Tatts and Tiara Day, a Valentine’s Day fundraiser for those who experience the opposite of love, now awaits the jewel in the crown – knowing how much money was raised nationally for the Abused Child Trust. Obviously, I’m not a candidate for Australian Princess. My tiara gave me a headache and I had to keep taking it off. This gave me cause for reflection though. How easy it was for me to just toss my tiara aside and get on with my life.

For many of our world’s children they are unable to toss their headache aside and get on with life. They live with the daily threat and experience of abuse. Without committed individuals and agencies to assist their plight, these children may grow into hurt, scared and dysfunctional adults. Is this how we want our future leaders to be?

Child Protection is the responsibility of all of us. I was not encouraged in knowing that our community cares by the few business houses displaying Tatts and Tiaras posters and selling Abused Child Trust merchandise this Valentines Day.

A quick content analysis of our local paper revealed 15 advertisements for Valentine’s Day and NO advertising supporting those who experience dysfunctional love (abuse) on Valentine’s Day.

We live in a fiscal world where cash is king. Advertising is expensive and child abuse does not equate to increased profit lines for corporations. Or does it? If one in three children are abused by the time they reach 18 years of age that’s an awful lot of future spenders who may well just support those industries that openly display their corporate responsibility toward child sexual abuse prevention.

Imaginif managed to sell a box of Tatts and Tiaras merchandise. That’s a donation of $115.00 to the Abused Child Trust. Small fry but if only 10 people in my area had done the same that’s $1150.00 that stays in our area to support children and their families affected by child abuse.

In addition to the merchandise sold, Imaginif will be donating the coins collected in our big blue vase since New Year’s Day. Every year we support a different child abuse charity. In 2007, our charity of choice is the Abused Child Trust. Our vase collection, made up of useless 5 cent coins, netted $43.15 in only 45 days. I challenge you to match this amount and donate it straight to the Abused Child Trust or a similar charity in your corner of the world.

Be a Royal – flush child abuse away by supporting a charity that works toward ending child abuse.

What is Purse for a Curse

• A fund raiser for child sexual abuse prevention.


• Used celebrity purses, wallets and hand bags are auctioned at a gala dinner and simultaneous on-line auction.


• 100% of profits go to a charity that supports ending child sexual abuse.


• In 2007, all fundraising goes to the Abused Child Trust.


• Auction and dinner will be held in Cairns during Child Protection week (September 2007).


• The prevalence of child sexual abuse is said to be as high as 1 in 3.


• Child sexual abuse is a curse that you can purse to.
  
  

Imaginif Pty Ltd is a family owned Protective Behaviour firm that offers a range of professional services to people who want to help end child sexual abuse. One evening while Megan Bayliss (Director) was feeling frustrated over the endemic numbers of child sexual abuse, she said, “We need a fund raiser for prevention, a purse for a curse. A fund raiser where every year the recipient changes so that the widest net is cast over those agencies working to prevent child sexual abuse”

From there, discussions began, and Purse for a Curse was born. Megan approached the Abused Child Trust in Cairns and asked if they would be the inaugural recipient of fund raising. They agreed.

Purse for a Curse allows you to help end the social curse that is a shame on our communities. Our children, and our helping agencies, need support. You can support by donating or bidding on a celebrity purse, wallet or handbag.

Who can donate used Purses, Wallets or Handbags?

If you are a person of high profile or celebrity status, you can! Your used purse, wallet or handbag will have far more value to one of your adoring fans that it would if you threw it out. Most importantly though, the money your donated purse will bring at auction will have an unprecedented value to a child affected by the social curse of child sexual abuse.

There is a tradition to include a coin or two when giving a gift of a purse so that the recipient has good luck. You may want to consider this as your additional symbolic move toward ending the social curse of child sexual abuse.

You may not want to donate your beloved old purse. You may prefer instead to donate a cash sum to the cause. Your donation is tax deductable and will be publicly recognised in both promotional material and on the night of the gala dinner and on-line auction. Everyone will know that you care about our kids and are prepared to do something about it.

How to Donate?

Please send your used purse, wallet or handbag to either Imaginif Pty Ltd, PO Box 995, Edge Hill, QLD, 4870, Australia, or to the Abused Child Trust in Cairns, PO Box 1084, Earlville QLD 4870, Australia.

Please include your name and a short bio about yourself, including any links to web or fan pages. This information will be used to promote your willingness to help end the social curse of child sexual abuse and to encourage bids on your purse for a curse.

Readers: if you know anyone of high public profile or celebrity status, please feel free to email this to them. The more celebrities we reach, the quicker we can all impact upon ending the social curse of child sexual abuse.

I ran into a stranger as he passed by, "Oh excuse me please" was my reply.

He said, "Please excuse me too; I wasn't watching for you."

We were very polite, this stranger and I. We went on our way and we said goodbye.

But at home a different story is told, How we treat our loved ones, young and old.

Later that day, cooking the evening meal, My son stood beside me very still.

When I turned, I nearly knocked him down. "Move out of the way," I said with a frown.

He walked away, his little heart broken. I didn't realize how harshly I'd spoken.

While I lay awake in bed, God's still small voice came to me and said, "While dealing with a stranger, common courtesy you use, but the family you love, you seem to abuse. Go and look on the kitchen floor, You'll find some flowers there by the door. Those are the flowers he brought for you. He picked them himself: pink, yellow and blue. He stood very quietly not to spoil the surprise, you never saw the tears that filled his little eyes."

By this time, I felt very small, And now my tears began to fall. I quietly went and knelt by his bed; "Wake up, little one, wake up," I said. "Are these the flowers you picked for me?"

He smiled, "I found 'em, out by the tree. I picked 'em because they're pretty like you. I knew you'd like 'em, especially the blue."

I said, "Son, I'm very sorry for the way I acted today; I shouldn't have yelled at you that way."

He said, "Oh, Mom, that's okay. I love you anyway."

I said, "Son, I love you too, and I do like the flowers, especially the blue."

FAMILY: Are you aware that if we died tomorrow, the company that we are working for could easily replace us in a matter of days. But the family we left behind will feel the loss for the rest of their lives. And come to think of it, we pour ourselves more into work than into our own family, an unwise investment indeed, don't you think?

So what is behind the story? Do you know what the word FAMILY means?

FAMILY = (F)ATHER (A)ND (M)OTHER (I) (L)OVE (Y)OU

Do you worry about your kids playing on-line all the time? Many parents worry for different reasons: no exercise, staring at a screen all the time, impaired social skills, or personal safety.

On-line Safety is my biggest concern about my kids playing habits. Just as sexual predators groom our kids and adults around them in real life, so too do internet sexual predators. Chat rooms and on-line game messaging are perfect places for those sneaky predators to mask their true colours. Befriending our kids, predators may pose as a similar age, say they have similar interests and skillfully trick our kids into releasing personal information.

Children love to share photos of themselves and like to look at photos of other kids. This is a natural part of a child’s development. It provides our kids with a sense of identity and allows them to measure themselves against others from different countries.

If ever anyone online asks your child for a picture of themselves, be wary. Allow the request to set of the bells of Notre Dame in your head. However, unless you have an open talking relationship with your child and you know what they are visiting, which games they are playing and whom their on-line friends are, you may never have the opportunity to find out if they’ve been asked the photo question. Often the request may be innocent, but you have to check it out. Who wants a photo of their child shared across a pedophile network or posted on sites that were not given permission by you or your child to be posted on?

Yesterday I had a lengthy chat with an Australian Federal Officer from the Online Child Sex Exploitation Team Economic and Special Operations. I wanted to know the process for listing Imaginif’s new on-line child protection conversation with the team that monitors on-line activity for child sex predators and exploitive material. The Officer was so incredibly helpful and he provided me some supportive information about where and how to report any suspicious activity.

The Virtual Global Taskforce is a partnership between police forces from around the world working together to fight online child abuse. Along with offering advice, information and support to both adults and children to protect themselves against child sex abusers the site encourages on-line reporting of any inappropriate or illegal activity with or towards a child online.

Created in 2003, The Virtual Global Taskforce, is a direct response to lessons learned from investigations into on-line child abuse around the world. It is an international alliance of law enforcement agencies (Australia, U.S.A, U.K, Canada and Interpol) working together to make the Internet a safer place and it is staffed by specialist police officers and investigators. Once a report is generated, the report will go to straight to them. From there, the report is sent to the country of origin for immediate investigation.

Although I am not a supporter of doing things anonymously, I appreciate that many parents prefer to make anonymous reports. One of the many advantages of using the Virtual Global Taskforce is that you can make an anonymous report about any suspicious on-line sexualized behaviour toward your children.

Please, don’t hesitate to use this service if you are concerned about any on-line activity. Investigation and proof is not your responsibility. The global team are trained, professional and passionate. They are the ones tasked with investigating and sorting the innocent from the guilty. The rest of us share the responsibility of reporting exploitive behaviour toward children. Remember, Child Protection is everyone’s business.

Some other excellent sites for ensuring your child’s on-line safety:

A little girl, aged 11, asked me why her mother didn’t help her and stop the abuse. I explained that her mother had no idea that father and uncle were sexually abusing her. The abuse had gone on for years. The child was angry, her behaviour was telling everyone that something was wrong and she was sent to counseling to get sorted out.

During the therapeutic process, the child disclosed the abuse. She claimed that she had told her mother by saying things like, she hated her father and never wanted to see her uncle again. She was using a child’s simple language to explain something that her vocabulary and life understanding was unable to punctuate with words. The child's mother didn't understand what the child's behaviour was saying. It wasn't until I told the mother in plain adult English and gave her the choice to tell the authorities herself before I did, that mother understood what had been happening.

Devastated and wanting retribution, the mother turned her anger toward her husband and brother. She committed acts of violence and was charged with three counts of grievous bodily harm. The mother turned to alcohol to consol herself and sought as much support as she could from other angry friends. While the anger danced around the household and the plotting thickened, the child and her enormous emotional and healing needs were forgotten. The child and her emotional needs simmered and the child developed a belief that her mother had (and was continuing to) failed to protect her.

The child saw family and friends that cared only about themselves and family that didn’t really believe the abuse because they acted like it was her fault that the family was now separated. Because of her young age, the little girl failed to recognise that her family were handling grief in their own way, that they did love and believe her but that were incapable in that moment of providing the support she so required.

The secrecy that surrounded the sexual abuse tore this family apart. It was not only the dysfunctional secrecy of the abusive acts, but the secrecy that then surrounded everyone’s coping mechanisms. Nobody talked through their primary emotions. Anger, a secondary emotion, quickly escalated to violent behaviour: behaviour that knew no words but that acted to further destroy the fragility of the family.

The 11 year old ran away from home at age 14. She lived with family of friends who would take her in and she drifted from bad situation to worse. Now 16, she has begun to visit her father again and never sees her mother. Where is the justice in this story? There is none. The perpetrator wins and the innocent remain wounded and cut off from each other. Why? Because they couldn’t talk about what had happened.

Talking to our children is important. If we can establish preventative cultures of talk then it makes it easier for our children to tell us if something happens to them. It is also easier on protective parents when and if they discover child sexual abuse. Talking about our pain, our betrayal, our shock is far healthier than acting it out and taking the law into our own hands.

Just as we invest in our children’s academic education, so too must we invest in our children’s development of emotional intelligence. Discussions about child safety, what to do if someone tries to touch you, and who to tell, are just as important as learning to read and spell.