City Tees Tackling Abuse Issues

Many wonderful things are happening in our world and our community to make a change and stop violence.

One example of this is the effort put forth by 11 Sturgeon Bay High School Students after learning about people being exposed to multiple types of abuse. Two groups of students are working vigorously to prepare to give 75-minute presentations at the Wisconsin Teen Summit in the Wisconsin Dells in March of 2012.

The groups have chosen to focus on addressing the hurt that violence causes. One group will present on the emotional healing journey that needs to take place, demonstrating how different forms of art media can be used as a healing tool. The second group will focus on education about human trafficking.

These teens believe that abuse happens on a daily basis in our world and, in some cases, within our own community, and they want to respond, helping make a change and spreading awareness.

To help explain why it is so important for us to start believing and to address misperceptions of why victimizations cumulate, we need to start educating ourselves. Once a child is exposed to even one type of violence for a brief period of time their risk for experiencing other types of violence dramatically increases. For example:

“A child who was physically assaulted in the past year would be five times as likely to have been sexually victimized and more than four times as likely to have been maltreated during that period. Similarly, a child who was physically assaulted during his or her lifetime would be more than six times as likely to have been sexually victimized and more than five times as likely to have been maltreated during his or her lifetime.” (Finkelhor, Turner, Ormrod, Hamby, and Kracke, 2009).

Each misperception serves to make us all more vulnerable especially our children. It is time to BELIEVE. Only when one believes in something can one act purposefully.

This article is brought to you in part by the Door County Coordinated Community Response (CCR) to Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Teams and the Door County Elder and Adult-at-Risk Interdisciplinary Team.