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The 'No More Secrets' Project; About the project
Topic Started: May 19 2010, 11:18 AM (73 Views)
Eve1224
Administrator
Welcome to the board. This is my first time ever creating a message board so please bear with me as I work out the kinks of a new experience and feel free to offer advice and tips and to alert me to mistakes I've made. I'm depending on you to walk this journey with me!

First, a little background:

It was four years ago that my daughter made her outcry to me. A brave and brilliant six year old sat in the tub playing with her Barbies. Delicately, she broached the subject of the differences between boys and girls. I thought I was about to have that uncomfortable conversation that every parent dreads. I had no idea how right I was.

What followed this outstanding display of bravery, was a hurricane of despair, confusion, anger and unanswered questions. The legal system was it's own tornado of misinformation and ineptitude. And watching my daughter's case be pigeonholed by the defense attorney and seeing excellent evidence be deemed inadmissible was enough to make anyone lose their mind. It felt in fact at times like that was a very real possibility.

Eventually (after an entire year of delays and card tricks performed by the defense), he plead guilty and received probation with mandatory counseling. It was pretty devastating to watch him walk away with a smirk firmly in place. But watching that led to the project you see now.

What has astounded me over time, is to learn how prevalent child sexual abuse actually is. Having been abused myself as a child, I felt very alone for a very long time. It was only as an adult that I began to get a glimpse of how unfortunately untrue that was, and it was only after this nightmare was visited upon my daughter that I have gotten a clear picture of the magnitude of this storm on our society.

It's the trauma that no one talks about. There are detailed news stories nightly about murders and victims of war and devastating car accidents. But very rarely do you hear about the 39 million estimated survivors of childhood sexual abuse in our country. It is an epidemic of monumental proportions. I don't know how to change that, but I'm hoping that this site will help in some way.

As long as we remain quieted by the shame and fear, we will continue to suffer in silence. And the perpetrators will be allowed to walk among the shadows of our fear. We need to speak up about the levels at which this these events are taking place. We need to educate the rest of the world about the effects - physical, mental, and spiritual - that sexual abuse has on the lives our children who become the adults of tomorrow. Maybe then, more support will be given to the survivors, and more action will be taken to stop it from happening in the first place.

Please help us all by sharing your stories and making your voice a light in this darkness.
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