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So guys, the word sex has been getting tossed around a lot in the media over the past few weeks.  And, not in a good way because it has been accompanied by the words harassment and abuse…

Of course, there are the recent allegations against presidential candidate Herman Cain…

… but even worse are the unfolding events at Penn State, where college football icon, Joe Paterno, was recently fired after 46 years of coaching …

You know, Tom, over the past three years on the Tom Joyner Morning Show, I’ve talked about a wide variety of subjects…and some of them have been very difficult …

But one of the most difficult topics for me to talk about is the sexual abuse of a child… the allegation that an adult would violate the innocence of a child in that way is sick and disgusting…

…and yes, although Coach Paterno apparently didn’t break any laws and did the minimum required in reporting the abuse, he should still be held fully accountable for not doing more to protect and advocate for that particular child, as well as for all of the past and potential young victims of Sandusky…

…and his conscience should haunt him for the remainder of his days for not doing so…

But, that said, I also want us to recognize that, while this particular case is now in the public eye, what about the countless other incidents involving the sexual abuse of minors that occur each and every day in this country and go unreported? Who is speaking up for these children…?

It is commonly known among health professionals that sexual abuse often has long term and devastating effects on the victim, including a loss of trust, poor self esteem, feelings of shame, guilt and depression, substance abuse, suicide, promiscuity, anxiety, and criminality…

A National Institute of Justice study found that childhood abuse increased the odds of future delinquency and criminality by 40%… In addition, victims of child sexual abuse are 27 times more likely to be arrested for prostitution as adults…

So if nothing is done about it, this horrific cycle continues with the very real possibility of those being abused becoming abusers or criminals themselves… To learn more about child sexual abuse and how to prevent it and break this cycle, you can go to stopitnow.org…

Now, I’m sure many of you remember the powerful movie directed by Denzel Washington awhile back named Antwone Fisher, in which the movie’s namesake was victimized by sexual abuse as a young boy…

Well, I’d like to close this week with an excerpt from the poem Fisher wrote that, speaks of the suffering, pain, and stigma of lost innocence, of stolen childhoods, as a result of the sexual abuse of children across the world…

Who will cry for the little boy?
Lost and all alone
Who will cry for the little boy?
Abandoned without his own

Who will cry for the little boy?
He cried himself to sleep
Who will cry for the little boy?
He never had for keeps…

Who will cry for the little boy?
Who knows well hurt and pain
Who will cry for the little boy?
He died again and again.

Who will cry for the little boy?
A good boy he tried to be
Who will cry for the little boy
who cries inside of me.

Until Next Time, this is Stephanie in Love and Hope.

admin Abuse, Children, Events, Media Antwone Fisher, Harassment, Joe Paterno, Penn State, Sandusky, Sex, Sexual Abuse

Good Morning Tom, Sybil, and Jay.

Tom, last week I talked about women’s historical roles in advancing worker’s rights and, I shared a story about Mary McCleod Bethune’s encounter with the Ku Klux Klan…

While that story had a happy ending, our history is also full of stories of black women with different endings, women who endured heinous atrocities but never received the justice they deserved… The Root’s Cynthia Gordy recently captured one of these stories…

On an early September evening in 1944 in the small town of Abbeville, Alabama, just outside of Montgomery, 24-year-old Recy Taylor left services at Rock Hill Holiness Church to walk home with two other churchgoers. Minutes later, a green Chevy pulled up and seven white men wielding guns and knives jumped out, pulled Taylor in the backseat and rode off…

Stopping in a deserted grove, the men ordered the young wife and mother out of the car at gunpoint, forced her to undress and brutally gang raped her. When they finished, they drove back to the road they found her on and kicked her out of the car after threatening to kill her if she told anyone…

But Taylor was brave and she did tell… and reports of the incident traveled quickly, subsequently reaching the ears of a fearless young female activist at the Montgomery NAACP who specialized in rape cases…

That activist, not only housed Mrs. Taylor for three months as a safety measure because her home had been firebombed two days after the assault, but she organized prominent and national black organizations to form The Alabama Committee for Equal Justice for Mrs. Taylor…

Despite the fact that the case provoked international outrage and attention, a few months later, an all-white, all-male grand jury elected not to indict…

But here’s the thing… The impact of Taylor’s brave quest for justice set into motion events that would not only change America, but the world…

…The coalition formed by that young female activist later became known as the Montgomery Improvement Association, the group, that a decade after Taylor’s rape, would launch the modern day Civil Rights Movement and swear in The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as its president…

…and the name of that fearless activist who came to Taylor’s aid way back in 1944, long before the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and even before Martin Luther King had graduated from High School? Mrs. Rosa Parks.

That’s right, Tom… You see, Taylor’s quest for justice actually set into motion the chain of events that brought about the most effective rights struggle in American history…

Yet despite the initial attention Mrs. Parks steered to the case, time moved on and Taylor’s name eventually faded from the pages of history…

And while Taylor moved on, the pain did not…Fifty years after the attack, her brother, Robert Corbitt, visited her and the then 80 year-old Taylor brought it up and began to weep…

When he retired in 2001, Corbitt moved back to Abbeville, to try to get justice for his sister…But, no records of the case existed.

Finally, in 2008, Corbitt read an online essay by history professor, Danielle McGuire, referencing the 64 year-old case… McGuire recently penned the book At the Dark End of the Street featuring Taylor’s story…

After meeting with McGuire, Corbitt learned that all of the assailants had once admitted to the crime, but at the time, the local police squashed it…

And now… Tom, 91 year-old Recy Taylor and her family are asking for a public apology from the city of Abbeville, and the state of Alabama… that’s the least they could do…

We should all demand the same… and since the state of Alabama has no statute of limitations on rape, ANY living assailants should be prosecuted …

We can call Abbeville,  Mayor Ryan Blalock at (334) 585-6444 to demand an apology for Recy Taylor; We can also call Alabama Governor Robert Bentley at (334) 242-7100 …

But you know what, Tom? There’s something else we can do that’s also long overdue… and to do it, I am going to break my own protocol this week and not end with a quote like I usually do…because this is more important…

Here in Women’s History Month, we can simply say to Mrs. Taylor, “Thank you.” …and I will proudly lead the charge…

So wherever you are, Mrs. Taylor, thank you for your incredible courage in the face of unspeakable horror and intimidation… Thank you for persevering in your ongoing quest for justice… Thank you for inspiring a movement that changed America and the world…

And rest assured, though the pages of history have tried to forget you, your legacy will always live with us…Until Next Time, this is Stephanie in Love and Hope.

admin Abuse, Civil Rights Alabama, Civil Rights, Cynthia Gordy, Montgomery, rape, Recy Taylor, Roots

Good Morning Tom, Sybil, and Jay.

Tom, you’ve often heard me use this weekly platform to talk about issues concerning children…

After all, as parents, a large part of our lives are devoted to the beautiful, challenging, and rewarding art of raising children…

We feed them when they’re hungry, nurse them back to health when they’re sick, hug and protect them when they’re scared or hurt, and tuck them into bed when they’re tired… (even though they somehow end up in our bed by the morning…)

Now, Sybil, because life and relationships certainly have their challenges, parents don’t always see eye to eye, and they may, unfortunately, split up, separate, or even divorce…

And if the parents can’t see through their own emotional issues and pain to recognize that the children simply want, and still deserve both parents in their lives, there’s gonna to be trouble…

That said, let me tell you about a parent, a father by the name of Tewodross Melchishua…also known as ‘Tee”

Tewodross is a talented brother living in the DC area who is an independent film producer, artist, designer, animator, and professor at Bowie State (let’s hear it for the HBCUs)…

He loves all five of his children ranging in age from 3 to 17 including two sets of TWINS from a previous marriage.

In the late 90s, after his first marriage didn’t work out, Tee and his ex-wife shared joint custody of their twins – 2 boys and 2 girls.

One day, in 2000, he went to pick up his then 6 and 7 year old children from their mother for the weekend, as he always did, and they simply weren’t there…

Did you hear what I just said, Tom…? They were GONE… The mother had disappeared… to Egypt!!!!!!

I can’t even begin to imagine, as a mom, how that must have felt…?

For the past ten years –that’s right, I said ten– Tee has done everything in his power to first locate his children and then reunite with them…

He finally got a telephone and email address for his ex-wife . . . before she took the children and relocated again to yet another country!

He found her again and ultimately convinced the mother to allow the teenage sets of twins to travel to the United States alone to visit their father…

So Sybil, believe it or not, we’re still hoping for a relatively happy ending here …

But this is just one father’s story. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children estimates that over 1000 family abductions occur in the United States every day…

And international family abductions – where a parent or relative kidnaps a child and takes them to a different country—occur, on average, a reported 16,000 times a year and often leave the “Chasing Parent” with huge emotional and financial burden…

The main problem is that many of these countries simply REFUSE to return these American children back to the United States.

Sometimes, as in Tee’s case there is a difference of religion; sometimes as in the recent high-profile cases in Brazil and Japan, no reason is given.  Amazingly, this is also the case even where the country is a friend or ally of the United States, and even where the country has signed the Hague Convention, the international treaty designed to protect children from these abductions.

You can get more information on parental abductions at missingkids.com.

You know Tom, I’ve occasionally heard people without children wonder why anyone would want to bring a child into this sometimes cruel and unpredictable world…

Maybe this saying from the late writer & blogger, Liz Armbruster, offers the answer: “I brought children into this dark world because it needed the light that only a child could bring.”

Until Next Time, this is Stephanie in Love and Hope.

admin Abuse, Children

Good Morning TJMS Family.

Well, there’s certainly been a lot going on lately down in the Lone Star State…

That’s right, Texas has been in the news recently for a number of reasons – not many of them good…

Last week, many of us watched in horror the video of the fired African American teacher at the Houston charter school beating up an African American boy…

And we’ve also been troubled by the recent textbook controversy in which a conservative slant is being imposed on millions of the state’s public schoolchildren…

Both situations say a lot about the current state of education in Texas… but today, I’m going to focus on the physical assault…

I watched the teacher on Good Morning America after appealing to the media to quote-unquote “give her side of the story”… I couldn’t imagine what that would be given the tape of her beating, dragging, and kicking a terrified 13 year-old …

After the teacher, her attorney, and the host viewed the tape, the teacher correctly acknowledged there was nothing that could ever justify her actions… “Exactly” I thought, before wondering why she’d even come on the show…

And then I knew. After claiming her adrenaline was high because of a prior incident, she got back to her classroom to find the door locked and a group of children circling a recent transfer and special-needs student… She said the children – the boy in particular — were standing around the student in a “threatening” way and that they were all African Americans with prior court issues and that the special needs student was white…

Wow… guess the teacher and her white attorney thought that was a pretty important point… So important, they wanted to say it on international TV although they already admitted there was no justification for assaulting the boy…

I guess it didn’t matter that the teacher wasn’t protecting the student at that point since the boy she was beating was cowering in a corner in fear …

I guess the whole purpose of her interview was to appeal to white America and to show how she was standing up for one of theirs …’

What other purpose could there have been for her TV appearance…? Why mention the race of the students at all?

Is it horrible that any young student can be taunted by others? Definitely.

But when an adult, and a teacher no less, totally loses it, repeatedly assaults a child cowering in front of her, and then appeals to the court of public opinion on the implicit basis that a white child’s trauma at the hands of African Americans is somehow worse than the opposite, that’s beyond belief…

And that teacher should be held accountable in both a court of law and in the court of public opinion…

I leave you with this: “What is done to children, is what they will do to society.”

Until Next Time, this is Stephanie in love and hope and you are listening to the TJMS at its Best.

admin Abuse, Public School, Texas