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May
11
Mother’s Day and the Release of No Trespassing
Today is Mother’s Day and no matter how hard I try to forget about this day, it still manages to come, mock me and leave for another year.
This day is by far a great day for most people–Mothers for one. It is also a great day for people to show their mothers how much they love and appreciate everything that they have done for them. However, sometimes you get that special case where one day out of the year just doesn’t mean the same to someone as it does to others; and Mother’s Day is that day for me.
I have not seen my mother in almost a decade. No, she isn’t dead, but she may as well be. My mother was not like most out there. My mother was a child abuser. She was a child sex trafficker and a child molester. She was (and still is) a drug addict and an alcoholic. I stayed silent about so much that happened during my childhood for so many years and it was last year where I pretty much just deteriorated. My layers of walls that I had spent years of my life perfecting melted away and I started to talk about what I had gone through and that was the best time of my life. I had stayed silent for so long because I was afraid of what people would say, how they would see me and most of all, I was afraid of what the rest of my family would think about me. While I was still in my mother’s custody I had told her that I would tell on her some day and she said that no one would believe me and I believed her.
I still don’t know what the rest of my family thinks. I was never really given the opportunity to speak to them about all of this; whenever the subject of my mother has come up my grandmother would be the first one to say that she didn’t want to hear about anything because it made her upset to even think about what happened. My father, while I love him immensely, has never been one to show or voice his emotions and so the verdict is still out on that one. My aunt had talked to me very briefly about it, after reading an interview I had done with my local newspaper about being a survivor of child sexual abuse. Not being given the opportunity to actually speak to my family about my childhood, I decided to publish it in a newspaper and send it to the doorsteps of 70,000 people living in my area.
While I have undoubtedly progressed in this whole healing process (not to mention being raped when I was 18 at the one and only college party I had ever attended and starting the whole “healing process” over again,) I have quite a ways to go and with that, to further symbolize this day for me, my short film No Trespassing was released today.
Apr
29
Report It on Angela Shelton Day
Happy Angela Shelton Day!
Today is the day where the Report It campaign, a campaign motivating survivors of sexual assault to report their cases via an online form at the Report It website, comes to a close with the biggest rally of unified sexual assault survivors taking place at various courthouses across the country! Today, on Angela Shelton Day, survivors are being asked to go to your local courthouses and say that the silence of sexual assault survivors has went on for far too long.
Sexual assault is the most under-reported crime in the world and it is also the least talked about. By being a survivor and living through your abuse and talking about your abuse, you are breaking the silence surrounding this pandemic. One person can change the world, so if you are able, please go to your local court house and speak up for the rights of survivors everywhere.
Here is the statement that is being read at rallies across the country:
“Sexual assault is the most underreported crime in the world. All too often victims do not report the crime to authorities for fear of not being believed, mistrust of the legal system, because they blame themselves for the crime or fear of retaliation. It’s time to address why this happens to sexual violence victims, while victims of other crimes, like robbery, don’t hesitate to seek justice. Victims of sexual violence deserve the equal protection of our laws. They deserve to be heard and validated. The Report IT Campaign is a first of its kind effort on behalf of all victims — an initiative designed to give hope to all victims that we can end the silence surrounding sexual violence. Our loud, unified voice today will be the first step in a multi-year effort to inspire much needed reforms and better access to justice for all victims.”
But this isn’t the end of the collaborative rally from Angela Shelton and PAVE. In fact, PAVE will be collecting reports from survivors for the next year, in 2009 this rally will run again just as it did this year but hopefully with even more people and in 2010, PAVE is taking this rally straight to Washington DC.
If you haven’t already, report your case today on Angela Shelton Day by filling out the online form. I filled mine out this morning and now it’s your turn!
If you need someone to talk to remember that you can always call RAINN. It’s safe and confidential. 1.800.656.HOPE or check out the online hotline.
Apr
26
Help Us Help You Help Others
SkirtSports, a retailer for sport apparel for women and children, has recently put together a campaign that will help their customers give back to the organizations and charities that mean the most to them.
Help Us Help You Help Others is a campaign unlike most others I have seen. Not only can you donate to a charity and help that charity help others in need, but you, as a SkirtSports customer, can choose the charity that Help Us Help You Help Others donates to.
Over a period of a month, SkirtSports asks people to nominate their favorite charity and the charity that receives the most submitted nominations will receive a $500 donation from the SkirtSports Help Us Help You Help Others campaign plus whatever amount is received through your donations, which range from donations of $5 to $100.
For the month of April and in honor of Sexual Assault Awareness Month, Help Us Help You Help Others will be donating to SOAR (Speaking Out Against Rape) SOAR is an amazing non-profit organization which runs national awareness, education and prevention programs to help survivors of sexual abuse reclaim their voice, confidence and lives. You can learn more about SOAR at their website here.
In order to donate to SOAR through Help Us Help You Help Others, go here and select the amount you would like to donate. 100% of your donations go straight to SOAR; there is no tax or fees of any kind and it gets donated directly. As an added bonus, SOAR has a special promotion through SkirtSports where if you buy from their website you receive 10% off on all online purchases by using the promo code SOAR–and while you’re at it, don’t forget to make a donation to SOAR.
Apr
13
Reclaim Your Voice While Helping Others
I recently came across the Teddy Tour, which is run by Megan from Imaginif and Leigh from All for Women; both are truly excellent sites.
Teddy Tour is about giving survivors of childhood sexual abuse a voice through a really unique concept–plush teddy bears. It doesn’t matter if you are male or female or what age you are now; if you were sexually abused as a child, you are able to take part in the tour.
The process is simple–You fill out a teddy tag (don’t worry, it’s completely anonymous and your name will not appear on your tag) either by filling out the form to send one instantly or you can download and print out this tag and send it out in the mail. You can also make your own tag or decorate the mail-in tag to personalize it a bit more.
After your tag is received, it will be put on a plush teddy bear, a picture of it will be taken for the website and it will then be sold at Imaginif where all proceeds go straight to a survivor of child abuse.
This is an excellent project, I love it. I filled out a teddy tag for myself and hope that all survivors of childhood sexual abuse will do so as well, it’s an excellent cause and not only are you reclaiming your voice and rising above your abuse, you are also helping other survivors in the process. What could be better than that?
Apr
11
5th Annual Race to Stop the Silence
I thought I was too late with this, but luckily, I’m not!
This Sunday, April 13, is the 5th Annual Race to Stop the Silence, presented by the Ms. Foundation for Women and The Washington Post, in an effort to raise awareness and stop the silence surrounding child sexual abuse. It will take place at 8:30am in Anacostia Park in Washington DC.
If you are around the Washington DC area, I cannot urge you enough to go and be part of this amazing activist effort. Child sexual abuse is a silent epidemic and it is only growing more rapidly out of control. If you wish to take part in the 10k race and the 5K pledge walk you can register either today, tomorrow or Sunday before the race at a tent near the skating rink at Anacostia Park, which will open at 6:30am. Download the registration form here and bring it to the balcony of the Old Post Office Pavilion at 1100 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C. Also, you can download the agenda of activities here. (PDF)
This is definitely a great cause; for those of you who are already signed up and ready to go, good luck; and for the rest of you, go download the registration form!
Apr
3
Blogging Against Sexual Violence Using Creative Expression
Today is A Day to End Sexual Violence. Courtesy of abyss2hope, today is the second annual Blog Against Sexual Violence Day.
I’ve been thinking for a few days about what I wanted to write about. I cover sexual violence quite a bit here, but I wanted this to be a bit different and have deeper meaning to me, so I finally decided to share a piece of my own creative writing that tells a little but about my childhood and my own past with sexual violence.
This is a short prose piece entitled Stonewalled and was written on May 8, 2005. It was featured in North Eastern Pennsylvania’s Women’s Resource Center’s “An Empty Place at the Table” art gallery.
Stonewalled
Go brush your teeth and I’ll be right up to tuck you in.
And with that statement, you were gone. The door slammed, the car’s ignition hissed, and the tires roared away from our townhouse apartment - home for needy welfare mothers who spend their earnings from their spread your leg careers on “I’m sick of feeling like this, I want to be someone else” hallucinogens and “My veins are pretty empty and could use a lift of spirits” syringes. Where were you this time? Because I’m still in bed peering from the turned-down comforter to see you and smell the musty scent on your breath, on my face, on your clothes. When do you think you’re coming back?
This is because you couldn’t mother a pair of mistakes; the first a little more damned than the second. If the men had the money you would introduce them to your shining star concubine - age’s six to twelve. Sifting into nothing but a corpse; unable to do anything but lay there, engulfed in a wonderland of dead fairies that all look identical. Laying there as if nothing happened; gyrating into outlandish figures - all bleeding from one sacred pore.
Mar
23
Innocent Images Takes Down Major Child Porn Ring
This is a few weeks old, but definitely still noteworthy. Hooray for the FBI having an entire program dedicated to catching child pornography and exploitation and an even bigger hooray for arrests and these sites being shut down!
Innocent Images, a program run by the FBI to combat online child pornography and child exploitation has recently busted a major child porn ring.
With messages that read “Mala is to die for in those pigtails.”, “I have a few 5yo [year old] Taras that you do not have.” and “Just dropping in for a hot minute … to help out the dry spell, and to give everyone something to do for an afternoon.” this ring doesn’t seem too different than the others circulating the internet, however, this ring had many features that Innocent Images had not come across before.
This ring was one of the largest and most sophisticated rings that the FBI has ever come across, using maximum security methods to make them increasingly hard to catch. The ring worked more like a business, with several different people spanning over different countries performing specific jobs within the community. The ring had traded, trafficked and posted over 400,000 images and videos and incorporated several operation security measures.
Since discovered, over 20 victims of child exploitation have been rescued and 22 men have been arrested in the United States, Germany, Australia and the U.K. while more rescues and arrests are being pursued.
Mar
3
Vote Pro-Choice and Go to Hell
Oh, the Catholic church is at it again with their preposterous shenanigans. Catholic bishops, being the men who form the delusions of speaking directly with god and informing others of his word, are going down their list of damnation and letting us all know that the latest memo says that reproductive rights trump everything.
Bishops have not only taken a poll, saying that all politicians who believe in a woman’s right to choose are going to hell, but if you vote for them, you have a seat reserved right next to them.
“It is important to be clear,” the bishops said in a 44-page statement titled “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship,” “that the political choices faced by citizens not only have an impact on general peace and prosperity but also may affect the individual’s salvation.” Brooklyn Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio, chairman of the committee that drafted the statement, put those high-minded sentiments into plain English earlier this month. Support for a candidate who “espouses policies that are gravely immoral” is possible “only under exceptional circumstances that are hard to imagine,” he told the Cathedral Club of Brooklyn.”
But that isn’t all! Not only do these bishops condemn you to hell if you vote for a politician who upholds women’s rights, but you are also helping us follow in the footsteps of the Nazis:
“In our country we have, for the most part, allowed the party of death and the court system it has produced to eliminate, since 1973, upwards of 40 million of our fellow citizens without allowing them to see the light of day,” wrote Rockford, Ill., Bishop Thomas Doran in 2006. “No doubt, we shall soon outstrip the Nazis in doing human beings to death.” He continued, “We know…that adherents of one political party would place us squarely on the road to suicide as a people.”
Note: “The party of death” sure is clever and ranks up there on my list of “Funny things Catholics say for kicks while in the process of using scare tactics for conversion.”
I cannot even imagine how those who have family who had been tortured and killed during the Holocaust feel about now being compared to those who performed the torture and killing of their ancestors by a group of people who protect pedophiles and actually aided the Nazis. I suppose we have come a long way, however, since the Catholic church is now actually admitting that the Holocaust even happened; but the hypocrisy that spews from the mouths of these people every time they deem something immoral is becoming a bit more than I can handle.
The moral of this story, and the new law that god told the bishops to relay to all of us peons who do not get to speak with him directly, is that now to gain entry into heaven, even if we do everything else so-called “correctly,” if we vote pro-choice, we’re spending eternity in hell. Nice. I wonder what else god has in store for us in the coming years.
“This just in: All people who are interested in spending eternity in heaven with the pedophile priests all must wear clown noses and hop on one foot for an entire year.”
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