Opening Remarks by Jetta Bernier

"Taking Action to Prevent Child Sexual Abuse: Strategies for YOUR Community"

March 2, 2005

On behalf of the Massachusetts Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Partnership and the twenty-three state-level agencies that make up this public/private collaboration, I want to welcome you to our second conference  -  “Taking Action to Prevent Child Sexual Abuse: Strategies for Your Community.”  It will be an informative and thought-provoking day that promises to take us all to new levels of understanding about the nature and scope of child sexual abuse and, importantly, how to join forces to prevent it.  

I want to begin by publicly acknowledging the fine work of our Conference Planning Committee whose names you will find in your program and the fine leadership provided by Megan Lewis, Coordinator for the Partnership.  Megan, you have done a great job not only organizing the logistics of this conference but most importantly working to ensure that our program today is comprehensive, provocative and cutting edge. Well done.

The Partnership includes a diverse mix of child abuse prevention advocates, educators, public health specialists, survivors, child protection leaders and sexual offender treatment providers. While we are diverse, we are also unified by a clear and powerful vision - to prevent child sexual abuse by building a statewide movement of concerned and educated citizens and professionals  - community by community.  We are clear that to achieve this goal we ourselves must understand the latest knowledge in the field, identify or develop new prevention strategies and programs, test and evaluate them to ensure their effectiveness and finally, make them available for replication across our state.

While we are still only in the early stages of this challenging work, we are pleased today to showcase the groundbreaking work of the Partnership’s three pilot sites in the communities of Gloucester, North Quabbin and Newton.  During the past 18 months these communities have each created their own local collaboration of concerned adults and professionals fully supported by their mayors, chiefs of police, school superintendents and other key leaders. They have launched the Enough Abuse media campaign through their local press, and through posters are promoting the Enough Abuse.org website. 

Corps of local professionals have participated in days of intensive training to learn about the latest knowledge and research in the field. These trainers are now educating parents and other professionals about the nature of child sexual abuse, the conditions that allow it to exist, and, how to change those conditions so that we can prevent adults from perpetrating now and make it less likely that today’s children will sexually offend in the future.

We want to thank the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and their representative here today, Dr. Janet Saul,  who 2 ½ years ago chose Massachusetts as one of only 3 sites in the country to develop and test new prevention approaches through a three-year grant.  We are pleased to announce today that CDC’s commitment to this issue is strong and they have invited their three grantees in Massachusetts, Minnesota and Georgia to apply for an additional two years of funding.  This would give us more needed time to refine our approaches and more fully evaluate their effectiveness. We are hopeful that this extension would allow us not only to go deeper in the three pilot sites but also to go broader by involving additional selected communities.

This morning we will hear from our two exciting speakers -  Dr. Anna C. Salter and Robin Stone - thought-provoking information that will help each of us fight smart as we fight hard to protect our children from a problem that the AMA has appropriately called “the silent epidemic.”

All of us here remember vividly, how the silence of that epidemic was shattered forever on January 6^th and 7^th, 2002 when the Boston Globe ran the first articles of their Spotlight Series on the Geoghan case.  By the end of that month, thanks in large part to the bold ruling of Judge Constance Sweeney, the Globe exposed complicity on the part of the Church hierarchy using thousands of pages of the Church’s own documents – the now famous Geoghan papers.  As they say, the rest is history and it’s a history we have all now been witness to.  

But there were other Massachusetts advocates before those dark day whose voices were breaking the surface.

Yes, much has happened since we read those first gut wrenching headlines on that cold morning in January . . . more disclosures, more trials, convictions, suicides of both victims and offenders, even murders. We have all wished that it would just end and in fact some have actually proclaimed the end of the crisis.  But it is not over.  Even Kathleen McChesney of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops straightforwardly acknowledged this fact last week when she shared the results of archdiocesan audits across the country.

The morning newspaper still reminds us every day that it’s not over.  

While these stories are a daily reminder of the insidious and pervasive presence of sexual abuse in our state, we need to find solace in each reported incidence. They mean that more victims, more family members, more bystanders are finding the courage, the voice to come forward and say:  enough secrets, enough shame, enough denial, enough hurt, ….enough child sexual abuse.

This is the mantra of the Enough Abuse Campaign and your presence here today is a powerful affirmation of that message.  We hope that each of you will consider yourselves a member of the Campaign and help steer this vehicle through which the growing statewide movement to end child sexual abuse will be carried and achieved in our state.  

Today’s conference will give you new knowledge to consider and  suggest actions you can take now to move our Campaign further towards its goal.  In fact, before we break for lunch later this morning, we will suggest three specific things you can do now as bon fide members of the Enough Abuse Campaign. Stay tuned.

For now though to help us reflect on and tap into the power that is here in this gathering  - the power that we must carry outside to our families and our communities - we have asked Kevin Callahan to sing for us a song that he wrote and that was inspired by the Enough Abuse Campaign.  Kevin is the father of 8 year old Ben and 6 year old Emily. This is the first public performance of Kevin’s song........

Three Things You Can Do Now:

1.)  Bracelets for everyone. Available for sale at $2 each

2.)  Bumper stickers. Also available for $1 each

3.)  Legislation information:

      SOL:  Coalition for Reform of Sex Abuse Laws. Bonnie Gorman

So many have not been charged because the Statute of Limitations clock had stopped ticking for them. Only those who spent significant time in other states, like Paul Shanley, for example, were able to be prosecuted.  As the Boston Herald stated last week in its editorial supporting repeal of the Statute of Limitations:  “Justice ought not depend on a criminal’s travel plans.”

    Licensure for sexual offender treatment providers. MA Coalition for Sexual Offender Management – Jenn Meade

●    Reminder that a box lunch will be provided after the first Workshop session. Only a half-hour so we could fit in more valuable workshop time.

●    The Speakers are signing books which are available for purchase at the Olive Tree Book Store table in the Exhibit area.

Kevin Callahan will sing another song for us to send us on our way.

It’s a song written by folk artist David Wilcox called “Show the Way”. The song reminds us that what we are battling is no less the force of evil in our world and how our actions - our love - is the only way we can win for the children and for ourselves.