HELPING PREVENT CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE

After teaching personal body safety to over 1,000 kids, I was inspired to write the Say NO! and TELL! books. Child sexual abuse is prevalent and increasing nationwide. I know too many friends and family who have experienced this trauma. The intervention, sharing a survivor story and recovery parts are growing strong in this movement, although I saw a gap in prevention education.

Almost instantly, I had a vision about the butterfly telling her story plus scenarios to role-play. I wanted to create something light, bright, colorful and positive with an animal character delivering this prevention message. I realized that children across the nation and world-wide could benefit from a boundaries approach to help prevent child sexual abuse with child-friendly language and age-appropriate content. And, body boundaries do not need to include reproduction so we can begin training very young children during those teachable moments.

In January of 2015, I began researching prevention of child sexual abuse for about 1.5 years while writing the read-aloud children’s books of Maisie Monarch for girls and Daxton Dolphin for boys. I also researched the tactics of an abuser and identified eight common ones, which I turned into positive life skills to role play. I also trained about 80 children’s church volunteers one summer, which led to writing the training workbook. During that time, my great concern was that our pornified culture and society was trying to lower the age of consent and normalize pedophilia. Sadly, it seems that it is already on our doorstep today.

My husband and I have fully funded this endeavor and we seek to grow We Stand Guard so we can reach as many children as possible. This journey has been costly and sacrificial…and totally worth it, because we love children. I have met so many wonderful people across the nation and world at gatherings like anti-human trafficking events who are dedicated to protecting children. Protecting children is a wonderfully unifying value among humanity. And, this is God’s plan since He loves children so much! This prevention work is about reaching the next one, as Jesus went after that one lost sheep. Each child is special and by reaching the next one child with body boundaries, the impact is significant because the family tree and their sphere of influence are empowered for generations to come.