New Year’s thoughts: Safety crises and lessons from India and the USA

Visiting India can provide a shock to the system–the sights, the sounds, the colors, the social issues, often seem more intense than I am used to back home in the US. On this trip we landed in India in the middle of an unfolding social crisis, as the country confronts the gang rape and resulting death of a 23-year old paramedical student in New Delhi. The young woman has not been named publicly, but has been called “Nirbhaya” (“Fearless”) by The Times of India. ... Read more

Feelings of rage and helplessness after the Sandy Hook School shootings

Like so many Americans, today I’ve been reading a lot facts about the Sandy Hook Elementary School murders, but on the inside I am left with a lot of feelings and the question, “Will this time be any different? Will we take action to take charge of gun safety?” Before this latest tragedy I had been feeling like we as a society had become numb to gun violence. It was only four days ago that a shooting at a mall in Portland Oregon left three people dead, including the... Read more

Connecticut School Shooting: Kidpower Shows How To Empower Kids In The Face Of Violence

Kidpower offers three articles, in English and Spanish, for parents and teachers help children cope with the news of a tragic mass-shooting today at a Connecticut elementary school. “Timing matters: kids are likely to be asking questions today,” says author Irene van der Zande, “how adults respond can make a big difference for children’s emotional well being.” Kidpower, an internationally acclaimed child safety education nonprofit, offers three articles for parents... Read more

BBC sex abuse scandal: Jimmy Savile was hiding in plain sight

The venerable British Broadcasting Company, The BBC, has been rocked by allegations that their long-time celebrity DJ and TV star Jimmy Savile was a serial pedophile who abused hundreds of young people. It is even alleged that he engineered his television shows, Top of the Pops and Jim’ll Fix It, to enable him to perpetrate his abuse. As Americans, we aren’t familiar with Jimmy Savile, but he has been described as a British version of Dick Clark. Savile was famous, rich, and... Read more

After Catholic Church, Penn State, Boy Scouts revelations–are we finally on the verge of a great awakening about sexual abuse?

“The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody had decided not to see.” –Ayn Rand I am not an Ayn Rand fan but this morning I keep thinking about her quote. It is appropriate for today’s news as we take a look at sexual abuse that was covered up for years. Last week, by court order, the Boy Scouts of America released their decades’ worth of secret “perversion files” that contained reports of thousands of instances of child sexual abuse... Read more