gchildess@heraldsun.com; 419-6645
CHAPEL HILL – For Kim Grooms, executive director of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro YMCA, the child sexual abuse statistics were unreal.
The numbers showed that one in four girls and one in six boys will be sexually abused before their 18th birthdays.
“That’s just startling to me,” Grooms said. “That means that in every group of 25 children we see, there is one that could be a victim of sexual abuse.”
So for Grooms, it made sense for the Y, an agency that supervises thousands of children each year, to partner with Darkness to Light, a nationally acclaimed non-profit organization committed to ending child sexual abuse. Darkness to Light will train adults in Orange and Chatham counties in strategies to prevent abuse.
“It just touched us in a way that made us say ‘we have got to do something about this,’” Grooms said.
That something begins with Darkness to Light’s award-winning prevention program, Stewards of Children, a 2 ½ hour workshop designed to teach adults how to recognize, prevent and responsibly react to incidents of child sexual abuse.
Thanks to grants awarded by the Oak Foundation and the Redwoods Foundation, the Y is offering free training to the general public with its sights set on reaching youth sports organizations, coaches, camp counselors, teachers, schools, faith centers and other service organizations.
The training sessions started in February; 350 adults have been trained since. Another 175 are in the queue and will soon receive their training.
“I’m hoping to reach 500 by the end of the year,” Grooms said. “Our goal is to eventually reach 1,500 adults a year.”
The long-term goal, Groom said, is to train 5 percent – roughly 7,300 people – of the adult population in Orange and Chatham counties over the next three to five years.
Grooms noted another statistic shared by Darkness to Light showing that 90 percent of children who abused are assaulted by people that they know.
She said that’s something of which parents should be aware.
“It’s no longer the scary guy in the park in a trench coat,” Grooms said. “Darkness to Light is saying it’s no longer just the stranger that we need to be concerned about.”
Duston Lowell, children service program manager for the Orange County Department of Social Services (OCDSS), has gone through the training and found it beneficial.
“I thought the training was excellent,” Lowell said. “I thought it was wonderful preventive program for child sexual abuse.”
As a parent, Lowell said he found the information useful in that it gives parents information to use to keep their children safe from child predators.
“Many of these are common-sense things, but this helps parents to focus on what they need to do to keep children from becoming victims of child sexual abuse,” Lowell said.
He said and OCDSS supervisor will soon undergo the training so that she can train partner agencies.
Grooms said the entire community is impacted when a child becomes the victim of sexual abuse. She said statistics show that every substantiated incident of child sexual abuse costs taxpayers nearly $14,400.
But the cost to victims is much higher. Grooms said child sexual abuse can cause a victim to spiral into other types of abuses.
“We believe that every child deserves the chance to discover who they are and what they can achieve in a safe nurturing environment, and that’s why partnering with Darkness to Light for this program is so important to us,” Grooms said.
