loud enough, his roommates would intervene. Or someone in an adjacent apartment would call the police.

“No one came,” she said.

Fearing for her safety, she froze. Fight or flight didn't apply here, as it often doesn't in rape, Markgraf said.

Randall had been drinking. If she called the cops, they would ask how much she had to drink. Would they believe her? She had no car, no way to get home. Her rapist had already been violent. Would he use force if she tried to leave?

So she stayed the night.

She called a friend to pick her up in the morning. She needed to go home to change before school that day.

The mirror showed clear outlines of his hands all over her body.

She changed clothes and went to teach 11th and 12th graders.

Five or so weeks had passed and Randall's friends were wondering why they hadn't seen her at karaoke. She decided to give it a try.

Her rapist was also there.

“He reached around to the back of my neck and grabbed my hair and got close to me,” she said, rubbing the back of her neck where his hand had been. “He talked about how he would kill me if I told anybody what had happened. I confirmed I was right to be scared of what he would do.”

About a week later, she confided in a friend, who told her this wasn't the first time this man had been accused of rape. She encouraged Randall to go to the police because, if not, he would likely do it again.

While Randall recognizes this thought has some truth, she cautioned those who are confided to about rape: don't push someone to report if they don't want to.

“It goes back to putting the shame and the blame on the victim,” she said. “I didn't make the choice to have him rape me. He made that choice. I can't prevent him from making that choice again.”

Randall went to the Minot police soon after, where she was told detectives were on a first-name basis with her rapist. He had been previously accused of rape and had an arrest warrant out for a different offense, they told her. A detective said they wouldn't have enough evidence to arrest him for rape or enough time to serve a warrant.

It's not uncommon. Rape or sexual assault cases don't often come to fruition.

“It's scary for individuals who are victims of rape,” Randall said. “The (chances) are so low that your rapist will go to jail and serve their full amount of time that it's an act of bravery to report the assault.”

Closing the case

While reported rape rates in Sioux Falls are higher than the national average, so too are the number of cases closed. The national average for a case being presentable to a state's attorney or that leads to an arrest is 38 percent. Sioux Falls sits around 66 percent, Burns said.

Each case is unique, said Minnehaha County State's Attorney Aaron McGowan. A case depends on physical evidence, ages of the victim and perpetrator, victim involvement in the investigation and, if the suspect is known to the victim, perpetrator cooperation.

Cases with physical evidence involving children younger than 16, the age the state recognizes a person can consent to sex, are relatively easy to prosecute, he said. Prosecution gets more difficult if the survivor and suspect are both of age.

“If they're of age and we have evidence, the defendant can say, ‘Yes, we had sex, but it was consensual,'" said McGowan. "Then it becomes 'He said, she said,' and that can be hard to prove."

He and his staff try to put the least amount of stress on the survivor as possible. Prosecutors often need detailed accounts, though, for a case. Weighing that can be hard to decide if the state has enough evidence or accounts to prosecute.

“Do we want to put (the survivor) through that? We want to hold people accountable, but if we can't prove it, what good do we do by putting them through that?” McGowan said.

None of Randall's rapists are in jail, but she says she feels at peace.

“Some days are harder than others," she said. "The majority of my days are really good. I think a lot of people assume you won't feel any sort of healing until you get that person behind bars. And the odds of that right now are just not that strong.”

Randall had a chance to be part of a case that did end in prosecution, however.

During her teaching years, a student confided in her that her uncle had raped her. As a mandatory reporter, Randall had to report the incident. The student was upset with her at first, Randall said, but her actions ended up getting the student out of a bad situation.

Randall had extra interest in seeking justice for another survivor.

“The fact that I didn't get any help... I wanted to make sure that others got help. There's this saying, ‘Be the person you needed when you were younger,'” she said.

Dealing with trauma

To this day, post-traumatic stress disorder seeps into Randall's daily life. A popping toaster can make her jump. She suffers from sleep paralysis, night terrors and panic attacks. She's been in therapy most of her adult life, regularly needs breathing exercises and has picked up techniques from other survivors at group therapy.

She's trying out a new type of therapy at The Compass Center where clients watch a light pattern while re-telling their story. It's supposed to help reduce vivid, sudden triggers from an assault.

Randall taught high school for about seven years before deciding to use her experience and desire to help other survivors in a different career path. She started attending the University Center in Sioux Falls with the goal of reaching nursing school.

“Through counseling, it gave me a lot of encouragement that made me feel worthy of a better job,” Randall said.

She wants to be in a position to help other survivors on a personal level. She wants to be the person an assault survivor can confide in so she can help provide support and resources.

Randall hopes by sharing her story, other survivors will feel encouraged or supported to seek help.

“You have to give yourself some grace,” Randall said. “You have to cut yourself some slack. Way easier said than done. You are not a dirty person. You have nothing to be ashamed about. This is something that happened to you. You did not ask for this. You did not bring this upon yourself.”

COMPASS CENTER

The Compass Center is an organization in Sioux Falls that serves domestic and sexual assault survivors in Minnehaha, McCook, Turner and Lincoln counties.

Survivors can receive help with crisis intervention, speak with an advocate, receive counseling, and meet with a court advocate to walk them through the process of filing a case.

All of the services to survivors are free.

Children ages 3-12 can also receive play therapy with a registered play therapist to help process traumatic events and express themselves with toys in a safe place.

The center also provides prevention education to schools, community groups or job sites.

Visit the website at abusecounselingsiouxfalls.com or call 605-339-0116.

http://www.argusleader.com/story/news/crime/2017/04/20/sioux-falls-rape-survivor-sexual-assault-statistics/100592478/

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Florida

Opinion

Strengthening families prevents child abuse

by Jennifer Ohlsen

Parenting is an awesome responsibility and a tremendous privilege. It's rewarding to watch our children learn, grow and thrive. Most parents work hard to give their children the best opportunities and ensure they feel safe and loved.

But parenting can be a tough job, even under the best of circumstances. Tension and conflict often increase when parents encounter stressful circumstances such as raising children alone, facing unemployment or homelessness, or suffering from substance addiction or poor mental health. Sometimes parents need extra help to create loving homes where children can thrive.

April is recognized in Florida and throughout the nation as National Child Abuse Prevention Month. Governor and First Lady Scott, state legislators, community leaders, child welfare professionals and child advocates participate in activities and outreach to share the message that everyone plays a role in preventing child abuse and neglect. This is a good time to assess the well-being of the children around us and consider our efforts to help children and their families succeed. A community can take action to prevent child abuse and neglect by supporting activities that strengthen families. One community-based program that successfully strengthens families while preventing child abuse and neglect is Healthy Families Florida.

In 1998, the Florida Legislature created Healthy Families Florida, a voluntary program for expectant parents and parents of newborns experiencing stressful life situations. Family support workers are invited into families' homes and provide guidance on parenting techniques, independent living skills and healthy child development. Parents learn to recognize and respond to their babies' developmental needs, use positive discipline techniques and cope with the stress of parenting.

Families in all 67 Florida counties have access to Healthy Families Florida services. Last year more than 17,400 children in 9,600 families benefitted from the program. Backed by decades of research and founded on strict quality standards, the program has proven to be highly successful in preventing child abuse and neglect. In fact, 98 percent of children are free of abuse and neglect while enrolled in Healthy Families Florida and 95 percent remain free of abuse and neglect three years following completion of the program.

Building on these successful outcomes for families, we continuously seek ways to improve and offer more assistance. Targeted Healthy Families sites now offer mental health services and coordinate behavioral health care for families experiencing substance abuse, domestic violence, mental health concerns or other challenges threatening their ability to succeed.

Investing in programs proven to prevent child abuse and neglect is far less costly than treating the consequences of child abuse after it occurs. The annual cost of providing services in response to child abuse – child welfare, hospitalization, juvenile justice and special education – exceeds $105,000 per child, whereas Healthy Families effectively prevents child abuse and neglect for an average of $2,100 per child. Prevention services are a sound investment in our families that pays dividends for generations.

Everyone can take action to prevent child abuse and neglect. To find out how you can help, contact the Healthy Families program in your community. If you know a family who would benefit from a program proven to strengthen families so children have the best chance of healthy development and happy childhoods, contact the Healthy Families program in your community. Find your local contact at www.healthyfamiliesfla.org.

Jennifer Ohlsen is the executive director of Healthy Families Florida.

http://www.pnj.com/story/opinion/contributors/2017/04/20/guest-view-strengthening-families-prevents-child-abuse/100690826/

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United Kingdom

Children wait 100 days longer than adults for sexual abuse investigations to go to court, figures show

Increased reports of sexual offences placing significant demand on services and agencies dealing with cases, exacerbating the trauma experienced by children and their families, report warns

by May Bulman

Child sex abuse victims are waiting 100 days longer than adults for their cases to go to court, a report has found, prompting calls for more to be done to give underage victims access to the support they desperately need.

A report by the Children's Commissioner reveals that in the year 2015-16, the median length of time for investigations of child sex abuse cases was 248 days, compared with 147 for adult sexual offences – a total of 101 days less. A quarter of cases took considerably longer, some 393 days or more.

According to the data available, child sexual abuse investigations take longer than not only adult cases but all other crime types, with the median length of time taken for crime recording to a charge outcome in relation to drug offences being 90 days, theft 73 days, and violence against a person 72 days.

Alarmingly, the length of time for child sex abuse investigations seems to be increasing, with the median length of time between an offence being recorded and a charge being laid having increased from 179 days in 2013-14, to 236 days in 2014-15 and then 248 days in 2015-16.

The figures reflect how increased reports of sexual offences are placing a significant demand on services and agencies dealing with the cases. Where capacity is stretched to meet the increasing demand, there is a risk that cases will take even longer to resolve, exacerbating the trauma experienced by children and their families, the report states.

It adds that while the length of time the investigations take may reflect the relative complexity of these cases, the considerable wait is likely to be a “period of huge uncertainty” for victims. The report urges police and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to explore ways of working more effectively to minimise delays and increase the speed of decision-making.

HM Inspectorate of Constabulary should “explicitly address” the timeliness of investigations in its child protection inspections, it states, adding that the “sexual offences” category of Home Office and Criminal Courts data should be separated in published data to “child” and “adult” offences, in order to enable scrutiny of performance on child sexual abuse.

It also recommends the adoption of the Icelandic “Barnahaus” approach, whereby different professionals work under one roof in investigating suspected child sexual abuse cases and providing appropriate support for child victims.

The findings come as part of new research commissioned by the Children's Commissioner, which includes three separate reports into child sex abuse and differential access to support, with many failing to receive the help they need.

A second report, carried out by researchers from the University of Bedfordshire in partnership with NSPCC, found that child victims were frequently having to wait months or years for therapy following abuse, and that some schools were failing to offer children any lessons on the issues.

About half of primary schools report that they teach subjects related to sexual abuse, and a significant minority of secondary schools do not yet offer any teaching on this issue, according to the report, called Making Noise .

There were 106,098 sexual offences recorded by police in the year ending March 2016 – an increase of 20 per cent compared with the previous year. This includes a 20 per cent increase in crimes recorded as sexual assault on a female aged 13 and over, a 31 per cent increase in sexual activity involving a child under 16, and a 51 per cent increase in the offence of sexual grooming.

A report published by the Children's Commissioner in November 2015 called Protecting Children from Harm found that as few as one in eight victims of child sexual abuse is estimated to come to the attention of statutory authorities, suggesting the scale of child sexual abuse is much larger than is currently being dealt with by statutory and non-statutory services.

In light of the findings, Anne Longfield, children's commissioner for England, said: “It is clear from this research and the heart-breaking stories told by young people within it, that many child sexual abuse victims are being let down by the system.

“Too much is being expected of victims themselves. Not only do many feel unable to disclose abuse, they are waiting too long to see their abusers charged and jailed. Often they have to wait months and years for therapy following abuse.

“Professionals remain dedicated to supporting the victims of abuse, but urgent changes need to be made to the way it is reported, the role of schools in preventing it and the criminal justice process in child sexual abuse cases.

“The Icelandic ‘Barnahaus' approach, where services ranging from medical examination to therapy are provided to victims under one roof, has been proven to be successful in overcoming some of these hurdles and I hope it will be trialled in England.”

Trish O'Donnell, development manager from the NSPCC, meanwhile said: “The Making Noise report allows the voices of children who have experienced familial sexual abuse to be heard. It tells us how they can be let down by systems but when they do find help it can really changes things for them.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/child-sex-abuse-investigations-taking-longer-figures-show-a7691561.html

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Michigan

Given recent sexual abuse cases, signs of abuse come to forefront

by Brigid Kennedy

The sexual abuse of children is a problem that plagues communities around the world, though people never expect it to happen in their own communities. Ex-MSU doctor Larry Nassar is accused of sexually abusing and exploiting children as young as 6 years old, and new allegations continue to come to light.

Families, educators and others who spend time around children should be vigilant — children might not broach the subject themselves, according to Mayo Clinic.

"A lot of times children will not mention it because (they've been abused by) an authority figure," attorney Stephen Drew said in a previous State News article . Drew represents alleged Nassar victims.

Executive director of the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, or NYSPCC, and president of the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children Mary Pulido has dedicated her life in part to educating people of the warning signs that a child has been abused, and how to prevent it from happening again.

The NYSPCC runs the largest child sex abuse prevention program in New York City for children in kindergarten through the third grade.

"My staff are out there teaching and training on how to recognize, identify and report child abuse every single day," Pulido said.

They've been carrying out that mission since they were established in 1875.

"We wrote the laws that are the basic underpinnings of child protection in the United States today," Pulido said.

When a child has suffered sexual abuse, they often show no physical signs, Pulido said.

"You're going to have to really look at the emotional and the behavioral signs for children," she said.

Children below the age of 8 years old frequently display different emotional and behavioral signs than their older counterparts. Young children might seem to regress: wetting the bed, sucking thumbs, experiencing separation anxiety and regression in language are key warning signs of sexual abuse, Pulido said.

The biggest red flag for young children is sexual knowledge beyond what is typical at their age.

"(If) they're sexually acting out, that's something that needs to be explored," Pulido said.

Older children and adolescents might isolate themselves from their friends and family, develop eating disorders or substance abuse problems, experience mood swings or guilt, or self-mutilate.

Signs of sexual abuse differ from case to case, Pulido said.

"It depends on the child and it depends on the situation itself," she said.

If a child does mention feeling uncomfortable about an incident or an adult in their life, it should be fully investigated, Pulido said.

"The most important thing that a child needs is to be believed by an adult. That's the basis for healing. That's also one of the key messages we give little ones in our sex abuse prevention program," Pulido said. "Keep telling, telling, telling until someone believes you."

While the presence of warning signs doesn't necessarily mean a child has been abused, people should seek professional help if they have any suspicions.

Those who believe a child may be suffering from sexual abuse can report their concerns to law enforcement or contact the 24-hour Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-422-4453.

http://statenews.com/article/2017/04/signs-of-sexual-abuse

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India

Government directs blocking of online child sexual abuse material by July 31

New Delhi, April 20: The India government on Thursday has directed the internet service providers to block online child sexual abuse material by July 31, 2017.

by Shubhang Chauhan

New Delhi, April 20 -- The India government on Thursday has directed the internet service providers to block online child sexual abuse material by July 31, 2017. Last month, India's top court, the Supreme Court, had asked senior government officials to map out a way to stop child pornographic material getting uploaded over the social media platforms.

A committee was formed to look into the matter with representatives of Google, Facebook, and Yahoo. The committee was granted 15 days to come out with a solution beginning from April 5. A Bench headed by Justice MB had asked committee that if it was unable to find a solution to the problem then it must be prepared with solid reasons as to why it wasn't possible to block uploading and circulating videos of rape, gang-rape and child pornography.

The court had formed a committee after a PIL was filed by an NGO which put light on the uploading and circulation of such videos. As per The Tribune , the NGO had sent two gang-rape videos and penned a letter requesting immediate action.

CBI's cyber security experts had told the bench that blocking such content on the internet was a challenge and for stopping such videos a guideline was required. The cyber security experts had told the court that many countries had a hotline service to stop child abuse but India isn't listed on that platform. To stop child pornography, help of INTERPOL was taken and upon receiving complaints the internet service providers were asked to stop such such content.

Opinion

Passenger abuse resembles child abuse

by Arthur McCaffrey

I have just completed an extensive, comparative review of international cases of child abuse, revealing common trends and historical patterns shared across countries. These similarities also extend to the recent case of abusive mistreatment of a passenger by United Airlines, which demonstrates many of the typical features usually associated with clergy abuse of children.

For instance, a common feature of abusive environments is an asymmetry of power, often involving institutional authority figures-- priests, teachers, gymnastics coach, football coach, airline cabin crew, airport security-- who wield their authority to overwhelm the victim. The different means used differ only stylistically: while a priest may woo and groom his target, in the United case airport police took a more brutal, direct approach. The end result is the same: an unconscionable attack on the dignity of the human person.

Next, you have the availability of hapless, powerless, vulnerable victims who are preyed upon--an innocent 10-year-old altar boy, or a foreign-looking passenger who may not know enough English to protest.

Then comes the abuse, either sexual in the case of Catholic children, or physical in the case of the United passenger. In either case, the powerful rape the powerless, often with an almost reckless sense of invincibility, confident that it would be too risky and costly for their umbrella institution (Church or corporation) to blow their cover. One might label this the Sandusky Syndrome, after the notorious case of pedophilia at Penn State University involving assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky.

Finally, there is the post-abuse institutional response, which is usually self-protecting and company-shielding - in other words, damage control to minimize the fallout, and, above all, put the best spin on the employee misbehavior and the company reputation. The initial response by United CEO Oscar Munoz fits this category perfectly - lots of back-pedaling and self-serving formulaic responses, which make Munoz sound like a Catholic bishop.

What should be our response to this kind of mistreatment of innocent victims? How do we redress the injustices? Fortunately, Bishop Desmond Tutu has supplied a remedial formula. After President Mandela appointed him to chair South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1994, Tutu declared that decades of institutional injustice against victims of apartheid needed to be remedied in four ways: Apology, Compensation, Punishment, and Reconciliation.

What happens when we apply Tutu's formula to abused altar boys or harshly handled passengers? Apologies are offered almost universally by guilty religious institutions, plus some token of financial reparation, albeit reluctantly. Consequently, several lawyers (like Mitchell Garabedian in Boston) have become well-known champions of the abused by bringing successful lawsuits against archdioceses.

Compensation carries substantial financial consequences for abusive institutions who get caught: settlement costs to the Catholic Church had reportedly reached more than $1.5 billion by 2007, and are still climbing, leaving a trail of bankrupt dioceses in their wake.

United Airlines, instantly caught and found guilty in the glare of cellphone headlights, has hewed to the universal response pattern of clumsy apology plus offer of financial compensation for the inconvenience. We can probably expect a costly out-of-court settlement with the abused passenger, akin to the Fox News resolution of its own internal cases of abusive harassment.

However, there is one additional punitive option available to United victims that a religious institution does not have - the market. The stock exchange may already have started to devalue United shares, a kind of corporate punishment at least, though perhaps small comfort to an abused passenger.

What about Tutu's toughest categories of Punishment and Reconciliation? Criminal prosecution for clergy abuse tends to be rare; by the time the case finally surfaces, the statute of limitations for initiating criminal proceedings has often expired, leaving civil litigation as the only recourse. Many adult survivors would still prefer punitive justice to cash, and hanker for a penal solution to salve their suffering. The raw cruelty witnessed on board the United flight is more likely to trigger criminal proceedings, unhampered by statutory restrictions.

Reconciliation? Lacking a just solution, forgiveness and reconciliation are unlikely, whether in the pew or in seat 25B middle. Tutu emphasizes that forgiveness is not a freebie donated by the victim - the abuser has to earn it to deserve it. Can the Catholic Church earn it? Can United earn it? The rage expressed on social media would suggest that reconciliation with United will not happen anytime soon.

There is, nevertheless, another response to injustice not covered by Tutu's remedial formula, and that is group solidarity. Unless you count cellphone photography as a form of solidarity, such evidence of common cause was conspicuously absent on the United plane. Where was the popular revolt by passengers against the uncivilized mistreatment of the Asian doctor? Who stood up to block the aisle to prevent the atrocious abduction of a fellow passenger, a fellow human being? Most of the videos I have seen indicate that everyone stayed in their seats throughout.

Perhaps the stress of modern air travel causes the flying public to adopt an anomic, three-wise-monkey strategy for coping with troubling encounters -- hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. This detachment only reinforces a common finding from generations of abuse cases, namely, that, at the very time a victim most needs an ally, he or she is most alone.

Dr. Arthur McCaffrey is a retired Harvard University psychologist who writes frequently about child abuse.

http://www.courier-journal.com/story/opinion/contributors/2017/04/18/passenger-abuse-resembles-child-abuse-mccaffrey/100598052/

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West Virginia

Law would block parenting rights of rapists

by Lacie Pierson

CHARLESTON - A proposed law that would prevent rapists from exercising parental rights over children conceived from the act of rape is getting praise from anti-domestic violence advocates in the Mountain State.

Senate Bill 445 is under Gov. Jim Justice's consideration, and if it becomes law, it would protect rape victims and children conceived in rape from parental interference from the rapist, regardless of whether a conviction is achieved in the criminal case.

Joyce Yedlosky is the team coordinator for the West Virginia Coalition Against Domestic Violence, and she lauded the bill for taking another step in preventing the revictimization of women who become pregnant as a result of rape and choose to raise the children.

"Without this law, if a baby was conceived out of rape, the rapist could ask for parenting time and they could parent that child with the rape victim having to coordinate parenting time with their rapist," Yedlosky said. "In terms of revictimizing, it would revictimize the adult victim and the child who would be, in part, raised by a person who's a rapist."

Sen. Charles Trump IV, R-Morgan, was the lead sponsor of the bill in the Senate, and he said the measure was crafted with the support of domestic violence coalitions in the state.

Senate Bill 445 changed the definition of "abused child" in state code to include a child who was conceived as a result of sexual assault.

The bill also absolves the sexual assault victim from criminal responsibility in the child's conception, meaning, for example, if a woman were to give birth to a child who was conceived from sexual assault, she would not be charged with child abuse if she chooses to give birth to and raise her child.

"I think that's an important bill because what it means is it makes clear that the person who sires a child in an incestuous relationship has the status of an abusive parent," Trump said.

The rape victims would have to establish in family court that the person who raped them did so. In family court, similar to civil court, the petitioner has to establish "clear and convincing evidence" that the rape occurred, Yedlosky said. This threshold of proof can be established without a rape conviction, Yedlosky said.

The National Network to End Domestic Violence reports nearly one of every five women and one in every 77 men has experienced rape in their lifetimes.

The network's data also shows that in the United States, rape is the most costly crime to its victims, levying $127 billion in costs a year, including medical costs, lost earnings, pain, suffering and lost quality of life.

If the measure passes muster with Justice, West Virginia would be eligible for more federal grant funding through the STOP Violence Against Women Formula Grant Program and the Sexual Assault Services Formula Grant Program, Yedlosky said.

Both programs are among 25 such funding provisions set forth in the Violence Against Women Act of 1994, Yedlosky said.

http://www.herald-dispatch.com/news/law-would-block-parenting-rights-of-rapists/article_3229072b-fe58-53c1-b0f1-8709a0f1159f.html

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Kentucky

Human trafficking addressed

‘I Am Jane Doe' chronicles mothers battling sex-trafficking, adult classifieds

by the Middlesboro Daily News

FRANKFORT — Attorney General Andy Beshear, the Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation Prevention Board and the University of Louisville recently announced an upcoming special screening of “I Am Jane Doe,” a worldwide documentary on child sex trafficking.

The 2017 film chronicles the battle of several American mothers on behalf of their middle-school daughters, who are victims of sex trafficking, against printed and online adult classifieds.

The film, narrated by Academy Award-nominee Jessica Chastain, will play at 6:30 p.m. on May 8 at the Clifton Center's historic Eifler Theater in Louisville, located at 2117 Payne St. An expert panel discussion introduced by Beshear will follow the viewing of the film.

“We must continue to raise awareness on human trafficking and how it represents the worst form of abuse, often to children, in the Commonwealth,” Beshear said. “Human trafficking is increasing all over the Commonwealth, and as Kentuckians we must recognize the signs because it occurs in all our counties, cities and communities. By helping to bring this film to Kentucky, we have another opportunity to raise awareness about our obligation to prevent, identify and prosecute human trafficking cases.”

The Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation Prevention Board, which is administered by the Office of the Attorney General, is co-sponsoring the film – currently only being shown in larger cities worldwide – through the Child Victims' Trust Fund.

The Fund last year helped pay for nearly 400 child sexual abuse forensic exams and helped administer $160,000 in statewide grants aimed at teaching parents how to discuss child sexual abuse with children and how to keep children safe on the Internet.

Dr. Jennifer Middleton, director of the University of Louisville's Human Trafficking Research Initiative, is spearheading the efforts to bring “I Am Jane Doe” to Louisville and is working with

Beshear's office to raise awareness on human trafficking.

Beshear recently joined Dr. Middleton and her colleagues at the University of Louisville's Kent School of Social Work to announce a study from the school that found that 40 percent of homeless youth surveyed in Louisville and southern Indiana reported being victims of sex trafficking, mostly in exchange for money or lodging.

“Based on the findings of our recent research study, it is clear that child sex trafficking is prevalent in our community, particularly among our most vulnerable children,” Dr. Middleton said. “The good news is that there is a lot that we can do to combat the issue and even prevent it from happening. And it starts with increasing the community's knowledge and awareness about the issue.”

The Eifler Theater at the Clifton Center seats approximately 500 guests. To obtain admission information and to register for the event, please visit the event page at http://bit.ly/2ogJzkh. The event is free to the public but space is limited, so pre-registration is strongly encouraged. For additional questions about the event, please call the Human Trafficking Research Initiative at 502-852-3651.

At the completion of the film, a panel will discuss with the audience the documentary and the signs of human trafficking. The panelists include: Donna Pollard, survivor and member of Beshear's Survivors Council; Julie Horen, coordinator of the My Life My Choice prevention program at Catholic Charities Human Trafficking Program; Allyson Taylor, director of Beshear's Office of Child Abuse and Exploitation Prevention; Michael Littrell, cyber investigator for Beshear's Department of Criminal Investigations; and Angela Renfro, survivor and director of the Kristy Love Foundation.

“Human trafficking is a crime and its victims are often hidden, which makes awareness especially important and also difficult to achieve,” Renfro said. “It is important for everyone in our community to be aware of the human trafficking problem in our community. Because you can make a difference.”

Beshear is encouraging Kentuckians to support the Child Victims' Trust Fund through private donations, proceeds from the purchase of “I Care About Kids” license plates or donations made through the state income tax refund check-off program. To support victims of child sexual abuse, Kentuckians may visit their county clerk's office and request an “I Care About Kids” license plate or check the box on their tax returns to designate a portion to the CVTF.

http://middlesborodailynews.com/news/17583/human-trafficking-addressed

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Tennessee

Preventing child abuse through education

by Barbara Burns

Wouldn't it be great if our kids came with an instruction manual? There would be no more second-guessing the choices we make when rearing our children. We could simply turn to a handy guide to answer all our parenting questions.

The reality, however, is that raising children is difficult in even the best of circumstances. For those parents who find themselves in extremely difficult situations — financial stress, illness, no support system, a childhood history of abuse or neglect, or all of these — providing a stable, loving home for their children is often a far greater challenge.

Here in Tennessee, child neglect is a serious problem. In fact, 62 percent of child abuse and neglect cases are defined as neglect (failure to care for properly).

April is Child Abuse/Neglect Prevention Month. I think it's an ideal time to shine the spotlight on The Family Center, a local agency that is preventing instances of child abuse and neglect by equipping vulnerable parents through education and coaching.

As a three-year member of the board of directors for The Family Center, I witnessed firsthand how they are helping hurting children by empowering parents to succeed. Many of the parents served by the Center did not have role models for positive parenting. They grew up in chaotic homes with addiction, abuse, and mental illness, never experiencing the nurturing and communication children need to thrive.

As parents, they are at high risk for repeating their generational cycles of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). Through education, the Family Center helps these parents understand the ACEs in their lives and connect the dots between what has happened to them and how they parent. They are taught that these experiences don't have to define them or their children's future.

Many vulnerable parents love their children and want to provide them with good care, but they need help developing a toolbox of practical knowledge necessary for parenting. The Family Center answers this need with parent education provided in classroom and community settings, and in homes. Here, parents learn about child development, stress management, understanding feelings, self-worth, and cooperation.

The Family Center parent education courses equip parents to nurture childhood brain development, especially in the crucial first five years of life. Parent educators teach parents how to turn everyday moments like mealtime, play time, and bath time into brain-building moments. These educators also help parents set family goals, develop routines, build empathy, and learn healthy discipline techniques.

We are indeed very lucky to have The Family Center as a valuable resource for vulnerable parents in our community. My service on this board helped me to understand that The Family Center helps parents build their own instruction manual for being the loving, nurturing, effective parents their children need.

When we invest in well-equipped parents, we invest in strong communities and thriving families — a better Middle Tennessee for all of us.

Barbara Burns is a former Family Center board member

Change the Tune

The Family Center will host their annual Change the Tune fundraiser event on April 22 at Marathon Music Works. The event will feature a night of singer-songwriters and a silent auction. Tickets can be purchased here. All proceeds go to benefit The Family Center and help put an end to child abuse and neglect.

http://www.tennessean.com/story/opinion/2017/04/18/preventing-child-abuse-through-education/100631142/

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Ohio

Spotting the signs of child abuse

by Jim Langham

VAN WERT — Van Wert County Crime Victims Services Director Christina Eversole said recently that there are not a lot of convicted child abuse cases in Van Wert County. That doesn't necessarily mean that more aren't happening, Eversole said.

In many cases, individuals are afraid to report for fear of causing hard feelings in families or with friends and neighbors. Now, in the midst of Child Abuse Awareness Month (April), Eversole suggested several things that can and should be done when there is suspected child abuse.

“Documentation of stuff, whether written or pictures, is so important,” said Eversole. “You can call Children's Services anonymously. Be in contact with law enforcement; you can always ask for a safety check of a situation where you might suspect child abuse.”

“If law enforcement is informed of potential child abuse in a situation, they can always run by or keep a lookout over a suspected situation,” continued Eversole. “Documentation is the most effective way to keep track unless you are willing to expose yourself to the situation.”

Eversole said one of the things to keep in mind is a home where dishes are piled up and even covered with mold and mildew, garbage is present throughout the house and other manifestations of clutter surround the home just waiting for an accident to happen with the children.

“If it is possible, take pictures of the prevailing clutter and the dishes piled up. Follow through with the system, try to keep family members involved,” noted Eversole.

Eversole said that even if officials are called into the situation and enforce a clean- up, unless there is counseling and follow-up involved, the cycle is more than likely to start over again.

“Most people try to leave the kids out of it,” said Eversole. “If there are cell phones involved, see if questionable conversations can be recorded. Children's protective services can do an interview with the parents.”

Eversole said that if it's possible, officials try to keep the kids connected with home, parents, relatives or people they are familiar with during investigation. “The kids have already been put through so much,” said Eversole. “They shouldn't uproot them and take them away from their toys. So many are already so scared that they sleep with one eye open.”

“So many of the abused children are afraid to say anything because they are afraid that they won't be believed or what they say will come back to make things worse for them. Unfortunately, there's often a good reason for their fears,” added Eversole.

http://www.timesbulletin.com/Content/Default/Homepage-Rotator/Article/Spotting-the-signs-of-child-abuse/-3/1168/209314

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Pennsylvania

Penn State scores NIH funding as national child abuse research center

by Lori Falce

Penn State is now, officially, the place to turn for answers about child abuse.

On Tuesday, the university announced it had received a $7.7 million grant from The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, part of the National Institutes of Health.

That five-year competitive grant allows Penn State to establish the Center for Healthy Children, “a national resource for child maltreatment research and training.” Penn State added $3.4 million for a total of $11 million toward the project.

The recognition follows Penn State dedicating $12 million toward research and programming in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal. Part of that was a cluster hire of 12 faculty members to increase the amount of focus on the topic.

“This is the product, the payoff of that investment. NIH has recognized Penn State as the place in the country that they want to invest in,” said Jennie Noll, director of the Child Maltreatment Solutions Network at Penn State and principal investigator of the NIH award.

“It really focuses the research mission. It brings us together,” she said. “Almost every single one of those people who was hired are co-investigators on this. It brings together all of their talents.”

“We recruited the best and the brightest researchers to Penn State to create a network and we continue our commitment to work on this critical issue by contributing $3.4 million in support of the new NIH center,” said Penn State President Eric Barron. “The expertise, passion and dedication of our researchers are unparalleled and this grant exemplifies our strength in successful interdisciplinary collaborations, with leading experts from across the university.”

Part of the focus is on research studies like one looking at 1,200 kids aged 8 to 13 from across Pennsylvania to address “eradicating health disparities for children who have experienced the child welfare system.”

Another is a clinical trial working with pediatric intensive care units across the country to assess a screening tool for children's abusive head trauma, something that kills 1,500 American children annually.

“This is really a complement to what we have created here,” said Noll. “This addresses the scope and gravity of child maltreatment in a way that raises awareness and implores a larger systemwide acknowledgment. We want to be a national model, solving large problems in this area.”

http://www.centredaily.com/news/local/education/penn-state/article145318164.html

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Maine

York women fight wall of silence on child sex abuse

by Deborah McDermott

YORK — Dr. Jeanine Ward was 5 years old when she was sexually abused by the man who lived across the street from her Quincy, Massachusetts, home. She would be an adult, and an emergency room doctor, before the memories of that time came flooding back five years ago.

“People would say to me, how can you not remember that? I was surprised I'd buried it all. I was a workaholic, that's how I dealt with it,” she said. After she remembered, she called a childhood friend and asked, “Were you abused by him, too?” That woman took a dive into heroin and alcohol before finding her way out, and is now working toward becoming a counselor.

The man still lives across the street, although the statute of limitations for her to bring charges has long since run out. But once it became clear what had happened, “I told everyone in the neighborhood. If something happened to a little kid because I didn't say anything, I couldn't live with that burden,” she said.

She also became actively involved in a Massachusetts program called the Enough Abuse Campaign, which aims to raise awareness of child sexual abuse through education, community awareness and legislative outreach. And now that she works at York Hospital, she is working to bring that model to York. An organizing meeting sponsored by York Hospital and the York Police Department and open to the public will be held Friday, April 28, at the library.

“This is my therapy,” said Ward, who became a trainer as part of her work with the campaign. “At least I can do something to help someone else. It helps me to help someone.”

Ward is being joined in this effort by two other women: York police officer Jamie Rooney, the school resource officer at York Middle School; and Kara DioGuardi, a Grammy-nominated music producer and songwriter who was a former judge on”American Idol” and lives in York. The three share the painful memory of child sexual abuse. For DioGuardi, it was child on child abuse, the son of her mother's best friend. For Rooney, who grew up in a highly dysfunctional household, it was “Uncle Bobby” who babysat and then again when she was 12, it was the father of a friend.

Rooney discussed these incidents in her book, “Black to Blue,” and said after it was published, “a couple of girls reached out to me. They knew I was the real deal. Since then, I've heard several reports of things that have happened in the past — to both kids and adults. They thanked me for sharing my story.”

Rooney said more than 18,000 cases of child sexual abuse are reported in Maine each year. And Ward wonders how many cases go unreported. “I wonder if someone said to me when I was young, ‘Don't have someone touch you there,' it would have made a difference. I was raised to do what adults tell you to do. So I did. If we don't talk about it, it's buried. That's a grooming tactic that abusers use.”

The Enough Abuse Campaign currently works in half a dozen states, and is a community-based program that works to build local partnerships of citizens and professionals; provides comprehensive training for vetted volunteers who then provide free education to parents, children and school personnel; works to help schools strengthen existing governmental and school policies; and educates people about legislative action that they can work to support.

Jetta Bernier, the director of MassKids, which created the Enough Abuse Campaign, will be in York April 28 to explain the program. She called the campaign "a citizen-based movement. We're not trying to compete with existing programs like crisis centers. We're trying to complement them. And it begins in the community. Citizens can do a lot."

DioGuardi, who is involved at both the state and national level in strengthening child sexual abuse measures, said she has long known Bernier and supported the work of the Enough Abuse Campaign. When Bernier put her in touch with Ward and Rooney, she was struck by the fact that "here are three different women, all in very different professions, all working for the same cause."

Together, she said, they want to "break open the walls of silence and engage the community. This is a first step, making sure there is awareness around this issue and starting a dialogue," she said. "This is a hard subject, but we can start discussing it and saying that it's okay to speak about it."

Ward said the April 28 meeting is intended as an initial discussion of the Enough Abuse Campaign. She said it may be that at the end of the meeting the community may want to go in a different direction, "and that OK. I know this program and I feel it can be successful. The important thig is that we hold forum and start the discussion."

Eventually, she said, she'd like to see this model incorporated in other communities in York County, and key stakeholders from area communities have been invited to attend the forum.

Meeting particulars

Inaugural meeting to discuss child sexual abuse and the Enough Abuse Campaign model will be held April 28 at 1 p.m. at the library. York Hospital President Jud Knx and York Police Chief Douglas Bracy are sponsoring the event. School and town leaders in York, Kettery and Wells were invited. The public is also invited but is asked to RSVP by emailing info@yorkhospital.com.

http://www.seacoastonline.com/news/20170418/york-women-fight-wall-of-silence-on-child-sex-abuse

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Missouri

Child sex abuse: Things parents might want to know after KC-area teacher is charged

by Mara Rose Williams

Children who have been sexually abused may not always exhibit clear signs that are easily identified by a parent.

But experts in treating child victims of sexual assault say that sometimes there are behavioral changes a parent might notice. And they say there's a right way to question a child to find out if sexual abuse is involved.

“I would not just come out and say to a child, ‘Are you being sexually abused?' ” said James Anderst, a child abuse pediatrician at Children's Mercy Hospital.

Such concerns about how to talk to a child about sexual abuse might now be on the minds of Kansas City-area parents in light of the latest investigation into a North Kansas City teacher accused of engaging in sexual acts with a then-16-year-old boy a dozen years ago.

James R. Green, 52, a teacher and coach at Northgate Middle School in the North Kansas City School District, was arrested and charged last week with six counts of second-degree statutory sodomy. Green is accused of sexually assaulting a Smithville High School student in 2005 and carrying on a sexual relationship with him. Police also are investigating allegations that in recent months, Green had a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old Blue Springs boy.

The FBI has set up a hotline for possible other victims — 816-805-5138.

Anderst said that in asking about a possible sexual assault, “the best thing a parent can say to their child is, ‘You are not going to get in trouble. I am on your side. It is not your fault. I will make sure you are safe.' ”

It's a bad idea, said Anderst, to try to force a child to tell you what you think you might know.

“Kids will tell when they are ready to tell,” he said. If the parent tries to force the issue, Anderst said, “the child may pull back more.”

In 2012, the most recent data from the U.S. Department of Justice shows, more than a quarter of sexual abuse victims that year were 12 to 14 years old, and more than a third were younger than 9. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that about one in six boys and one in four girls are sexually abused before the age of 18.

Erin Hambrick, an assistant professor of pediatric psychology at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, said that some of the behaviors an abused child might exhibit are shared by children stressed for many other reasons that have nothing to do with sexual abuse.

Here's a tip: “Typically, there is not just one behavior” indicating sexual abuse, “but rather a pattern” of behaviors that should alert a parent, Hambrick said.

Behaviors to look for:

? A normally outgoing child suddenly seems reserved, quiet, withdrawn.

? A normally well-behaved child begins to act out in school, with friends or at home.

? A child's grades suddenly take a dramatic drop.

? Parent notices excessive change in a child's sexual behavior.

? A child exhibits sexual behavior that seems too advanced for their age.

? A child who suddenly begins to have trouble paying attention or shows sudden shifts in their mood — depression, anxiety or self-destructive behaviors.

“Unfortunately, a lot of children are highly afraid to disclose” information to a parent. Hambrick warns that questions from the parent to a child “should always be open-ended, and let the child have a voice.” Ask how are things going at school, or how was the time you spent bowling with so-and-so.

The American Academy of Pediatrics offers the following information about child sexual abuse:

? Most offenders are known to the child, and teachers and coaches are included on that list.

? Children most susceptible to sexual abuse have obedient, compliant and respectful personalities.

? Child sexual abuse often involves more than a single incident and can go on for months and years.

Anderst said parents should pay particular attention if their child seems to spend an unusual amount of time with any one adult, talks about getting preferential treatment on a regular basis from a teacher or coach, or comes home with inappropriate gifts from an adult.

And if a parent thinks their child may have been the victim of sexual abuse by a teacher, “call the police” Hambrick said. “Call child protective services.” And “try not to show extreme anger. To the child, that translates: ‘I shouldn't have said anything about it.' Transmit two messages: This is not your fault, and we are going to keep you safe, and express that verbally and in body language.”

http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/crime/article145316904.html

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Police in Europe break up WhatsApp child sexual abuse image sharing network

by Geo TV

Police have arrested 39 suspects in over a dozen countries across Europe and Latin America after busting an online paedophile ring that used the WhatsApp chat service to share images of child sex abuse, officials said Tuesday.

In coordinated swoops late last month, local and international authorities searched houses and seized hundreds of devices containing child sexual exploitation material in South and Central America as well as Germany, Italy and Spain, Europe´s policing agency Europol said in a statement.

"These offenders are pushing the boundaries of modern technology to try to avoid being caught by law enforcement," Europol´s director Rob Wainwright said.

Dubbed "Operation Tantalio", the investigation was sparked in mid-2016 by the Spanish police´s High-Tech Crime Unit focusing on the Tor encryption network, used by criminals to mask their identities.

"Prompted by clear evidence of prolific sharing of indecent images, the Spanish investigators revealed links diverting users to private groups on WhatsApp," Europol said.

A total of 25 groups, formed by invitation only, are currently being investigated, according to Europol. Hundreds of devices containing pornographic material have been seized, it added.

Spanish police said the photos and videos that were seized showed "humiliating treatment" and "excessive brutality" involving children from babies to children up to eight years old.

Europol and international law enforcement agency Interpol, which also took part in the investigation, said 38 suspects had been arrested but Spanish police said "so far" 39 people had been held, including 17 in Spain.

The other arrests took place in Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, Colombia, El Salvador, Germany, Italy, Paraguay and Portugal.

Spanish police said they found handwritten material at a house they searched in Lugo in the north of the country listing the names, ages, and places where encounters with minors took place. Some of them dated back 20 years.

"We need to continue to combine our joint resources and skills to tackle this threat to our children and bring these offenders to justice," Wainwright said.

"Actions like Operation Tantalio send a strong message" that police across the globe will continue to work together to bring to justice those "engaging in or benefitting from the heinous crimes," added Bjorn Sellstrom, Interpol Crimes Against Children operations coordinator.

New Hampshire

‘I'm a damn survivor, and I'm proud of it'

by Alyssa Dandrea

Harmony Reid was an advocate, the person who helped victims of sexual assault become survivors. When asked, she'd tell her own story of the day she was raped.

Her voice, though strong and resolute, was drowning out her own trauma, the unhealed wounds from the day she was assaulted by an acquaintance during her first week as a Plymouth State University freshman.

After graduating from the school in 2010, Reid broke down. She threatened suicide and, on the same night, returned home drunk. Her mother drove her straight to the hospital. The path to recovery started that night.

“I realized how much my life was in shambles, and how much I was hiding the truth from people,” Reid, now 28, said. “I thought everyone was still blaming me for what had happened – ‘If only you had done this, or if only you had done that.' ... That's not what they were saying, but that's what I heard.”

Reid recalled that she and the other members of an outpatient program jumped at the therapist for asking a particularly pointed question.

“What if it was your fault? Would that have changed your life or the situation?” the therapist asked.

The answer held the key to her recovery.

“There's nothing I could have done. I could have done everything wrong and it still wouldn't have made what he did right,” she said. “In that moment, I felt like all the gray, all the fog and the haze that I was just existing in for so long was gone. I wanted peace more than the anger.”

Reid, who now lives in Brattleboro, Vt., spent the first decade of her professional career working with victims of domestic and sexual violence, including in New Hampshire.

She said she realizes now that she may never have pursued that path if it hadn't been for the kind words of a criminal justice professor who encouraged her to become an advocate. He was one of the few people who at the outset told her she would not just be okay, but “do amazing things one day.”

Violation in a safe place

Reid recalled in a recent interview the day she showed up to her first criminal justice class – “Individual and the Law” – in a tattered navy blue sweatshirt and gray sweatpants. She felt her professor deserved an explanation, so she said, “I don't usually look like this. My name is Harmony and I'm in your class. I was sexually assaulted first semester of freshman year, and I don't know what to do about it.”

The professor replied, “Well, I do. I'll take care of you. You'll be fine.”

Reid said she took his words to heart and worked hard to prove him right. After excelling in the class, she decided to declare her major: criminal justice. She wanted to make the biggest impact, and not only help victims but stop people from being victimized in the first place.

Like so many young women who are victims of sexual assault, Reid said she was raped by someone she knew in a place she felt safe. She said she came to understand years later that she had no reason to be ashamed.

Her recovery, though, was increasingly complicated by a criminal process that never made it to the courthouse steps.

Sept. 8, 2006

More than a decade has passed since Reid said she was raped by a hockey player whom she met at a party her first night on campus. Despite the passage of time, she said, she can vividly recall the details of the Sept. 8, 2006, assault, including the blue striped sheets on his bed, the incessant ringing of his phone, and music of Dave Matthews Band playing on his computer.

He had texted her about 5 p.m. to say he was having a tough time adjusting to college life and needed someone to talk to, Reid wrote in her Oct. 12, 2006, statement to campus police. She told police she agreed to go to his dorm room, but during the course of their conversation he became grabby and started to rip off her clothes. Reid recalled trying to use some of the rape aggression defense strategies she had learned in high school to push him off her, but she said he was too strong and overcame her.

“I stopped paying attention to what was going on to me physically. I wanted so badly for this not to be happening,” she said in a March interview. “I didn't think this was rape. I thought he was just having sex with me.”

That night, Reid said, she went out and drank everything that was put in front of her. She wanted to forget. Instead, she woke up the next morning sore and bruised, with every detail crystal clear in her mind.

In the weeks that followed, rumors circulated the campus. Reid said she was ultimately confronted by her boyfriend, to whom she disclosed, “he raped me.” She went on to confide in her closest friends, many of whom campus police later asked to give written statements.

Reid said she knew the police investigation was in trouble from the beginning because of the weeks that had lapsed since that night. The men's hockey coach reported the incident to police, in accordance with National Collegiate Athletic Association rules, after Reid confided in the hockey captain.

On Oct. 9, 2006, she received a phone call from a police sergeant who said he knew of an incident and asked if she wanted to talk about it.

“I showed up at the police department, and little did I know the (expletive) that I was in for,” she recalled later. “I had no idea that was going to be the hardest part.”

She said she had tried so hard to “become normal.” Instead, she found herself reliving the nightmare as police questioned her. She revealed that she was terrified to be alone, could only sleep during the day and spent much of her waking hours with her mind in a fog.

“Now it's setting in,” she recalled. “I was a victim.”

Shedding that label took years of soul-searching as she tried to process what had happened to her and how to best move forward. She said she danced between victim and survivor for a time, until finally realizing that she was not to blame for what happened. She has since owned the title survivor, someone who can accomplish her goals and live her life, while not forgetting her trauma.

Case dropped

Reid said she learned from university police two months after filing her report that they were dropping the sexual assault case, citing inconsistencies in her statements over time.

Through increased education in the past decade about the effects of trauma on memory, investigators and prosecutors say they've learned how common it is for survivors to share new information as a case proceeds, and not because they're being dishonest.

Doctors first diagnosed Reid with post-traumatic stress disorder and rape trauma syndrome after her freshman year. She said the stress had taken a toll on her body and that she was often ill.

To make matters worse, she said she later learned that investigators hadn't spoken to key witnesses the first time around. She confronted the campus police chief and demanded the case be reopened.

Ultimately, the case landed on the desk of Grafton County Attorney Lara Saffo. Saffo told Reid that prosecutors could pursue a grand jury indictment, but even if they passed that threshold, the case would be extremely difficult to prove to a jury. The case was a classic “he said, she said,” Reid recalled Saffo telling her.

“What the jury was going to see was two students who had a different interpretation of what happened that night,” Saffo said in a Monitor interview. “Like most adult sexual assault cases, the defense was going to argue that she was upset because it was regrettable sex that she was embarrassed by. While I did not think that was the case, that was anticipated to be a defense explanation for her demeanor, and, unfortunately, like so many cases, we just didn't have supplemental evidence to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Healing by helping

After many months of reliving her trauma, Reid knew she couldn't continue forward and endure a potentially lengthy and public criminal process. As the reality of that set in, she started looking for other ways to regain control of her story and her life.

The on-campus activism she did was the start of that journey, although she did not understand then the importance of self-care, she said. Following her emotional breakdown in 2010, she was able to see herself clearly for the first time in years, and she no longer recognized the person staring back.

“I said, ‘Wow, I really have gained 50 pounds, my eyes are a different color. ... Is that a gray hair?' ” she recalled.

The realities of her situation motivated her to return to the goals she had envisioned for herself after that first criminal justice class in spring 2007. She remembered telling herself she would start at an emergency shelter and work her way up the ladder, helping as many people as she could along the way.

Two days before her 24th birthday, Reid landed a job as a caseworker in the city of Poughkeepsie, N.Y. She worked one-on-one with victims of domestic violence, sexual assault and child abuse, and they shared with her horrific stories, some of which she admitted hit too close to home.

While the job was a great first experience working in the courts, Reid said she was there to advise victims and provide information, but she wasn't their advocate. In time, she said, she realized advocacy was where her heart was, and that the job was not the best fit.

Reid had interned with the New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence in Concord during her junior year at Plymouth State and had maintained contact with advocates there. When the education coordinator position opened up at the Monadnock Center for Violence Prevention in Keene in 2014, many in Concord encouraged her to apply. She interviewed and was hired the same day.

“The position was really a culmination of everything I wanted and everything I had done rolled into one,” Reid said, noting that she most enjoyed teaching young children about healthy relationships and body safety.

Reid left the organization in spring 2016, saying that it was time to relinquish the baton after 10 years in the fight. She said she felt comfortable taking a step back, knowing confidently that the fight to end sexual violence was not her responsibility alone.

This year, for the first time in a decade, she said, she was able to reflect on her accomplishments and on a system that, although still in need of change, has made significant progress. With that in mind, she recently began a new job working for the Department of Children and Families in Vermont, and she said she's excited to return to a familiar world, although through a different lens.

“I'm so proud of myself. I'm so proud of the people in my life who have supported me. I'm so proud of how far the system has gone, and I'm so proud of where the system is going, because it wasn't always like this,” she said. “We have generations of people coming forward who are taking leaps and bounds ahead of what we ever thought could have happened.”

For Reid, that progress is deeply personal and intimately tied to her own recovery.

“I may be all of these things: a sister, a daughter, a friend, a girlfriend, a pen pal with someone living on the West Coast. I may also be a victim, but I'm a damn survivor, and I'm proud of it, and there's nothing that's ever going to take that away from me.”

http://www.concordmonitor.com/Plymouth-State-survivor-dedicates-life-to-advocacy-work-8405249

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New Hampshire

St. Paul's sex assault victim talks about social media campaign, helping others

by Paul Feely

CONCORD — Chessy Prout didn't ask for the attention she has received since telling the world she was a victim of sexual assault at the age of 15 at a New Hampshire boarding school.

“All I wanted was to be a safe haven for victims,” said Prout. “I want to help other women and men know there are teams of people out there that want to help you.”

Prout, the former St. Paul's freshman at the center of the school's sexual assault case, was in Concord Monday night to discuss her social media campaign — #IHaveTheRightTo — and to take part in a panel discussion on ways to address sexual violence. Held at the University of New Hampshire's School of Law, the panel included U.S. Rep. Annie Kuster, D-NH (02); Allison Power-Bernal, prevention coordinator for the N.H. Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence; Peggy O'Neil, executive director of WISE of the Upper Valley; and Forrest Seymour, Keene State College's coordinator of sexual violence prevention.

A Merrimack County jury found Prout was sexually assaulted by senior Owen Labrie in May 2014. She revealed her identity to the world in August 2016 when she told her story on “The Today Show,” and launched her social media campaign on Twitter. The effort is aimed at empowering other survivors of sexual abuse.

Labrie, 21, was convicted of statutory rape, endangering the welfare of a child and using a computer to set up a meeting with Prout that ended in sexual assault. He has appealed the convictions and petitioned the court for a new trial, claiming ineffective counsel. He is out of jail on bail conditions pending his appeal, wearing a GPS monitor while staying with family in Vermont.

A civil lawsuit filed by Prout's parents against St. Paul's School isn't scheduled to be heard before a federal jury in Concord until March 2018. In the suit, Prout's parents accuse the school of “fostering, permitting and condoning a tradition of ritualized statutory rape,” saying she was the victim of a practice known as the “senior salute,” where upperclassmen arrange for intimate encounters with younger students.

The school has since denied any liability.

Monday marked the first time Prout returned to Concord since Labrie's trial. Prior to the panel discussion, she had private reunions with law enforcement officials who worked on her case, then sat down with a New Hampshire Union Leader reporter to discuss her new social media campaign. Prout, now 18, said that since her #IHaveTheRightTo social media campaign launched in August, millions of sexual assault survivors have responded by tweeting messages and pictures of support.

Prout said she struggled with the decision to go public with her story, fearing the negative backlash that could come with it. She said she drew strength from the words of a friend.

“She said for every negative comment I get for coming forward there would be ... 100 positive ones,” said Prout. “I thought she was exaggerating, but one of the most rewarding things has been ... people reaching out to me and sharing their stories, telling me they never told their story before. That's been incredible, that's all I wanted was to be a safe haven for people to talk things out.”

Prout admitted going public with a story of sexual assault “isn't for everyone.”

“It's been very healing in my case, to come out after being silenced for so long because of the court process,” she said. “But just talking to someone, one person at a time, until you find someone who believes you and listens to you is very important, because holding onto something like this is very hard to do.”

Prout said events like last night's discussion in Concord are important, even if the statistics associated with them are overwhelming. According to the New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence, nearly one in four women and one in twenty men in New Hampshire have been sexually assaulted.

“One in five people will be sexually assaulted before they go to college,” said Prout. “Now when I walk into a room I look around and say, ‘Okay, almost every person in this room has been impacted by rape or sexual assault.' That can be overwhelming, but the way people come and speak about it ... we know it's happening and it makes me feel better that these people are coming and speaking about it, because it's a very undereported crime.”

Earlier this month Kuster and a group of lawmakers launched the Bipartisan Task Force to End Sexual Violence, which is working to advance legislative proposals and initiatives to address sexual violence. Areas that the Task Force plans to focus on include K-12 education, college campus safety, the rape kit backlog, military sexual trauma, ending online harassment, improved data and collection, and law enforcement training.

“We cannot change the culture of sexual violence unless we are all part of the conversation,” said Kuster Monday night. “This is a heavy lift. We need to make sure that, as a society as a whole, we are able to preserve and protect our well-being, from the youngest child on up to the oldest adult.”

Prout said she has plans to work on and grow her social media campaign in the coming years. “I want to graduate high school first, but I hope this campaign doesn't slow down,” she said.

“People realizing their rights, and claiming their voices, publicly standing up for themselves ... I hope that continues,” said Prout. “This conversation is so much bigger than myself and my family. Speaking out has been an important part of my healing process.”

Prout said she has an important piece of advice for students attending middle schools, high schools and colleges in New Hampshire and elsewhere: Don't be afraid to ask questions.

“They shouldn't be ashamed to ask a question or speak up for themselves,” Prout said. “Don't accept the status quo. I did that too long. I accepted the culture for what it was and thought I couldn't change it, and there's a lot that needs to be changed.”

http://www.unionleader.com/social-issues/St-Pauls-sex-assault-victim-talks-about-social-media-campaign-helping-others-04172017

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Florida

Know the signs of child abuse — and report immediately to state hotline

by Susan Dandes, PH.D.

It's hard to imagine any adult intentionally hurting a child. Yet the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that nearly 700,000 children are reported to be abused every year in the United States. And many more cases go unreported and undetected. Any intentional physical or emotional harm or maltreatment to a child under 18 years of age is considered child abuse. Child maltreatment takes many forms, including:

? Physical abuse. Occurs when a child is purposely physically injured or placed at risk of harm by an adult. When people think of child abuse, their first thought probably is of physical abuse such as striking, kicking or shaking a child. Warning signs may include unexplained injuries, including bruises, fractures, burns or other injuries that don't match the explanation provided.

? Sexual abuse. Any sexual activity with a child, such as fondling, oral-genital contact, intercourse or exposure to pornography. Warning signs may include sexual behavior or knowledge that is inappropriate for the child's age, a sexually transmitted infection, the child's statements that he or she was sexually abused, or abuse of other children sexually.

? Emotional abuse. A pattern of behavior that negatively affects a child's emotional development and sense of self-worth. It can include verbal and emotional assault, such as continually belittling or berating a child, as well as isolating, ignoring or rejecting a child. Warning signs may include loss of self-confidence, social withdrawal, loss of interest or enthusiasm, depression, headaches or stomach aches with no medical cause, or decreased school performance.

? Neglect. Any action or inaction on the part of a caregiver that interferes with a child's growth and development, including inadequate food, shelter, affection, supervision, education or medical care. Warning signs may include poor hygiene, inadequate weight gain or growth, lack of supplies to meet physical needs (clothing, school supplies), stealing food and basic supplies, poor school attendance, or parents' failure to follow through with medical and dental care.

Most of the time, abuse happens at home. Children who are abused may feel guilty, ashamed, afraid or confused. Children often think they will be blamed or that no one will believe them if they tell.

As parents and community members, we have a responsibility to be alert to unexplainable changes in a child, either physical or behavioral. While there are no behaviors that definitively reveal abuse, it is important to watch for red flags such as:

? Emotional changes. Children who are abused may appear withdrawn, fearful, depressed, or even engage in self-harming behavior. Others may become outwardly angry and present as bullies.

? Relationship changes. Children who are victims of abuse generally have difficulty trusting others. They may withdraw from friends or usual activities and not seek comfort from their parents or caretakers like other children.

? Behavioral changes. Abused children often display defiant or rebellious behavior, hyperactivity and aggression.

If a child discloses abuse to you or you suspect that a child is being mistreated, encourage the child to tell you what happened. Don't interrogate the child. Let the child tell you in his or her own words about the experience and listen. Offer comfort (“I'm sorry that happened to you”) and reassurance that he or she did nothing wrong and that the abuse is not his/her fault.

Never enter into an agreement with a child that you won't tell, even if that means they decide not to share additional details with you. You do not need proof to speak up.

Although abuse most often occurs in families, it is not a private family matter. If you suspect a child is being abused, you need to take action to protect the child from additional harm. In Florida, everyone, including professionally mandated reporters like doctors and teachers, should contact the Florida Abuse Hotline at 1-800-96-ABUSE or visit reportabuse.dcf.state.fl.us when they know or have reasonable cause to suspect that a child has been abused, abandoned, neglected or exploited.

The Abuse Hotline Counselor will determine if the information provided meets the legal requirements to be accepted as a report for investigation. Reporting is anonymous, so you do not need to give your name. When you report a case of suspected child abuse, try to be as specific as you can with details.

A child who has been abused needs special support and treatment as early as possible. The primary concern is ensuring the safety of the child. Once safety has been established, a child abuse victim can benefit greatly from the services of a qualified mental health professional. Fortunately, the existence of a close relationship with a supportive adult can reduce the negative effects of the trauma. Be that special someone for a child you know needs help.

Susan Dandes, Ph.D., is a pediatric psychologist and clinical director of the Child Protection Team at the University of Miami Health System. For more information, visit UHealthSystem.com/patients/pediatrics.

http://www.miamiherald.com/living/health-fitness/article145097254.html

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Minnesota

Opinion

The persistent Minnesota child-abuse problem

Despite reforms enacted in 2015, much more must be done to protect the most innocent among us.

by Patrick Hirigoyen

If you read the headline in the April 13 Star Tribune on how child-abuse reports in Minnesota rose by 25 percent in 2016, straining the state's child-protection system — and asked, “Didn't we already deal with this problem?” you wouldn't have been far off the mark.

The article reported that 39,500 Minnesota children were suspected of being abused or neglected, according to the state Department of Human Services (DHS); 2016 was the second straight year of sharp increases in such reports.

What has shocked many Minnesotans, however, is that these increases follow the 2015 Legislature's enactment of major reforms to the state's child-protection system, including increased state funding. The legislation reflected recommendations of a child-protection task force appointed by Gov. Mark Dayton following a series of Star Tribune investigative reports.

Does the spike in abuse reports indicate that the legislation was ineffective, or that the task force didn't make the right recommendations? Not at all. The state certainly has taken important steps, but much more is still needed.

Reforms to the system should be considered in light of two factors: funding, and the standards set by the state for child-protection services. Lawmakers addressed both of those areas in 2015, but not completely.

The 2015 legislation increased state funding by $26 million annually. That was welcome, but it only helped restore child protection staffing to levels seen in 2002, before cuts to child protection funding by previous administrations. Nor did it restore the services that case workers need to manage abuse and neglect cases, including therapy, child care or transportation. Those also had been cut since 2002.

In addition, the 2015 funding did not take into account caseload increases among county social-service workers. Such increases were predictable in light of the reforms mandated in 2015, the second factor in the equation.

A DHS representative suggested that “heightened awareness” was a reason for the increase in reports. That may be a contributor, but a more likely explanation is that counties are now required, rather than encouraged, to follow state guidelines on screening such reported cases for further investigation.

The 39,500 reports in 2016 represent those cases “screened in” for a child-protection response. Historically, Minnesota has screened in only about 30 percent of actual maltreatment reports for an assessment or investigation — less than half the national average of 62 percent. The numbers, therefore, suggest that counties probably received many more maltreatment reports.

The state, and its counties, must therefore respond with more funding. To be sure, some are stepping up: Hennepin County, for example, recently increased funding for these services by $13.2 million, hiring nearly 100 more workers.

And, along with funding, the state and counties must do more to implement the recommendations made by the task force behind the 2015 law. Yes, more cases are being investigated, but officials haven't implemented some of the task force recommendations because they disagreed with them.

One, for example, would require that when a child is suspected of being abused, he or she should be interviewed apart from parents or guardians. In many cases, however, child-protection workers continue to follow the old practice of interviewing children in the presence of their parents, who may have been the actual perpetrators of abuse.

Another provision recommends that caseworkers respond to reports in person before determining if they merit investigation. Unfortunately, many such decisions are made solely on the basis of a phone call.

To finish the job begun in 2015, the state needs to fully implement the reforms and the Legislature needs to fund them adequately.

The statistics released by DHS indicate that our state is far from having an effective child-protection system. For that to happen, state and county officials must have the resources they need, and those responsible for child-protection enforcement must do their jobs.

http://www.startribune.com/the-persistent-minnesota-child-abuse-problem/419657423/

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California

Social Workers Charged in Gabriel Fernandez Child Abuse Case Plead Not Guilty

'Red flags were everywhere,' a judge said following a preliminary hearing in the child abuse case

by City News Service

Two former social workers and their supervisors, who are accused of failing to protect an 8-year-old Palmdale boy from deadly abuse by his mother and then-boyfriend, pleaded not guilty Monday to child abuse and falsifying records.

Stefanie Rodriguez, 32, Patricia Clement, 66, Kevin Bom, 37, and Gregory Merritt, 61, were fired from their jobs following an internal investigation into the May 24, 2013 death of Gabriel Fernandez.

On March 20, all four were ordered to stand trial on one felony count each of child abuse and falsifying records. Each defendant faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted.

They are set to return to court April 27 for a pretrial hearing.

Pearl Fernandez, 33, and her then-boyfriend, Isauro Aguirre, 36, are awaiting trial on a murder charge stemming from her son's death. The District Attorney's Office plans to seek the death penalty against the two.

Following a preliminary hearing, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge M.L. Villar found that the social workers and their superiors had a duty to protect the boy and had plenty of reason to suspect that the youngster might be seriously injured or killed.

"Red flags were everywhere, yet no referrals were ever made for a medical exam," Villar said, citing reports of injuries by Gabriel's teacher, who took photos, and a welfare office worker.

"The abuse was clearly escalating. Reckless and criminal negligence is found here," the judge ruled.

Clement's attorney, Shelly Albert, told reporters early this month that the prosecution was "an aberration" and said it amounted to holding the social workers "vicariously liable for acts of the parents."

Gabriel's death prompted a firestorm of criticism of the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services over reports that social workers repeatedly visited the family's home in response to allegations of abuse but left the boy in his mother's custody.

James Barnes, one of two attorneys for Merritt, told reporters following the preliminary hearing that Villar's ruling was "totally incorrect legally," contending the legal duty that the social workers had was not to the child, but to control the mother's behavior.

There was simply not enough evidence for the Department of Children and Family Services to take the child away from his mother, the defense attorney said.

He said the escalating violence cited by the judge occurred months after Merritt had already closed the case file on Gabriel. The only complaint his client was aware of was bruising on the boy's bottom, and parents are allowed by law to use corporal punishment, Barnes said.

"My client and the others are being scapegoated," he said, calling the case an excuse for DCFS' lack of sufficient staffing to handle child abuse cases.

Palmdale elementary school teacher Jennifer Garcia testified that she called Rodriguez multiple times to report that Gabriel said his mother punched him and shot him in the face with a BB gun. Her first call came more than six months before Gabriel was killed.

An autopsy showed the child had a fractured skull, several broken ribs and burns over his body, according to authorities.

Villar said records were incomplete and inadequate, parties weren't talking to one another, incidents went undocumented and some people who are mandated to report abuse failed to do so.

Defense attorneys argued during the preliminary hearing that others were culpable in the boy's death and were better positioned to have saved the boy.

"Gabriel was certainly not left on an island by himself" when the case was transferred to another DCFS unit, argued Joseph Gutierrez, another attorney for Merritt. He said one therapist failed to report serious injuries because her supervisor told her not to.

The case was transferred to the Family Preservation Unit to "put more eyes" on Gabriel, said Rodriguez's attorney, Lance Filer. "(Rodriguez) was the only one ... to substantiate any of the claims ... she did exactly what she was supposed to do and had been trained to do."

Gabriel was seeing a counselor twice a week and a sheriff's deputy stopped by at one point to check on the boy and found no evidence of abuse, according to the defense.

"This was unanticipated, not foreseeable," Gutierrez argued, adding that it's "contrary to human nature, to human reason" that a mother could kill her child.

"I don't think there's anyone who feels worse than these four social workers," Gutierrez said.

But Deputy District Attorney Ana Maria Lopez accused the defendants of making "a deliberate choice to circumvent the system," taking shortcuts and violating procedures.

Prosecutors allege that Rodriguez and Clement falsified reports that should have documented signs of escalating physical abuse and the family's lapsed cooperation with DCFS.

Prosecutors also contend that Bom and Merritt knew or should have known they were approving false reports that conflicted with evidence of Gabriel's deteriorating physical health, allowing the boy to remain in the home until he died.

An investigation revealed that at times over an eight-month period preceding his death, Gabriel -- among other instances of violent abuse -- was doused with pepper spray, forced to eat his own vomit and locked in a closet with a sock stuffed in his mouth to muffle his screams, authorities have said.

"It was their responsibility to protect Gabriel," Lopez said, "to remove this child and put him in a safe place. That's where they failed."

The prosecutor accused the social workers of "professional arrogance" and questioned whether they were "covering up their own misbehavior" in failing to reconsider their earlier decisions when the violence began to escalate.

http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Gabriel-Fernandez-Child-Abuse-Death-Social-Workers-419635694.html

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Kentucky

Raising Awareness as Kentucky "Faces It" - Child Abuse and Neglect

by Greg Stotelmyer & Public News Service

While statistics about child abuse and neglect in Kentucky are alarming, experts say progress is being made across the Commonwealth to educate parents, child care and health care providers, and law enforcement on how to both spot and address the problem.

In 2015, nearly 18,000 Kentucky children experienced neglect and more than 2,500 experienced physical or sexual abuse, 74 of whom died or were seriously injured. Tracy Fuchs, director of marketing and special events with the Family Nurturing Center in Northern Kentucky, said moving the focus beyond "stranger danger" to sexual abuse is important.

"It's a taboo topic. It makes us feel uncomfortable to even hear somebody talk about it, but the fact is 90 percent of children who are sexually abused are done so by someone they know or trust,” Fuchs said. "This discomfort that we have in it, it's exactly what the perpetrators want. They want this culture of silence."

One way Kentucky is raising awareness is through the Face It movement, which was launched four years ago this month by Kosair Charities. The initiative, which promotes best practices in child abuse prevention and intervention, now involves more than three dozen nonprofit groups, educational institutions, and government agencies.

Jerry Ward, chair of the Kosair Charities board, said the spike in abuse and neglect cases set off alarm bells. That was the spark that ignited Face It, which reaches parents, children, and professionals.

"We've got an organized effort throughout the Commonwealth to address this plague and we're seeing a very positive result and it continues to grow,” Ward said.

The state recently reported the number of substantiated cases of child abuse and neglect increased 55 percent over a four year period. Ward said he believes awareness raised by Face It is a big reason why.

"Part of it is because people are addressing the issues,” he said. "The teachers are taught to watch out for signs of child abuse, signs of sexual abuse. The daycare centers are taught. The medical community is taught."

April is Child Abuse Prevention Month.

http://wmky.org/post/raising-awareness-kentucky-faces-it-child-abuse-and-neglect

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Texas

UT researchers: Texas child maltreatment prevention programs working

by Alyssa Goard

AUSTIN (KXAN) — As Texas lawmakers continue their efforts this year to overhaul the state's Department of Family and Protective Services, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin found that a certain type of DFPS program is having success at a surprising rate.

The Texas Institute for Child and Family Wellbeing at UT Austin studied 137,068 caregivers who received prevention services between 2008 and 2015. These families received Prevention and Early Intervention services which are community-based programs given to at-risk families to help with identifying and preventing child abuse. The UT researchers found that 97 percent of those families did not experience cases of child mistreatment after they received prevention services.

“It's a pleasant surprise to see that these families are able to stay out of the system and most importantly that no children were confirmed as cases of child maltreatment in that 97 percent,” said Monica Faulkner, Ph.D., the institute's director.

“From our estimation, it appears that child maltreatment prevention works and it appears to be a really good investment for the state,” Faulkner said. “Because when we have a child that's been abused, that costs society, that costs the child, so the costs to the child are their mental health — their well-being over time.”

According to DFPS records, more than 62,000 families received Prevention and Early Intervention Services in 2016, an increase of 23 percent from the past fiscal year. More than 95 percent of youth who were involved in PEI services in 2016 did not become involved with the juvenile justice system, DFPS records state.

The Center for Child Protection in Austin works with law enforcement and agencies like DFPS to conduct forensic interviews and provide support for children who are victims of crime and abuse. Therapy team members at the center already use a prevention based approach, trying to work with families to curb abuse.

“Focusing on prevention absolutely works, it's providing our community with education, it's getting people to talk about it,” said Tara Powdrill with the Center for Child Protection. Powdrill explained that while most of the center's work doesn't focus specifically on state PEI programs, their own prevention-based programs make an impact in curbing child abuse too.

Faulkner added that while she hopes that lawmakers pay attention to the research showing the benefits of child abuse prevention programs, she also wants politicians to invest their dollars in helping families build healthier lives. She added that drug and mental health problems are interwoven with many of the families with patterns of child abuse.

“And that is impacting all these other social problems that we see and we need to start funding (drug treatment and mental health services) and I don't think with our legislative session and the budget we've really done a good job with that,” she said.

Faulkner thinks the best strategy is to fund child abuse prevention programs as well as other programs for substance abuse treatment and mental health.

You can find out more about PEI programs at helpandhope.org.

http://kxan.com/2017/04/17/ut-researchers-texas-child-maltreatment-prevention-programs-workihttpkxan-comp455546previewtruepreview_id455546ng/

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Nevada

Assembly backs legislation to extend statute of limitations for child sexual abuse victims

by Ben Botkin

CARSON CITY — The Assembly backed legislation that extends the statute of limitations for victims of child sexual abuse to sue their perpetrators.

Assembly members voted 38-0 on the bill on Monday, with four lawmakers absent.

Assembly Bill 145 extends the statute of limitations from 10 years to 20 years. The clock on the statute of limitations would start after a victim turns 18 or discovers an injury was caused by the abuse, whichever comes later.

The vote will support victims and give them the courage to come forward, said a bill sponsor, Assemblywoman Lisa Krasner, R-Reno.

“For far too long, these victims have hid in the shadows because of shame or fear,” Krasner told lawmakers before the vote.

Another sponsor of the bill is Speaker Pro Tem Irene Bustamante Adams, D-Las Vegas. The bill now goes to the Senate.

https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/2017-legislature/assembly-backs-legislation-to-extend-statute-of-limitations-for-child-sexual-abuse-victims/

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New Hampshire

Tracking Child Deaths in N.H. (Part 2 of 4)

by Allie Morris

Concord — Four days after Katlin Paquette gave birth to a baby girl, child protection workers were among her first visitors. They came to the hospital to investigate whether her daughter, Sadee Willott, had been born exposed to drugs, agency records show.

Over the next 21 months, child protection met with Sadee's family 29 more times to check whether the blue-eyed toddler was being physically abused and neglected.

Every report was dismissed, except for the last — but by then it was far too late. When the ruling was made, Sadee had already been dead more than a year. Paquette told police she was trying to get her daughter to sit down in the bath in September 2015, when she pushed her down, causing Sadee's head to smack against the cast-iron tub.

Sadee is one of at least 25 New Hampshire children whose deaths have been linked to abuse or neglect since 2010, records show. Most died before reaching their fourth birthdays, having been beaten, poisoned, smothered or neglected by parents or caregivers. In a troubling trend, the number of child deaths has risen steadily — from three in 2011 to 15 over the last two years.

At least eight children died under the watch of the Division for Children, Youth and Families, according to agency records obtained under a right-to-know request.

A Concord Monitor analysis of these cases and interviews with experts reveal problems within the agency meant to keep children safe.

Facing increased caseloads and high staff turnover, DCYF rarely substantiates reports of abuse or neglect, provides few prevention services to at-risk families, and occasionally doesn't follow its own investigation protocols.

The Monitor analysis shows:

In 2014, only 4.7 percent of abuse reports in New Hampshire were found to have merit, far behind the national average of 19 percent and last in the country. That year, DCYF substantiated 652, out of nearly 13,900, according to most recently available federal data.

Child protection workers at times failed to interview enough people about abuse and neglect allegations, potentially missing information about a child's safety or risk.

DCYF no longer has funding to pay for child care, counseling or drug treatment for families who want help — a major gap in coverage, experts say, because prevention services can keep kids safe and reduce stress on the system later on.

‘Trail of Unfounded Reports'

Sadee's case is not unique. Child protection workers often looked into multiple allegations of abuse or neglect in a home before a child died, but rarely substantiated the reports and took action. DCYF investigated treatment of Christian N'Tapolis and his older brother four times before the 8-month-old Merrimack boy drowned unattended in a bathtub, records show. Agency workers looked into the care of 8-month-old Izik Davis-Miller two months before he died from fentanyl poisoning, after his mother's painkilling patch got stuck to his abdomen, according to DCYF records.

Health and Human Services Commissioner Jeffrey Meyers declined to speak about specific cases, but he acknowledged the state's low substantiation rate and said the department is working to address it.

One major problem, stakeholders say, is that allegations can be true, but still labeled unfounded in the current system. Those could include cases where a parent admits to spanking a child or using marijuana, but DCYF determines the action doesn't meet the threshold to go to court.

While other states have a special label for those kinds of reports — acknowledging that something did happen — New Hampshire does not. Experts criticize the state's practice, saying any evidence of abuse or neglect should be reflected in a family's file so workers can look back and spot potential patterns.

“If the incident occurred, intentional or not ... the report ought to be founded,” expert reviewer Jerry Milner, with the Center for the Support of Families, said last December when the center released an outside review of the agency. “We're seeing fairly often a pattern of not only repeat reports, but a trail of unfounded reports, even if those incidents occurred.”

DCYF faces a difficult task: deciding which children are in such danger the agency should petition the court to remove them from their parents.

Experts say personal judgments should be minimized and decisions should be guided by a tool — a computer-based process that projects a child's risk based on factors such as adequate food and shelter, history of past reports or the presence of domestic violence and drugs.

DCYF has such a tool, but the results have little bearing on agency decisions, according to the outside review. DCYF took no action against parents in all four “very high”-risk cases surveyed by the review. Sometimes the tool is not used at all.

Former DCYF workers said a supervisor or attorney's discretion can determine whether reports are brought before a judge or closed out.

“One person's interpretation of the law can be one way, and somebody else can look at it totally in a different light,” said Laurie Pelletier, who left the agency last October after working there more than 15 years.

Substantiation rates can vary across offices. Child protection workers in Coos County determined more than 15 percent of abuse and neglect reports in 2012 had merit, while those in Merrimack County substantiated just 5.1 percent, according to a Dartmouth College policy brief from 2014.

Meyers said there's a lack of common understanding about how child protection laws operate, which he said can be solved through better training for courts and DCYF staff.

Incomplete investigations

Facing a staff shortage and a rising number of reports, DCYF doesn't always enforce its own protocols, leading to incomplete investigations that remain open far beyond the agency's deadline. Workers have 60 days to take action on a report or close it out.

Records show a DCYF investigation into the treatment of 2-year-old Noah York was still open on day 62, when the agency got word the sandy-haired toddler had been smothered by his mother's boyfriend.

While policy requires DCYF workers to talk with the child victim, siblings, parents and at least two people outside the home, that doesn't always happen, records show.

Child protection workers never met with a North Country family at the center of a neglect report in May 2014 because the mother refused, agency records show. Weeks later, she dropped her infant twins out a second-story window and then jumped herself, landing on her son Barry McGuire, who later died of his injuries, according to prosecutors.

It's reports like those — assigned the agency's lowest priority level in its three-tier system — that face delays and less thorough investigation, records show.

Overwhelmed by rising caseloads, former workers recall having had to push off work on lower-level reports to deal with incoming high-priority ones, where children can be in immediate danger.

“When you have a Level 1, you say, ‘I must drop everything and see this child,' ” said Heather Raymond, a former DCYF worker who left the agency last year. “By having these tiers you emphasize the emergency of the Level 1 to such an extent that it's easy to then de-emphasize the level of 2s and 3s.”

Meyers said he has concern about the three-tier system and plans to look into why child protection workers don't have access to other tools that can aid in investigations.

Social media, such as Facebook and Instagram, are blocked on most DCYF computers, meaning workers can't look up a what a parent is posting about their children or home life online.

“There are appropriate uses for social media, and it is relevant to DCYF,” Meyers said. “It's an area that I am going to be following up on with the Department of Information and Technology.”

A Search for Help

For thousands of troubled families, assistance is out of reach.

Experts say prevention can save money and, more importantly, children's lives. But the Legislature eliminated funding for such voluntary services five years ago.

Now, only the most problematic parents that DCYF brings to court can get child care, counseling or drug treatment covered by the state. For the thousands with unfounded reports, DCYF can recommend services, but parents have to pay their own way. An agency referral doesn't bump someone to the top of a waiting list, so families may struggle for weeks before getting into an addiction program or mental health counseling.

“Prevention is such a high priority,” said John DeJoie, with Child and Family Services of New Hampshire. “If we don't find a way to offer services to these families that want help and need some help, they are just going to wind back up in the protection system, probably with more severe injuries.”

DCYF can't force parents with unfounded reports to get help. Over the course of eight DCYF investigations deemed unfounded, Sadee's family was given a crib, referred to a parenting program and encouraged to have the toddler “followed regularly by a primary care physician,” records show.

One former DCYF worker frustrated by the lack of options said she would keep investigations open past the 60-day deadline to keep checking in on families, scheduling their doctor's appointments or helping them work through problems.

Becky Carpenter and Evan Thorsell-Cary were basically homeless, living in a single-bed motel room in Rochester, when one of their infant twin sons stopped breathing in May 2016.

The couple had been investigated by DCYF three times prior for neglect allegations, including “unstable housing.”

Though Carpenter said they did nothing wrong, that their son Dennis died of sudden infant death syndrome, the couple reluctantly agreed to sign papers admitting to neglect. A finding was the only way they could get DCYF-funded services, she said, which ultimately helped them get off a waitlist and into a two-bedroom townhouse.

“We needed help and we wanted help,” she said. “We didn't know how else to get help.”

http://www.vnews.com/Only-4-7-percent-of-child-abuse-reports-in-New-Hampshire-found-to-have-merit-9271063

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Minnesota

Central Minnesota Organizing Against Sex Trafficking

by Richard Leguil

AVON — Sex trafficking is an everyday problem that affects thousands. Here in central Minnesota, it is the subject of several area organizations.

At the “Stop the Trafficking” event at the Avon Community Church Monday night, Waite Park Police Investigator Jason Thompson spoke about the crime.

Thompson says the community keeps him busy.

“I receive around 40 tips a month about on different trafficked people. On where it's occurring on who they suspect is trafficking, who's being trafficked, so I receive probably about half of my tips from community members.”

Thompson added that you should report anything that's out of place if you suspect trafficking.

“Nothing is ever too small or minimal, we'll investigate every tip, if it doesn't lead somewhere we just designate it as an “intel” file.”

Also at the event was Rebecca Kotz , Trafficking Coordinator for the Central Minnesota Sexual Assault Center. She says pimps usually fall into 2 categories, “Gorilla” and “Romeo”.

“Typically a trafficker that poses as a boyfriend is a romeo, they'll use tactics of charm or being “smooth”. “Gorilla” pimps on the other hand, are typically very sadistic, violent and brutal pimps.”

Kotz added that Romeo pimps usually transition into Gorilla pimps.

Some of the signs that someone is being trafficked are:

•  Signs of torture/abuse

•  Brands or scarring

•  Chemical dependency

•  Malnourishment and poor dental health

•  Excess fear and distrust, especially of authority figures

•  Avoiding eye-contact

•  Wearing clothing not appropriate for the weather

The presenters also talked about the Minnesota “Safe Harbor Law“. Under the law and Minnesotan under 18 who engage in the exchange of sexual activity for money or “something of value” are considered crime victims.

They also discussed the effect pornography has on the trafficking industry, calling it videotaped sex trafficking. Kotz cited a 1990 study by Minneapolis that found over half of trafficking victims had pornography made of them.

Kotz says the sexual assault center is always looking for donations or volunteers from the community.

http://wjon.com/central-minnesota-organizing-against-sex-trafficking/

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Indiana

Sex trafficking is happening here — and everywhere, says conference speaker

Judge encourages public to look for signs of trafficking

by Danielle Grady

NEW ALBANY — There's a story Judge Kimberly Dowling tells when she wants people to realize how easy it is for a child to be sex trafficked.

It's about a girl from a middle class family in Carmel. She started talking to a guy online. They chatted for months — building a rapport.

Then, when the girl's parents told her they wouldn't drive her to apply for a job, she let the guy take her instead.

“It took her parents two years to find her,” Dowling said.

It would take another few years of her running away, being brought back and receiving professional help before she was finally free.

The pervasiveness of sex trafficking, how to stop it and what the state is doing to help were the main points of Dowling's keynote speech at the Second Annual Southern Indiana Human Trafficking Awareness Conference at Indiana University Southeast on Monday.

The all-day conference was hosted by the Southern Indiana Human Trafficking Task Force and attended by around 200 people.

“The biggest thing is that I want to see people get involved and see people help get the word out about what human trafficking really is,” said Yvonne Moore, chair of the task force, about the purpose of the conference.

Dowling, a circuit court judge in Delaware County, was chosen as the conference's keynote speaker for her work with the state and her county on curbing sex trafficking.

When Dowling first got interested in the subject a few years ago, many people didn't believe sex trafficking was a problem in Indiana.

“They probably thought, it happens during the Super Bowl, but it isn't happening in my community. It's not happening in rural communities,” Dowling said.

That, she said, couldn't be further from the truth.

Sex trafficking, just one of the forms of human trafficking, is a commercial sex act that is induced by force, fraud or coercion. A child doesn't have to be forced, defrauded or coerced into performing a commercial sex act to be considered a victim of sex trafficking.

It's estimated by the U.S. Department of State that between 14,500 and 17,500 people are trafficked in the country annually, although Dowling said most numbers involving trafficking are conservative.

It's not known exactly how many people are trafficked in Indiana, but the Indiana Protection for Abused and Trafficked Humans task force received 520 tips about cases of human trafficking in 2016 — up from 130 in 2014.

Sex trafficking occurs in all sorts of areas, Dowling said: rural, as well as in cities.

People are at risk of being sex trafficked if they're homeless or living in poverty, if they have been involved in the child welfare system, or if they have a history of childhood abuse, family conflict or violence.

They're also more likely to be sex trafficked if they're experiencing things common to many teenagers: They want to be independent or to test boundaries, they feel misunderstood or as if their parents don't care or they're attracted to consumer goods.

There are a few things that members of the public can look out for to spot a victim of sex trafficking. There are physical indicators, such as malnourishment and multiple STDs and pregnancies. Some pimps even brand their victims, often with a tattoo on their neck of a guy's name or the word “daddy.” Tracking chips are becoming more popular in sex trafficking victims, as well. They're often found on victims' hands between the forefinger and the thumb, as well as underneath their arms and on their necks.

A good question for a person to ask themselves about a suspected victim is whether or not someone is benefitting from them in any way — either through money or something else of value.

The state of Indiana is doing a few things to combat sex trafficking, Dowling said. The state legislature recently passed a bill to turn Indiana into a safe harbor state, which would protect juveniles from being charged with prostitution. The bill has yet to be signed by the governor.

A subcommittee of the Commission on Improving the Status of Children is also starting the process of installing pilot programs in counties across the state, including Clark County, that would have probation officers, health care professionals and law enforcement officers report suspected victims of sex trafficking to the Department of Child Services.

Events, such as the human trafficking awareness conference, are helping, too, Dowling said to those who attended.

“It's because of folks like you, being here and learning about the red flags and learning bout what this issue is that you can now go home and start looking for the red flags and helping us to identify these kids,” she said.

http://www.newsandtribune.com/news/sex-trafficking-is-happening-here-and-everywhere-says-conference-speaker/article_2ba6f22a-23aa-11e7-ae24-c704ed9e0967.html

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New York

Bill Seeks to Enlist New York Hotels to Help Fight Sex Trafficking

by Brian Bossetta

Though she had previously sponsored legislation in New York to combat sex trafficking, Assemblywoman Amy Paulin said she had not realized how big a role hotels and hotel workers could play in the fight until she met with two activists.

“They made me aware,” Ms. Paulin said of Anneke Lucas, a sex-trafficking victim, and the Rev. Adrian Dannhauser.

Ms. Lucas started an online petition in January calling for legislation mandating that hotels post clearly visible signs explaining what sex trafficking might look like, and that they train employees how to recognize victims and signs of trafficking. The petition has more than 54,000 signatures.

Possible indicators of sex trafficking include guests who book multiple rooms, rent rooms by the hour and pay cash, or men accompanied by young girls who appear downtrodden or do not make eye contact. Girls tattooed with “Daddy's Girl,” “Daddy's Little Money Maker” or bar codes are other potential signs, said Carol Smolenski, the executive director of Ecpat-USA, or End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes, a Brooklyn offshoot of the international group.

Ms. Paulin, a Democrat who represents Westchester County, has introduced a bill that essentially mirrors a 2016 Connecticut law requiring hotels to become more engaged in fighting sex trafficking by training employees to spot victims and common trafficking activity.

It is early in the process — the bill is in the Economic Development Committee — but Ms. Paulin is confident it will become law.

“This is too important,” she said. “We know girls are being trafficked in hotels, and the more awareness we can bring, the greater potential we have of rescuing them and preventing future victims.”

If enacted, Ms. Paulin said, the legislation will apply to “all lodging facilities,” which the bill defines as hotels, motels, motor courts, apartment hotels, resorts, inns, boardinghouses, rooming houses or lodging houses.

“This bill is part of our evolution in fighting sex trafficking,” she said. “We have to keep up with the pimps. They keep evolving, and so do we.”

Ms. Paulin helped pass legislation last year requiring hospital staff to be trained to identify trafficking victims and to notify social services when those victims are under 18. She said she believed hotel staff members could serve as front-line defenders against the commercial sex trade.

“Pimps are clever and can avoid some hotels,” she said. “But they can't avoid all hotels.”

Some hotels are already on board. In March 2016, during the 60th session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, Ms. Dannhauser served as a delegate for the Church of the Incarnation in Manhattan, where she is the associate rector.

During the conference, delegates stayed at the Hampton Inn Grand Central in Manhattan, where Ms. Dannhauser told the hotel's managers about the Tourism-Child Protection Code of Conduct developed by Ecpat International.

“The management team was incredibly receptive,” she said.

Inspired by her experience at the United Nations, Ms. Dannhauser, who also leads the Task Force Against Human Trafficking for the Episcopal Diocese of New York, started an advocacy ministry at her church to help combat human trafficking.

Ms. Paulin's bill, like Connecticut's law, would require that hotel staff members receive training from an approved task force, like Ecpat-USA. Michelle Guelbart, the group's director of private sector engagement, said the Ecpat training, which was established in coordination with the American Hotel and Lodging Association, would provide a solid blueprint for hotels.

Another similarity is that the legislation would require that hotels display, “in plain view and in a conspicuous place and manner in the lobby and in the public restrooms,” the telephone number of the National Human Trafficking Hotline, which the federal government established in 2007.

Ms. Lucas, a native of Belgium who said she had been trafficked through many hotels in Europe as a child, said she believed this stipulation could save lives.

“Had I seen such a notice, I would have found a way to call that number,” she said. “I was seeking an opportunity to speak up, but didn't know how.”

Ms. Lucas and Ms. Dannhauser said they planned to take their fight to other states and to Washington, where they have an ally in Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, Democrat of New York, who helps lead the Congressional Caucus on Human Trafficking.

Ms. Maloney supports the Ecpat code, which she said established a “common set of guidelines” for combating trafficking. “Ecpat's code can drastically reduce traffickers' ability to exploit children through the tourism industry,” she said.

Oklahoma

Child abuse, neglect reports on rise in Oklahoma

by Kelsey Powell

OKLAHOMA CITY — The Oklahoma State Department of Health says thousands of children suffer from abuse and neglect each year.

More than a year ago, the department implemented the Child Safety Meeting. The program schedules a meeting with the parent or guardian and child protective services to assess whether the child is susceptible to abuse and neglect.

According to a report by the state Department of Human Services, there were 15,187 substantial child abuse and neglect victims in Oklahoma in 2016. In the past week, KOCO 5 has reported multiple cases of neglect and abuse.

On April 9, a baby was found dead in a dumpster in Enid. Later in the week, a woman was arraigned on felony neglect and drug possession charges in relation to the investigation.

A Midwest City man pleaded guilty Wednesday in the death of an 18-day-old baby.

The Oklahoma Child Death Review Board reviewed 18 abuse and neglect deaths in 2015.

http://www.koco.com/article/child-abuse-neglect-reports-on-rise-in-oklahoma/9516831

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Massachusetts

Editorial

Resources help victims of sexual abuse

It's never too early to teach children the proper names of their body parts — and that some of them are private.

Start when they the children still in diapers, advises Dr. Stephen Boos, co-medical director at the Family Advocacy Center at Baystate Children's Hospital in Springfield. That makes it easier for little ones to tell adults if something bad happens to them.

That's good advice because, unfortunately, bad things happen to kids more often than we'd like to believe.

According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, one in four girls and one in six boys will experience some form of sexual abuse before they are 18. In Hampshire and Franklin counties, there were 411 cases, involving 535 victims, referred to the Northwestern District Attorney's Child Abuse Unit for investigation last year.

Jennifer Falcone was a child growing up in eastern Massachusetts who did not have the language or the understanding of what was happening to her when a school administrator started molesting her more than two decades ago. She suffered in silence for years, not able to articulate the experience until she was an adult.

Finally able to find relief from the traumatic aftermath, she was inspired to become a social worker and is now based in Springfield. Now she, Boos and a team of other health care professionals are holding what they call parent cafes at libraries and education centers throughout Hampden County to help protect children. They had their first session in Holyoke earlier in April, which is Child Abuse Awareness Month.

On April 7, donors gathered for a fundraising breakfast to benefit the Children's Advocacy Center in Northampton. That center, along with its counterpart in Franklin County, is a nonprofit providing a homelike space where abused children can tell professionals what happened to them. The children also can have forensic examinations and mental health evaluations there, and get referrals for other services.

The keynote speaker was Donna Lloyd, who helped two young girls get the help they needed after one was raped and the other indecently assaulted by their mother's boyfriend. Lloyd took the children to the advocacy center in Franklin County for support that helped them through the court process, which ended with their tormenter's conviction. He was sentenced to serve between 20 and 25 years in jail.

Though the children were frightened, Lloyd said, one of the girls told her that describing to compassionate listeners what happened was “like taking a weight off my shoulders.”

Communication is crucial, Falcone told the parents she met at the Holyoke Library. She acknowledged that discussing sex can be difficult for some. She suggested that practicing beforehand might help. She noted that children are ready for certain pieces of information at different stages and, gauging their reactions, parents can provide a little at a time.

Falcone had other good tips, too, stressing that the point is to not scare kids, just to make them aware. She pointed out that, as was the case with her, an abuser often is someone the child knows and trusts.

Help is also available from the Baystate Family Advocacy Center in Springfield where a social worker can guide a parent through difficult conversations. And there are support groups available as well.

A parent's well-being is essential to the child's, Boos says. “If you fall apart, your child is not going to get better.”

Two more parent cafes are planned, at 5:30 p.m. April 26 at the Holyoke Chicopee Springfield Head Start in Ludlow, and at 4 p.m. April 27 at the Early Childhood Education Center in Springfield.

Awareness of sexual abuse has come a long way since Falcone's tragic childhood. She says she has recovered and turned her focus not only to her two sons, who are 11 and 9, but to other children as well. She is brave to tell her story publicly, providing a strong example of how such openness shines a light on how abuse unfolds and the damage it causes.

http://www.gazettenet.com/Editorial-Good-communication-with-children-the-first-step-toward-curbing-child-sexual-abuse-9207551

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Florida

Lauren Book to unveil display on resilience, triumph over sexual abuse in Capitol rotunda April 19

by Phil Ammann

Child advocate and state Sen. Lauren Book‘s inspirational story will be featured in Sheryl Sandberg‘s newly launched initiative on themes of resilience through tragedy .

On April 19, Book — a survivor of childhood sexual abuse who became an internationally renowned activist — will exhibit an installation decorating the Capitol rotunda, made up of more than 750 shoes worn and submitted by sexual assault survivors of all ages throughout Florida. The display will be up through April 21.

Book also plays a role in Option B, Sandberg's imitative on resilience that arose from the unexpected death of her husband. Sandberg, the Facebook chief operating officer turned author, had spent several months examining resilience as a way for her two sons to cope with tragedy, adversity and loss. She is now using those lessons learned to serve others thrive through challenging times. As part of the Option B community, Sandberg features inspiring voices of resilience and triumph, including that of Book — an advocate, author, state Senator and new mother. Book's story of surviving child sexual abuse is also on the Option B website, under “Expert Talks and Advice.”

Book's Capitol display also coincides with National Sexual Assault Awareness Month and National Child Abuse Prevention month. Book's organization Lauren's Kids and the Florida Council Against Sexual Violence (FCASV) are hosting the display, which asks viewers to “walk in the shoes” of survivors.

Both Book, of Plantation, and State Rep. Kristin Jacobs of Coconut Creek are supporting the event, which is intended to raise awareness and end stigma surrounding sexual violence, giving victims, families and those affected by the issue a larger voice in Tallahassee.

The display's presentation will be at a news conference Wednesday, April 19, at 12:30 p.m. in the Capitol rotunda. Fifteen child victims — now survivors — will “unveil” the display in the Capitol rotunda and speak with legislators. In addition, members of Bikers Against Child Abuse Florida (BACA) will attend after biking across Florida in solidarity.

http://saintpetersblog.com/lauren-book-unveil-display-resilience-triumph-sexual-abuse-capitol-rotunda-april-19/

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North Carolina

From childhood abuse to adult opioid addiction: a local tale

by Kristine Crane

Angela Maccarter remembers playing a game called Don't Wake Daddy. There was a board game by that name, and for most kids, that's all it was: a board game. But for Angela and her sister Melody, it was real life.

Angela remembers crushing baby aspirin into her father's mashed potatoes to try and poison him. She remembers hiding in the closet to call 911 when her father beat her mother.

Angela and Melody used to hold each other in bed at night, promising each other that the next morning at school, they would tell the principal on their daddy.

They never did.

When Angela was 6 years old, she saved her father: He'd taught her CPR, and she used it on him when he stopped breathing after ingesting too much of his own opioid and alcohol mixture.

“Even when I was 4 or 5 years old, I knew what he was doing was wrong, and what my mother was doing by staying with him was wrong,” Maccarter said.

So, when Maccarter, at 21, looked in the mirror and saw her father in herself, she was horrified.

“I was a full-blown IV drug user before my 21st birthday,” she said. “I despised my father for the pain he caused me.”

“'How did this happen?'” she asked herself.

The broken childhoods of opioid addicts

It happens a lot. Children who grow up in abusive households where this is already drug use often end up abusing drugs themselves.

A recent study from the University of Vermont specifically shows that emotional abuse during childhood leads to opioid addiction in adulthood. Researcher Matthew Price, an assistant professor of psychology at Vermont, started his research with the following observation: “Why is it that folks who misuse opioids also seem to have a lot of rough trauma history and a lot of mental health issues going on? How do these folks come into this situation?”

“In early life, they had some adversity as kids, and then they started misusing substances,” Price said.

Price said that emotional abuse is even riskier for addictive behaviors later in life than physical abuse.

“If you are abused in a way that has a physical component, someone else is very clearly the perpetrator,” Price said. “Emotional abuse is a little more insidious.”

That's because emotionally abused children often hear that they are something negative, he added. “The person has to deal with the fact that they have been called these things; they are swirling around in their head.”

Often, these children haven't learned proper coping mechanisms, and so whenever there is a negative trigger to their feelings of negativity, they are wired to having a “flight or fight reaction,” he added. And that's when they begin to self-medicate with drugs, and opioids in particular.

Maccarter's father abused everyone in the family; her sister, who had learning disabilities growing up, bore the brunt of comments like, “You're stupid.”

“She still believes that she's stupid,” Maccarter said. “Neither of us have learned coping skills.”

Instead, Maccarter learned drugs.

“By the time I was a pre-teen, drugs would numb the emotional pain. That was an easy, simple fix,” she said.

Stomach problems, which were brought on by anxiety, morphed into Crohn's disease, which kept Maccarter in and out of the hospital—where she could get opioids from an early age.

“I learned how to manipulate the system pretty young,” she said.

By the time Maccarter was 18, she was going through 200-250 hydrocodone pills per week.

“It didn't take me long to graduate to heroin,” she said.

Treating emotional abuse and addiction in tandem

Maccarter was 19 when she first went into rehab. It would take another ten years—in and out of rehab six or seven times—to come clean. She has been clean since Dec. 13, 2013.

What worked for Maccarter is an approach that Price suggests in his study: treating mental illness and addiction in tandem, rather than separately.

“Historically, the treatment model was you treat one, then the other. First substances, then depression,” Price said. “It's hard to do better on either if you don't do both at the same time.”

But the literature is showing that tackling both at once produces better outcomes, he added.

Anecdotally, that's been true for Maccarter.

“They call me a dual diagnosis,” she said, referring to her anxiety, depression and PTSD, as well as her addiction.

She was treated at Coastal Horizons Center in Wilmington, in a “wrap-around program” with medication-assisted treatment to get people over the hump of addiction cravings.

“Then they set you up with a therapist to purge these emotional experiences,” she said.

Nearly 80 percent are sober four months later, she said.

Maccarter, now 31, went back to school for a certificate in early childhood education.

“I know that there are a lot of children out there right now that are in these patterns, and it's not a happy way of life,” she said. “It's a very helpless feeling. Children don't have that voice to say: ‘Hey, I don't like what's happening in my life.' It can scar very deeply.

“Now that I'm an adult, it's been switched around to where I can take control, and I will, if I see a child that's in need, in danger. Or one that has experienced what I have.”

https://portcitydaily.com/2017/04/16/health-from-childhood-abuse-to-adult-opioid-addiction-a-local-tale/

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Michigan

Because Children are Our Future!

by Mark Bello

April is Child Abuse Prevention Month, a time to recognize that child abuse and neglect is a problem nationwide — in every state, in every community. It happens much more than we want to acknowledge, across all races, ethnicities, and economic backgrounds. In fact, an estimated 683,000 children were victims of child abuse in 2015 alone.

Child abuse is when someone whether through action or failing to act, causes injury, death, emotional harm, or risk of serious harm to a child. The perpetrator is typically not a random stranger. Ninety percent of the time, the perpetrator is someone the child has a relationship with – relative, babysitter, caregiver, coach, teacher, or priest.

There are four common types of child abuse:

•  Physical – when a parent or caregiver causes any non-accidental physical injury to a child

•  Sexual – when an adult uses a child for sexual purposes or involves a child in sexual acts.

•  Emotional – when a parent or caregiver harms a child's mental and social development, or causes severe emotional harm

•  Neglect – when a parent or caregiver does not give the care, supervision, affection and support needed for a child's health, safety and well-being

Child abuse is not usually just one physical attack or just one instance of failure to meet a child's most basic needs. Usually it is a pattern of behavior that takes place over a period of time. The longer child abuse continues, the more serious it becomes, the more difficult it is to stop, and the less likely the child will make a full recovery. Many children are afraid to tell anyone. They think they will be blamed or no one will believe them. They will keep quiet out of fear or because the abuser is someone close to them that they love. Parents also tend to overlook signs and symptoms of abuse because they don't want to face the truth. These are some reasons why cases surface many years later and why so many cases have never been reported.

Supervision of, and involvement in, your child's activities are the best ways to prevent child abuse outside the home. Always investigate if your child says he/she has been mistreated or if your child undergoes a sudden, unexplained change in behavior. If you suspect your child has been abused, get help immediately through your pediatrician or a local child protective agency.

Child abuse is not always obvious. The good news is knowing some of the common warning signs, helps catch the problem as early as possible.

Warning signs of physical abuse

•  Frequent injuries or unexplained bruises, welts, or cuts

•  Is always watchful and “on alert,” as if waiting for something bad to happen

•  Injuries appear to have a pattern such as marks from a hand or belt

•  Backs away from touch, flinches at sudden movements, or seems afraid to go home

•  Wears inappropriate clothing to cover up injuries, such as long-sleeved shirts on hot days

Warning signs of neglect

•  Clothes are ill-fitting, filthy, or inappropriate for the weather

•  Hygiene is consistently bad (unbathed, matted and unwashed hair, noticeable body odor).

•  Untreated illnesses and physical injuries

•  Is frequently unsupervised or left alone

•  Is frequently late or absent from school

While physical abuse and neglect might be the most visible, emotional and sexual abuse also leave deep, lasting scars.

Warning signs of emotional abuse

•  Excessively withdrawn, fearful, or anxious about doing something wrong

•  Shows extremes in behavior, such as overly compliant or demanding behavior, extreme passivity or aggression

•  Doesn't seem to be attached to the parent or caregiver

•  Acts either inappropriately adult (taking care of other children) or inappropriately infantile (rocking, thumb-sucking, throwing tantrums)

Warning signs of sexual abuse

•  Trouble walking or sitting

•  Displays knowledge or interest in sexual acts inappropriate to his/her age

•  Makes strong efforts to avoid a specific person, without an obvious reason

•  Doesn't want to change clothes in front of others or participate in physical activities

•  An STD or pregnancy, especially under the age of 14

Allegations of sexual abuse have become an increasingly disturbing occurrence. As more of these cases by religious leaders come to light, more victims are finding the support they need to come forward with their stories.

I have handled cases of child sexual abuse in my career. It is an enormous problem and, in some instances, made worse by the refusal of certain institutions to recognize the problem, punish the guilty, and move our precious children out of harm's way. I have written a novel, Betrayal of Faith, which depicts the extraordinary conspiracy of evil and criminal behavior that one institutional defendant engaged in to protect its reputation and cover up child sexual abuse. In particular, it tells the story of how one family copes with a priest's abuse of children as well as the difficult legal process a family has to navigate to achieve justice.

While our legal system may provide justice to innocent victims of abuse, a cause is only as strong as the people who support it. If you want to do more to support children and families in your community and prevent abuse before it ever occurs, volunteer your time or donate money to child-serving organizations in your community. You can also support Prevent Child Abuse America, an organization that works to prevent the abuse and neglect of our nation's children by building awareness, providing education, and inspiring hope to everyone involved in the effort. Help make a difference during Child Abuse Prevention Month.

Mark Bello is the CEO and General Counsel of Lawsuit Financial Corporation, a pro-justice lawsuit funding company.

http://farmingtonhills.legalexaminer.com/miscellaneous/because-children-are-our-future-2/

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Arkansas

Arkansas Senate: Helping neglected children

by the Magnolia Reporter

Weekly column written for members of the Arkansas Senate:

During the 2017 regular session, lawmakers considered numerous changes to existing law governing placement of neglected children.

About a dozen were enacted.

Many of the new acts set out clear legal procedures followed by attorneys for the state Children and Family Services Division, attorneys for parents both custodial and non-custodial, attorneys for other relatives of the children and attorneys for the children.

For example, Act 1111 clarifies that when a court order has been filed that terminates a person's parental rights, the division no longer has to try to reunify that parent with the child. That person's lawyer is relieved of the duty of representing the person, and the person is no longer to be notified of hearings and court proceedings.

The act prevents the results from past drug tests from being used to deny a parent visitation with a child. However, if the person is under the influence of drugs or alcohol during a visit, or appears to be impaired, that visit may be canceled.

Act 1116 directs child welfare officials to try to locate a non-custodial parent and grandparents when the state takes custody of a child in neglect.

Act 701 instructs juvenile courts that a non-custodial parent shall be presumed a fit parent, and other parties in the case would have to present evidence otherwise.

Act 861 creates the Commission for Parental Counsel. In neglect and abuse hearings, the commission would provide attorneys to represent parents who don't have money to hire their own. Judges would appoint the attorneys from a list provided by the commission.

Act 994 sets up a legal procedure for people whose parental rights have been terminated, allowing them to petition the court to have those rights reinstated.

Act 994 recognizes that too many displaced children in Arkansas are never reunited with their biological parents, and also never get to live in a permanent foster home or adoptive home.

Its purpose is to add an option for permanently placing children over 14 who have been in the foster care system for many years, especially if the process of adopting them has been disrupted and halted.

Act 700 expands the legal definition of “fictive kin.” The term describes people who are not related by blood or marriage to the child in the neglect case, but who have strong and positive emotional ties to the child. Examples in the previous law included godparents, neighbors and family friends.

Act 713 creates a new legislative body to oversee child maltreatment investigations by the Division of Children and Family Services and the Crimes Against Children Division of the State Police. The oversight committee may only review completed cases, and not pending cases.

The committee's meetings will be closed to the public and there will be penalties for members who unlawfully reveal its activities.

Act 996 revises the criteria a judge follows when permanently placing a juvenile with a parent, a custodian or a guardian. The judge may consider whether the adults maintained consistent contact with child welfare officials and how much they were involved in the writing of a case plan.

South Arkansas state senators:

District 12 (Columbia and Dallas counties, parts of Ouachita, Nevada, Clark and Grant counties) – Bruce Maloch, Democrat. 650 Columbia Road 258, Magnolia, 71753. 870-235-7041. bruce.maloch@senate.ar.gov

District 11 (Lafayette, Miller and Little River counties, parts of Hempstead and Sevier counties) – Jimmy Hickey Jr., Republican. 3216 E. 35th St., Texarkana, 71854. 903-824-8861. jimmy.hickey@senate.ar.gov

District 27 (Union and Calhoun counties, parts of Ouachita, Cleveland, Clark and Jefferson counties) – Trent Garner, Republican. P.O. Box 11135, El Dorado, 71730. 870-818-9219. trent.garner@senate.ar.gov

http://www.magnoliareporter.com/news_and_business/opinion/article_aead4240-2144-11e7-a24a-d38aff5ecdca.html

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Kansas

DCF: Reports of abuse and/or neglect in Kansas up 9.7 percent

by Hays Post

TOPEKA – Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt, in partnership with the Kansas Department for Children and Families (DCF), Kansas Children's Service League (KCSL), Wesley Medical Center and the Wichita Police Department spoke at a “Pinwheels for Prevention” rally on Wednesday, April 12, at Wesley Medical Center's Children's Hospital, Wichita. The event highlighted the role mandated reporters play in the abuse prevention process, and outlined steps Kansans should take if they suspect a child is the victim of abuse and/or neglect.

“Keeping a watchful eye for the signs of child abuse can help protect our Kansas children,” Attorney General Schmidt said. “We all have a responsibility to help keep children safe.”

In FY 2016, DCF's Child Protective Services division received 67,642 reports of abuse and/or neglect in Kansas—up 9.7 percent from FY 2015. More than 20 percent (13,609) of those reports came from Sedgwick County, more than 9 percent (6,333) from Wyandotte County and nearly 9 percent (6,064) from Shawnee County.

“Every child deserves to grow up in a safe, loving environment,” Secretary Gilmore said. “Parenting can present challenges, but we need to connect with our communities so that when we are struggling to cope, we know we're not alone. DCF and our community partners offer many services to strengthen Kansas families, and keep children in their homes, as long as that is a safe option.”

One resource offered to families is the Parent Helpline. Sponsored by KCSL, the Parent Helpline is a free, statewide, anonymous information and referral service. Helpline advocates are trained and offer support to help with simple questions or complex situations. The Helpline is available 24/7. If you have parenting questions or need someone to talk to, please call the Parent Helpline at 1-800-CHILDREN.

Mandated reporters, such as social workers, teachers and law enforcement, are required by law to report suspected child abuse. DCF Social Worker Sarah Hoss has spent 13 years working in Wichita's Exploited and Missing Child Unit, investigating cases of child abuse and neglect. She understands firsthand the important role both mandated and non-mandated reporters play in protecting children from dangerous situations.

“I want the public to know that it is important if you suspect, or even have a concern, of abuse or neglect that you report it,” Hoss said. “They are the voice of the children, and without them reporting it, we don't know that it's occurring and we can't help the families and the children in our communities.”

As part of Wednesday's event, local children planted pinwheels outside the hospital in flowerbeds to commemorate Child Abuse Prevention Month. The planting ceremony is part of the Pinwheels for Prevention campaign—an effort to change the way our nation thinks about prevention and how we can deliver on our commitment to Kansas children. The pinwheel serves as an uplifting reminder of childhood and the bright futures all children deserve.

If you suspect a child is being abused and/or neglected, you are urged to call the Kansas Protection Report Center at 1-800-922-5330.

https://www.hayspost.com/2017/04/16/dcf-reports-of-abuse-andor-neglect-in-kansas-up-9-7-percent/

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New Hampshire

Tracking Child Deaths in N.H.

by Allie Morris

Concord — Four days after Katlin Paquette gave birth to a baby girl, child protection workers were among her first visitors. They came to the hospital to investigate whether her daughter, Sadee Willott, had been born exposed to drugs, agency records show.

Over the next 21 months, child protection met with Sadee's family 29 more times to check whether the blue-eyed toddler was being physically abused and neglected.

Every report was dismissed, except for the last — but by then it was far too late. When the ruling was made, Sadee had already been dead more than a year. Paquette told police she was trying to get her daughter to sit down in the bath in September 2015, when she pushed her down, causing Sadee's head to smack against the cast-iron tub.

Sadee is one of at least 25 New Hampshire children whose deaths have been linked to abuse or neglect since 2010, records show. Most died before reaching their fourth birthdays, having been beaten, poisoned, smothered or neglected by parents or caregivers. In a troubling trend, the number of child deaths has risen steadily — from three in 2011 to 15 over the last two years.

At least eight children died under the watch of the Division for Children, Youth and Families, according to agency records obtained under a right-to-know request.

A Concord Monitor analysis of these cases and interviews with experts reveal problems within the agency meant to keep children safe.

Facing increased caseloads and high staff turnover, DCYF rarely substantiates reports of abuse or neglect, provides few prevention services to at-risk families, and occasionally doesn't follow its own investigation protocols.

The Monitor analysis shows:

In 2014, only 4.7 percent of abuse reports in New Hampshire were found to have merit, far behind the national average of 19 percent and last in the country. That year, DCYF substantiated 652, out of nearly 13,900, according to most recently available federal data.

Child protection workers at times failed to interview enough people about abuse and neglect allegations, potentially missing information about a child's safety or risk.

DCYF no longer has funding to pay for child care, counseling or drug treatment for families who want help — a major gap in coverage, experts say, because prevention services can keep kids safe and reduce stress on the system later on.

‘Trail of Unfounded Reports'

Sadee's case is not unique. Child protection workers often looked into multiple allegations of abuse or neglect in a home before a child died, but rarely substantiated the reports and took action. DCYF investigated treatment of Christian N'Tapolis and his older brother four times before the 8-month-old Merrimack boy drowned unattended in a bathtub, records show. Agency workers looked into the care of 8-month-old Izik Davis-Miller two months before he died from fentanyl poisoning, after his mother's painkilling patch got stuck to his abdomen, according to DCYF records.

Health and Human Services Commissioner Jeffrey Meyers declined to speak about specific cases, but he acknowledged the state's low substantiation rate and said the department is working to address it.

One major problem, stakeholders say, is that allegations can be true, but still labeled unfounded in the current system. Those could include cases where a parent admits to spanking a child or using marijuana, but DCYF determines the action doesn't meet the threshold to go to court.

While other states have a special label for those kinds of reports — acknowledging that something did happen — New Hampshire does not. Experts criticize the state's practice, saying any evidence of abuse or neglect should be reflected in a family's file so workers can look back and spot potential patterns.

“If the incident occurred, intentional or not ... the report ought to be founded,” expert reviewer Jerry Milner, with the Center for the Support of Families, said last December when the center released an outside review of the agency. “We're seeing fairly often a pattern of not only repeat reports, but a trail of unfounded reports, even if those incidents occurred.”

DCYF faces a difficult task: deciding which children are in such danger the agency should petition the court to remove them from their parents.

Experts say personal judgments should be minimized and decisions should be guided by a tool — a computer-based process that projects a child's risk based on factors such as adequate food and shelter, history of past reports or the presence of domestic violence and drugs.

DCYF has such a tool, but the results have little bearing on agency decisions, according to the outside review. DCYF took no action against parents in all four “very high”-risk cases surveyed by the review. Sometimes the tool is not used at all.

Former DCYF workers said a supervisor or attorney's discretion can determine whether reports are brought before a judge or closed out.

“One person's interpretation of the law can be one way, and somebody else can look at it totally in a different light,” said Laurie Pelletier, who left the agency last October after working there more than 15 years.

Substantiation rates can vary across offices. Child protection workers in Coos County determined more than 15 percent of abuse and neglect reports in 2012 had merit, while those in Merrimack County substantiated just 5.1 percent, according to a Dartmouth College policy brief from 2014.

Meyers said there's a lack of common understanding about how child protection laws operate, which he said can be solved through better training for courts and DCYF staff.

Incomplete investigations

Facing a staff shortage and a rising number of reports, DCYF doesn't always enforce its own protocols, leading to incomplete investigations that remain open far beyond the agency's deadline. Workers have 60 days to take action on a report or close it out.

Records show a DCYF investigation into the treatment of 2-year-old Noah York was still open on day 62, when the agency got word the sandy-haired toddler had been smothered by his mother's boyfriend.

While policy requires DCYF workers to talk with the child victim, siblings, parents and at least two people outside the home, that doesn't always happen, records show.

Child protection workers never met with a North Country family at the center of a neglect report in May 2014 because the mother refused, agency records show. Weeks later, she dropped her infant twins out a second-story window and then jumped herself, landing on her son Barry McGuire, who later died of his injuries, according to prosecutors.

It's reports like those — assigned the agency's lowest priority level in its three-tier system — that face delays and less thorough investigation, records show.

Overwhelmed by rising caseloads, former workers recall having had to push off work on lower-level reports to deal with incoming high-priority ones, where children can be in immediate danger.

“When you have a Level 1, you say, ‘I must drop everything and see this child,' ” said Heather Raymond, a former DCYF worker who left the agency last year. “By having these tiers you emphasize the emergency of the Level 1 to such an extent that it's easy to then de-emphasize the level of 2s and 3s.”

Meyers said he has concern about the three-tier system and plans to look into why child protection workers don't have access to other tools that can aid in investigations.

Social media, such as Facebook and Instagram, are blocked on most DCYF computers, meaning workers can't look up a what a parent is posting about their children or home life online.

“There are appropriate uses for social media, and it is relevant to DCYF,” Meyers said. “It's an area that I am going to be following up on with the Department of Information and Technology.”

A Search for Help

For thousands of troubled families, assistance is out of reach.

Experts say prevention can save money and, more importantly, children's lives. But the Legislature eliminated funding for such voluntary services five years ago.

Now, only the most problematic parents that DCYF brings to court can get child care, counseling or drug treatment covered by the state. For the thousands with unfounded reports, DCYF can recommend services, but parents have to pay their own way. An agency referral doesn't bump someone to the top of a waiting list, so families may struggle for weeks before getting into an addiction program or mental health counseling.

“Prevention is such a high priority,” said John DeJoie, with Child and Family Services of New Hampshire. “If we don't find a way to offer services to these families that want help and need some help, they are just going to wind back up in the protection system, probably with more severe injuries.”

DCYF can't force parents with unfounded reports to get help. Over the course of eight DCYF investigations deemed unfounded, Sadee's family was given a crib, referred to a parenting program and encouraged to have the toddler “followed regularly by a primary care physician,” records show.

One former DCYF worker frustrated by the lack of options said she would keep investigations open past the 60-day deadline to keep checking in on families, scheduling their doctor's appointments or helping them work through problems.

Becky Carpenter and Evan Thorsell-Cary were basically homeless, living in a single-bed motel room in Rochester, when one of their infant twin sons stopped breathing in May 2016.

The couple had been investigated by DCYF three times prior for neglect allegations, including “unstable housing.”

Though Carpenter said they did nothing wrong, that their son Dennis died of sudden infant death syndrome, the couple reluctantly agreed to sign papers admitting to neglect. A finding was the only way they could get DCYF-funded services, she said, which ultimately helped them get off a waitlist and into a two-bedroom townhouse.

“We needed help and we wanted help,” she said. “We didn't know how else to get help.”