Translator: ana carla martinez Reviewer: Yasmina Casado González
I'd like you to close your eyes for just one moment with me,
and think back to when you were a child.
When you crawled into bed at night under the covers,
you got a gentle goodnight from a loving family member, likely,
and you drifted off to sweet dreams.
For many children, that is not the reality
of the nighttime.
Many children have predators that come for them
under the cover of darkness.
When I met Jake, he was twelve years old
and accompanied by his two younger brothers.
Jake and his brothers came into our family room
and his two brothers started playing with all the toys
and making a lot of commotion, and Jake fell asleep.
My co-worker and I speculated why would Jake
fall asleep like that, in a room with all that noise.
And then we thought, "well, maybe he has an illness".
But when we heard Jake's story, we understood.
You see, when Jake is in his bedroom at night,
the one that he shares with his two younger brothers,
his father comes for him to sexually abuse him.
Now, Jake hates that his father comes for him,
but he fears that if he doesn't please his father,
he'll begin to molest his younger brothers.
So, Jake waits, and hates the night.
When I met Bree, she was fourteen years old.
She was a young teenager with long, dark hair
and really angry eyes, very expressive.
Bree was living in a juvenile detention center.
She said that she had ran away and stolen a vehicle,
that's what landed her there.
Bree began her story, which was a long story
of victimization and multiple molestors.
She began it with at about five years old,
when she was molested by her father.
That went on for quite a while.
And Bree said, not unlike Jake,
that she tried very hard to please her father,
beacuse if she didn't please her father, she feared that,
in fact, he would molest her mother
So, Bree tried to please him.
But at about seven years old her father disappeared.
Now, you and I would think that Bree's life got better
when her dad left.
But unbelievably, it got worse.
From that point on, Bree was molested
multiple times, by multiple offenders.
Bree talked about how when she committed delinquent acts
she didn't connect them to her abuse.
But when she landed in detention,
she felt safe. She could sleep at night.
She softly wondered where she would go next
or she wouldn't be raped.
At the Red River Children's Advocacy Center last year,
we saw five hundred kids that came to us with stories of abuse.
Most of them were stories of sexual abuse.
Now, you likely know a victim of child sexual abuse.
Experts tell us that one out of one ten kids
is victimized before the age of eighteen.
You know, age doesn't matter to predators.
Predators will prey on any age victim.
Our medical director can tell you a story of a three month old baby
that he treated for sexual abuse.
Our statistics tell us most of the kids we see are under the age of twelve
and the national average is about nine.
These kids live in everyone of your neighborhoods,
they go to school with your children and your grandchildren.
In most cases, the abusers are someone that these children know
or trust, even love, like a father or a mother,
an older sibling, a grandparent, a babysitter or neighbor.
In just about every case, the offenders use bribery
or threats to keep the children quiet.
Now folks tell us that there are many children
that will never be able to share the accounts of sexual abuse
until long into adulthood.
Because you see, child sexual abuse is hard to talk about.
Children that are victimized suffer from trauma.
And trauma is something that, experts tell us,
literally floods the brain with toxic stress hormones,
and impacts the way we think and the way we react.
Researchers tell us that kids that are sexually abused,
without intervention,
will likely have a lifetime of negative consequences.
Such things as cronic illness, lost opportunities,
broken promises, addiction, mental illness.
At the Red River Children's Advocacy Center
and eight hundred advocacies centers like it in the United States,
we work really hard to give children a place
where they can begin or be part of that process of recovery
from that trauma.
Along with our partners, law enforcement, social services,
mental health professionals, medical professionals
and prosecutors, we all do everything we can
to see every child.
But we know we don't reach them all.
I told you one out of ten children, and that we saw five hundred.
You do the math. We're missing a lot of children.
So, we keep working. We keep trying to do just that.
But I want you to understand that it doesn't take very long
when you're working in the field of intervention,
to realize or wonder, how you can continue to serve
and honor these victims, without taking steps
to stop the abuse.
And so, we are going to wage a war.
We are going to wage a war to stop sexual abuse.
We want the full force of our community.
At the end, it won't take a week, it won´t take a year,
may not happen in a generation. It may take two generations.
But in the end, we can have a community where child sexual abuse is taboo
and where prevention is our priority.
Just imagine.
To this end, we have great, great allies. In every community there's allies.
In our community we have to call a medical foundation
and our Rape and Abuse Crisis Center, Prevent Child Abuse North Dakota.
They've helped us to enlist the services or the help
to build the model from an expert from Massachusetts,
and we have local experts that are helping us on prevention.
And a very important part of that strategy is to educate every adult.
Every adult should be armed with knowledge.
Traditionally, we have armed children with the knowledge
of how to tell an ok touch from a not ok touch.
And that's important education, and that has to continue.
But now we need adults to know how to react.
We need adults to understand what is a grooming behavior.
A behavior that an offender or an abuser uses to ensnare a child.
We need adults to recognize those behaviors and be able
to take steps to stop them,
before the acts of sexual abuse ever happen.
Once parents and other adults are armed with this knowledge,
they can protect children, and they can share it with other adults.
And pretty soon, you've got our whole community
and the next community.
So what can you do? What can you do to fight the war?
Well, number one. You can get educated.
You can get aducated.
There's prevention classes and prevention training available.
But you can go to websites,
like Enough Abuse and Prevent Child Abuse America
and get educated about the grooming behaviors that I mentioned.
Learn about them.
Quit thinking that this doesn't happen here,
because it does.
And remember, with education you can begin fighting the fight
to protect kids.
Advocate, number two.
Advocate for safe child policies, to hold offenders accountable
and when treatment is appropriate to see that we find it.
And raise up the survivors.
Honor the victims, and the adults who protect them.
And lastly, don't ever give up.
It is going to be a very long fight, and it's going to take everyone of you
and outside this room, the world.
I beleive that the most despicable thing that a human being can do to a child
is to sexually abuse them.
And I beleive that we are all responsible to stop
this from happening.
And, that we can.
Every child should have the opportunity to go to bed at night
safely and peacefully.
And we can make that happen.
Thank you.
(Applause)