Child Abuse Prevention And Awareness: What Can You Do?

Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted, the indifference of those who should have known better, the silence of justice when it mattered most, that made it possible for evil to triumph."           ---Haile Selassie

Thank you to my friend, Faith McDaniel, another Advocate for children and survivors of childhood sexual abuse, who shared this quote recently on Facebook. 

This article came about because of a person on Facebook asking the question (paraphrased) what can just one person do to stop child abuse. His comment was that child abuse is so big, how can one person make a difference. Here is my answer to him.

You begin with one day at a time, one child at a time, and one survivor at a time. If you continue to do nothing as previous generations have done, nothing changes. 

I am proud to be in our generation which is no longer being silent about the abuse we have suffered from and through. I am proud that we do have a voice and aren't afraid to use it. One day we will stop child abuse in all of its ugly, evil forms, but we won't do it by remaining silent and afraid.

Any start is better than no start at all. Instead of the question, "What can we do to stop child abuse?" bring it down to the question, "What can I do to stop child abuse?" Make it personal. Make it real. 

Find one small thing you can do today and do it. Don't just talk about doing it. Don't say you will try. Try gives you a way to do nothing but talk. Do. Then tomorrow do something else. 

Have a conversation with someone about the signs of child abuse. Educate yourself if you don't know those signs. Post something about child abuse on your Facebook page or Twitter to educate others. Education is so important for parents and for children.

If you remain silent, nothing changes. Mentor a child. Give them a healthy role model of what it means to be an adult. Allow them to be children. Listen to the child when they talk to you. Really listen. You may be the only one who does. 

If you suspect child abuse, report it. Tell the agency that you call what you think is happening or what your feelings are. Don't keep quiet because you might be wrong. What is worse is that you might be right and you may be the only hope that child has. If you ask a child if they are being abused and they say no, that child may be too afraid of their abusers to tell you the truth. What does your gut tell you? If you tried to get help for the child and failed, remain a mentor to the child. You may be the only kind and loving adult in that child's life. You may be their lifeline to sanity.

Just think of the changes that could happen and the children who could be saved and protected if each one of us did just one thing each day to change the status quo. We can do it one child at a time.
Patricia

Silence Allows Child Abuse To Continue - I Will Not Be Silenced!

"I can't read this stuff anymore."  This is the second comment of this sort that I have received over the past two days in response to the abuse articles that I post on my Facebook page. This particular response came under the following article with the title of "Father who killed his daughter, 3, with an 'immense' blow to the stomach and failed to call for help jailed for seven years." Here is the link to the article if you want to read it. I warn you, it isn't an easy article to read. I also wonder why such a light sentence - 7 years for killing a 3-year-old - was given?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2370455/Father-killed-daughter-3-immense-blow-stomach-failed-help-jailed-seven-years.html

Anyone who enjoys reading this stuff is sick. I don't read them because I enjoy them. I don't share them because I want someone to enjoy reading them. I want you to read them so that you are educated about child abuse. It isn't an imaginary thing that is happening to someone else. Children are getting abused every day and every day, children, like this 3-year-old, are dying. She is one of the few that we know about. Society - people, families, neighbors, aunts and uncles - don't acknowledge child abuse and then do something to stop it nearly enough. There are still too many children who are being abused and nobody does anything to stop it until it is too late, like for this little girl who died at the hands of someone who should have loved and protected her. Instead he killed her. He got seven years. She got death. Is that fair? She died before she had a real chance to live. Are you as outraged as I am over his seven year sentence?

Our court systems aren't giving heavy enough sentences, in my opinion, especially with cases of child molestation. Many are getting light sentences, as short as 3 years or less, and then they are back out abusing more children. I see this every day in the articles that I read. I question the thinking of the judges that put them back out on the streets so quickly. I question the society that I live in that allows this to happen. Why aren't more people joining me and voicing their concerns?

Back to my readers' comments from Facebook. The first person told me that she had to sort thru so much garbage (my word, not hers) to get to the gems (her word) that I share. I share both - garbage and gems. I do share a lot of inspiring stuff on my page to conteract the darkness of the evil in the articles that I also share. I told this person that it was okay with me if she unfriended me on Facebook if she had trouble with what I put on my page. I also told her that I won't stop posting about the evil side of child abuse.

Why do I continue to share this crap? Because we have to know what is happening if we have any chance of changing it and stopping it. It is my prayer that one day there will be no more child abuse articles to share. Will I stop because, as my friend above says, she can't read anymore? No, I won't. The topic of child abuse and stopping it is too important.

Too many of us have been silent for too long. Please join me in using your Facebook page, Twitter page and your blog, if you have one, as a weapon against those who commit child abuse. Don't let abusers continue to maim and murder their children in silence. Join me and break the silence of child abuse. Even those of us who survived a childhood of abuse still have invisible scars that affect our lives even as adults. If you are an adult survivor, share your story with someone. By sharing your story, you may be giving someone else the permission that they need to tell their own stories. Be sure to share your healing too. By sharing your healing, you may inspire someone else to take the first step on their own healing journey. If you don't like what I share on my Facebook page or here on my blog - good. I don't like it either. But I won't stop sharing as long as child abuse, especially child sexual abuse, is still happening.
Patricia

Eternity's Sunrise Website

I just finished adding Eternity's Sunrise website to my blogroll. I wanted to further bring this site to your attention because of its Resources page. The resources are for survivors, loved ones of survivors, domestic violence survivors, hotlines and survivor blogs.

This blog Spiritual Journey Of A Lightworker was very recently added to their page. I thank you for the honor of being added to your page, Cosima Zehring. I recently met Cosima on Twitter. Here is the link to Eternity's Sunrise Resources page:

http://www.eternitysunrise.org/resources/

I hope you will join me in welcoming Eternity's Sunrise to our community.
Patricia

Hurricane Sandy and Elections

Where does time go these days? I just cannot keep up with everything that I want to do and visit with everyone that I want to talk to. Is it because I am getting older or is time really speeding up? I am not sure but I don't like it.

These past few weeks will be remembered in the U. S. for a long time. Hurricane Sandy has come and gone and left a lot of damage in the lives of many Americans as well as in Haiti and the other islands that she hit before the U. S. I am continuing to pray for all of those people who have been affected by the destructive path of Hurricane Sandy. Events like this should bring out the compassion and generosity in all people.

I pray that President Obama who won re-election yesterday has the best interest of the American people at heart with any and all decisions that he makes over the next four years. I am so glad that all of the political advertisements are gone for another few years until election time comes around again. I wish that all politicians, not just the presential ones, would take an oath to say nothing but the truth when they open their mouths. I am proud of all the the Americans who took the time to vote yesterday. Voting is a privilege that not all people have the option to do in other countries in the world.

I don't usually express my political views on here but I am so grateful for the defeat of the three politicians who mouthed off stupid things in sharing their beliefs about rape and pregnancy. I have faith in Americans in stepping up and saying no to child abuse and no to rape. I am proud of the women and men who voted against those politicians. None of them were in my state of Arkansas or I would have voted against them.

As an advocate for children and survivors of child sexual abuse, I am so proud of everyone who is breaking the silence of abuse and domestic violence.  I had a conversation on Twitter this morning from someone who thought that most of my tweets and retweets were very negative and dark. He was afraid that they would trigger him to drink. I told him to take care of himself and if he needed to he could Unfollow me without it hurting me. I went on to tell him that I would not stop retweeting the type of posts that I tweet. I told him that negativity and darkness is the reality of children who are being sexually abused. People need to be aware of what those children are dealing with and how much adult survivors struggle with issues of incest and/or domestic violence and rape. Not of those situations are rosey colored and pretty so my tweets and retweets aren't either. I understand about triggers so I am not angry or upset with this young man. He understood my position as well.

It is time for people to take their heads out of the sand and pay attention to what is going on in their homes, communities and the world where children live. I do tweet and retweet a lot of inspirational tweets too because I know that we all need to be encouraged and uplifted, especially if you are a survivor. I do the same thing on my Facebook page. I won't stop talking about child abuse, rape and domestic violence until there are no more victims and every child is safe.
Patricia

Are The Effects Of Incest A Life Sentence For A Survivor?

Sharing some more of my Tweets on Twitter from several weeks ago. Tell me what you think.

The sad fact of my life is that at age 60, my abusers are all dead but the effects of incest live on in me.

I have done many years of healing work and am in a good to great spot most of the time with my incest issues behind me.

Even with healing, sometimes an issue will pop up and catch me by surprise and I find more grieving to do.

More grieving, more healing, more anger and fear to feel and then let go of because of the incest in my childhood.

A Survivor's work is never done, at least in my experience. Joy and peace do exist and I enjoy them when they are here.

And I still have those moments of fear come up when something triggers a memory or a feeling from my inner child.

I live with hope and laughter in my life and I still am a work in progress.


Tomorrow is my dad's birthday. He died January 6, 2000. Because of the length of time that he sexually abused me, I count him as my main abuser and most of the issues that I have worked on came from the abuse done by him.

My dad was born in 1931 as the 3rd oldest of what would become a family with 12 kids. He quit school in 5th grade when he went to work in the fields with his dad to help feed their family. I don't know if he had been a good student or not. When I was older, I realized that he could barely read or write. He could write his name. As for his intelligence, I don't think he was very smart. He came from a family with alcoholism and codependency in it just as I did. My grandfather when I was older would start drinking on Friday evening as fast as he could cash his pay check and get to the store to buy beer. When I was growing up, we spent lots of weekends at their house. I was always afraid of my grandfather because he was loud, a big man and a mean drunk. He would drink all weekend. On Sundays, he would drive back to town to buy more beer even though it was against the law back then to sell alcohol on Sundays. You did not want to ride with my grandfather when he was drinking. I rode with him one time with my siblings.  I cannot understand how he was never in an accident or stopped by a policeman for drunk driving. He was all over the road. Whatever direction he looked, the car went. That was before you had seat beats in cars. He never drove over 40 miles per hour. Neither did my dad. This was also before you had interstate highways.

None of this is told to you as an excuse for my dad's behavior but to give you a little bit of background to his life and mine. I can feel sad for the child that he was and I can see where some of his patterns of behavior came from. I can see why he grew up into a frightened man who felt that he had to control everyone around him to feel safe. I did the same thing until I realized that control didn't make me safe or make me happy. For awhile, I copied what I saw as a child. You have to have awareness of behaviors before you can change them. My dad never saw that he needed to change anything. I have learned that control hides fear - lots of fear.

When you face your fear, you can give up the need to control. Letting go of fear makes room for you to start to heal.
Patricia

The Beginning Of Who I Am Is Rooted In Incest

I am not the incest and it has helped to define who I am. A friend on Twitter recently told me that the abusers didn't steal the real me. Here are the Tweets that I sent back to him. I wanted to share this message with my readers.

For awhile, yes, they did steal me. The me you see today is not who I might have been without the abuse.

I could have been a better or a worse version of who I am today but either one would have been a different me.

Who I am today is because of my struggles with incest and my healing from incest. A person I am proud to be today.

Some of my choices when I was still struggling were not beneficial to me or my family.

I do love me today. For many years, because of the incest, I hated myself.

When I started healing at age 38, I didn't know who I was and didn't know what I wanted or needed.

Nothing changed until I started to love myself.


I love some of the conversations that get started on Twitter.  When I first started on Twitter, I didn't know how useful it would be for reaching out to other incest survivors but a friend suggested I give it a try. I am glad that she did. I have met so many survivors on Twitter. I still use my Facebook page but I use Twitter more.  Some of the survivors that I have met are still full of rage and the pain of their childhoods. Others have done healing of their issues and are experiencing joy and peace in their lives and, like me, are reaching out to other survivors. Either way, I can and do tell them that they are worth the work of healing.

I made the words of my last Tweet above in bold letters because I want to acknowledge that Nothing changed until I started to love myself. I will keep telling you over and over again here and on Twitter that loving yourself is the most important gift you can ever give yourself. Loving yourself is the key to opening the door of healing and you are worth it.

Feel free to comment on any or all of my above Tweets. I look forward to hearing from you.
Patricia

Today Honor All Survivors Of Child Sexual Abuse

Something I wrote a short while ago on Twitter says, "Today honor all the Survivors that you know with a hug &/or kind words. We all struggle at times. We can heal." Today I ask you to do this for any Survivors that you know.  With the statistics saying that one in four girls and one in six boys today are sexually abused before the age of 18, chances are very good that you know at least one survivor. Another statistic that says your odds of knowing a survivor are even better is the one that says for every survivor that tells about their abuse, another six never report their sexual abuse.

I ran across a site a few days ago that calls itself RANDOM FACTS. Here are two lists that I read and want to share with you. Warning: Some of what you read in these two lists may be disturbing. I hope they are.  Education and understanding is necessary if we are ever going to stop child predators from abusing children.

64 Facts About . . .
Child Sexual Abuse
http://facts.randomhistory.com/child-sexual-abuse-facts.html


55 Little Known Facts About . . .
Human Trafficking
http://facts.randomhistory.com/human-trafficking-facts.html


I will leave you with one more of my Tweets from this week. "I have always known even as a child that I would find a way to make something good come out of the incest." Reaching out to other incest survivors with my blog, my facebook page where I go by my full name Patricia Caldwell Singleton and on Twitter where I go by patriciasinglet is one way that I make something good come from being sexually abused as a little girl.  You will find me talking and sharing with other survivors in all three places. Supporting each other makes our healing a little less of a struggle than doing it alone. Now go tell your Survivor friend or family member that you love them and you are there for them. They will appreciate you for it. Have a glorious day.
Patricia