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

Boy Scouts Sex Abuse Response: Much Too Late and Still Too Little

Most of the Boy Scouts I know are incredibly honorable people. They are horrified by the reports of thousands of men who abused kids between 1947 and 2005 through relationships developed from their role as Boy Scout leaders and volunteers – and by the fact that failure of the Boy Scouts of America to report these pedophiles has put other kids at risk. So far, the Boy Scouts of America has partially addressed the issue by removing these people from their organization and recently enacting... Read more