Number of abused U.S. children unchanged since 2008

Original Article

05/14/2013

By Andrew M. Seaman

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - The number of U.S. children who were exposed to violence, crime and abuse in 2011 was essentially unchanged from 2008, according to a new government survey.

Researchers who interviewed 4,503 children and teenagers in 2011 found that two in five children reported being physically assaulted in the previous year, and one in every 10 kids was injured by that abuse.

"The good news is that a lot of people expected things to get worse given the economy was doing so bad," said David Finkelhor, the study's lead author.

"That's the good news but the bad news is that... the level of exposure to violence, to crime and all that stuff is really enormous to kids," added Finkelhor, director of the University of New Hampshire's Crimes against Children Research Center in Durham.

For the new study, which was supported by federal grants from agencies including the U.S. Department of Justice, interviewers called the homes of children between the ages of one month and 17 years old.

They interviewed an adult in the home and then a randomly selected child between 10 and 17 years old. If the child was younger than 10 years old, the caregiver who is most involved with the child was interviewed.

Finkelhor and his colleagues found that 40 percent of the children and teens reported being physically assaulted in the past year, and 10 percent said they suffered an injury from an assault.

Boys were more likely to be the victims of assault, and often brothers and sisters or other children were the perpetrators.

About 6 percent said they were the victims of sexual harassment, and about 2 percent said they were sexually assaulted.

Those at the highest risk for sexual assault were girls between the ages of 14 and 17 years old. About a quarter of girls in that age group experienced sexual harassment and about 8 percent reported a sexual assault.

The researchers also found that about 14 percent all the children and teens experienced maltreatment, which includes neglect, physical or emotional abuse, custodial interference or sexual abuse by a familiar adult.

About a quarter of the entire group also said their belongings were vandalized or stolen in the past year. About the same number of children reported seeing some sort of violence or crime in their homes or their community. That included domestic violence.

A previous study that surveyed children and their caregivers in 2008 found similar rates of violence and abuse, according to the researchers, who published the new findings in JAMA Pediatrics.

Finkelhor suggested that the rates may have remained steady, in part, because there are programs to help curb violence available to families.

"In spite of anxiety that people had about the recession or the Internet… I think something larger is at work," he said, adding that people still should not be afraid to get involved if they suspect abuse.

"I don't want anyone to get the impression that everything is hunky dory. We still have rates that are higher than in many other developed countries," Finkelhor said.

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IL - Teens confess to crimes they didn't commit

Original Article

12/07/2012

The Chicago Police Department is now the subject of a federal Justice Department investigation into its interrogation practices in at least one case that dates back more than 25 years, 60 Minutes has learned. The case involves juveniles who were as young as 14 years old. Now, after serving lengthy jail times, they tell Byron Pitts they were picked up on the streets, isolated from their parents and in some cases held for days by the police, who they say forced false confessions from them under harsh interrogations. Pitts' report will be broadcast on 60 Minutes, Sunday, Dec. 9 at 7:00 p.m. ET/PT.

"Everything in that confession was fed to us, and myself and my co-defendants by the police," [name withheld] tells Pitts. He signed a 21-page confession in 1994 admitting to a murder and rape of a 30-year-old prostitute that resulted in a 30-year sentence.

"You are being cuffed up and beat on by the police...they can get you to do what they want you to do,'' says [name withheld], who would sign a confession in another case that resulted in being jailed for more than 19 years.

Defense attorneys point out that Chicago has had twice as many false confession cases that have been documented than any other city in the country. This year seven men, including [name withheld] and [name withheld], were exonerated by a Chicago court of murder and rape charges. It was charged that Chicago police may have coerced confessions out of some of them when they were teenagers. Those men are now free and were given certificates of innocence, but not before they had spent nearly 20 years in jail for crimes they did not commit.

This happens all too often in Chicago, says Peter Neufeld, the co-founder of the Innocence Project. "Quite simply, what Cooperstown is to baseball, Chicago is to false confessions. It is the Hall of Fame," Neufeld says. "There are more juvenile confessions in Chicago than anyplace else in the United States...It's not because the kids are different...it's because of the way the police keep pounding and pounding and pounding away in those interrogation rooms," he tells Pitts.

Former Cook County Prosecutor Bob Milan says for the first time that he is now convinced some of the convictions his office made were based on false confessions obtained by Chicago Police. "I didn't believe people would confess to rape and murder of a woman. You know, just didn't believe it," Milan tells Pitts. "But based on my experiences, I found it did happen."

It happened in [name withheld]'s case, one Milan was involved in as a young prosecutor. [name withheld] and his teenage defendants, [name withheld] and [name withheld], were convicted and sentenced to life in prison based on false confessions obtained by the police.

Milan says it still haunts him that he did not examine the confessions given by some of the defendants at the time -- confessions that resulted in their convictions.

"These young men lost a lot of good lives. I was part of it, I didn't mean it, I never would have done that intentionally, but it doesn't make it any easier," he tells Pitts. "There's nothing worse as a prosecutor than playing a role in sending an innocent person or people to prison for many years. There's nothing worse."

Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez tells Pitts that she is aware of the federal investigation into one of the cases and is cooperating with their probe. Recently she has established a new unit within her office to re-examine questionable prosecutions, but defends the action of the police in these cases. "We have not uncovered any evidence of any misconduct, by the police officers or the state's Attorneys, that took the statements in these cases,'' she says.

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Sexual abuse is less than 10% of all childhood abuses, yet we don't have a online shaming list for those other abusers, why not?

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DC - Bill that expands child sex abuse reporting requirements advances

Original Article

11/15/2012

By Tim Craig

Nearly all adults in the District would be held liable if they fail to report suspected child sex abuse under a bill tentatively approved Thursday by the D.C. Council.

The legislation, which comes in the aftermath of the Penn State University sex-abuse scandal, would greatly expand existing city laws requiring mandatory reporting for government workers, teachers and counselors who work closely with children.

After reports surfaced at Penn State that some adults failed to report potential warning signs of abuse by former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, council member Phil Mendelson (D) pushed to broaden reporting laws to cover all but a few exempted adults in the District.

“We are interested in sending a clear message,” said Mendelson, now the council’s chairman, noting that 18 states have similar regulations. “This is a bill that simply establishes a policy, that everyone has to report if they know or have reason to believe a child has been sexually abused.”

But the proposal is prompting some unease about government overreach that would set the stage for a surge in thinly vetted complaints, which could lead to false accusations.

“I think we definitely want to achieve more reporting, but there is definitely some concerns around how [authorities] will handle the level of reports that they will get and potentially false allegations,” said council member Kenyan M. McDuffie (D-Ward 5), a former Prince George’s County assistant state’s attorney. “And does having lots of false allegations have the effect of making it more challenging to prove some of these cases?”

Under the bill, which must be voted on a second time before it goes to Mayor Vincent C. Gray for his signature, anyone 18 or older “with knowledge or reasonable cause” to believe an adult is abusing someone younger than 16 must “immediately” report it to police or Child and Family Services. Violators can be fined $300.

Attorneys and ordained ministers are exempt to protect attorney-client and clergy-penitent privileges. Victims of sex abuse would not be required to report past abuse.

For caregivers, teachers and other government officials covered by existing reporting laws, the bill increases penalties to a $1,000 fine and up to 180 days in jail.

In an interview, Mendelson cautioned that he expects penalties to be rarely enforced. But the legislation comes amid a broader debate about the public’s responsibility to be vigilant of abuse vs. the right to privacy.

Read the entire article here

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CA - Bill to protect child actors from sex offenders becomes law

Original Article

Why is another law needed? Aren't the existing laws sufficient?

09/28/2012

By Dawn C. Chmielewski

A bill banning registered sex offenders from representing young talent in California has been signed into law after winning broad support in Hollywood from film studios, actors unions, agents and managers.

The state measure requires screening of acting coaches, managers, photographers and others in the entertainment industry who have unsupervised access to minors. The new law, signed Thursday by Gov. Jerry Brown, sets up a permit process by which these professionals would submit their names and fingerprints to the state labor commissioner to be checked against the national database of registered sex offenders. It takes effect Jan. 1.

“For us, this has been a long time coming,” said Anne Henry, co-founder of the nonprofit advocacy group BizParentz Foundation, which sponsored the bill. “We’ve seen the problem escalate, and we’ve seen more public cases.... We could see that the problem of pedophiles in the entertainment industry wasn’t going to go away. That meant we had to take action to protect our children.”

BizParentz tried unsuccessfully to push similar legislation through in 2006, but that bill never made it out of the state Senate Appropriations Committee amid opposition from some in the entertainment business.

Awareness of child sexual abuse has changed dramatically in the wake of the Penn State scandal that resulted in the conviction of former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky on 45 counts involving 10 boys. The matter struck closer to home when The Times reported last fall that a convicted child molester had been helping cast child actors in mainstream Hollywood movies. Within weeks, another case surfaced: Longtime child talent manager [name withheld] was arrested Nov. 29 on suspicion of child molestation. He pleaded no contest in June to two counts of molestation.

An examination by The Times identified at least a dozen child molestation and child pornography prosecutions since 2000 involving actors, managers, production assistants and others in the industry, based on court documents and published accounts. Advocates and professionals who work with victims of child sexual abuse say predators exploit the glittery allure of Hollywood to prey on aspiring actors or models.

“Instead of blaming the stage parents or blaming the kids for being in the industry, suddenly pedophilia was in their face in the schools and colleges and in Hollywood,” said Henry, whose group conducted a campaign to build support for the bill. “And they realized this was probably more common than anybody thought.”

In February, Assemblywoman Nora Campos (D-San Jose) introduced the bill, AB 1660 (PDF), to provide greater protections for young actors.

The Assn. of Talent Agents and the Talent Managers Assn. wrote letters supporting the bill, as did the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists union, saying that a screening process would improve the safety of child actors.

“The entertainment industry is a unique setting where minors of all ages interact with various people, not knowing if those individuals have been convicted of predatory behavior,” wrote Thomas Carpenter, then chief labor counsel of SAG-AFTRA. “While the recent reports of harmful situations are not the norm, the safety measures set forth [in the bill] will strengthen the tools given to those tasked with protecting children.”

The major film studios also lined up behind the measure through the industry’s trade group, the Motion Picture Assn. of America. The MPAA applauded the governor’s decision to sign the bill into law. The measure passed the state Assembly and Senate in August by wide margins.

“We were all supportive of this from the beginning,” said Vans Stevenson, the MPAA’s senior vice president of state government affairs. “We think it’s important and critical legislation that makes it clear that young actors are protected.”

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Unstructured Therapeutic Disclosure - Treating Psychosexual Trauma Disorder

* * * WARNING * * *

This film contains the testimonies of survivors of child abuse. It may cause distress.


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KY - Kentucky Supreme Court to consider fairness of child-abuse registry

Original Article

09/03/2012

A Louisville Sunday school teacher for 25 years, “W.B.” was appalled when he found out he might be listed on Kentucky’s Central Registry of substantiated child abusers because of an accusation for which he was never charged, says his lawyer, J. Fox DeMoisey.

W.B. feared that being listed would cost him his teaching post — and worse, his reputation, DeMoisey said. So W.B. skipped the normal appeals process and sued, saying he deserved to have his case heard by a jury.

A Jefferson Circuit Court judge and the Kentucky Court of Appeals ruled against him, saying that while the state should not “stigmatize the innocent,” it has an overriding interest in “keeping child abusers out of the ranks of child-care workers.”

Now, the state Supreme Court has agreed to hear oral arguments Sept. 12 in the case, deciding just how much due process individuals deserve before they are branded as abusers.

Unlike the sex-offender registries that every state makes available on the Internet, child offender lists maintained in Kentucky, Indiana and virtually every other state generally aren’t accessible to the public.

But day care centers, schools and adoption agencies must check with the state to see if a prospective employee is listed, and individuals may ask for that information if, for example, they are hiring a nanny.

A person doesn’t have to be convicted or charged with a crime to be listed. In Kentucky, people are placed on it because a social worker substantiates an allegation of abuse or neglect.

There are 83,917 Kentuckians on the registry, which lists people for at least seven years, according to the Cabinet for Health and Family Services, which maintains the list and ran 41,872 checks last year.

DeMoisey said his client sued using his initials because it would have defeated the lawsuit’s purpose if he were named. DeMoisey said W.B. supervises maintenance and the physical plant at a large health care facility in Louisville.

Ensuring children safety

Nobody disputes the value of child offender registries, which began in the 1960s and 1970s.

James Hmurovich, president of the Chicago-based Prevent Child Abuse America, said they are invaluable in identifying perpetrators, especially those who move from town to town within the same state.

Jill Midkiff, a spokeswoman for the cabinet, said the registry offers the ability to effectively screen applicants for jobs and foster parent openings to “better ensure safety of children.”

But courts in several states have taken issue with the process for adding offenders to the list, and critics, including the American Bar Association, have said some may be unfairly listed.

The ABA’s Washington-based Center on Children and the Law has noted that most people on state registries are there for neglecting, rather than abusing, children, and a disproportionate number are poor, which prevents them from challenging their listing.

The North Carolina Court of Appeals in 2010 ruled that state’s registry unconstitutional because it didn’t give suspected abusers enough opportunity to defend themselves, forcing the state to temporarily stop releasing information about the 8,000 people on its list.

In California, a federal appeals court ruled that state’s system invalid in 2008 because it didn’t provide a way for innocent people to clear their names.

The court said that Craig and Wendy Humphries lived “every parent’s nightmare” after they were exonerated in court of allegations that they abused their daughter but couldn’t get their names off the state’s list of 800,000 people.

Concerns about false listings and fairness have stalled a proposal for a national registry of child abusers, according to a May 2009 report to Congress from the Department for Health and Human Services.

Anonymous complaint

The W.B. case began on Aug. 22, 2008, with an anonymous complaint to the cabinet’s child abuse hotline.

A family that had stayed a few times at W.B.’s house complained that he had molested their daughter, according to DeMoisey and court records.

Louisville police investigated the allegation but never brought charges because of insufficient evidence, DeMoisey said in his Supreme Court brief.

But in December that year, the cabinet notified W.B. that it had substantiated the allegation and that he had a right to appeal.

That didn’t satisfy W.B., DeMoisey said, in part because the hearing would be before a cabinet attorney who might be “more concerned about retaining his job” than being fair-minded.

When W.B. filed suit in circuit court, it stayed his hearing and listing on the registry.

Besides the “high probability of a rubber stamp,” DeMoisey also argues on his client’s behalf that a person’s reputation is so valuable it should only be taken away by a jury. “The two most important things this side of the grave are our reputation and our life,” DeMoisey said in his brief, quoting English cleric Charles Caleb Colton.

Need to know

The cabinet’s lawyer, Erika Saylor, said the hearing process is replete with procedural safeguards, including the right to be represented by an attorney, to present evidence and to cross-examine witnesses. The accused also may appeal the cabinet’s decision to its secretary, then to circuit court.

She also said names in the registry are only available to a “reasonably limited number of people on a need-to-know basis.”

And she noted that that virtually all juvenile matters are determined without a jury.

Terry Brooks, executive director of Kentucky Youth Advocates, said in an interview that he hopes the court upholds the registry process.

“There is a potential to be falsely listed and I can understand how somebody would feel aggrieved by it,” he said. “But as a state we need to err on the side of protecting kids, not protecting adults.”
- Wait until you or a loved one gets put on the registry, then I'm sure you will see things differently.

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TX - Grandfather describes beating death as an accident

Original Article

06/11/2012

By Sonny Long

The grandfather of the 4-year-old girl whose father beat a man to death said Monday that his son was sorry the man died.

"My son. Sorry," the grandfather said in broken English Monday afternoon yards from where the incident took place Saturday off Lavaca County Road 302. "It was an accident."

The father told law enforcement that he caught the man molesting his daughter and tried to physically stop him.

Lavaca County Sheriff Micah Harmon said the father expressed regret after the beating occurred.

"He was very remorseful. I don't think it was his intent for the man to die," Harmon said.

The incident took place through a metal gate, down a rut-filled - almost gully-filled drive in a pasture behind a barn where the father was tending to horses, Harmon said.

No charges have been filed in the case and neither the father nor the 47-year-old man who died has been identified by law enforcement.

"We are still having trouble locating the deceased's next of kin," the sheriff said. "The chief deputy has been in Gonzales running down some leads, but his family may end up being from out of the country."

Across the county road from where the beating took place, a neighbor said the family who owns the property are "good people."

"They have horses and chickens over there and come out every day to feed and water them," said the neighbor. "They are good people, good hard-working people."

District Attorney Heather McMinn said that once the investigation is complete and turned over to her office, she will present it to a grand jury.

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Our comments on the video below:
So Nancy, you are an ex-lawyer right, who is suppose to look at all evidence before jumping to conclusions, right? So since this man is dead, he'll never be able to tell his side of the story and you just assume what the father says is true? Come on, remember what you were taught? So the message I see here is, if you want to kill someone, just accuse them of molesting your child, kill them so they cannot speak, then you will be made out to be a hero! That is just pathetic and not what the "justice" system is suppose to be about. I can understand beating the man a couple times, but enough times to kill him? I believe this is involuntary man-slaughter and the father should be punished for it. We cannot have vigilantes running around doing as they wish, but that's not what I get from Nancy's comments!

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Court video of 911 call

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GA - Child Abuse Reporting Laws Changing in Georgia

Why is this only for those who work with children and not everyone in the public? Anybody who suspects child abuse should report it! Also, you mention those who work at colleges as well. Aren't people who go to colleges adults?

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Chelsea Schilling violates Facebook TOS to pretend to be a pedophile

This just shows that vigilantes are probably the ones creating all the "pedophile" web sites and profiles. Pretending to be someone and using an alias is against Facebook's TOS. If pedophiles are truly doing this, then people like this lady are hampering police investigations by potentially scaring off people, so they are not preventing child abuse but helping it.

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12-year-old dies giving birth in Yemen

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Child of Rage

WARNING: THIS VIDEO IS VERY SHOCKING, DISCRETION ADVISED!!


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First Impressions: Exposure to Violence and a Child's Developing Brain

And yet we have children who are being ruined daily for being kids and experimenting with sex. See the following for many examples. Either a person is or isn't an adult, you cannot have it both ways.

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How to Prevent Violent Criminal Behavior in the Next Generation

I have said before, and I'll continue to say it, if you treat people like animals, they will be animals, if you treat them with respect, love and caring, despite what they have done, they will change. I know that is hard for many to understand, but think about it for awhile. If someone was always calling you names, picking on you, etc, eventually you will lash out. You do not solve violence and crime with more violence and crime. The prison systems are suppose to be about rehabilitation, but they are not, they are just a place to house people, and they are all abused all the time, shown disrespect, or worse, and what do we have in prisons? More violence!

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He Sold His Soul to the Devil: Then God Stepped In

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FL - Governor signs bill to make everyone (Just School Officials) responsible for reporting child sex abuse

Original Article

04/27/2012

By Mary Ellen Klas

Prompted by the Penn State child sex abuse scandal, Florida’s victim advocates tightened the state’s laws to make it a third-degree felony for failing to “willfully and knowingly’’ report child sex abuse

TALLAHASSEE - After the Jerry Sandusky saga exposed the flaws in Penn State’s storied legacy, it revealed to victim advocates in Florida the need to fix the state’s child sex abuse reporting laws.

On Friday, Gov. Rick Scott signed into law a bill that requires anyone to report known or suspected cases of child sex abuse. The “Protection of Vulnerable Persons” law (PDF) also gives Florida the toughest mandatory reporting requirements in the nation for sex abuse violations on schools and university campuses, say victims advocates.
- Is it just for schools and universities?  If so, then it's not much good, IMO!

Under the measure, which takes effect on Oct. 1, anyone — from university coaching staff to elementary school teachers to administrators to students — who “willfully and knowingly” fails to report any suspicious sexual abuse they encounter will face fines of up to $1 million per incident and face potential criminal charges.

Current Florida law requires mandatory reporting of child sex abuse only when the suspect is a parent or other caregiver of a child.
- No it only adds schools, but why not anyone who sees sexual abuse and doesn't report it?

“This law will break the culture we have learned so much about in the wake of the Penn State, Syracuse, and Citadel child abuse scandals, where institutions seemed to think the names of their institutions were more important than protecting children,’’ said Tallahassee lobbyist Ron Book, who, with his daughter Lauren, proposed and pushed for the bill.
- Oh, that explains everything!

Lauren Book is a sexual abuse survivor and the founder of “Lauren’s Kids,” a victims advocacy group. For the past 11 years, she and her father have sought to tighten Florida’s safety net for victims of sexual abuse and to strengthen the laws against child sexual predators.
- Yeah, and they are turning Florida into sex offender ghettos, and forcing people into homelessness due to their lobbying for draconian residency laws.

The Book said they didn’t realize the state’s mandatory reporting laws were so weak until learning of the Penn State child sex abuse scandal. Sandusky was arrested last year on charges that he sexually abused at least eight boys over a period of 15 years. After his arrest, Penn State fired Sandusky’s supervisor, the college’s long-time coach Joe Paterno, who died earlier this year. The college’s athletic director, Tim Curley, was also accused of perjury and failing to report suspected child abuse.
- Hmm, so at any time, did Ron Book know or suspect his daughter was being molested by their nanny?

The new law requires anyone to report suspected sex abuse and provides $2 million to promote the sex abuse hotline at the Florida Department of Children and Families and adds 47 additional hotline counselors.

Sen. Nan Rich, D-Weston, said she initially expressed concerns that the bill was an overreaction to the Sandusky saga and worried that the initial plan to fine universities $5 million per incident went too far. But, after the bill’s sponsors, Rep. Chris Dorworth, R-Lake Mary, and Sen. Lisbeth Benacquisto, R-Fort Myers, agreed to narrow the scope and reduce the penalties, she supported the bill.

“Whenever you have a high profile case, the Legislature can have a knee-jerk reaction and there can be unintended consequences,’’ Rich said.
- Yep, and that is how they have always reacted, and they continue to cause people to suffer due to their knee-jerk reactions.

The new law also requires hotline operators to refer abuse reports to law enforcement and requires universities to turn over their abuse reports to prosecutors.

“We used to think we needed to simply create a hotline and get counseling services to people but we learned that people still don’t want to tell,’’ Book said.

“Ninety percent of the childhood sex abuse may be committed by someone you know but 95 percent is preventable through education and awareness,’’ Book said. What’s worse, he added, is according to national data “the average predator commits 123 separate offense to separate individuals before they are caught.”
- Still spewing his BS I see, but what did one expect?  He's living in Wonderland!

In addition to imposing fines on universities, the bill increases from a misdemeanor to a third-degree felony the penalties for those who knowingly fail to report child abuse. In addition, it raises the prison sentence from one year to up to 15 years and increases potential fines from a maximum of $1,000 to a maximum of $5,000.

Legislators also set aside $1.5 million, or up to $3,000 per victim, to help victims relocate.

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Strangers not always behind child sexual abuse

Original Article

So ask yourself this. If most sexual abuse or physical abuse is done by someone the child knows, most often their own mother, father, brother, sister, etc, then do you really expect them to teach their child how to tell on them? It should be taught in schools!

04/16/2012

A vast majority of children who are sexually abused are done so by someone they know - most often a family member, an adult the family trusts or, in some instances, another child, a new study has revealed.

According to numbers provided by the National Association of Adult Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse, parents generally teach their children about "stranger danger" from an early age, telling them not to talk to, walk with or take gifts or candy from strangers, but statistics show danger often lurks closer to home.

Parents can help protect their children from sexual abuse by talking frankly to them about abuse, starting at a young age with age-appropriate information.

"It's essential that parents have a continuing conversation with their children about sexual abuse," Kay Knaff, clinical services program manager for Youth Villages, a private nonprofit organization that helps children with emotional, behavioural and mental health issues, as well as children who have been abused or neglected, said.

"This may seem hard to do, but it's the best way to protect your child. It's best to start talking to your children about child abuse as early as age 3 or 4," Knaff said.

Parents should talk to their children about inappropriate touching and other forms of child abuse, and make sure their children know what behaviour is right and what is wrong.

In addition, Knaff said parents should teach children to say "no" to their abuser if they can, try to get away from the abuser and or call for help so other people become aware of the situation.

"Child abuse data show that the majority of children keep abuse a secret."

"That means it is even more important that parents not only talk to their children about what child abuse is and emphasize that it is never the child's fault. Abuse is always wrong, and children should report it to a trusted adult."

"Parents need to keep the lines of communication open and seek out their children whenever they feel like something is going on with their child or their child is behaving differently in some way from usual," Knaff said.

To encourage children to report any abuse, parents should let the child know about two or three people designated as safe adults the child can talk to if he or she suffers abuse or feels unsafe.

"Children need to know who they can talk to."

"They also need to be encouraged to tell what happened to them to more than one person and keep telling until someone believes them and does something about it," Knaff said.

Knaff also recommends parents specifically teach their children to report any touching that feels uncomfortable or wrong, even if it is by a family member, teacher, coach, pastor or church official, youth group leader or another child.

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Elizabeth Smart Foundation - The Alicia Project - Not One More Child

If they "know" those hundreds of thousands of dots lead to a person harming a child, then why not go find the dots and arrest them? Sounds like a lot of fear-mongering for cash to me!

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The Revolution: Child Sexual Abuse

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Bully - A must see documentary

Web Site | Facebook

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