To Protect Our Children - Get Rid of Sex Offender Registries

You might think that as an advocate of child safety and an educator on the topic of child sexual abuse, I might be gung-ho about doing everything possible to keep sex offenders away from children.  The reality is that it's not so simple.  Check out this new article I wrote for Kveller that gives a different perspective on this question.  This is only the tip of the iceberg, but you can get an idea from these points that registries may in fact not be the best approach to keeping our

kids safe.

Safety Kid & Connect with Respect

Last night Debbie Fox delivered a presentation here in Baltimore for parents on the topic of child

sexual abuse.  Mrs. Fox has been leading the charge on this important issue for many years, and her Safety Kid program is currently being used in communities all over the US and Canada.  I myself ran this program in various schools in New Jersey while I was the outreach coordinator for Project S.A.R.A.H., so I am intimately familiar with it, and I am very glad that my kids will now be exposed to it as well.

Many times when I had finished presenting the program in a school, they would come back to me with a boatload of positive feedback, and then they would ask, "so what do you have for middle school?"  The answer at the time was, "nothing," and it remained so for a good while, until one rather assertive guidance counselor said, "Well, we're going to be doing something for our middle school.  I hope you're it."  And with that motivation, I set to work creating something we could offer to Jewish middle schools.

Some years and many revisions later, Connect with Respect is ready to roll!  You can see a brief overview of the program here.  (Note that originally Safety Kid was running only up until 4th grade, so mine picked up with 5th grade; now I understand they are doing Safety Kid in 5th grade as well, so I will likely be running Connect with Respect in 6th, 7th and 8th grades instead of 5th, 6th, and 7th.) Currently I am in contact with several communities (including, of course, Baltimore) who have expressed interest in the program.  If you'd like to know more about it or would like to bring it to your town, please contact me!

Amudim

Apparently there's a new Jewish organization on the child sexual abuse prevention scene, Amudim.  I don't know much about them, but I just saw this video they produced, which is extremely disturbing and emotionally jarring.  It warns that the video is graphic, which is not entirely accurate - but it is definitely triggering for anyone who might have trauma in their past, so please consider whether you want to watch this or not.