Welcome to the MassKids Chronicle, our quarterly e-newsletter on the latest news about MassKids’ child sexual abuse prevention efforts and how you can get involved. MassKids directs the Enough Abuse Campaign that works through training, education and advocacy to prevent child sexual abuse.

Preventing Child Sexual Abuse in Lowell, Lynn and Medford

With support from the Cummings Foundation's 2021 $25 million grant program, MassKids received a $100,000 grant to provide child sexual abuse prevention trainings and technical assistance on prevention policies for schools and youth-serving organizations in Lowell, Lynn and Medford over the next three years. With previous support from the Parker Foundation, nearly 1,200 employees across Lowell's 30 public schools completed our Enough! Preventing Child Sexual Abuse in My School e-learning course, and three virtual trainings for Lowell-area youth-serving organizations were held. The Cummings grant allows us to offer our trainings to the 20 communities that make up the Greater Lowell area. In partnership with the Greater Lowell Health Alliance and the Center for Hope and Healing, outreach to over 100 youth organizations has been made which are now eligible to participate free of charge in our second e-learning course, Enough! Preventing Child Sexual Abuse in My Youth Organization.

The Cummings grant will also us to build upon previous efforts in Lynn, including a Training of Trainers that certified two dozen advocates to deliver Enough Abuse workshops in the community. We invited 48 youth organizations in Lynn to take the e-learning course and met with 25 key community leaders who make up the Lynn Education District. MassKids Director Jetta Bernier and School Superintendent Patrick Tutwiler were guests this month on the 30-minute American Dream Cable TV program hosted by Jim Carrigan, Esq. to discuss this prevention initiative and how Lynn schools can benefit from this crucial training. Mayor Jared Nicholson's office is helping promote the training opportunity for youth organizations and the Lynn Daily Item will be publishing a feature article about the initiative in an upcoming edition.

In Medford, with support from Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn, 37 youth organizations have been urged to adopt the Enough! course. School Committee member Melanie McLaughlin is serving as our liaison with Medford Public Schools where rollout of the school course is expected this fall.

Tell MA Legislators to Pass the Prevention Package!

A package of bills in the current legislative session in the Massachusetts Senate and House would improve MA's child sexual abuse prevention policies. S369 would require prevention training for all schools and youth organizations. (Reported out favorably from the Committee on Education.)

S132 would prohibit sexual misconduct by a person in a position of authority or trust and prohibit consent by a minor 16-18 years of age from being used as a defense in such cases. (Reported out favorably from the Committee on Children, Families and Persons with Disabilities. These bills are now in front of the Senate Committee on Ways and Means.)

S1091 and H1471 would strengthen the screening of applicants for positions in schools to identify any past sexual misconduct and prohibit aiding and abetting a school employee engaged in sexual misconduct with a student to secure a position in another school. These bills are being considered in the Judiciary Committee until June 30th.

Contact your legislators to urge them to Pass the Prevention Package! You can send an already drafted email to your legislators through our Action Network letter campaign. Click the button below.

To draw attention to Pass the Prevention Package! on social media, you can share a post and tag your legislators. Check out our social media toolkit.

Other Enough Abuse Training News...

MassKids Director presented a 90-minute virtual training on child sexual abuse prevention on April 6th to 60 physicians, nurses and social workers at Boston Children’s Hospital. The training was sponsored by the Hospital’s Child Protection Team that oversees all cases of child maltreatment that present at the Hospital.

Schools in all 56 school districts in Nassau and Suffolk Counties on Long Island in New York will now have free access to MassKids’ Enough! online, evidence-based course to address child sexual abuse, through a $30,000 grant from Nassau BOCES, the largest Board of Cooperative Educational Services in New York State. To bring this high quality educational training to your school, click here.

State Policy Exchange: Passing Prevention Laws in Every State

In March, 26 participants from 14 states participated in MassKids’ first meeting of our State Policy Exchange (SPE), launched to provide opportunities for information sharing and peer support for legislators and child advocates seeking to push for child sexual abuse prevention legislation in their states. Among the participants were: Prevent Child Abuse America national staff and PCA chapters in Illinois, Kentucky, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, North Dakota and Rhode Island; Prevent Together (National Coalition to Prevent CSA/E) members from Florida and Massachusetts; representatives from the Kentucky Attorney General’s Office; and other policymakers and advocates.

The State Policy Exchange is a follow-up to our 3-part webinar series for Policymakers and Advocates held in November. These recorded webinars are available on our homepage. Over 80 advocates from 25 states registered for those webinars to learn how to use our Call to Action Report to advocate for CSA prevention legislation, and several have pledged to begin efforts to introduce new prevention legislation or amend current laws that lack recommended provisions.

The SPE will meet bimonthly via Zoom. If you are interested in joining the State Policy Exchange, email [email protected].

You can help prevent child sexual abuse.

We'll show you how. Take the Pledge to Prevent today.

Take specific, achievable actions to prevent child sexual abuse today. Visit www.pledgetoprevent.org and join the almost 1,600 survivors, parents, teachers, nurses, sorority sisters and other allies who have pledged to take action to end this silent epidemic affecting 1 in 10 children.

April is Child Abuse Prevention Month but MassKids works hard every month to prevent child abuse from ever happening. Become a partner in prevention.

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