Tonya Craft, Former Georgia Teacher, Acquitted of Molestation Charges

The headlines read the same for most networks and cable news. But what is not being said is that verified research indicates that the vast majority of children who disclose sexual abuse are telling the truth. Adults need to listen, believe and take action on behalf of all children who tell of being sexually violated. When there are false accusations it most frequently occurs in and around a contested or heated custody battle.

But here’s the real headline –Child Sexual Abuse does not have to happen! We can stop it in real time…. When adults are trained how to prevent, recognize and react responsibly to the issue – the reality of sexual abuse – we create a totally different outcome.

Imagine if the adults in this story knew common sense proactive ways to keep their children safe – we wouldn’t be blogging about this. But we have to get trained, organized and create a shift in our culture. We have to acknowledge that we are experiencing an endemic and we’re passively condoning it by not preventing it.

In fact as a nation of taxpayers we spend over $35B annually for the long term cost of child sexual abuse. 60% of first time teen pregnancies are preceded by sexual abuse, eating disorders, alcoholism, drug abuse, depression, suicide – the list of the fall out from sexual abuse is long and nasty. But still….we are not seeing the movement of prevention take off the way it should.

Unlike other issues and diseases where we need to raise hundreds of millions and billions of dollars to go into a laboratory and one day find a cure – the cure, the end of sexual abuse is right in front of us. It’s on every street corner, in homes and conference rooms all across our country – responsible adults saying no more; I’m going to get trained, I’m going to insist that the youth serving organizations my child attends do child sexual abuse prevention training.

Let’s get going! Let’s end the tragedy of child sexual abuse for all of us. Go to www.d2l.org to do your part to end the insanity.