From the left: Allie Solomon, Andrew Willis (CEO, Stop Abuse Campaign), Erika Wicke, Brian Wicke, Ann Wicke, Christopher Anderson (Executive Director, Male Survivor)

Dear Ron,

You were a survivor.

Like all survivors you sought understanding. Like many survivors you recovered your hope, regained your spirit and buried your demons.  Like many survivors you became an advocate for change and understanding.  Like few survivors you went on to play a leadership role with the Stop Abuse Campaign.  As a founding partner, you developed new models for survivor self help groups, building the teams, the capability, and piloting the groups with an energy few others have ever had.

You touched many lives, and saved quite a few.

Ron, on behalf of survivors everywhere we salute you.  You wore your pride as one of Oprah’s 200 Men, you inspired a vision for the Stop Abuse Campaign, and you shared tremendous healing with all survivors of violence and abuse.

Cancer may have claimed you, but your vision and tenacity will always remain.  You will always be a survivor.

You leave the world a better place than you found it.

You are an inspiration to us all.

Andrew Willis (CEO, Stop Abuse Campaign)

Christopher Anderson (Executive Director, Male Survivor)

The information and technology we have available to us now, will be a key factor in helping to stop abuse.  New studies out every day show the how abuse alters the brain’s make-up and chemistry, especially in children. In December we posted a study in the journal Current Biology, where researchers used brain scans to explore the impact of physical abuse or domestic violence on children’s emotional developmentChildren exposed to family violence show the same pattern of activity in their brains as soldiers exposed to combat. Read it here: http://stopabusecampaign.com/feature/child-abuse-changes-the-brain

Another in April about a study out by Duke University that shows how abused children age faster than those who are not. This doesn’t mean abused children grow up faster, this study means that aging is occurring, physically and more rapidly, at a cellular level in abused children. Read the story: http://stopabusecampaign.com/feature/bullyingchild-abuse-hasten-aging-in-kids

Now a new study goes inside the bulled brain to explore the damage no one can see from the outside. It’s the damage that lasts a lifetime. A new wave of research into bullying’s effects, is now suggesting that in fact, bullying can leave an indelible imprint on a teen’s brain at a time when it is still growing and developing. Being ostracized by one’s peers, it seems, can throw adolescent hormones even further out of whack, lead to reduced connectivity in the brain, and even sabotage the growth of new neurons.

  The Stop Abuse Campaign is dedicated to stopping all abuse. Get involved today. Make a difference. Become an AbuseStopper by taking The Pledge on our homepage. More important, become a member of the Stop Abuse Campaign.  It’s quick, easy and it’s the right thing to do.  Support the only organization in America with a mission and plan to stop ALL of abuse.  Get involved and learn how.  Make an effort to make a difference, because sooner or later, abuse touches us all.

Inside the bullied brain

The alarming neuroscience of taunting

In the wake of several tragedies that have made bullying a high-profile issue, it’s becoming clear that harassment by one’s peers is something more than just a rite of passage. Bullied kids are more likely to be depressed, anxious, and suicidal. They struggle in school — when they decide to show up at all. They are more likely to carry weapons, get in fights, and use drugs.

But when it comes to the actual harm bullying does, the picture grows murkier. The psychological torment that victims feel is real. But perhaps because many of us have experienced this sort of schoolyard cruelty and lived to tell the tale, peer harassment is still commonly written off as a “soft” form of abuse — one that leaves no obvious injuries and that most victims simply get over. It’s easy to imagine that, painful as bullying can be, all it hurts is our feelings.

  The Stop Abuse Campaign is dedicated to stopping all abuse. Get involved today. Make a difference. Become an AbuseStopper by taking The Pledge on our homepage. More important, become a member of the Stop Abuse Campaign.  It’s quick, easy and it’s the right thing to do.  Support the only organization in America with a mission and plan to stop ALL of abuse.  Get involved and learn how.  Make an effort to make a difference, because sooner or later, abuse touches us all.

There’s nothing funny about rape and Adam Sandler’s new movie

‘That’s My Boy’

Still from That's My Boy

Adam Sandler’s new movie, “That’s My Boy,” should be BOY-cotted by anyone who believes that statutory rape of a 13-year-old is wrong.

That sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it?  I mean, after all, “That’s My Boy” is a comedy that makes light of the seduction and statutory rape of a 13-year-old boy by his pretty teacher – a rape that results in the birth of a child.

Yet, Hollywood thinks it knows two things:

1) Sex sells.

2) Little boys do not need or deserve the same protections from sexual assault as girls because they actually like it.

They’re entirely right about sex selling, of course.  In our almost hopelessly repressed culture just about anything, including a movie with such a sordid premise, can reawaken the sexual feelings we tend to wall off and deny. And yes, those same feelings will get some people to part with a little time and a little cash for a movie.

Hollywood writers, producers and directors are entirely wrong, however, about believing that 13-year-old boys are fair game sexually for adult women because the boys will enjoy going to bed with them.

It should go without saying that 13-year-olds aren’t immune to the psychological fallout of being manipulated into bed by authority figures, like teachers, who are supposed to help them to focus and to learn, not help themselves to their bodies.  And it should go without saying that a 13-year-old boy who has a son after being raped by his teacher isn’t going to live happily-ever-after.

The truth is that both girls and boys obviously have sexual feelings when they are 13-years-old (and much, much earlier).  Both girls and boys fantasize about what it would be like to have romantic relationships with attractive teachers, or coaches, or youth group leaders.

They’re supposed to be having these thoughts; they’re a normal part of sexual development.  But they are supposed to learn that those who care for them in other ways—as their educators, for example—won’t commandeer those natural and innocent impulses for their own pleasure.

They are supposed to be learning things like trust in others and respect for authority and that they are worth being kept safe when their parents allow schools or churches or athletic leagues to care for them.  They are supposed to learn that they matter for their minds and potential.

Sadly, too many Americans, however, agree with Hollywood on both counts.  They think adolescent boys can’t be harmed by adult women who have sex with them. They think males, including adolescents, are merely sexual “animals,” without any feelings.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/05/02/there-nothing-funny-about-rape-and-adam-sandler-new-movie-that-my-boy/#ixzz1u4HnJ0vK

(917)  388-2529

andrew.willis@stopabusecampaign.com

Capitol Hill Noon May 8 Stop Abuse Campaign Briefing

CDC’s Linda Degutis, Victims’ Rights Caucus, NPEIV Leaders to Speak

2226 Rayburn House Office Building

May 2, 2012—The Stop Abuse Campaign is pleased to be working with Reps. Ted Poe (R-TX) and Jim Costa (D-CA), co-chairs of the Congressional Victims’ Rights Caucus on an information-rich noon May 8 briefing in 2226 Rayburn House Office Building, featuring Dr. Linda Degutis, Director of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Other speakers include Andrew Willis, CEO of the Stop Abuse Campaign; and Robert Geffner, Ph.D., co-chair of the The National Partnership to End Interpersonal Violence Across the Lifespan (NPEIV) and President of the Institute on Violence, Abuse and Trauma at Alliant International University.  The panelists will underscore efforts to offer education, intervention and best practices for reducing and even stopping abuse in this country.  Individuals directly affected by abuse will also tell their personal stories.

It is important that media RSVP for the luncheon briefing at rsvp@stopabusecampaign.org.

VRC Caucus contacts are:

Blair Bjellos (Rep. Ted Poe) at Blair.Bjellos@mail.house.gov and Andy Flick (Rep. Jim Costa) at Andy.Flick@mail.house.gov.

For more information, please refer to these links:

http://vrc.poe.house.gov/

www.stopabusecampaign.com

###

Staffers who abuse special-education students “don’t appear to have the skills they need … and clearly don’t have the supervision they need,” said Brenda Considine, a spokeswoman for the New Jersey Coalition for Special Education Funding Reform.

Assemblyman Dave Rible, a Republican from Monmouth who has called for improvements to special education in New Jersey, said he understands the outcry. “No one wants to see their children degraded or hurt.” 

Rible last week urged legislative action on a measure he’s sponsored to create a task force of special-education experts. “The whole crux of my bill is to examine special education, how we’re spending money there and how we can improve it,” said Rible. “If we’re providing a service, we’ve got to provide the best possible service.”

Now is the time to demand better of ourselves. We know training educators about abuse is insufficient and mostly outdated and underfunded.  That is the situation at hand and will remain so until we all decided, together, to do something to change it. And it goes beyond this particular issue, to the greater issue of stopping all abuse.  The Stop Abuse Campaign is the movement and YOU are the movement to stop abuse in America, once you click the pledge on our homepage to do so.  The Stop Abuse Campaign is dedicated to stopping all abuse. Get involved today. Make a difference. Become an AbuseStopper by taking The Pledge on our homepage. More important, become a member of the Stop Abuse Campaign.  It’s quick, easy and it’s the right thing to do.  Support the only organization in America with a mission and plan to stop ALL of abuse.  Get involved and learn how.  Make an effort to make a difference, because sooner or later, abuse touches us all.

N.J. teacher, aide heard bullying autistic boy

CHERRY HILL, N.J. – When harsh words flew in a classroom for autistic children here, the school employees who spoke them likely thought no one in authority would ever hear.

“Shut up,” shouted one staffer, unaware that a digital recorder was hidden in the pocket of 10-year-old Akian Chaifetz.

“Go ahead and scream because guess what? You’re going to get nothing until your mouth is shut.

• VIDEO: YouTube: My Son Was Humiliated

• STORY: N.J. teacher, aide heard bullying autistic boy

“Oh Akian, you are a bastard.”

By Mel Evans, AP Stuart Chaifetz kisses his son, Akian Chaifetz, 10, as they play in the backyard of their home Wednesday in Cherry Hill, N.J.

But after the boy’s father, Stuart Chaifetz, released excerpts of the tape in an online video last week, millions of people learned what was said at the Horace Mann Elementary School.

Now, educators and others are trying to figure out just what the incident means.

“What happened in the classroom is not excusable and should not have happened,” Cherry Hill school officials said in a statement Friday. But while vowing to learn from the experience, the officials assert, “We believe this regrettable incident is an anomaly.”

Others aren’t so sure. They say special-education programs in many communities may lack the support and expertise needed to benefit children with disabilities.

Staffers who abuse special-education students “don’t appear to have the skills they need … and clearly don’t have the supervision they need,” said Brenda Considine, a spokeswoman for the New Jersey Coalition for Special Education Funding Reform.

“It’s ironic that this stuff is garnering so much attention because we just passed one of the toughest anti-bullying laws in the country aimed at stopping kids from bullying one another,” said Considine. “Here’s clear-cut evidence that (school employees) are engaged in bullying.”

The Cherry Hill incident wasn’t the first such case in New Jersey.

READ MORE:  http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/story/2012-04-29/autism-education-abuse-reform/54616582/1

“Those kids are ‘older’ than they are supposed to be,” said study leader Idan Shalev, a postdoctoral researcher at Duke University. If the cellular aging isn’t reversed, Shalev told LiveScience, the children would likely be at risk for premature death.

Research of this kind, while very important, must only be telling us what we already know and believe true, and that is, abuse causes much deeper and more long term problems, which last long past the healing of bruises and broken bones.  Research of this kind, a precise understanding of what abuse can literally ’cause’ a child to become is critical knowledge for developing better treatments and processes’ for healing.

The Stop Abuse Campaign is dedicated to stopping all abuse. Get involved today. Make a difference. Become an AbuseStopper by taking The Pledge on our homepage. More important, become a member of the Stop Abuse Campaign.  It’s quick, easy and it’s the right thing to do.  Support the only organization in America with a mission and plan to stop ALL of abuse.  Get involved and learn how.  Make an effort to make a difference, because sooner or later, abuse touches us all.

Bullying, child abuse hasten aging in kids

by Stephanie Pappas Published April 26, 2012 LiveScience

Children exposed to multiple instances of violence age faster on a cellular level than children without violent experiences, a new study finds.

Although childhood stress has long been linked with later disease risk and health problems, the study is the first to show accelerated biological aging in childhood as a result of stress.

“Those kids are ‘older’ than they are supposed to be,” said study leader Idan Shalev, a postdoctoral researcher at Duke University. If the cellular aging isn’t reversed, Shalev told LiveScience, the children would likely be at risk for premature death.

Violence and stress

To gauge biological aging, Shalev and his colleagues examined a portion of DNA called telomeres. These sequences cap the ends of our chromosomes (packets of DNA), but they get shorter with every cell division, acting as a sort of molecular “clock”that signals wear-and-tear on DNA.Several studies have found that adults who experienced violence as children tend to have shorter telomeres than those with peaceful childhoods. But those studies couldn’t determine whether the telomeres had been shortened because of childhood stress or because of later adult health problems stemming from that stress, Shalev said.

To find out which was the case, he and his colleagues began a study that looked not backward, but ahead. Using a sample of 236 children from a British sample born between 1994 and 1995, the researchers took DNA samples by swabbing the children’s cheeks and then measured the length of each child’s telomeres at age 5 and age 10.

By the 10-year-old time point, 17 percent of the children had experienced domestic violence in their households, 24.2 percent had been frequently bullied and 26.7 percent had been physically abused by an adult, according to interviews with the children’s mothers. (Some kids were already in protective custody as a result of this abuse.) Because some children experienced more than one type of violence, the researchers split them into groups: kids who hadn’t experienced violence (54.2 percent), kids who had experienced one type of violence (29.2 percent), and kids who had experienced two or more types of violence (16.5 percent).
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2012/04/26/bullying-child-abuse-hasten-aging-in-kids/#ixzz1tNcXMwU

Also Read: http://stopabusecampaign.com/feature/child-abuse-changes-the-brain

The Stop Abuse Campaign is dedicated to stopping all abuse. Get involved today. Make a difference. Become an AbuseStopper by taking The Pledge on our homepage. More important, become a member of the Stop Abuse Campaign.  It’s quick, easy and it’s the right thing to do.  Support the only organization in America with a mission and plan to stop ALL of abuse.  Get involved and learn how.  Make an effort to make a difference, because sooner or later, abuse touches us all.

Pet abuse in violent homes probed

Olivia Carville

WARNING SIGNS: A dog showing evidence of slash wounds. A study has linked similar wounds to domestic-violence situations

A dog decapitated in front of children, a litter of kittens hurled against a wall and a cat held in the air while its legs were broken one by one are Christchurch examples of the link between pet abuse and family violence.

Women’s refuge centres across the city compiled examples of the correlation between animal cruelty and family violence after a study released last month that investigated the issue in New Zealand for the first time.

The Pets as Pawns study was a Women’s Refuge-SPCA project that showed violence towards animals was often used as a way for abusive men to maintain control over their families.

Dr Michael Roguski surveyed more than 200 Women’s Refuge clients and found 54 per cent said a family member or partner had threatened to kill their pets.

One-third of respondents had a pet injured or killed during a relationship, and much of the abuse was witnessed by children.

Christchurch was not included in the survey because Roguski did not want to overburden the city’s swamped refuge centres after the earthquakes.

He had no doubt the same violence occurred in Christchurch, and the city’s refuge centres have confirmed his belief.

Christchurch Women’s Refuge spokeswoman Julie McCloy said 70 per cent of clients in rural Canterbury feared for their pets, and 30 per cent held the same concerns in the city.

All of the case workers had clients reluctant to leave violent relationships because they feared their pets would be killed if left to the mercy of their partner.

“Abusing animals is another form of power and control that is used to manipulate women and torture them,” McCloy said.

“We are aware of women and children staying in unsafe situations because they wanted to look after their animals.”

Continue reading:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/6821217/Pet-abuse-in-violent-homes-probed

http://stopabusecampaign.com/ask-lala-3