“Angelica” is a 17 year old girl who was sexually assaulted by an adult male relative when she was only 10 years old. Drinking, doing drugs, failing school – Angelica was acting out and working so hard to suppress her feelings. She kept her rape a secret until she was 16 when she confided in her boyfriend. Fortunately, her boyfriend, “Marcos”, heard a CALM radio commercial.  Marcos was a great influence on Angelica. He believed that her acting out was a result of her early trauma and he was right. He threatened to tell her parents what had happened to her if she didn’t tell them herself. Finally, Marcos told Angelica’s parents and they brought her to CALM.

Once Angelica broker her silence, we learned that her younger sister had also been abused by this same relative and needed help as well. “Maria” was suicidal and ready to take her own life when she came to CALM. Now, both girls are doing much better after learning about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and child sexual abuse. They are each now able to see that what their relative did to them was not their fault. Both girls were able to do a SART interview (Sexual Assault Response Team) and the police detectives are looking for the perpetrator. Unfortunately, he is on the run but eventually, he will be prosecuted. Most importantly Angelica was able to examine her faulty beliefs about her sense of guilt and her feeling a lack of worth and value that were stemming from her sexual abuse.

Through art therapy, she was able to express deeply buried emotions and was able to access the pain she had repressed for so many years. Through her paintings, she was able to discharge these painful memories and move them from her insides to her exterior, where she could see them with more objectivity and ultimately, release them. Both Angelica and Maria thank CALM for the help that they received. Maria even brought a friend to CALM who had shared that she had been molested and now that girl is also receiving services here.

Angelica is now studying psychology and wishes to be a counselor when she grows up. She considers herself a wounded healer and wants to help other children who have survived sexual abuse. She is now sober, drug free, and with one boyfriend in a healthy relationship. Her grades have improved and she is taking college courses concurrently with her high school studies.

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.