Now that Jerry Sandusky has been found guilty of child sexual abuse, the question before us as a nation is:  What have we learned?

We have learned that our community is prepared to say, I Will Not Be Silent. When communities are prepared to come together to support healthy, happy childhoods, we can prevent child sexual abuse before it ever occurs.  According to Prevent Child Abuse America, we have learned that policymakers both local and federal now better understand that the laws in place are inadequate if we are going to prevent child sexual abuse from ever occurring.  And we have learned that as a country the impact of child sexual abuse remains more far-reaching than most of us were able to acknowledge, or even understand, before the Sandusky scandal happened.

In Santa Barbara County we know that all adults must play an active role in the lives of the children who live in their neighborhoods and communities if we are to ensure that all forms of child abuse are prevented, and that when child abuse occurs, we must address it and help children to heal. We at CALM are committed to using evidence based techniques to both prevent and treat child abuse.

What happened at Penn State is a terrible tragedy for those who were victimized and silenced, but that it doesn’t have to be the whole story.  Our community can, and must not be silent. We must work together to become a community of responsibility to protect children from abuse, neglect and exposure to violence.

To become part of this discussion please visit our website, “Like” us on Facebook, and support our work.

CALM launched a Pet Therapy pilot program this past year. It was not only successful, but yielded some surprising results.

Brenda Murrow, one of our interns who created our Pet Therapy curriculum told us the following story. “One surprise that came out of Pet Therapy is that it enabled our therapists to address issues that would have been difficult to raise without the animal. For example, one little girl continually asked about grooming Maddie, the dog. Every day she would ask, “ How do you brush Maddie’s hair? Do you brush Maddie’s teeth?” The therapist suspected that the girl was not getting adequate care at home, but was hesitant to ask the mom for fear of making mom feel defensive. The girl’s questions about the dog, however, enabled our therapist to initiate a natural, non-threatening conversation with Mom.  It turned out that an older sibling was responsible for caring for our little client in the mornings while Mom was at work, but was not doing her job. Maddie enabled therapist and Mom to do some problem solving and address the grooming issue without blame.”

Brenda is now working on writing her dissertation and is analyzing all of her work with Pet Therapy.  We look forward to sharing more stories with you.